Mauro DePasquale is one the best keyboard players in this city. And yet, what he's been doing for the past twenty plus years has been working like a slave to enable others to have a voice, and to put that voice onto the cable TV system where thousands of people can watch and listen.This is not the Hoity-Toity channel, it's the Public Access channel where more happens amongst larger segments of our city's population than ANY other sector besides education. Last night a lady stood up to say that when she lived in England, there was a great deal of very helpful, as well as entertaining television to watch. But when she came to America, and to Worcester, cable channel 13 was the only one she could relate to at all.
People from Africa, from Central and South America, and people from Asia have only one source of local connection in this city with channel 13. And the programming done for them is only a tiny part of what's happening with this facility.
City Councilor Gary Rosen attended, and then spoke towards the end of the meeting. Because of the Plan E form of our municipal government, however, he admitted that there's not very much he can do about the current state of limbo that the City Manager has been leaving WCCA in. He can ask for a report, he can ask what's the holdup, etc., but in the end it's the City Manager's decision.Because of the way Plan E works, the City Manager can pretty much do whatever he feels like doing with WCCA's future funding. So far, the runaround he's been giving everybody on this says only one thing to this taxpayer: charter change may not be such a bad idea, after all.
1 comments:
Posted on the T&G regarding this story:
First: the city should have placed WCCA at the center of table 'prior' to negotiating with Charter Communications. The city should have done all they could, up front and in the open, to work for franchise assurances to ensure WCCA's mission and its increased growth into the future, as a center piece of Worcester's technological infrastructure.
Second: Worcester's city law department failed to apply itself and negotiate with Charter to meet the expressed community needs that were expressed, demonstrated, recommended in numerous reports and documented during the time it was conducting its cable renewal ascertainment process. YES, ws, the need exist. Quantitatively and qualitatively. Common sense will tell you, just Look at the station's programming, if it wasn't needed it would be black, like the government and school channel was from 1986 through to 1997. It's not it teaming with diversity and community programming. During that time, by the way WCCA was up and running and well utilized.
Wouldn't it be in the best interest of everyone if the city took on a more supportive and opened role rather than an apparently closed and adversarial one, as other cities do?
-rr
City Manager Michael V. O'Brien did ask the Research Bureau where to cut costs. But he conveniently neglected to tell them about the raises he wants to give to himself and his friends. If the people of Worcester let him do what the Research Bureau tells him to do then the Senior Center and WCCA, two things Worcester NEEDS to keep, will no longer exist and he will richer for his delegating.
-OBrien's Worcester
I wonder if it's the same 'necessary due diligence' that led them to fund their obscene pay raises? Quit the double talk and fund Channel 13 and the Senior Center not your own pockets. Your pockets don't need funding and it doesn't take a Research Bureau to figure that out.
-Sal
Post a Comment