Permanent Cable Committee - Regular Meeting

Sorry. I'm just having a chance

wanna explain what we need about Verizon so in case Bob drops out again?

Okay. So we got a notice from the state notifying us that the franchise with Verizon is set to expire in three years of our five year contract that we have. So we reached out to mister Triano to see if he would be interested in assisting us with the negotiations for the renewal with Verizon. So I think at this point, Bob, is do we have to let the state know if we're gonna do formal or informal or anything like that, or is it just was it just a notice from them and we don't have to do anything right yet?

I don't think you have to do anything right now, but at some point, you could do a letter to Verizon, sending them a copy of that and saying, could you please contact us to discuss

We do have a new rep.

Verizon's side.

Yeah. We have a new rep for Verizon. Neil is gone.

Do you would you write us something, Bob, so Karen can send it?

I can I can get you the contact person and their address if you just wanna send it? Yeah.

Send it from you. Yeah.

Just send an email, and then I'll give you a draft of the letter, and you guys can look at it. And then authorize it to go out.

Okay. I

don't think I don't think because of the way that contract reads like the three years still left that they're gonna be in a position to wanna start negotiating. But at some point, you gotta do all that rigmarole on what do they call it? Acertainment or whatever it is, study. Yeah.

Yeah. That

that is the formal or informal. If you do just the informal, it's you don't have to go through the whole ascertainment. Right?

Right.

I mean, I don't see them.

I don't want you to have to spend the money doing all this study like you did whenever it was five or six years ago. You know, you had to hire that company. So

Yeah. I think we're good.

Yeah. I mean and I don't think they're gonna be ready to do anything for at least another year and a half, probably.

Yeah. Maybe we'll do that again once Comcast is up and cover both of them again.

What's the name of this new rep?

Oh, it's a woman, and I cannot remember her name off the top of my head.

Sorry. No problem.

Yeah. The lawyer's gone, I guess. Neil's gone. So they they trimmed off the

top voice. Yeah.

So, so you'll take care of that for us?

Yeah. I'll compose something.

Thank you. I'll get you the name and the contact.

Okay. I guess I'll sign off.

Alright. Nice to see you.

Nice seeing you. Thank you. Good luck with your CAT scan.

Yeah. It's the new and improved box, you know, 36 pounds lighter.

Yeah. Good looking.

Oh, wow. Good for you. Yeah. Well, it's called too prestigious, Steve. Know. I know. Know. I I know. Forty four hours earlier, they found a hole in my stomach. Oh. And and I know you're a big fan of all these World War two movies and Gunsmoke in the Virginian. I found out that three out of 10 people don't make it off of the table.

What loosened up?

Well, you made it off. You just got many more CAT scans to go.

Alright. You you're broken up now. We'll we'll talk to you soon, Bob. Okay? Oh, he's frozen now. Okay.

Yeah. You froze up, Bob.

Yeah. Well, this will be the sixth one.

There he goes.

It was bound for him to get this term to leave. And then the other thing that we were here to vote on is, as we've all talked about in the past, one, two, three, four, 5, and Steve, 6. Okay. As we've tried to call in the past, if we actually talked in executive session about what we were gonna do with Karen's loss of funds because they're cutting the media department, and she prepared a budget for us. I'll let Karen speak on it so that she can explain it.

Okay. Hold on. There's a fire truck going by.

I can't hear a thing.

Oh, that's good. So what I did was I rolled my entire salary into the budget. We also added in my longevity and the indirect cost for benefits for Zach and I. Joe doesn't pull any benefits yet because he's so on he's still on his parents' plan. So I was surprised that that was the price that it was, the $51,006.85.

So that's good. I did a little bit of adjustment with our capital outlay section. I did a look back over the past five or six years to see how much we typically spend in the capital and the new equipment, And we'd always budgeted, like, a 150,000. I know it was a padded number, but we never spent anywhere near that. So I figured I'd just put in what we actually get in capital in both those lines.

So we we get 90,000 next year in capital. So I put 40 in capital projects and 50 in the new equipment. So that didn't change our budget too drastically from what it was this year. So we are going I'm proposing that our f y twenty seven budget be the $490,557.79.

Karen, it's

About 560. Right?

Right. That's what? Did I

Go ahead, Donna.

It's 490,657.

See, I don't have glasses. I tried to write it bigger. $6.57. Sorry. Correct. I know he made the answers on me.

Darn and I picked up one at the same time.

Alright. Good. Glad. See, you two both have glasses on.

We're not vain. We wear that.

No. I just I don't I have readers, and I'm reading, and I don't have them.

So sorry. It's been his long too.

Adam, you'll get there someday. Someday.

It's very, very soon.

Alright. So

So what what it comes down to, and I just asked the question, Karen, the the warrant opens on Monday. Why don't you explain that, Karen?

So the town meeting warrant will open at the Selectman's meeting on Monday, and what that does is allows articles to be put on the town meeting warrant. We typically have our own article for the appropriation of funds for our department. It's separate from the town budget. And I'm thinking because we don't know for sure if media's go gonna be going away. We could have this, you know, number in as a placeholder.

And Mhmm. Then if for whatever reason it, you know, changes or not, we could change the number up until the warrant closes, which is a couple weeks away. So we won't we won't know what they're planning for the budget. I mean, we got I got that letter that, you know, a couple other people got that said it's probably gonna happen. So, you know, it's not set in stone until people vote at town meeting, but we need a number on the warrant for our article. So

And he thought that

But, like, I mean, like, we've done in the past, we know we vote a budget, and we have yet to ever spend our full budget. It's just what we appropriate to have a number there. So we have the funds and don't have to go back to special town meeting or whatever to appropriate more funds. This is a higher question? What's that?

Could I ask a question? I have a question in reference to if the media doesn't go away, would you still be running that part and the town won't be helping pay for

That is up to the department. We did I mean, we did talk about the fact that the town because the town is having a budget crisis that maybe for FY '27, the cable committee could spot my position a 100%. If the position if the position didn't go away, I could still do some work for media. Liz does the majority of it. Mine is mostly oversight and budgeting and scheduling and overseeing what she and the intern are working on, but it would also reduce our indirect costs.

So if if the media stayed

The thing I was looking at is and I asked Erin this earlier. If media stays, is she gonna go back, or is she gonna stay with us? And I said, Liz can run the media side of it, and you would basically be a 100% from McCann accept for if you asked a question from Liz, and that would be it. You'd receive no pay, no nothing. I told her when she was getting the job, just watch your back.

The gentleman that had given it to you is a snake in the grass, and that's on record by me many times. So that's my side of it. I feel that hearing does enough for us, making sure that, you know, we have people out there, you know, keeping us in the public's eye. You know? So I I would rather have her with us. I was never in favor of having her split the position, but that was her

choice. Right. I agree a 100%. I just, you know, wanna make sure that I don't know, that they're not gonna throw other people stuff and have us pay for it or cover other things.

They're they're using using a space that's leased, so they'd have to take media out of our department if they're not gonna if they try to throw more people in there. Okay. It we we lease that space.

Right.

It's gonna be, like, twenty six years we're gonna be leasing that space because we spent

And that that agreement that we had made with them was that they would pay our indirect cost for me and Zach for having the media department here. So if the media department stayed, they would continue paying. That that's like their lease their sublease of our space by paying that.

Steve, I saw you come up. Do you have something to say?

Just curious. Anytime that we brought the budget proposal to the town meeting, has anybody ever questioned, you know, is this town money or cable money? Has anybody ever questioned us?

The only time I ever had to get up and speak was in 2019 when we brought the vote to the town meeting that explained it all. But when we we set that the cable committee could be the only ones that spend from the account, and we we had to create the warrant article to approve the appropriation because we never had to do that before.

Right. Right. Does it say in

the law that this is cable derived money and it isn't regular general fund?

Yeah. And, I mean, in the past, since 2019, whoever the town manager was would when they read the article, they would explain that this is cable funds from subscribers. This is not tax one. They they explain it even though You might have

to sit with Joe if he's gonna read this out of me.

I will help him write. Well, I'm definitely gonna write the article myself. And but, you know, like, he's not speaking to me. Gee. I wonder why. He's not speaking to a lot of us. We we can't get, you know, we can't get in front of him to talk to him. They no emails, no phone calls, closed doors. So He's

a hell of a manager. Wow. Oh, yeah. He's we won't go there.

No.

I just found out things about him and the fire department stuff, so it thought it got me a little bit today. But it's interesting. Got a police chief in there as town manager that did a police budget, trying to do the whole town budget. So Oh. But he's getting help from somebody that approved the budget. I mean, what's her name? Sue Nickerson? But we won't go

down that road. That has nothing to do with us.

So my thought was we can approve this so that if they decide to cut media, that Karen can put this in in place of the the other one. Is that what you're gonna try to do, Karen?

Yes. I did reach out to the GMEG group and have submitted a new job description for me that removes all work for the media for the town out of it and had requested that I keep the title of director of media technology only because it's currently listed as that in the GMED contract that was signed. If I had to create a new director of cable access or whatever, a new position that you know, we have a job description for that. It's just not in the current contract, so it would have to be approved by GeneSight. There's just a lot more steps than just changing the job description, leaving the title.

And I do, you know, I do more than cable access, I do the web website for the McCann as well as social media, so it is it is media technology. I would like to keep that.

Carrie, you run the Facebook page for McCann?

Yep.

When it's not hijacked?

It's not hijacked anymore. We're all good.

But you finally got it all back?

I got it all back.

Wow. You're able to delete him out and stuff? Yep. Wow.

I did it. Took me a couple weeks, but we're good. We're clear. All clear. All two factor, multifactor. Nobody's getting into my account without me knowing or approving them. So I did add Zach as a secondary on the account. So if something should happen ever to either one of us, somebody else is there. So there's a backup on the Facebook account.

The even while you're sleeping.

Yes. No joke.

Okay. Well, that's good. Glad you got it back. What I'm looking for is we we talked about this during executive session. We also talked about the Verizon thing, which we got Bob to go forward with. We really didn't need a vote on that, but we do need a vote on this. So I just wanted to get everybody's feeling before we make a motion and all that stuff. But I wanna make sure it was explained well by Karen. Everybody gives their opinions and go from there. Anybody have anything else to discuss with it?

Mister chair?

Yes.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the, McCann peg access budget for f y twenty twenty seven in the amount of $490,000. It's 490 657.79. Gonna need those glasses. I can see them. And 79¢. I got that

wrong, but

I can repeat that over again. Oh, it should remain and and seconded. Donna, you seconded? Yes. Thank you.

Hustle took glasses to club, Nick. What? You you have the glasses on. Right?

Oh, there we go.

There you go.

Those are

these are mine.

Those are blue glasses, though. Motion has been made and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? It passes unanimously. Thank you. Is there anything else to come in front of the committee while we're here? It is an open meeting. I mean, it is.

I'm working on Adam, you sent me over annual town report information. If there's anything else you wanna add, pictures or whatever, send them to me because we'll be wrapping that up this week to get that printed for town meeting.

Very good.

I think that's it. Good. I've been busy. That's

K. Well, thank you everybody for coming.