In recent months, the Village of Ellenville's Board of Trustees have taken a step into a foreign world. They recently passed a resolution requesting that their currently expired Cable TV Franchise Agreement be melded into the Town of Wawarsing's current agreement, and that Time Warner be required to separate out the Village's Franchise Fee and forwarded same to the Village. This was done both in spirit of trying to work with the Town, initiate joint Village-Town opportunities, and to avoid duplicity of agreements with mutual providers of services.

It remains to see if the Town will openly welcome this opportunity to work with the Village. It needs to be noted that in Town / Village combinations such as New Paltz, the franchise agreements have the same type of clauses we have and / or have requested from Time Warner, yet Time Warner won't provide them here.

Another benefit of this is that there will be a single voice dealing with Time Warner Cable, who holds a monopoly over the Cable TV services in the area. The further hope is that Time Warner will finally work with the Town / Village in providing services that are guaranteed by the New York State Public Service Commission, and by the Cable TV Franchise Agreements, that are or were in place. Specifically, those rules and terms dealing with the PUBLIC ACCESS, EDUCATIONAL, and GOVERNMENTAL (PEG) use of cable TV channel(s).

It should be noted that under New York State Law, the PEG channel is guaranteed to be a shared channel between Educational use and Governmental use. Yet, the Ellenville School District refuses to abide by these laws and controls Channel 20 totally. It also needs to be noted that without the Town allowing the District to use the feed and modulator provided by the Town from Time Warner, this would not be possible. The District takes this position because of a frivolous lawsuit filed many years ago, which, under current court rulings at the Federal level, provides protection to the School District. Further, it needs to be noted that the District has convinced the Public Service Commission that they are fulfilling the requirements as set forth by the Federal Communications Commission, and the Public Service Commission, to have their own channel. Yet, the District also sees fit NOT to provide an on-air listing of shows, as well as when these shows will air, as all other school districts do for their respective channels.

As a result of both Time Warner's failure to honor its contract terms with the Town, in violation of Public Service Commission rules, the taxpayers of both the Town and School District provide funding for the District's television program which may exceed $ 100,000.00 per year — we don't know how much this will cost, since the School District has never broken out the funding for the TV station separately, but instead lumps it in with the radio station. It also needs to be noted that the radio station has violated Federal Communications Commission laws in that it has aired promotions that violate the rule allowing the airing of solely 'non-profit' announcements.

It would be lovely if the citizens of the Ellenville Central School District could know when things like the School Board meetings were being aired and if these meetings were even aired at reasonable times to allow the citizens to see them rather than airing them at 2 a.m. In addition, the inability to have League of Women Voter debates, and Town and / or Village Board meetings televised, deprives citizens of the ability, and the right, to be informed. It is hoped that the Town of Wawarsing will vigorously pursue Time Warner for not honoring its contract and in failing to follow the Public Service Commission's rules and regulations. We need to have services that provide us with information easily, with ready access for all.