Council seeks TV exposure
By LEE PROCIDA
Cherry Hill Sun
1/25/2008

District ‘on the road to accommodating request’ to broadcast town council meetings on public access channel

In an effort to make local government more transparent, the town council is currently negotiating with the school district to broadcast regular council meetings on public access channel 19.

District and township officials met Jan. 15, to discuss the deal, and council passed a resolution a day earlier urging the board of education to simply play the taped meetings.

“We’re on the road to accommodating the request,” said Susan Bastnagel, public information officer for the school district. “The general feeling is this is an opportunity to share resources with township.”

The township first approached the school district in the fall, but discussions were postponed until after the elections last November because the district said it did not want to broadcast political content on the channel.

In December, the board first met to discuss broadcasting the meetings.

Bastnagel said the issues that came up at that meeting were whether the township or the district would pay for filming the meetings and if the township would share the franchise fees it collects on channel 19.

Cable subscribers pay franchise fees in their cable bill that the cable company in turn pays to the township.

Currently, the school district receives none of those fees although it pays an employee for programming on the channel, officials said.

The township has said it will provide the tapes, but is against sharing franchise fees.

“The township does not believe that any extra resources need to be given to the school district in order to provide a service that supports open and transparent government,” Mayor Bernie Platt said. “The township is proposing a recording strategy for town council meetings in the same vein as the Voorhees committee meetings.

“There is no extra cost, or drain, on resources to the school district other than finding the proper time to press play and broadcast the meetings on channel 19.”

Currently, the school district strictly uses the channel for educational purposes, but also broadcasts notices for township departments.

Bastnagel said the district may have to amend its policy to allow for broadcasting council meetings and that the school officials are simply going through the necessary process to do so.

“We have a procedure, and we have to follow that,” she said. “We were a little surprised they came out with a resolution since we’ve been meeting with them. I don’t know if council was aware of the meeting the following day.”

Platt’s spokesman Dan Keashen said Washington Township and Voorhees Township both broadcast their council meetings on their local public access channel, and that at least Voorhees does not share its franchise fees.

Keashen said the purpose of the resolution was to expedite the progress of negotiations that began several months ago.

“We want to jumpstart the process,” he said.

Bastnagel said the next step is a meeting in early February to further discuss the deal.