Recently, the Londonderry Town Council held two, mandatory, Public Budget Hearings. The purpose of these public hearings was to hear the views of the citizens. At these meetings, citizens and petitioners were not allowed to fully explain their points of view and were even put on time limits. Before the citizens had an opportunity to complete their questions and discussions, the Town Council began making cuts and adjustments to the budget. And this was a “Public” Hearing?! As a result, their decisions were made with incorrect information and a lack of all the facts.
One such result could affect Warrant Article 12, a Citizen’s Petition Warrant Article, which re-establishes the Cable Special Revenue Fund. At the urgency of a resident, at a past meeting, the Town Manager researched and discovered the Cable Special Revenue Fund for the Londonderry Access Center was never legally established even though the voters of Londonderry had been voting in favor of it for many, many years. The Town Attorney, in a letter that was read aloud at a meeting, suggested “addressing this issue by presenting an article to the town meeting, so as to formalize the long-standing practices of the community.”
Neither the Town Manager nor the Town Council wrote a warrant article to re-instate this, no tax impact, Special Revenue Fund. Instead, they chose to “correct” the error by directly moving the Comcast cable revenues of $535,000 into an Undesignated Fund Balance. In addition, a Capitol Reserve Fund Warrant Article for $200,000 funded from the Undesignated Fund Balance would only be used for future LAC equipment acquisition.
Believing that the true intent of the taxpayers, all these years, was to dedicate the cable revenues for maintaining Londonderry Access and TV Studio, Cindy Eaton, submitted the Citizen’s Petition Warrant Article. Warrant Article 12 was written with the help of the NH DRA (Department of Revenue Administration) to legally allow the Londonderry Access Center to continue to be self-funded with a zero tax impact. Passage of Warrant Article 12 with an activation date of July 1, 2012 will ensure all future revenues from Comcast will be dedicated to the Londonderry Access Center.
Please come to the Town Deliberative Session on Monday, Feb. 6, at 7:00 and to the voting polls, March 13, to vote “Yes” for Article 12.
Thank You,
Cindy Eaton
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“….self-funded with a zero tax impact….”
Nonsense that this is “self funded” with “zero” impact. We, who have Comworst Cable, pay for this every month with a hidden tax on our cable bills.
Don’t mislead. The Town Council has done the correct thing. What might have been a viable solution of funding LAC with a hidden tax years ago to fund an ever expanding local cable station (how many channels are we up to now 6 – watched by an equal #) is no longer financially prudent.
Better yet – lets eliminate the hidden tax on our cable bills and get rid of LAC – who will miss it any way (the people with satellite dishes get along fine without LAC).
That’s a warrant article I’d vote yes for – not this one.
First I need to say I am a Satellite user and therefor do not pay this “fee!”
The one question Dottie does not answer is “if you collect all this money year after year what are you trying to build?”
We have already seen how disengenious Dottie has been with her “retirement!” I was there when she said “keep the three positions until I retire. Implying at the end of the budget cycle. Watch the tape.
Cable is a revenue source, for the privilage of running cable all over town.
We have three employees running the center, most towns such as Manchester have two. I can’t even get an estimate of how many people watch this at night.
Dottie has already submitted plans to build and addition to the studio so students from the high school don’t run into the UPS guy. “Heaven for bid!
IMHO, we are watching and seeing a mini-empire being built, and for what purpose?