Clearlake Vice Mayor Joyce Overton went to the board with the request on behalf of the PEG station.
PEG stands for “Public, Education, Government.” The station, found on Channel 8, is provided by Mediacom as part of its franchise agreement with the county and cities. Supervisors meetings are broadcast on the station, as are other local meetings and community events.
Overton and Supervisor Jeff Smith both are members of the PEG Board which oversees the station. She was accompanied to the Tuesday meeting by Clearlake businessman Vincent Metzger, a station volunteer and PEG Board member who has taken an active role in helping work with station volunteers.
County Administrative Officer Kelly Cox went over the staff report he had prepared on Overton's request, which sought $5,000 for this year and a retroactive $5,000 contribution for last year.
He said that in 2008 the county gave the city $15,000 for the channel, $5,000 of which was for operations and $10,000 was a one-time contribution for equipment.
The rules of a 2007 agreement the county and Clearlake entered into required the PEG Board to submit budgets by the March preceding the beginning of the fiscal year to be considered. Cox said they didn't meet that requirement for the 2009-10 budget, and although they met it earlier this year, neither the city nor the county offered funding due to fiscal constraints.
Cox said Overton contacted him several weeks ago to ask about the funding. He said Overton stated that Clearlake – which houses the station in its city hall – is incurring indirect operating costs for the station.
Formerly, the station's equipment was housed at Yuba College and overseen by a teacher. Cox said a past city administrator unilaterally moved the equipment to city hall several years ago.
Cox offered the board four options, including continuing the existing agreement with the city and making the financial contribution, terminating the agreement and withdrawing from involvement, asking the city to relinquish the equipment and control of the station to the county, or asking Mediacom to give the county its own channel to manage.
If the board wanted to consider the latter two options, Cox said administrative staff needed to do some additional investigation regarding cost.
Cox suggested the board consider a budget transfer to allow giving the station $5,000, with the conditions that the city of Clearlake make a matching contribution.
He said Overton also was seeking support to have the Mediacom representative on the board replaced with another public member, citing a conflict of interest. The company can't be involved because of programming, she said.
Overton said the station has been her project for the six years she's been on the Clearlake City Council. She said she looked into having Yuba College take it back, but was told there was no space or teacher available for it.
“It was really a shame that it got moved out of that area,” she said.
The station no longer has a paid manager due to fiscal constraints, but Overton said they now have a very good group of volunteers.
They've worked hard to settle the controversy that's grown up around the station in recent years, Overton said. Some of those issues, which became the source of angry PEG Board meetings earlier this year, revolved around control of content and when shows would be aired.
She said the city staff provides a lot of support, and they don't know just how much overall support the city is giving. Cox pointed out that documenting the city's support is a condition of the agreement, and Overton said she was trying to come up with numbers. Cox said he would be happy to help her.
Overton told the board that the channel is utilized by a broad spectrum of county residents, not just those living in Clearlake.
Current programming consists not just of meetings, events and Yuba College classes but also exercise and golf shows, and many live broadcasts, she said. Shows also can be viewed on the station's Internet site, http://laketv8.pegcentral.com/ .
The goal is to grow the station, Overton said. “We don't want you to pull away from us,” she told the board, adding that the station “should have always been a countywide thing.”
Later in the day she was planning to meet with the city of Lakeport to ask it to join the effort.
Overton said some PEG stations charge for content, and a supervisors meeting would cost as much as $150 to air. Considering that the station airs the county's board meetings twice a week, she said the county is getting almost $10,000 in services for free.
Cox said Overton had given him two budgets, one for $20,000 and one for $56,000, and asked which was the actual one. She said the $20,000 budget was the real one, with the more expensive document the “wish budget” that included a paid station manager.
During the discussion Cox suggested Overton stay in contact with Yuba College and pursue moving the station back there at a future time. He said he knew the college didn't want it to leave in the first place.
“There may be an opportunity to partner with them again,” he suggested.
Overton said the college has changed deans since the station left. Cox replied, “I'm just thinking maybe the door isn't entirely closed on that.”
Overton said her main goal is to move the station out of Clearlake City Hall.
Concerns over conflicts
Supervisor Rob Brown said he has problems with the city or the county having control of the station, suggesting it belonged at the school, because there should be a strong education element.
Brown said the local community radio station, which he didn't directly name but is KPFZ 88.1 FM, had promised to have an education component, but as soon as the county gave money to it he said the station forgot about education.
Having the school take it over removes the element of conflict, Brown suggested.
“The reality is, this has become a private media for certain candidates for political office, and it should not be,” he said, noting candidates should be paying for the amount of air time they were getting.
“We need to take that conflict out of it and put it back in the schools,” he said.
Overton said she agreed, and that they didn't have a candidate policy so they were caught off guard by the election-related requests this year.
Brown said some campaign footage was used to make false claims to the Fair Political Practices Commission, which he said currently is being investigated.
Overton said the attorney advising the PEG Board told them that if a member of the public submitted an election-related video, they had to air it at least once. She said her concern was about how often the programs were being aired.
She said they've never had anyone utilize the station in that way before. “Please don't use that to not give us the $5,000.”
Metzger said that the station is, by definition, an alternative channel that is supposed to encourage people to submit different programs. “We're supposed to cause this activity.”
Brown said he had a problem with taxpayer money being spent on entertainment. “That's not one of our constitutional obligations, to provide TV and radio.”
Cox told the board that he felt KPFZ should be a model for PEG. The county invested money in the station and it, in turn, pays to lease antenna space. The space in question is located on Buckingham Peak.
Rushing questioned how a former city administrator could unilaterally have moved the station, and said it appeared that a clear process for decision making for the station wasn't well known at the time.
She asked about the PEG Board's makeup, and Overton said it included five members, including representatives from the Board of Supervisors, which was the seat Smith filled, the city council – Overton's seat – and other at-large members.
Rushing said she struggled with the idea of having government operate the station.
Smith said that if this issue would have come before the board a year ago when the station was going through turmoil he wouldn't have recommended giving PEG the money. “I'm in a total different position at this point.”
He said there are many volunteers working hard to make the channel what it should be, and suggested the board give the $5,000. The board will have until next May 1 to decide on other options.
Community members support station
During public comment, station volunteer Dante DeAmicis said that Rushing had rightly highlighted the problem of a conflict of interest with government control of the station.
He suggested that the city stay with in-kind contributions of space, that they take the $5,400 offered by Yuba College and rather than the flat $5,000 contribution from the county that the county instead should pay a fee for service, in this case for televising board meetings.
DeAmicis suggested that was a “triple level of support” more appropriate for a struggling community.
Shawn Swatosh, the local Mediacom office's senior manager for operations, said Mediacom gave a one-time grant of $30,000 to the city of Clearlake in 1997 for the purchase of equipment for the station. The following year, Mediacom installed the system for recording and televising supervisors meetings.
Swatosh said that 5 percent of the gross revenue from Mediacom's video subscribers goes to Lakeport, Clearlake and the county under the franchise agreement. Cox later told Lake County News that the county receives approximately $250,000 in fees, more than he believes the cities receive, but those figures weren't immediately available.
Swatosh asked the board to consider supporting one quality PEG channel rather than two. If the effort splintered, he said the funding would be more dubious. Swatosh said he had seen that problem happen in other communities.
He recommended that the county, which has more resources, take the lead on the channel. Swatosh noted that the county paid about $8,000 for equipment with the capability of streaming meetings live to the TV8 Web site. That and the Web hosting means the services for the county aren't free, he said.
Station volunteers and supporters urged the board to make the financial contribution due to the need and the station's value to the community.
“It really enriches our lives, I think, to know what's been going on,” said Cobb resident Tom Slaight.
Cox said that Smith had approached Social Services Director Carol Huchingson about donating surplus computers to the station, and Huchingson had two such computers ready to offer.
Rushing said she wanted to find a way to make the station work, but suggested there were a couple of conditions for support, one of them being that it can't be operated by, or have the appearance of being operated by, government. That, she said, “immediately puts you into conflict.”
She said she would love to see a plan in place about a year from now or next spring for transitioning the station to a community supported model, adding she supported the proposal for not having Mediacom on the board but in attendance. Rushing suggested having an educational representative fill the former Mediacom slot.
Supervisor Jim Comstock wanted to see the city of Clearlake document its contributions to the station and also wanted to make sure policies are in place to prevent some of the station's past issues from reoccurring.
Overton said she is starting to work with a nonprofit to move the station from city control. She said by May they will have a report on the plan.
Rushing moved to give the station the $5,000 contribution, with the requirement that the station give the board a report by May 1 on its model and a plan for transition. The board approved the motion 4-1, with Brown voting no.
The board also reached consensus to remove the Mediacom member from the board.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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