Speechless

Last night's Town Council Agenda was as jammed packed with critical issues as the Council Chamber was with those who had come to be heard. At least that's what I think. I tried to watch the meeting from home, but with no sound, it became impossible. Despite my desparate attempts to call the Cable Studio and it's director, the Town Council Office, and the Town Manager's office to alert someone, anyone, to add sound to the video feed, the only voice on the other end was voice mail.

My mother used to preach that it is often better to be seen and not heard. Granted given Councilor Devaney's penchant for meaningless mumbles, it could have been a good thing - but last night was not that time.

It's beyond reproach when you take into consideration that one of the most critical issues was being discussed. Two important presentations (on the Agenda) on health insurance and the well known funding issue on what is estimated to be roughly 1.5 million dollars of the town's operating budget was not available in sound to the viewing audience. Without the benefit of the audio and video presentation, how are we, as taxpayers to understand how our tax dollars will be affected when funding health insurance?

After 2-1/2 hours of foolishly believing that if I continuously increased my sound button on the remote to illegal decibal levels, I would be able to hear, I gave in to frustration, stopped my whaling at the TV and stomped out of the room in speechless mutter. How is it that the subject matter, obviously well planned out, based on the video feed, did not receive or get confirmation that the live feed would be working properly? It's been done before and as the former Council President, I made darn certain that any meeting presenting the magnititude of relevance like this one, had cable up and running. There is simply no excuse for this. There is an apparent lack of communication with the director who has and continues to be willing to coordinate special adjustments to cable feeds for highlighted events during this perpetual battle between Comcast and the Town.

To add insult to injury, Peter Z (clearly as frustrated as I was) told me in an early morning conversation on Wednesday that if residents are still using an Analog Box (instead of a Digital Cable box), they viewed the program with no problem. Apparently, Comcast agreed in a new contract to have to provide only an iNet feed. In simplified terms it means anyone who has a newer television set (with or without Hi-Def)and a digital cable box, they shouldn't even bother trying to watch local programming. But wait - in case you are about to rush off to replace your digital box with an analog box, forget about it. Comcast no longer provides antiquated analog cable boxes. Must be a reason. I think it's called technological advancement-and in Watertown's case - it's back to the future.

I for one am fed up with the excuses and reasons as to why Comcast has not fulfilled their obligation. Comcast is taking us all on a costly ride on the information technology highway with nothing more than a dead end approach.

How is it possible that Channel 9 is barely viewable and Channel 10 has been stuck on a snapshot of the League of Women's Voters Banner depicting the 2005 candidates night for over 3 weeks?

As a reminder, it was Comcast who wanted out of local broadcasting and the fact that they threw money at the Town to take it over, does not satisfy their obligation. They are responsible for the technology, including fiber optic cables and feed for viewing both local and network cable channels.

I wonder how Comcast would respond to the town's population if we deducted a payment portion of our bill and sent a note indicating that as soon as they fulfilled their obligation to assist in providing a working service, we would fulfill ours to pay for it.