Philadelphia Community Access Coalition
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COUNCILMAN COHEN: Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. COHEN: Hi. My name is Josh Cohen, and I'm an artist, and I've been involved in public access television for a long time. Twenty years ago in college, I was active in public access. And then when I lived in New York City, I was involved in public access.

And I think that today, the overwhelming testimony to the value of public access has been demonstrated and comes down to a question of how do we get this to be a reality here in Philadelphia. And it seems like a real blight, a real mar on the record that it hasn't happened yet. Other cities, every large city has public access. So it really is intriguing to me, it's almost like a puzzle as to why this isn't happening, what can we do to make it happen. So I've been asking a lot of questions and meeting trying to contact the interested parties and trying to work this out.

After the meeting yesterday, I talked to the President of Public Property. And he gave me a lot of information and background as to what's happened. My understanding is that there is $8 million a year that comes from Comcast to the City, and out of that, $500,000 is supposedly earmarked for public access but instead, it's been going into the public fund. And that there is supposed to be a not-for-profit entity created by the Mayor to implement public access using that money.

Today in the hallway and in the side over here, I talked to some lawyers from Comcast and tried to get a sense of whether they're open to the possibility that we could actually solve this instead of just being adversaries and, you know, everyone just digging their heels in, how to come together.

So I got some phone numbers from some of the heavy-hitters lawyers and from Stephanie Lowe, who is the personal -- I'm not sure -- community outreach person, the representative from Comcast. And I'm hopeful that in the days and weeks and months, or whatever -- hopefully not years -- to come, that somehow, that by having ongoing discussion and with David Cohen, hopefully, as an important part of this, to try to find one way to say yes to this.

When the original budget was made for $500,000 by the Public Properties Person, he was saying that was based on union labor and so on. And when I worked in the public access in Wooster, Massachusetts, our budget was $5,000 a year, and it was in an old converted carriage house, and the cameras were actually old bank cameras that were black and white. So that can be done on a shoestring budget. There's various options as to how much money. You get more when you pay more, but just to have one station broadcasting, just to get going, just to have something, I think that's really an important thing to do.

And I think it's -- and I think there's room for even if it's not $500,000, $50,000 out of the entire $190 million budget of the Public Properties, I think they can find it. It's a question of getting the political will and the bureaucracy and the inertia to shake things up and say yes to this.

So far, just to wrap up here, we're going to have a new mayor, and Mr. Street has signed a letter saying that he's in favor of public access, and I believe it's in the works to contact Mr. Katz and see if he's willing to sign on, and if both of them are signing on to this, it seems likely that somehow we can make this a reality in the reasonable future.

So I have high hopes at this time. And what happened today is resounding that the great showing that we had today, and this important testimony will resound and echo. People in this building know that this is happening. It's being heard over intercoms throughout the building, and City staff will be talking about what is happening here, and this is real democracy at work. And I'm hoping that we can get this to be accomplished for everyone's benefit.

COUNCILMAN COHEN: Thank you, thank you very much.

MR. COHEN: You're welcome, and I hope to be in touch with you.

COUNCILMAN COHEN: Okay.

(Applause.).

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