Janet McCarty and Steve Fontana have announced that they will be going on NHTV regularly (every week or so) to answer questions from citizens and to discuss what their administration is doing and planning to do.
This is a far cry from the Kopetz approach, which was to deal with citizens only one on one, in private. This is good for certain sorts of problems, but it keeps citizen recommendations and complaints private, when most of them should be public.
This is a great first step in bringing transparency to North Haven government.
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Well, that's why we have NHTV--to inform the public about local issues. If it's broadcast live they could have a call-in segment.
Also of note, someone told me that there was a real screamer at last night's Planning and Zoning Commission last night. Did anyone attend?
I think that the utilization of North Haven TV is a good idea and would be a good forum for the Democrats. I truly believe that there is a larger perspective that needs to be considered for the citizens of North Haven.
North Haven TV has, what I consider to be, more expansion for viewable content. With channels 19 and 20 available to us, I would like to see more programming available to us on these channels.
We do have a regular cycle or "looping" where we can view various meetings that occur in town but I think that there is an opportunity to have both the Republicans and Democrats have televised content where opposing points of view can be discussed.
This could mean either separate shows for the Republican point of view and Democratic point view or shows where both points of view are discussed.
Recently, I watched a show entitled "TWO CENTS" hosted by Joe Vegliante that included 3 prominent citizins in town that were supporting the Democrats.
I was disappointed to hear that the host of the show offered the Republicans the opportunity to also appear but there was no interest in doing so.
As a Republican,I would have enjoyed apppearing on that show to discuss in a professional fashion the issues at hand.
For the future, I believe that as programming content opportunities arise on North Haven TV, there is an opportunity for local North Haven businesses to support North Haven TV in the form of advertising to help underwrite some of the costs.
This would only be effective, in my view, if there was no political agenda involved by those companies who would be interested in advertising to support additional content.
There seems to me to be a growing interest in our local town politics at all age levels and demographics. I believe that we have an opportunity to capitalize on this through the local medium of North Haven TV.
Sincerely,
Michael Freda
Republicans have, in recent years, done what they can to prevent NHTV from covering public exchanges. As they have done to prevent open government in general.
People who, as Mr. Freda says, "support the Democrats" (even though some are Independents or Republicans) fought for years to get the public comments section of board and commission meetings to be part of the meetings, so they could be televised on NHTV. But Republican majorities refused to allow this, until Mr. Freda's own Board of Finance auditor subcommittee allowed it. This broke the dam.
Republicans consistently supported David Monz's decision to prevent citizens from even asking questions of town officials at town meetings. Government doesn't get more closed than this, and no Republican publicly criticized it. Not one.
Closed government is Republican policy. That's the principal reason I supported the Democrats. Asking for more public conversation is great, but why didn't you and your colleagues give it to us when you were in power?
And where are Independents and minority party members in your vision of open public debate? They're front and center in mine. Independents are probably the largest group of voters in town, and minority party members often have the freshest ideas.
Mr. Wechsler,
I can only try to offer an explanation based upon my 18 month tenure as a member of the BOF.
During the sub-committee meetings that you referenced, we were asked to have the public comments aired.
I was all for that as were my fellow members and I ended up calling North Haven TV to request this because I thought that it was a good idea. I must admit that it was not me that thought of it but it was the correct thing to do.
There was discussion on this among the Republicans because it had not been done before but there was no significant intransigence on this once we understood what the procedure would be to facilitate it.
In my opinion, once I had a chance to understand the potential legal issues that North Haven TV wanted addressed, which we did address, this was the first step to trying to do a better job at this moving forward.
Although there was considerable progress to be made moving forward, we did start the progress through the "portal" of those sub-committee meetings.
Looking back over the course of a longer period of time, I would agree with you that we did a poor job in this area.
The independents and minority party members would certainly be, and should be, an important set of constituents as it relates to an environment of healthy public debate.
I think an important point to be made is that NHTV has brought alot of government issues and policies to the forefront and helped to make many citizens much more aware of how the town operates.
Walt Mann does a superb job of operating that studio on a wing and a prayer and funds are very, very tight. He struggles constantly to keep this important information venue running as seamlesly as it does.
I am all in favor of increased airings of meetings, discussions,forums on government,ect.(as a matter of fact I think they're imperative ) but this increased usage deserves to be funded in some way. Mr. Mann and his volunteers need more support from the community or we will lose this extremely valuable tool for regaining the public's trust in our town's government.
The town easily found money for things like the K of C building. I hope the town now can come up with some sort of financial stipend, without too much resistance from the taxpayers, to help offset this increased, albeit neccessary usage of this great local medium.
At a minimum BUY SOME FRUIT!!for god sakes!!Every little bit will benefit us all tenfold in the long run!
Putting it on NHTV is great I think the public should be able to see what goes on. { I think some should have an IQ test prior to voting } but Oh well. I could think of several Dems better than the one you sent up. Please help me to understand why she was the choice? As shown in many other towns in the state anyone running against an incumbent won since most voted AGAINST who was in charge during these last few years and not FOR a better candidate.
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