PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Cable Advisory Committee has mapped out a timeline for community outreach before negotiations on the Charter Spectrum contract begin.

The panel plans to meet with Spectrum and Mayor Peter Marchetti at the end of February and hold hearings in early March before reconvening at the end of March. The goal is to have a solid document by April, as the city's 10-year contract ends in September.  

"This is kind of our game plan up through the beginning of April, tentatively April 1," Chair Sara Hathaway said. "But if we need a little an extra week to pull together the documents will give ourselves an artificial deadline of April 1."

Member Shawn Serre, who is executive director of Pittsfield Community Television, reported that the first of two focus group sessions was held with Pittsfield Public School educators.

"I think it was a pretty lively discussion, they were all very engaged with what we were asking," he said, explaining that there is a 23-page transcript from the meeting that will be boiled down and go into the ascertainment report, fueling the asks for the cable license.

Municipal department heads will be the subject of the second focus group.

After hearing that PCTV channels are not working on a streaming box called Xumo that is partnering with the cable company, the committee voted to send a letter to Marchetti and the state Department of Communications and Cable highlighting the issue.

Serre held up a printed photo of the splash screen that said "Charter Communications is not responsible for the program being aired on this channel" when trying to access Channel 1301 with the streaming box. The education channel 1302 and the government access channel 1303 are not registered as valid channels with Xumo.

After looking at a customer's bill he found that they are getting charged with a local government franchise fee of $4.43 and a local government PEG capital fee of 22 cents.

"So this customer is paying for cable through the Xumo box, they're getting all the video channels, they're being charged the franchise fees but they're not able to access the channels," he said. "So that is something I think that we should concern ourselves with."

Hathaway was "shocked and horrified" by the development.

The committee also voted to request that the mayor write a letter to Spectrum requesting a breakdown of PEG fees, as it is seen as useful information when going into the contract negotiation.

Late last year, closed captions were restored on PCTV's cable programming after a letter to the Federal Communications Commission. The organization implemented closed captioning for certain programs about a year ago but came to a roadblock when the captioning was coming through on streaming but not through cable boxes.

"It took two years to get there and we definitely did the nice thing first and we tried to do all the informal procedures of asking them to take care of it and none of those efforts were successful," Serre explained.

"So the only choice that we have left really was to involve the FCC's disability rights office and once they got involved, it seemed like things move pretty quickly."

In addition to that, there have been requests for Spanish translations and PCTV was able to secure grant funding for it, which is expected to start next month.

Serre pointed to the city's growing Hispanic and Latino population and said it will be a major step forward.

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