As part of its approval of a $1.4 billion budget last night, the Tucson City Council agreed to kick $25,000 to Access Tucson to keep the public-access station from going dark over the next few months.
The city is combining the public-access facilities with the city’s own Channel 12 in a new community media center that is designed to handle both those responsibilities as well as some new responsibilities. You can can see the details here.
But while the city goes through the process of selecting a new organization to run the community media center, it will continue funding the cost of putting programming on the Access channel. The downtown studio closed to the public last month.
Access Tucson Executive Director Lisa Horner said she was surprised by the council’s decision, which was hammered out as the council members discussed the budget.
“Clearly, there was political will to ensure that the channels for community media not cease to program while the city channel maintained funding as well,” Horner said.
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2015.
$1.4 BILLION dollar budget! That’s $3500 per person in the City of Tucson.
We’re not worth it.
And how much of that $3,500 per person is for paying down debt from waste by current and past Mayors, Council Members, and City Managers? Way too much for the current group not to continue the funding for Tucson organizations and projects that had nothing to do with the waste and mismanagement of City Hall!
A two month extension for Access Tucson was a kick the ball political decision. I will not be giving the Mayor Rothschild or Council Member Romero a vote in the primary … and if Access is not funded properly after two months, I will be voting against them in the General Election.