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Contact Your Elected Officials If you care about bringing media access to your community, the most important thing you can do to help is also the easiest: contact your elected officials! Cable franchises are essentially real estate contracts negotiated between the cable company and a municipality, so the bottom line responsibility for getting a good deal rests with public officials. Lets make this happen! • Speak out at Troy City Council meetings. • Send letters to local elected officials. (Letter download) • Email and/or call the Mayor and Troy City Council. • Tell your friends about the effort to organize access. (Flyer download) Speak
out at Troy City Council meetings, A
few tips when addressing the council 2. Keep it simple! Remind your elected officials that the cable contract is a basically real estate deal that outlines what citizens get for letting the cable company use public property (streets, sidewalks and other rights-of-way). They're negotiating on your behalf--tell them you want them to get the best deal possible! 3. Be brief! Tell your representatives that you just want what hundreds of other municipalities already have--a community media center with the resources necessary to take full advantage of the public, educational and government access channels on cable. Plus an I-Net (Institutional Network) that connects city government, schools, and other municipal buildings and helps save taxpayer money. 4. Be realistic! You don't have to come across like a rocket scientist to speak out effectively. There's a fortune at stake in every cable franchise so, as with any complex negotiation, the city should employ expert help to get the best possible deal. All you need to do is convince your elected officials to take this issue seriously and not cave in to the cable company. 5. Be creative! What aspects of public access mean the most to you? Church services for shut-ins? Televised government meetings? Educational programming? Local sports? Music programming? Arts and culture? Local history? Public safety information? Activities for young and senior citizens? Media literacy training? A place to learn computer skills? You get the idea--public access television can open up a new world of possibilities for the public, and help expose the great things about life in this community! 6. Be persistent! Don't let this opportunity slip away. The cable company knows millions, even billions, of dollars in revenue will flow from this contract--they will fight long and hard to keep as much of it as possible. The cable franchise defines how citizens will benefit. Elected officials have to be reminded of their responsibility to negotiate the best possible contract, even if doing so is hard work. 7. Be grateful! Thank them for their time, their attention, for allowing you to speak--and for their support of public access community television.
Write your own support letters to local elected officials. If you don't have time to write your own, then here are sample letters to send to Troy City Council President Marjorie Mahar DerGurahian, Troy Mayor Harry Tutunjian and State Senator Joseph Bruno. Print them, sign your name and address, and mail. Keep sending letters. The stamp is a symbol of how vaulable your opinion is. Print from a PDF file (download) quick and easy Print
from your web browser, don't forget to hit your back
button to return Email and/or call the Mayor and Troy City Council. Tell them what you think. Email: the Mayor and all of Troy City Council at once with this link
Tell your friends about the effort to organize access. (Flyer) Download the community access television flyer.(pdf) -Give the flyer to people you know. -Post the flyer in a public space.
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