Statement by Portland Community Media on the Portland City Council Resolution
Opposing National Cable Franchise Legislation
November 9, 2005

I am Kohel Haver, I am an attorney and I am the president of the board of Portland
Community Media. I have come today in support of this city council taking a stand
against the Congressional and Senate bills that would undermine the city’s ability to
govern the public’s property and rights of way including collecting reasonable rent and
providing for other unique community services. I proudly support every effort this city
takes to recognize the important role of local government to demand local customer
service, support for local community media and providing universal and affordable
broadband communications services. I urge you to oppose any legislation that denies
local government the right to require service providers, who use our public rights of way,
to pay franchise fees, and provide support for PEG access and Institutional Networks.

In this country, there are many community media centers like the one we have on MLK
Jr. Boulevard. Community media centers educate people about media and help them
make their own television programs, which in turn reach the many neighborhoods of our
community. Our Portland Community Media is at risk by the pending national
legislation, which are being pushed by the telephone industry in a bid to enter the video
business with a minimal amount of regulation.

The proposed legislation would eliminate the City of Portland’s ability to grant cable
television franchises, control public rights-of-way, and provide PEG Access resources. I
am sure you know that the cable franchise fees are a significant source of revenue to the
city’s general fund. That alone should garner you vote.

However - more important to our community is that a very small part of those franchise
fees, were provided to Portland Community Media - to give the citizens the place, the
equipment and training to use the cable system for communication and community
development. If you don’t know we in Portland have one of the most productive, most
used and most technically excellent facility in the country. I am very proud to be part of
Portland Community Media. What do we do there? We teach anyone and everyone who
walks through our doors to create television programming that cannot be found on those
500 other cable channels. These city council meetings, the Portland City Club, more than
twenty five locally produced public affairs programs, homework and school programs,
neighborhood parades, numerous programs by and for immigrants in their native
language and available for everyone to enjoy, community issues discussed in depth - all
by our neighbors.

Last year the community and PCM produced over 8,000 hours of programming. If you
add them up the network evening news programs made about 546 hours last year, a
whole season of the program “24” is only 24 hours. I have brought you a copy of
Portland Community Media’s most recent newsletter - in it is a sample of the
programming available on the community channels. I invite you to tune in and see
something that is uniquely Portland. You will note that we have productions in our
community that have been produced for over a decade with a following of thousands of
viewers who are not otherwise served by commercial media. It is the essence of
community media.

As all of you know there is a lot going on in this city that make us proud to live here.
Community Media is part of that. Do not let officials in Washington D.C. give it away to
huge corporations trying to monopolize our television..