Not the last City Commission meeting, but the previous one, a couple of commissioners had the local cable access organization,
PEGASYS, in their crosshairs for outright termination--contract renewal was up for a vote, and they were making nasty noises about why vote on a contract when its entire future was in question. Yeah, I got a problem with that; I was expressly prohibited from making a video of Winter Chautauqua and I was gonna wait that year for when PEGASYS would finally show it...except if that contract wasn't renewed, it would never air. Yeah, it was only in retrospect that I figured I should have asserted my Fair Use rights, but the last thing I wanted to do at the time was get into an argument (even though an argument transpired anyway; inevitable, that, I suppose).
Somebody showed up at the commission meeting and basically sunk teeth into why PEGASYS should continue, even though those two weren't convinced of voting in favor of relocation funding (it's been forced by the city to move out of its established location).
PEGASYS
gets to live for one more year.
ONE.
In these times of downsizing even important things, I'm sure nobody found that the cutting of Enid Chautauqua was any surprise, but PEGASYS too? Some things aren't worth fighting for, some are just losing battles...and some things are darn well worth it even if ya die trying. I draw the line at cutting PEGASYS.
Put up yer dukes, City Hall. I'm ready for ya.
Confused by the date on the pics? Well, because of other online city politics (who else gets online etc) and how search engines work (Google's blog SEO in particular), I deliberately delayed the reporting of this matter for about a month. It also makes sense to take care with usage or omitting of names, which may appear as part of an image instead of part of the text, or not at all.
In this era of crazy budget cuts, and some for no real good reason, it just seems to me that if fighting is inevitable, the sane thing to do is to fight for the same side.
Fact: I'm not the enemy--the funding cutters are.
UPDATE: After some asking around, it appears that this issue is mostly resolved, and what remains unresolved is in process of being resolved. Won't jinx the future by giving more details, though...except the following...
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