PORT TOWNSEND — Producers of shows on public access cable television station PTTV and city administrators agreed after a two-hour meeting Thursday to keep station operations status quo until at least the middle of next month.
The future of those operations came into question in July when the City Council approved an ordinance that disbanded the station’s oversight body — the PEG coordinating committee — leading supporters to believe that someone was trying to unplug the station, which appears on Millennium cable channels 47 and 48.
Producers, who pay a fee to have their shows aired, want to continue operating under a City Council resolution passed in 2001 rather than one approved by the council in July.
The producers say the 2004 resolution illegally disbanded the PEG coordinating committee.
While some of the conversation during Thursday’s meeting was centered on the distrust some of the producers feel toward the city, there were also ideas about how to move forward.
PTTV station manager Gary Lemons, City Manager David Timmons and City Clerk Pam Kolacy, who is also a show producer on the channel, signed a mediated agreement earlier this week agreeing to look to the future and acknowledging words and actions that were hurtful.
Never curtailing
Timmons reiterated that there has never been discussion of curtailing the public television effort.
He said discussion of changes, including elimination of the oversight committee, was done to give producers more freedom to act independently of the station manager.
