On Tues. Jan 12, the Mayor and City Council cut all funding (over 1 million dollars annually) to Public Access in Tucson effective immediately. The City Manager announced that he will bring the Mayor and Council back a plan to combine public and government access on February 23. Presumably Access Tucson will begin a discussion with the City immediately regarding how this will be accomplished. Members of the Alliance for Community Media think that the CM is disingenuous and that there will not be a serious effort to preserve public access services. While the economy is mostly to blame, it also provided a cover for the agendas of some elected officials. Access Tuscon's Board will meet today to decide what to do next.
On the national level Access Tucson is working to convince the FCC to rule on their petition and to convince Congressional members to support the CAP Act. Access Tucson needs your assistance to work at the local level as they also work at the national level, and has stated that they welcome your ideas as to how they can better help other access stationswhen situations such as this arise.
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To join the public listserv for the Alliance for Community Media (a collective of more than 800 public access stations nation wide.) follow this link or copy and paste into the address bar of you window: http://lists.alliancecm.org/listinfo.cgi/alliance-public-alliancecm.org
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