The Education Channel's Letter

Text of a letter from Ann Goldenberg of the Tampa Educational Cable Consortium to the Hillsborough County Commission, on proposed budget cuts:

Dear County Commissioners:

The County Administrator’s recommended FY 08-09 budget eliminates all funding for Tampa Educational Cable Consortium (TECC), which operates the local educational cable channels, helping thousands of Hillsborough students succeed academically by providing the educational material they need – like Mathematics Homework Hotline and college courses, promoting our local educational and cultural offerings, providing homebound seniors with quality arts programming, and televising the School Board meetings for the civic minded.

TECC has served the public with outstanding commercial-free educational programming for the last twenty years, has won the highest national award - Overall Excellence in Educational Programming - the last four years in a row, and has NOT received any increase in funding from the County for the last seven years . 

After twenty years of impressive service to this community, why is TECC being singled out for elimination?

Although the Administrator recommends modest reductions for many area non-profits, TECC is slated to be completely defunded. While the Administrator’s budget cuts off all funding - $519K - to TECC, Hillsborough County’s Communication Department, which operates the government’s channel, HTV22, is reduced a mere $82,410 in operations (-2%) and still maintains a budget of $4,152,51 for staff and a capital budget of   $238K.   Hillsborough County should not be favoring government programming at the expense of educational programming, but should seek a more just solution. Unlike HTV22, TECC did not benefit from any of the budget growth in the last seven years and should not take the full brunt of budget reductions this year, causing our community to lose these unique educational services.

Please reinstate TECC’s modest funding and keep The Education Channel alive and serving our community in Hillsborough County.

I would like to discuss this problem with all of you and will call your offices to set up a meeting.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Ann Goldenberg

Tampa Educational Cable Consortium

Comments

[Steve]

Howard, I read your column on Pinellas Cty cutting off the public voice while continuing their own vanity channel. I totally agree with you! How can they be so brazen? It's about time someone talked about all the money they throw away on the gov't channels. I say keep the education channel - I actually watch that one - and do away with the gov't channel!