According to Lesher, and Ward, who still helps run Access Tucson , not necessarily. Pardon me all the hell, but that's a lot of conditional conditions. Call me a cynic, but I'd rather see greater certainty for the long-term viability of public access. It's a cheap trick to turn the public against access. So they chafe at the few pennies access costs them, and TCI flogs them into a frenzy by spelling it out in black and white on the bill.
Public access is important.
It's the old truism about the rights of the greatest of us not being secure, as long as the rights of the least of us are in jeopardy. These guarantees set public access somewhat apart from the petty politics that could have stifled the free exercise of the First Amendment. For 15 years it did, at any rate. Now, if the new franchise agreement puts public access funding in the lap of the City Council, subject to annual budgetary review in which just four politically motivated votes will decide its fate, you can easily appreciate the chilling effect this will have on public access. I think the arrangement devised a decade and a half ago was a brilliant notion, and I hope the mayor and council rethink it, and renew it.