Lelko Suggests Seeking Alternate Funding
Chardon City Council unanimously approved a contract through December 2025 for local access provider Geauga-TV during a special meeting March 7.
Chardon City Council unanimously approved a contract through December 2025 for local access provider Geauga-TV during a special meeting March 7.
The vote came with a caveat that during the period covered by the contract, station manager Dave Jevnikar pursue avenues of funding outside of cable franchise fees.
In February, council discussed ending the forwarding of those fees, which are collected from cable television subscribers, to G-TV and repurposing those funds toward city projects.
The city’s contract with G-TV says the city will hold back $16,000 per year from its collected franchise fees for improvements to audiovisual equipment in Chardon City Hall. While the total fees collected vary based on the number of cable subscribers in the area, station manager Dave Jevnikar said in the past year, the total has been $44,000 annually.
Chardon resident Jon Miducki said council seemed to be concerned with the money involved in supporting the station.
“I don’t think anyone’s looking at the diamond of an asset the city of Chardon has in its own community cable TV station. You can’t find this in other communities,” he said. “G-TV is generational in this city. It’s been here for almost 30 years and people have become accustomed to being able to sit down, in the comfort of their home, turn to channel 1020 or 1025 and watch the Maple Festival, watch their kids in a sporting event, watch the school concerts, see what’s going on in council. It’s become part of so many people’s lives from my generation.”
Council member Heather Means said since the February meeting, during which council discussed ending payments to G-TV, 18 members of the public contacted council to argue in favor of keeping the station funded, including those who spoke during the meeting.
City staff reached out to cable provider Spectrum and determined, as of the end of 2023, there are 952 cable subscribers in Chardon, making up about 45% of the city’s households. The 18 people who reached out make up only 2% of the city’s subscriber base, she said.
Council member Dan Meleski said 2% is actually a fairly respectable amount of feedback in a short period of time. Pushing back on the idea the city’s portion of collected fees pays for programming viewed by those outside of city limits, Meleski said Chardon has put money into several projects, including the historic theater, that do the same.
“We do a lot of concerts on the square. Does anybody have stats as far as how many people are from the city and not from the city that show up for those? Show up for the national night out, show up for Fall Fest, right?” Meleski asked his colleagues. “Regardless of what we do, there’s a portion — although the city has city limits and city taxpayers — there’s a greater footprint of people that feel like they’re part of Chardon city than (are) actually part of Chardon city.”
Additionally, the station is not funded by the city’s tax dollars, Meleski said.
“They do put out a lot of announcements, they cover a lot of different things, so I find that there’s value to it,” he said. “I know it goes beyond what can be measured.”
Kyle Martin said while he is newest on council, he wants to listen to the residents.
Although the feedback he received was unofficial, Martin said it was universally in favor of keeping G-TV funded through cable franchise fees.
“I just keep hearing, you know, the old MTV (slogan), ‘I want my G-TV,'” he said. “They don’t want it to disappear.”
But council member Dave Lelko said while he was not in favor of cutting off payments, he wants Jevnikar to look into additional ways to fund the station, including becoming more like a traditional vendor that could be hired to cover events and run announcements.
“I do not want to cancel the contract right now. I’d like to give G-TV and Mr. Jevnikar an opportunity to look at how he operates, how he gets funded, other opportunities there might be and then we have a chance to look at that to see where we want to go,” he said.
In a phone interview March 8, Jevnikar said G-TV has already explored other funding options, adding the station was only able to cover Chardon High School’s football game because of the generous underwriting of the Gridiron Club.
“We were already looking into alternative funding sources and found that one to help us make it through the year,” he said. “Without that, we would not have been able to do what we did for Chardon football.”
Seven members of the community spoke in favor of keeping the station funded, including Hambden resident Terry Hegner, who said the senior population in the community is growing dramatically.
That population does not always have the ability to leave their homes and G-TV is often their only way to witness their kids, grandkids and great-grandkids participating in school and sports events, he said.
To take the station away would be very devastating for seniors, Hegner added.
“And if you know anything about our senior population in this community, you know that they all vote,” he said. “And that could be something of importance to everybody that’s sitting here tonight.”
Bill Hofstetter, of Chardon, told council the value of the station is intangible and hard to quantify, but it cannot be replaced.
“If it goes away, I don’t know what will take its place,” he said.
