Fall River committee to seek more information on recording-all-meetings resolution, discusses FRGTV capacity and funding

The Fall River Committee on Ordinances and Legislation on May 26 heard a presentation from Renee Cotchman, director of operations for FRED TV and FRGTV, and interim city administrator Ann O’Neal Susa on a resolution to ensure public meetings are recorded and made broadly available. After questions about staffing, notification and funding, the committee voted to table the resolution pending further information.

Resident Matt Madura, who described a web application he made to crowdsource plow status during the 2026 blizzard, urged the city to distribute meetings on more open, searchable platforms. “I recently created civicmeeting.net, which has aggregated over 1,500 city meetings that FRGTV has distributed to the YouTube channel with timestamp topics, searchable transcripts,” Madura told the committee, and he recommended distribution through RSS and podcast formats so residents can search and filter meetings by subject.

Cotchman described FRGTV and FRED TV as student-staffed public-access channels housed at Dery High School and funded by a Comcast grant. He said the stations cover many civic events when notice is provided but face staffing and technical limits that make blanket coverage of off-site or early-morning meetings difficult. Cotchman said recordings are stored digitally on servers at Dery High School and that program funding tied to cable subscriptions has declined.

Committee members pressed for clearer notification processes and suggested centralizing some boards and commissions in the council hearing room to improve audio/video quality. The committee also discussed long-term funding: Cotchman said capital payments this year are in the order of $160,000 (quarterly disbursements) while noting historic receipts were higher, and that the city’s current cable contract runs 10 years with two years elapsed. Councilors flagged House Bill 91 — which would permit use of streaming revenues to support public-access channels — as a possible statewide avenue for sustaining operations.

After discussion the committee tabled the resolution to allow staff and FRGTV to return with a schedule of missing meetings, clearer notification procedures, platform options beyond YouTube, and verified cable-payment figures.

Key details and clarifications: Cotchman said FRGTV’s archive of digital files resides at Dery High School servers and that the stations operate as a not-for-profit community service supported by Comcast funds; exact quarterly or annual amounts will be supplied to the committee on follow-up. Committee members asked staff to check whether some meetings could be moved to city hearing rooms to ensure consistent audio/video quality.