By Sarah Cormier
C & G Staff Writer

HARRISON TOWNSHIP — A new set of policies and procedures pertaining to Harrison Township’s community access channel prompted a discussion among board members about how officials can have more control over what is played on the air.

The board approved the new policies with a 5-2 vote at a Feb. 25 meeting. Township Treasurer Darrin York and Trustee James Ulinski both voted against the measure.

The newly adopted rules are for Harrison Township Community Access Television, HTCA-TV, which runs specifically on Channel 18 on Wide Open West, WOW. According to a statement of purpose written in the policies, the point of having a community access channel is to provide “citizens, community groups and nonprofit organizations with the resources to distribute non commercial video programming.”

William Servial, chairman of the township’s cable board, said that the community access channel has been in operation for about 14 months, but due to technical difficulties, no new material has been shown on the air. The only items shown on the public access channel are the same that currently run on the township’s government channel.

However, officials say the channel is ready to run, and now they just need content to air. The new rules will govern what type of material is appropriate to broadcast.

“The first step in this process is to get WOW running, and hopefully, people will see some value to it, submit files, and we’ll actually have a real community access channel,” said Servial.

The policies state that no obscene material, adult content or political advertising is permitted, among other things.

However, York said he was concerned that residents would perhaps take video of a neighbor they are fighting with, or something similar, turn it in to be viewed and that it would be considered something appropriate to air.

“I think we need to at least have some type of an appeal process,” he said.

However, Servial said that as long as the content met the criteria of the policies and procedures, it had to be aired one time. Doing otherwise would be considered what he called ”censorship.”

Servial added that such situations generally don’t occur and that an associate advised him not to include language in the rules that pertain to situations that haven’t happened yet.

“What he advised me is don’t try to write language in to anticipate what you think might happen. Address it when it does happen,” said Servial. “You’re looking for problems where there probably aren’t going to be any.  But should there be some, this document can be amended at that time, if need be.”

Township Attorney Robert Huth agreed.

“There’s a lot of variables with something like this, and it’s hard to come up with a policy that’s going to capture all of them,” he said. “It may be a document that’s like a living-work-in-progress document.”

You can reach Staff Writer Sarah Cormier at scormier@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1095.