Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Meeting Not A "Secret"

Emmet Mayor Ottis "Chuck" Otwell explained why the council met earlier in the month during the regular meeting of the Emmet City Council.

At the regular meeting, held a day early, Wednesday, Sept. 9, he said in order to get the annexation issue on the ballot the city's attorney, Glenn Vasser, had to prepare an ordinance to be passed by the council.

Vasser, Otwell said, got the ordinance ready Wednesday, Sept. 2 around 1 p.m. and notified Emmet Secretary/Recorder Anita Allen. The ordinance had to be passed and sent in by Friday, Sept. 4, to be on the Nov. 3 General Election ballot.

The options, Otwell said, were to meet Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. He chose Wednesday night, calling the council members to get a quorum present to pass the ordinance. Otwell also had Allen notify the media of the special meeting.

The meeting, he said, was not intended to be secret. The law was followed as required.

He also told those gathered he was thankful for having what was called a "yes" council. "This council says yes to all they believe will benefit Emmet. The people I've talked to approve of what's been done."

Once this was out of the way, the council accepted Allen's resignation from her post. The resignation is effective Oct. 1, 1998.

The council, in the meantime, will look for a replacement, hopefully naming one at the October meeting.

However, the council agreed to hire Allen on as the city's administrative assistant. She will be required to work from 8 a.m. until noon at City Hall Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and be paid $600 per month.

This, Otwell said, will allow her to change her voter registration outside the city limits where she now lives.

From there, Russell Gaston, with Friendship Cable, spoke. He told the council and audience he had not heard a lot of complaints from Emmet concerning poor service and bad reception

Concerning network stations 3, 6, 7 and 12, he said, there is little the company can do as they get the feed from an antenna and not a satellite downlink. Weather, he said, plays a big part in the reception people get from these stations.

People had complained about not being able to get local access station KTSS as well. Gaston told them this station also comes off an antenna, though he had talked with Kevin McKinnon, one of the station's founders, and something is supposed to be done about it.

Part of the problem Emmet customers may have, Gaston said, could be bad connections. This will affect the lower channel bands more than the higher bands.

There are many reasons for bad reception, he said, including co-channel interference. This is when the signal from two stations on similar frequencies overlap causing ghosts or appear to be scrambled. This can't be controlled.

As far as representatives coming to Emmet, he said, the company gets daily reports for pending service calls. Someone comes to Emmet weekly to do installations, add outlets, add premium stations or cancel cable orders. However, all other problems, Gaston said, should be handled on a daily basis.

The company, though, may look at raising its antenna, but, he said, there is no guarantee it will help.

Otwell said Friendship needs to have a technician look at the entire system as it was originally installed by Red River Cable and taken over by Douglas Cable. They were only in it for the money, he said.

Gaston said the company can go through the system street by street looking for problems.

However, he said, twice a year people will have poor cable and no one can do anything about it. This is because the sun gets in line with the satellite and Earth. The solar rays are so powerful they mess up the satellite signals.

These sunspots generally affect cable television between 3-4 p.m. for 7-10 minutes daily for about a week or 10 days. It also occurs in the spring.

As the meeting drew to a close, Otwell said many of the problems Emmet is experiencing are due to this being an election year.