Wanted: a few good citizens to help guide and monitor Burlington Telecom, the Queen City’s financially troubled, city-owned telecommunications network.
The latest BT drama concerns its Cable Advisory Council, a volunteer body established under the terms of the 2005 state license that regulates the municipal telecom. The council’s chairman and one of its members recently resigned, and both complained in subsequent interviews about a lack of cooperation on the part of BT’s management. A third member, conservative bankroller Lenore Broughton, quit in August.
That leaves only two seats currently occupied on a council that is authorized to include up to 15 members. BT has been advertising for council recruits on its website for the past few months, but “we’ve had limited luck attracting members,” says Stephen Barraclough, the utility’s general manager.
Burlington physician Jeffrey Kaufman says he resigned as chair in part because the advisory council was “marginalized, excluded, dictated to” by Barraclough. The BT manager exhibited a “negative attitude” toward the council by failing to meet requests for information, Kaufman adds.
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Makes ya really want to jump into that co-op thing financially doesnt it?
No comment from the mayor about this? If it were Kiss, you’d have him strung up.
BT is performing better financially then it ever has…. of course it isn’t paying the loan payments for that 50 million dollars it borrowed either.
I ran out of rope with Kiss. Anyhow everything is in court now and anyone commenting on the issue from city hall probably jeopardizes the case one way or another.
I wish I could get back the last three years (approximately) I wasted on the CAC believing that we were really there for a purpose to do something meaningful and now I just want to move on while BT tells the public their latest “spin”.