I wrote this letter, which appeared in the Healdsburg Tribune, August 5, 2009. It addresses some of the continuing distortions of the truth and misstatements of fact that have been promulgated by the HUSD Superintendent, Jeff Harding.
Dear Editor,
I am writing to correct inaccuracies in your article of July 29, “TV station may have to move out.”
Some statements attributed to HUSD Superintendent Jeff Harding were misleading, at best. The article stated “[When Harding] looked into the matter, he found that the facility lease for the Media Center between the city and the schools had expired in 2007 and the agreement that the local station would provide HUSD students with 18 hours of instructional time per week had long stopped.”
There are two misleading things here. First, the City, in the person of now-City Manager Marjie Pettus, repeatedly attempted to renew the Media Center lease with the District in 2007 and was rebuffed by the then-Superintendent, who according to Marjie, promised they would negotiate that deal separately. So in reality, the lease expired because the District refused to negotiate, while claiming that it would later do so. Second, Access Healdsburg has never stopped providing the District access to our facilities, even after it became clear that the District was planning to evict the station so they could remodel the Media Center (purpose-built by the community with $1.5 million of our bond money to be a TV station) into administrator’s offices.
Mr. Harding continues: “It’s been seven years of free rent.” This is false. Access Healdsburg has never received free rent from HUSD. AHTV and HUSD signed an agreement to staff and make available our facilities for the District’s use for 18 hours per week. In return for our investment of staff salaries and time, money, and equipment, the school district agreed to waive cash rent and supply us with other services, such as janitorial. It was not done out of the goodness of District’s hearts. It was a business deal, from which they derived significant benefit; many students have used AHTV facilities. The end result was that the District received more than $350,000 in value from that agreement.
Over the past seven years, our people made countless overtures to the schools to use the facilities that were subject to the deal. It is not our fault that they were short-sighted, underutilized the facility, and squandered an amazing opportunity for students and District staff.
I realize that Mr. Harding believes that it is in his best interests to now minimize and denigrate the services that Access Healdsburg provided the District, for the many years before he came upon the scene. But his word does not change the reality, much as he might wish that.
Finally, Mr. Harding states, implying that there could be safety concerns for students: “They are making videos in private rooms with no windows.” This is false. All rooms used by students at Access Healdsburg have windows, and our staff monitors those rooms while they are being used.
Tom Negrino
Access Healdsburg
