As the May 13 election draws near, a committee of residents devoted to instituting public access television in Hooksett continue to spread the word on a petitioned warrant article to establish public access or remove the 3 percent charge the town adds onto Comcast bills.

“We’ve touched base to just about everybody we can think of,” said Peter Farwell, the resident leading the charge, after visiting the Hooksett-ites senior citizen group to bring them up to speed on what’s going on with the public access debate.

The plan is to use franchise fees currently collected from Comcast bills to set up a public access cable TV channel in Hooksett, a project which could cost upward of $90,000 in the first year, depending on whether the town waits another year to buy equipment and hire parttime help to run it.

Currently, franchise fees the town collects, about 3 percent of each Comcast bill, go into the town coffers and are used to offset taxes.

The town gets about $100,000 per year, according to Town Administrator David Jodoin. “The town has to raise $23 million in taxes between school and town, and this is $100,000,” Farwell said, adding it’s likely some of the money would continue going into the general fund after public access has been paid for.

The station would be located at the Village School, currently being renovated to house the town offices. Fiber optic cables would run from the Village School up to the Comcast head station in Manchester.

Buying and installing the cables alone is expected to run around $30,000, Farwell said. Additional equipment needed to run the station has been estimated at around $27,000, rounding out the “one-time” expenses at close to $60,000 for the first year.

Two part-time positions, a technician and a programming coordinator, would tag on an extra $25,000 to $30,000 combined which would be a yearly expense and would become part of the station’s operating budget. Farwell pointed out the town could decide not to add the two part-time positions into the budget until the following year, or even to hold off on equipment for a year to spread out the impact.

Farwell said he envisions an advisory board made up of councilors, school board members and regular citizens that would oversee the setup and operation of the station.

The Town Council has already put a $1 line item in the budget to reserve a spot for public access already, allowing them to put money towards public access.

After conducting surveys, the public access committee found most Hooksett voters who participated in them fell into one of three categories: those who wanted to use the franchise fees to set up public access, those who wanted the fees removed from their bills and those who wanted the fees to continue going into the town’s general fund.

Some of the town’s residents, including Town Councilor David Ross, who supports the public access initiative and feels the franchise fees are an unfair tax because the money, which is only collected from Comcast users, gets spread among the entire town for tax relief.

“The fact of the matter of offsetting the tax rate is true, and it’s an unfair tax,” Ross said at the town’s deliberative session on Saturday, April 5. “It does not cost the taxpayers any money, it costs the ratepayers money if you subscribe to cable.”

David Pearl, another advocate for public access who has worked with Hooksett Issues, an online discussion group, to get the word out, said either public access should be set up or the fee should be removed from Comcast bills.

“There is growing support that if (the warrant article) fails, they’d like to take this franchise fee off,” Pearl said.

Resident Harold Murray said at the Town Meeting that he opposes the idea of public access all together.

“A hundred thousand dollars is now going into the general fund to offset taxes,” Murray said. “That hundred thousand has got to come from somewhere,” he said.

Fire Chief Mike Williams and Police Chief Steven Agrafiotis have both written and signed statements supporting public access in Hooksett, particularly for posting emergency messages having to do with public safety or natural disasters.

Williams said a public access channel would have been instrumental in getting Hooksett residents to safe ground during the flooding of the past two years. “It’s a way to get information out about a lot of people,” Williams said.

Agrafiotis agreed, saying the Police Commission has discussed public access in depth. He added the Hooksett Safety Center would be wired into the fiber optic cables to connect their media room, allowing the police and fire departments to hold press conferences and educational programming at the center.

“From the point of view of public safety, the ability to get out information whether we had a flood situation or a school lockdown or something like that, to get the information out quickly,” Agrafiotis said.

Agrafiotis was chief of the Raymond Police Department when public access was established there, and said it was a positive outlet and excellent source for the community.

Even if the article passes, it’s still going to be a while before public access is up and running, Farwell said.

“I don’t see much happening until the late third quarter, early fourth quarter of this year,” Farwell said, around September or October.