Dear Mayor:

An open letter to Fort Smith Mayor Ray Baker.

Dear Mayor Baker:

Although there certainly are more important issues with greater long-term positive impacts for city residents we could discuss than a franchise agreement with a telecommunications company, this is the issue recently dominating city board meetings and an issue on which you chose to take a stand.

Your recent veto of an extension of a franchise agreement between the city and Cox Communications was, one might theorize, part of a larger issue than a simple franchise extension. It likely had more to do with your ongoing and festering frustration borne of the city’s inability to have any say in Cox Communication’s decision to move religious channels. It also might be theorized that such events reflect your annoyance with the relatively hollow duties and powers of the Fort Smith mayoral post.

To be sure, this move of religious channels to a tier that will require a digital receiver increases costs for city residents, and created economic realities local church leaders say could prevent them from providing television broadcasts of their church services.

It is unfortunate that such changes occur, and your eager representation of “the thousands” — as you have noted — of city residents troubled by the Cox channel changes is understandable.

Your mayoral history will contain many examples of your efforts to ensure the city is mindful of the poor, elderly and those without the ability or understanding to lobby the city for their respective needs. This is a history for which you should be proud and city residents should be grateful.

Returning to the issue of Cox Communications and its franchise agreement and decision to move channels, please allow me to present a few alternative points not fully voiced during the discussions between you and city board members.

Cox is, one might safely assume, desirous to see a return on the millions of dollars it has invested in the area. Therefore, continuing the assumption, Cox officials must daily seek balance between its return on investment, the margin-crunching pressures of a marketplace that grows more competitive each month, the broad and diverse requests/complaints of customers, and the limitations/allowances of federal, state and municipal rules and regulations — just to name a few key factors requiring daily management.

This effort at balance suggests Cox can’t afford to ignore the growing local demand for sports and movie programming, more high-definition channels and, most importantly, persistent demands by businesses large and small for more and faster Internet access.

The investments in broadband (the big “pipes” that carry the “Internets”) by Cox, Newroads, CenturyTel, Pinnacle, AT&T and other telecom providers in this region are not only impressive, they represent tremendous economic development engines for “thousands” of area citizens.

The Internet was first piped into Arkansas a little more than 20 years ago, which means many area citizens who will be our future business and civic leaders don’t know of a world without Internet access. Their business operations, their family life, their political activity, their leadership efforts, their social life, their entertainment choices and their religious life are and will continue to be built around the constantly changing and improving access to what is indeed a world wide web of individual and business opportunity/success.

It is with this economic and cultural reality that I encourage you to consider being mindful of “the thousands” of area citizens who are more interested in constant improvements to our electronic connection to the world than in having convenient access to local religious programming or Lawrence Welk reruns.

Furthermore, the investments by Cox, AT&T and others will do considerably more to enhance the regional quality of place and/or quality of life (or whatever buzzword-loaded catchphrase we are now using) than free and easy access to religious programming. And yes, I am mindful of the scripture in which Christ quizzes, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” However, the city’s role is to create an environment for cultural and business progress, not saving souls. And it is likely, if not highly probable, that a municipality fostering cultural and business progress creates an economy in which church collection plates will afford greater soul-saving activities. We can have our Gods and Google them, too. Can I get an Amen?

All that being said, Cox Communications is the cable, Internet and phone provider in my home. Their Internet and phone service is good, but a little expensive. Their cable package sucks, and is too expensive. But please know I am much more confident that an increasingly competitive marketplace will better resolve my telecom needs/complaints than any legislative fiat.

Therefore, Kind Mayor, I am hopeful you will be as passionate to represent the interests of citizens interested in continuous improvement in regional telecom services as you are in representing the interests of those seeking the status quo in narrow areas of telecom offerings.

Sincerely Wired,

Michael Tilley