CAT-7 leadership in flux

A closed session to consider allegations against a city employee was canceled Tuesday after CAT-7 coordinator Eric Lipponen, mayor Roger Maki and the city’s human resources director James Barclay disappeared down a back hallway for a few minutes prior to the formal Cloquet City Council meeting.

Lipponen confirmed afterward that he had been the subject of the proposed closed meeting, and that the three men and Lipponen’s wife, Becca Lindberg, had arranged for a meeting Thursday to discuss a number of issues with the public access television channel and Lipponen’s job there.

CAT-7 is funded entirely by a franchise fee paid by Mediacom to the city of Cloquet. Those fees are deposited into the city’s cable TV fund and administered by the city. The money has always run through the city of Cloquet, although a volunteer cable commission used to meet to discuss programming and, in particular, the contract with Mediacom that assured the ongoing existence of the channel. That commission hasn’t met since early 2017, according to minutes posted online.

Late last year, city administrator Aaron Reeves told the council the budget at CAT-7 needed urgent action, as the station had been functioning in the red for years and eating into a once-healthy reserve fund.

In November, Reeves said the Mediacom franchise fees, based on Mediacom’s local revenues, had fallen to $108,000 in 2016, then to $101,000 in 2017. The city expected 2018 revenues of $125,000 going into the cable TV fund, while CAT-7 was spending about $107,000 in personnel costs alone. A large chunk of that money went to pay Lipponen, whose full-time salary was roughly $58,000 plus benefits, which cost another $28,000.

“It’s not sustainable,” Reeves told the Pine Knot News at the time.

Effective Jan. 1, Lipponen’s job became part-time (20 instead of 40 hours per week) and he no longer gets benefits for himself and his family, a move initiated by Reeves.

Lipponen told the Pine Knot News that the change meant a dramatic cut in programming for the CAT-7 station, and his cut in pay and benefits has hurt both him and his family.

Lipponen said he hasn’t been able to work for three weeks, as he was locked out of the old studio at Cloquet High School and there is no new “studio” at City Hall, just a tiny storage room and whatever equipment is in the council chambers. Communication with Reeves has completely broken down, he said.

The two men agree on that point, although not on who is to blame.

Reeves said earlier this month that the CAT-7 coordinator had not been to work since the high school studio was no longer accessible, adding that Lipponen had not come to the new City Hall to set up the system.

“Because he has not communicated with me in months and has not come to the new building to get the channel back online, I’m trying to find other cities or consultants to come do it so we can get the channel up and running,” Reeves said.

On Tuesday, Reeves told the council that he had been getting advice from the cable access channel in Duluth to get CAT-7 running again after the channel was turned off as the city prepared to move into its new building.

On July 2, Reeves said he had asked Lipponen to bring portable cameras to record the council meetings but that he had not done so.

The new CAT-7 system, Reeves said, is “one rack of equipment” and no studio. Meetings at the council chambers at the new City Hall are already being livestreamed on the city’s website. They are still working out technical difficulties with Mediacom regarding the CAT-7 channel, Reeves told the council in an update Tuesday.

Lipponen did not address the council Tuesday even though he was there. Audience member and resident Marty Hill expressed his support for Lipponen during the public comment portion of the meeting, and praised Lipponen’s skilled camera work when recording Minnesota Wilderness hockey games.

“He does top-notch work and deserves to remain with the city,” Hill said.

There is a detailed petition on Change.org under “Cloquet means Community” asking people to support Lipponen and put him back in charge of CAT-7. Started on July 12, the petition had 100 signatures as of Wednesday morning.