Haverhill officials move to replenish HC Media fund after years of mishandled Comcast payments

HAVERHILL — During the Haverhill City Council meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, councilors said the city had been out of compliance with its Comcast cable contract for years after failing to properly reserve Public, Educational, and Governmental (PEG) access channel capital funds that should have been set aside annually for HC Media.

Mayor Melinda Barrett explained that under the contract, Comcast must pay the city $110,000 each year for HC Media’s equipment and capital needs. That money is supposed to be placed in a dedicated PEG account. However, the city never created the account, she said, and the payments were instead deposited into free cash.

“In looking at how the Comcast cable contract is written, there was a provision for, we get monthly 5% payment that we give quarterly — 4% of it, goes to HC Media, 1% stays with the city,” Mayor Barrett said. She added that, beyond the aforementioned franchise fee, “there’s also another kind of donation as part of the contract of $110,000 yearly,” which must be placed in a dedicated PEG capital account. “If you set up this account and help us comply, we can have that as a revolving fund. We owe the revolving fund money because this money was never set aside for HC Media in the past,” she told the council.

Mayor Barrett told councilors that, once the PEG fund is properly established, HC Media will be able to request capital improvements for its broadcast operations. “HC Media will be able to…make capital improvements to their broadcast station for anything in this room if we need upgrades,” she said, joking that the equipment cabinet “is older than most of us here.” Barrett added that technological upgrades could also be made in Room 301, where many city meetings take place. She said HC Media would be able to come before the council to “select capital projects that they need” and seek approval for needed improvements.

To correct the violation, Mayor Barrett asked the council to adopt Massachusetts General Law Chapter 44, Section 53F ¾, which formally establishes the required PEG Access Fund.

Councilor Melissa Lewandowski asked the mayor if the city had violated its Comcast contract by failing to reserve the annual PEG capital payments, noting that “a lot of numbers [have been] thrown around and people who aren’t numbers people are probably” confused about what happened.

Mayor Barrett responded to Councilor Lewandowski saying, “Essentially, yes. We owe that to them. We owe them money prescribed in this contract that we signed in 2020 and now we are trying to fix it.”

When Councilor Lewandowski asked if the PEG funds “went to free cash and was used for whatnot,” Mayor Barrett responded saying, “It was really just used as our money when it was not our money.”

Councilor Colin LePage said his review showed the city should have accumulated about $660,000 in PEG capital payments over the years. “This was a question of transparency…this money was being dumped into free cash when it really should have been put to its use,” Councilor LePage said.

Mayor Barrett also said HC Media had previously been “overpaid by $112,320,” from the 4% franchise fees.

The council voted unanimously to authorize funding the PEG access fund with $452,993 in free cash into begin replenishing what should have been reserved.