Kent City Council shuts down radio station proposal

A proposal to start a city of Kent FM radio station drew nothing but static from the City Council.

The council decided against Mayor Suzette Cooke’s proposal to spend $50,000 on a consultant next year to help determine whether people would listen to the station or if sponsors could be found to pay for the station.

“We put that conversation to rest,” Council President Dana Ralph said at a Dec. 2 budget workshop about the lack of council support for a radio station.

Council members couldn’t see the benefits outweighing the costs.

“So what are we going to get after the $50,000?” Councilman Jim Berrios asked at a budget workshop last month. “We’re going to get a report that says, ‘Yes this is feasible.’ Will that include being able to see the possibility of getting sponsorship? That’s critical because that tells me you’re needing the sponsorship meaning the budget is not enough. We don’t want to get in a position where it is becoming a financial burden on our budget moving forward.”

Cooke initially proposed starting up the station in 2015 at a cost of $209,000, including $115,000 for capital start-up costs and $94,000 for a multimedia coordinator to run the station. She proposed the station be funded through sponsorship dollars. The $50,000 for the consultant fee would come out of the general fund next year while the other potential costs would be pushed to 2016.

“One of our greatest challenges in Kent is educating this community about its own safety for individuals, families and neighborhoods and the lack of communication has been a frustration for all of us as we try to get information out to folks,” said Cooke, who added officials from the Kent Fire Department Regional Fire Authority and Kent Police had indicated an interest in radio programs to reach out to people.

The mayor said the station could be used for public safety programs such as what to do during a fire, windstorm, flood or earthquake as well as emergency alerts. Other programs could be police amber alerts, sex offender notification information, street closures and traffic reports.

But the council never really tuned in to the proposal.

“I only listen to NPR (National Public Radio) and my kids (in their 20s) don’t listen to the radio so the question is what is the audience?” Councilman Bill Boyce said at a workshop last month about the proposal. “It sounds like a might be a good thing but that is the concern I have.”

City staff last year applied for the FM radio frequency license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and received the license for a public information station for a fee of about $800. The station would reach about 156,000 people in the Kent area.