Nate Etu: ‘No more LG TV $$

By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor

Queensbury At-Large Warren County Supervisor Nate Etu took a stand at Monday’s County Occupancy Tax Committee meeting against renewing the County’s contract with Lake George TV for online promotional videos.

“Our funding of the Lake George TV project needs to come to an end…when its current six month extension finishes,” he said.

Mr. Etu, who chairs the Finance Committee and is now the County Budget Officer, said, “I talked to a lot of our hoteliers and tourism experts, and none of them are really jazzed about the program anymore.

“It was really helpful to get us through those first couple years, but it wasn’t intended to be a project in perpetuity. It was three years related to the pandemic.

“I’m grateful for the platform’s utility.

“They know they’ve contributed to our region getting back on its feet, but I do believe the project has fulfilled its mission and its life cycle has ended.

“We need this $275,000 back. We need it for our regular budget, too. There are expenses we could have paid in our regular budget with Oc Tax that we didn’t have.

“We could have given tens of thousands of dollars to our Sheriff’s overtime for Oc Tax-related things like the Balloon Festival, and we didn’t have the money to do it.

“We need to be funding our special events better than we were able to last year.

“For these reasons, I’m a no vote on any future extensions unless there’s substantial amendments to it.”

LGTV is under a six-month contract that ends in April.

It’s run by Hood Communications under the umbrella of Jesse Jackson’s Look TV cable access channel. Mr. Jackson and colleague Ed Larkin created the online streaming video platform in response to a 2023 County call for promotional tools in response to the Covid pandemic.

The platform is available free to businesses and municipalities in the county.

It is paid for with Warren County Occupancy Tax dollars — $274,800 annually, under the original three-year contract that ended last October.

In November, the Supervisors extended the contract for six months rather than the proposed 12 months, under questions raised by Board members including Hague Town Supervisor Josh Patchett.

Mr. Etu said Monday, when the contract began, “we were at a once-in-a-lifetime health crisis, and the county was looking for help, and Hood Communications came up with a really cool idea. They conceptualized it and brought it to implementation, and now I think it’s over.”

He said, as a member of the Oc Tax committee last year, “We awarded much smaller special events funding because we were trying to be more financially disciplined. We heard from some of those frustrated hosts, who had 6,000 attendees at one of their events and we only awarded them $15,000, because that was the ceiling.”

He said that this year “we have a $200,000 request from the Civic Center (now Harding Mazzotti Arena). We have the Johnsburg Sewer” for which the County approved gap funding in excess of $1 million last year.

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