Letters: Support Reliance Fire Company; Xfinity owes customers an explanation for increases

Support Reliance Fire Company

Reliance Fire Company has been established for 139 years. Reliance has no debt to the community for our equipment, whereas Hope has a loan for the firetruck they purchased two years ago, with help from the Moshannon Valley Fire Council. We are not receiving any funding from the Moshannon Valley Fire Council for maintenance on our equipment. We have asked the fire council for an audit for the last six years to see where the tax dollars are going. To date, this audit hasn’t been presented to us. Now the Philipsburg Borough Council is trying to close the doors of the Reliance Fire Co.

In recent interviews, the Philipsburg Borough Council president said she and council members have been talking to Hope Fire Co. and they are persuading her to close Reliance. There is a life member of Reliance, who sits on Borough Council, who is taking steps against his own fire company. Another council member has family members related to a Hope member, so hearsay is being held against Reliance.

If the Borough Council shuts Reliance down, do you know the ISO rating for the borough will go up? This is bad news for premiums for your fire insurance.

Reliance is asking the community to attend the Philipsburg Borough Council meeting on Monday at 7 p.m. at the Borough Building. We need equal distribution of taxpayer dollars to help with equipment upkeep. We need your help!

Thank you for your support.

Xfinity owes customers an explanation for increases

As surely as the new year arrives, so does Xfinity’s letter to our homes announcing its annual cable service price increases. This year several are particularly stunning — and puzzling.

On my bill, the HD TV box cost for limited basic service went from $2.50 a month to $4.60, up 84%. The cost of the remote went from 18 cents to 40 cents, up 122%. Will the box and the remote work 84% and 122% better this year than last? I doubt it.

Most egregious, the broadcast TV fee went up 49.5%, from $10 to $14.95. This fee is, as Xfinity puts it, “the amount networks charge us to put their channels on our cable system.” Xfinity claims it absorbs some of those costs but doesn’t say how much.

The National Association of Broadcasters and the American Cable Association are at each other’s throats over this fee, but it’s the consumer who’s being strangled. The broadcasters say the fees are the result of “private, market-driven negotiations,” while the cable operators call the fees “broadcaster-imposed.” Either way, it appears Xfinity just folded instead of defending its customers.

I challenge Xfinity to write an open letter to this newspaper explaining in detail the reasons behind and justifications for its price increases. The paragraphs of spin language in the annual announcement tell us nothing.

Meanwhile, as we await this letter, I think I hear the quiet “snip, snip, snip” of more cord-cutting happening across Centre County.