MONTICELLO, NY — Radio station WJFF, located in Jeffersonville, sends its broadcast signal out from a Sullivan County-owned tower on Elk Point Road in the town of Liberty. The tower was a topic of discussion at a public safety meeting in the government center on December 11. (This reporter provides WJFF with weekend news segments.)

Sonja Hedlund, president of the WJFF Board of Trustees; Adam Weinreich, general manager; Malcolm Brown and Anne Larson, who founded the station; and several members of the board appeared at the meeting. Hedlund thanked the county for allowing the station to broadcast from the tower for 24 years, and said the value of the arrangement was worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to the non-profit station. She also said she hoped the arrangement could continue.

The county is in the midst of updating its emergency communications system, which includes building three new towers. Richard Martinkovic, the commissioner of public safety, said that as part of that process, WJFF had three options: the transmitter could remain where it is, the station could buy its own tower and try to generate some revenue with it, or the station could lease space on some other tower in the area.

Martinkonvic and emergency 911 coordinator Alex Rau see a couple of reasons the station’s transmitter should be moved. One is that, with new equipment going up on the Elk Point Road tower, the tower will be at 97% capacity in terms of maximum weight. Rau said it is best to keep weight at 50% if possible. Brown later said the weight of the WJFF equipment, only three light antenna bays, is a small percentage of the total weight of overall equipment on the tower and does not make a significant contribution to the overall burden.

Rau said another concern is that the WJFF signal sometimes bleeds over into the emergency broadcasts—involving fire, police and ambulances—being sent from the tower. Hedlund said that is no longer a problem. Rau responded that the fix for the bleeding is to place shields or filters in the county emergency equipment. After the meeting, Martinkovic said to one of the legislators that the problem of the WJFF signal bleeding into the emergency broadcasts “always comes back.”

It was clear that Martinkovic and Rau would prefer that WJFF move its transmitter to another location, and just as clear that Heldund and other members of the board would like it to remain where it is. It would be expensive to move the transmitter, and, Hedlund said, leaving it at the Elk Point tower would ensure that the same listeners who have been served for 24 years will continue to be served.

She said, “When Sullivan County and WJFF first agreed upon a lease to use the county tower, the station was still a tentative experiment. Twenty-five years later, WJFF is a well-established and well-known asset for the public good in Sullivan County; regular listeners average over 20,000 households.”

It was determined that the next step would be for an engineer from the county to get together with an engineer for the radio station to get a more precise picture of the situation at the Elk Point tower.