Happy New Year to all our Albert Lea area citizens and may ’09 be a better year than ’08 was. I just love starting out a new calendar and a fresh start. It is exciting, sort of like a child being given a clean new sheet of paper to draw, color and write on.

It is thrilling to have new public officials being sworn into office from national level down to local. This would be a great time for our City Council members, mayor and city manager to do something about the deplorable situation with Charter Communications for the TV channels the Albert Lea area receives.

A bit ago we watched Anne Tucker Carlson on the Rochester news assuring all the Rochester area viewers that they will not lose all the Twin Cities stations. The important Charter Cable TV guy stated he realizes how popular and highly watched these channels are with their viewers.

Our bill is $20 a month higher than many towns around us and they all receive WCCO-4, KSTP-5, KMSP-9 and KARE-11 besides all the local and regular channels. How fortunate the Frost, Blue Earth, Bricelyn, Kiester, etc., viewers all are. The Rochester area bill is also lower than ours. The important cable guy told Rochester to not worry about when it is switched over to digital TV in February. What about us? We’ve been cheated out of those good Cities stations for about 10 years; that is way too long to sit on our hands and put up with an unacceptable situation!

Then in a recent bill was now saying the cable TV bill will be $2 a month higher to “better serve us.” This service is not good, just expensive; anybody with half a brain cell will say, “We deserve better.” The bottom line is we want to be able to watch both local and Cities TV like the others. Also the Twin Cities newscasts are very good. I’ve written several letters about our Charter Cable TV because this matters.

Our City Council members, mayor and city manager are not like the man who went to the eye doctor to get new glasses. He said “I wish to see things less clearly!”

Judy Menssen

Albert Lea