Contract negotiations between Martha’s Vineyard’s six towns and Comcast for the provision of cable services to the Island were thrown into confusion this week after Tisbury’s negotiator appeared to suggest the town would pull out of MVTV, the local cable access channel.

Under the terms of a franchise agreement reached between the towns and Comcast 10 years ago, Comcast pays five per cent of the gross revenue it receives from Island subscribers to MVTV. That equates to about $400,000 per year.

But that is up for negotiation, as the current contract will expire at the end of June.

Up to this point, things had proceeded on the assumption that all six towns would push for this arrangement to continue. But Fred LaPiana, the representative appointed by the Tisbury selectmen to the Island cable advisory committee, threw that into doubt at a meeting of the committee last Friday.

According to one person present at that meeting, West Tisbury selectman Richard Knabel: “It seems Tisbury has decided they don’t want the money to go to MVTV any more. They want the money.

“What Fred was saying was that the town wants to set up their own studio, in parallel with MVTV, but exclusively for Tisbury. And not only do they want their five per cent of revenues — which amounts to about $80,000 a year — but also want some portion of the reserves that MVTV has accrued, so they can set up this arrangement for the exclusive use of Tisbury,” Mr. Knabel continued:

“I was astounded when I heard this, and quite upset. To me, it’s outrageous.

“All six towns have contributed to engage an attorney to negotiate the new contract on our behalf. Now we have five towns that want one arrangement and one town that wants another arrangement.

“This could sabotage things for other towns.”

Mr. Knabel said he understood Mr. LaPiana wanted to set up his alternative plan in association with another communications company, Global Protection Communication Systems, whose chief operating officer, Andrew Nanaa, is close to Mr. LaPiana.

“They seem to be joined at the hip,” said Mr. Knabel.

Other accounts of what was said at the meeting differ somewhat. West Tisbury’s representative and chairman of the committee, Jennifer Rand, also understood Mr. LaPiana to be threatening the town’s funding for MVTV.

“The take-away message that I got was that Tisbury is going to want to pull back its PEG [public, educational and government] funding for programming,” Ms. Rand said.

But she did not think that necessarily meant they would pull out of the agreement altogether, or raid the service’s reserve fund. She said Mr. Nanaa’s name was not mentioned at the meeting.

“What I understand Tisbury would like to do is have the money go to them, and then give some amount of it to MVTV, and hold back some of it to do their own programming,” Ms. Rand said.

Comments from Tisbury’s three selectmen did little to clarify the situation.

Selectman Geoghan Coogan said he was unaware of any proposal to change the status quo.

“It’s news to me,” said Mr. Coogan.

“As far as MVTV is concerned, we’ve never had a discussion about dropping them. We had a discussion about wanting some more transparency about the funds they were getting. There was talk in the beginning about changing the arrangement so that rather than Comcast paying the money direct to MVTV, it would come to Tisbury and we would hand it on.

“But even that has calmed down since they came in and went over their books with us,” Mr. Coogan said.

Selectman Tristan Israel was more equivocal. He said the selectmen had been “surprised” to learn that MVTV had built up a $400,000 war chest of reserves over recent years.

He also questioned the future budget planning of the service, noting in particular that it was proposing major new capital expenditures and hiring additional staff.

“The feeling is that maybe the money should come to the town first to make for greater accountability,” Mr. Israel said.

He did say, “We probably should have been better informed.”

Most significantly, Mr. Israel said he could not guarantee that Tisbury would in the future pass on all the money it received from Comcast.

“Suppose there was a modest proposal for $20,000 or $30,000, that would improve public access for the town. Why shouldn’t we look at it?” he said.

The third selectman, board chairman Jeff Kristal, offered yet another take on the town’s position.

Suggestions that Tisbury would pull out of MVTV were “not accurate at all” he said.

“The accurate picture is the board has instructed Fred [LaPiana] that we want more accountability in what’s going on with the budget process and more community involvement with what can be offered.

“We have no desire to go it alone. We are not a cable company; we have no desire to get into that business, no desire to hire employees to run a cable company.

“We have toyed with the idea of having the funds flow through the town, as they do in many other municipalities, and then on to MVTV,” Mr. Kristal said.

Could some of the money be siphoned off to other purposes?

“I would say no. But right now, we are having a dialogue. Dialogue is good. I do not see Tisbury bucking the trend of five other towns,” Mr. Kristal said. “I think it’s a negotiation and in a negotiation, people keep their cards close to their chest,” he added.

Whatever the reality of Tisbury’s position — and that should be clarified on Tuesday night when Mr. LaPiana is due to brief selectmen on the current status of negotiations — the confusion has had a chilling effect on MVTV.

Denys Wortman, chairman of the MVTV board, said any division would only complicate the process of negotiating a new contract with Comcast. He noted that the towns have hired a single attorney to represent them in the negotiations with Comcast.

“The best thing is the attorney gets the same marching orders from all six towns. Otherwise, it’s divide and conquer [for Comcast],” Mr. Wortman said.

He also took issue with Mr. Israel’s claim that Tisbury selectmen had not been aware of the detail of MVTV’s operations.

“We have not kept anything secret. We have an audit every year, taxes are filed, the payroll and books are all done, and it’s all reported,” he said.

And Mr. Wortman defended the organization against Mr. Israel’s suggestion there was something wrong with it having amassed a $400,000 reserve fund.

“We’ve been putting some money aside for some years. We have to; we’re a 501c3, a nonprofit. We can’t borrow easily. We have to save money up for new premises, for other capital expenses, for equipment, for a rainy day fund.

“Our premises [at the regional high school] are cramped. We need a bigger studio, more editing rooms, more storage area. We don’t even have a bathroom,” he said.

He said MVTV had plans for a new building.

“We have had preliminary drawings done, preliminary discussions with the school. But right now we are unsure about how it may all go, so we’ve put that all on hold,” Mr. Wortman said.

“I’m remaining optimistic that things will remain as they have been.”

MVTV executive director Julienne Turner said Mr. Israel’s concerns about additional staffing also arose as an “understandable misunderstanding,” and she said there are no immediate plans to expand staffing.

In anticipation of the Comcast contract negotiations, Ms. Turner said, the service had conducted a series of community consultations to determine what services may be needed in the future.

“Then we put together a proposal for the next 10 years,” she said, “assessing what our capital and budget needs would be. We identified that we would definitely need to increase our staff if we were going to meet the needs of the community. It was my proposal that if I was to meet those needs I would need two more full-time and one part-time staff member.

“But we’re not hiring anyone at the moment. I plan to explain it all to selectmen in the next month.”

Fred LaPiana, whose comments created all the uncertainty, could not be contacted for comment. His office said he was not at work on Wednesday, and would be in meetings all day Thursday.

Andrew Nanaa did not return telephone calls seeking comment.