Fredonia Access head Chip Riewaldt made it clear at a recent village Board of Trustees workshop he’s unhappy with the process behind moving the channel’s Village Hall headquarters.

The police department is taking over Fredonia Access headquarters to hold evidence. Chief David Price has pointed out the fentanyl epidemic means there’s a deadly substance out there, unsafe to hold in the current, tiny evidence room.

“I’m kind of disappointed because this whole process could have been avoided if communications was open from the police chief to us, that he would have said something ahead of time, because grants would have been available,” Riewaldt said. “It’s poor planning. I think everyone kind of thought it was just ‘pick up a desk and a couple of computers.’ It’s not.”

Riewaldt noted there was discussion about moving Fredonia Access to the trustees’ current second floor meeting room in Village Hall, and having the trustees meet in the third floor courtroom. However, that isn’t approved yet. Riewaldt also said that with the move, now he has a shortage of equipment space.

He said Fredonia Access moved in 2017 from an approximately 150 square foot corner space. “We had an opportunity to go down to the basement. The access volunteers paid for that service. We put the wall up…repainted and did everything in 2017, moved in at no cost to the village at all, zero cost. We’ve been operating out of there (since) that time, it’s also been used multiple times for multiple events, especially during the pandemic… so we’ve used that space quite a bit.”

Riewaldt added, “I just hate to go backward and go into another closet. It’s inadequate space.”

He went on to say that the longer it takes to move, the more it will hinder Fredonia Access’ television and Internet operations.

“It will be hard for us to do our Fredonia (Farm) Festival coming up, it’s basically going to be videotape and upload it and hopefully we can upload it with Internet or some availability. As for the athletics that we do a lot of, it’s going to be hard to do (live) streaming or anything like that. A lot of people like those events. The longer we go on with this, the longer the process. It took me three months to build the station downstairs.”

Board of Trustees meetings were also live streamed. For now, they will be recorded with a single camera and microphone and the video will get uploaded to YouTube.

A space in the basement is getting eyed for the Fredonia Access move. Riewaldt said it would take his space from 520 square feet to 216 square feet. However, trustees did continue to express interest in letting Fredonia Access move to the board’s current second floor space.

With its equipment scattered and no current home, Fredonia Access went off the air Thursday.

“I think what we need to do is move forward on doing something for the police to get them out of this building, out of the basement,” said Trustee Ben Brauchler. “I think that would be a solution that would help a lot with our space in the building — and frankly, their space, which is terrible.”

Brauchler acknowledged that can’t be done immediately.