GUILDERLAND — While campaigning last fall, Councilman Mark Grimm heard resident Albert Molis’s concern about the lack of closed captioning available for the hearing impaired on the town’s public television channel.

Now Molis is looking for the town to deliver.
"There are a lot of citizens, seniors and other, who are hearing impaired and need the captioning for all their television programs," wrote Molis in a letter to the Enterprise editor this week.
Tom Quaglieri, of What’s Happenin’ Productions, the company that handles the broadcasting of town meetings, estimated that closed captioning would cost between $250 and $300 per meeting. "It would be quite expensive," he said, guessing it could cost roughly $30,000 per year for the town to provide the service for all of its meetings.

Governor Eliot Spitzer is encouraging wider use of closed captioning, Quaglieri said.
Supervisor Kenneth Runion estimated an "initial investment" of $7,000 and then about $30,000 a year to provide closed captioning on town meetings. He has asked the town’s grant writer, Donald Csaposs, to look into grant opportunities in light of the governor’s interest in the service, he said on Wednesday.
When asked on Wednesday about the campaign visit, Grimm recalled it, saying, "We should take a look at it." And, although it wasn’t part of his platform, he said, he’d like to see it happen, "If it’s financially feasible."