Click here to subscribe today or Login.
HAZLETON — A non-profit organization that advocates for Latinos and celebrates the Dominican culture plans to start up a low-power FM radio station in the city, but the plans have hit a snag.
Victor Perez, president of La Casa Dominicana de Hazleton (The Dominican House of Hazleton), said CDH leadership came up with the idea for a Spanish/English language radio station about two years ago to help inform, educate and entertain Latinos in the area, especially those who don’t speak English well or at all.
The leadership learned from the Federal Communications Commission that the organization would have to be registered with the state as a non-profit organization in order to operate under non-profit status. So the organization applied and received the 501.3c non-profit status in April 2014. The FCC then authorized a low-power FM radio station permit.
But later that year, CDH experienced an internal power struggle and, following some legal proceedings, four individuals were ousted from the organization.
Perez said former CDH board members posing as current board members contacted the FCC and requested that the station’s permit be rescinded, and the FCC complied with that request.
“We are very sad and very concerned about what is going on,” Perez said on Friday.
Perez provided a copy of a letter that an attorney for CDH, Abraham Cepedes, of Cultura Law in Reading, sent to the FCC in March explaining the situation, and requesting that the permit be reinstated as well as information on how to go about acquiring reinstatement.
Cepedes on Thursday said he has not yet heard back from the FCC, and the FCC did not immediately respond to a Times Leader request for information on the status of the permit.
Perez said Mark Humphrey, a radio engineer, had been working on installing an antenna at the CDH offices in downtown Hazleton, but his work was suspended when the FCC permit was revoked.
Perez expects the station will be up and running no more than two months after receiving reinstatement from the FCC.
He said the station, which will be found at 99.3 FM on the radio dial, will broadcast cultural and educational programs in English and in Spanish, music and English language classes.
“We will give news and information that people in the minority population need to know,” he said.