Urbana council members have tentatively decided against taking strong steps to limit hate speech on Urbana Public Television, despite concerns raised by the local Jewish community and other residents about anti-Semitic programming being regularly shown on the station.

Council members, in a voice vote Monday night, tentatively approved a revised public access policies and procedures manual for Urbana Public Television, known as UPTV. Only Alderwoman Lynne Barnes, D-Ward 7, voted against the proposal.

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A final vote will take place at next Monday night's council meeting.

Barnes said she thought the city should drop the public access programming from its PEG channel, which includes public access, education and government programming.

"My trouble with it is, as a city council member, you're a part of this," she said. "If you've got trash in your yard, even if it's not your trash, it looks bad. As long as our name is on it, I feel as a taxpayer we're participating it in."

Much of the anti-Semitic programming is being submitted by a single resident, 88-year-old Timothy A. Brumleve of Urbana.

Other council members disagreed with Barnes. Dennis Roberts, D-Ward 5, said Urbana has a "reputation for being forward-thinking and supporting the widest range of viewpoints."

"What this city needs is not less PEG, but more PEG," Roberts said. "We need a greater and more active public dialogue."

Roberts said he supports creating a fifth PEG channel, through cable franchise negotiations with Comcast this year, that would be exclusively devoted to public access and would allow Urbana to remove the public access component from its channel.

Roberts also said he recently watched a particular anti-Semitic program and "wasn't impressed in the least."

"Let's not give them the power to control our lives through fear, let's totally ignore it," he said. "Let's change the channel."

Danielle Chynoweth, D-Ward 2, made similar comments, saying "the decay of society is when a single person can destroy a public amenity."

Rabbi Norman Klein of the Sinai Temple, 3104 W. Windsor Road, C, urged the council to include "checks and balances" in its public access policies to put some limits on hate speech.

"There are still Holocaust survivors in this community," he said. "Every time this show is aired, it makes them suffer."

Acting City Attorney Ronald O'Neal warned council members that the city was considered "a state actor" under the law and would likely see most free speech restrictions struck down by the courts.

"If you take any action that is not content-neutral, it is a legal problem," he said.

As was the case when the issue first came before the council, a number of residents spoke on the issue.

Carol Mizrahi of Champaign charged that the council was choosing to "cluck its collective sympathetic tongue at the Jews in the community, who are being slandered, maligned and possibly endangered."

But former council member Esther Patt, who is Jewish and who was representing the Champaign County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that "the best defense against fascism is freedom."

"The interests of minorities are best protected when government can not restrict speech based on its content," she said.