Cable Advisory Council Area 2

Bridgeport, Fairfield, Milford, Orange, Stratford, Woodbridge

March 8, 2007

 

Present at Platt Technical School: Gerry Speno, Jody Eisemann, Howard Jacobson – Fairfield; Mike Manente, Phil Kearney, Paula Patterson – Milford; Ron Davis, Marlene Silverstein – Orange; Laurence Grotheer, Pua Ford (guest) – Woodbridge; Gary Shaw – Cablevision; Tom Castelot – Sound View.

 

Call to Order at 7:00 p.m.  A motion was made and seconded to approve the November minutes.  All present approved with one abstention from Laurence. 

 

Membership Action Report  Howard reports current openings as follows:

One E rep and one At-Large rep from Fairfield; Stratford has an opening for one E rep (Nancy Carrigan turned down her appointment); Woodbridge has two vacancies; Milford and Orange are full. Currently, Bridgeport  has no appointed members. Ann Osbon continues to search for her replacement as library rep.  Howard asked Milford reps if they had a new census figure.  If the population in Milford has increased to over 50,000, they would then qualify for another spot. 

 

Treasurer’s Report  Paula reported that the opening balance was $4,750.50. Cablevision has gifted $2,000 and with disbursements of $194.56 for clerk, postage and GATA, CAC has a closing balance of $6,555.94. 

 

Announcements  Howard announced that the April meeting will be held in Woodbridge, the May meeting will be in Stratford and June will be the dinner meeting. Jennifer Nacewicz is the new Government Affairs Manager who replaces Tad Diesel in Areas 2 and 9.  Formerly she worked in the Bridgeport Mayor’s office as a mayoral aide, a project coordinator and the office’s legislative liason to the General Assembly. She has spearheaded many neighborhood initiatives in that city. Howard summarized installment issues and damages at the heart of a current suit by a Stratford building owner with two apartment complexes against Cablevision now in the discovery stage. 

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HB5297 Howard spoke about a bill that was before the Energy and Tech Committee of the state legislature which would allow municipalities to decide how they would be served by government access television.  Howard explained that he supported this bill and then cited Sol Silverstein whose summary he had read and which he called a superb summary before the legislature of OGAT’s coming of age as a model town specific site.

 

Local Programming Schedules Unresolved  Howard explained that this issue began when the DPUC sent notice denying Sound View’s request to allow them additional time to complete negotiations with Area 2 towns for their town specific local programming schedules. Instead, the DPUC ordered that the affected towns would be scheduled for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) sessions at its offices in New Britain. The first meeting will be next Tuesday in Milford.  Howard asked Tom for any additional status update on other meetings. He responded that he was only aware of the meeting next week.  Howard added that in Fairfield, Mr. Flatto indicated that Fairfield is not seeking the ADR process at this time.  He said the town will be seeking access on both a regional and town-specific basis. He added that SV has indicated to town officials that they would like to satisfy Fairfield’s requests and needs. Gerry asked if SV’s incentive plan for grants could be discussed because there were elements that he disputed.  Howard said this issue should be referred to the GATA committee. Howard requested of Marlene a copy of the local programming schedules collected by her committee to be sent to SV.

 

 Meduation Decisions  Howard asked the group for new information on towns who have opted for mediation. One decision went on record when Gerry questioned the status of Woodbridge and Laurence replied that they had decided to go to mediation.

 

Sound View 2006 Annual Report  The report has been filed with the DPUC. Its contents include the budget and other assorted data which can be analyzed against projected budget assumptions. Howard reminded members that the current policy  by council vote is that we are a committee of the whole when we discuss SV budget assumptions. These are management projections usually presented to its finance committee. They will be put on the agenda for the next meeting. Howard said he had offered a preliminary historical review of certain line items in the projected 2007 budget and referred to certain anticipated changes at the most recent GATA meeting.  Ron asked what the time frame was for the 2006 budget and Tom explained that the most recent budget was for the calendar year 2006.  Sound View does not file the 2007 budget until the annual report is filed at the end of 2007, he said.

 

Attendance at Sound View Board Meetings  Sheila McCreven, commissioner of GATcomm, the town endorsed government access organization in Woodbridge, has been trying to get a town member from each GATA town anointed by their chief official to be present at Sound View Board meetings. Howard said he supports this idea and asked members if anyone present had attended.  Marlene stated that she had attended the November 2006 meeting.  The meeting was completely open and the board discussed their thoughts on fund raising, grant writing and the DPUC draft decision.  Marlene felt the information would be very useful for the mayors and first selectmen. However she did not think that they were aware that they could send a representative to attend the meeting in their place.  Ron questioned whether or not someone sent by a mayor had any voice in the meeting to which Tom replied that they can speak and ask questions but they cannot vote. They are ex-officio, Howard said.  Tom announced that the next quarterly meeting would be held March 26 at 8:30 a.m. at Sound View.  Tom further explained that because of an attendance rule in their bylaws, they ask who will be attending when the agenda is sent out to the towns.

 

AT&T U Verse  Howard explained that this service is already available in parts of Fairfield and Milford.  AT&T has also had discussion with Sound View regarding a compact to make available content from Sound View’s PEG systemwide channels.  Tom concurred that Sound View is having ongoing talks with AT&T.  Howard said that the deal they are discussing will be simultaneous transmissions of their content on three designated future channels on U-verse. Gerry asked what type of funding Sound View would receive and if there would be a part of the funding given to the area towns for the town specific content they will provide.  Tom explained that because they are still in discussions, he will have to let the council know when he knows.  Gerry felt that with any distribution deal, the content provider is part of the deal, not after the fact.  Tom explained that whatever goes out on 77, 78 and 79 is public information.

U Verse said that they would provide for community access and possibly they see that means as Sound View. Marlene asked if none of the towns provided government programming to Sound View, then what would Sound View have to offer AT&T. Tom said that is a hypothetical situation and because it does not exist right now, he is unable to answer.  Howard cautioned the members that the content issue with U Verse should be a red flag to the area 2 towns and when they make any agreements, they should make content stipulations when the agreement is made.

Tom insisted that all the towns in Area 2 have no problem with other people seeing their programming but Phil disagreed. Milford had not agreed to allow their programming system wide, he said.  Howard again reminded the members that how a town is going to share their content is up to the town.  The issue with U Verse and simultaneous transmissions through a third party provider is a very new issue, he warned. Tom added that there are five states in the union with central franchise holder control, i.e. the DPUC.  CT is one of the five states. All of the other states allow deals on content to be made town by town.  Howard asked Tom if Sound View has discussed the content distribution with U Verse outside of Area 2.  Tom explained it was mentioned.

 

Standing Committees  GATA Marlene announced that the next meeting will be held March 20 and asked the members to pass along any agenda thoughts. 

 

Old Business  Howard said that Pat Tancreti, who is not here tonight, had asked each town to take an inventory of their I-Net sites, active or inactive. Gerry discovered that equipment was missing in Fairfield.  Ron said it is only relevant when someone is going to use it.  Howard replied that is why Pat is asking for an inventory so that when a town chooses to use it, the equipment is there and operable. Howard asked Gary for the most updated list and Ron, Paula, Laurence and Gerry said they would collect data for each site and contribute that information to an area wide inventory for Area 2. No one is present tonight from Stratford to report on the status of I-Net installations other than in town hall.

 

Discount Plan and Tier Packaging  Howard explained that this issue goes back to the Litchfield acquisition and grandfathering senior discounts in that acquired Cablevision franchise. Cablevision has said repeatedly at meetings that they do not include any discount plans for groups like senior citizens or indicate any plans for any such discount in the future.  Howard read for the council a letter from a Stratford resident and a letter from a disabled senior in Milford to Cablevision, complaining about channel loss and the additional cost to add digital with the additional equipment requirement.  Howard noted that the only way a senior discount will happen is if enough pressure is put on Cablevision.  Ron added that one way to avoid paying for a digital box may be to get a digital ready television which are already in some LCD and plasma TV’s but they are very expensive.  Howard said he believed the discount for seniors should not be based on criteria other than the one already in place by precedent at their Litchfield franchise.

Gary said that the most recent petitions collected from Fairfield were passed along to Cablevision at corporate headquarters. Their decision again is not to offer a senior discount because their competitors do not offer one. When the corporate department makes certain decisions regarding programming and whether or not they can move channels, Shaw said they need to look at which channels they can move without violating any contracts.  There are also other means like cable cards which allow people to get cable signals without getting a cable box. 

 

Cablevision  Gary reports that Cablevision is launching two new high definition channels, Discovery High Definition and National Geographic and they are re-branding a free on-demand channel, Life School, formerly MagRack, on March 29. The channel contains content produced outside and although a customer would need digital to receive the channel, there is no additional charge.  Ron commented that people are creating a pool of small specialty areas which is creating great opportunities for producers to produce video on demand. Howard added that Google is already dealing with small content providers and Verizon is dealing with them also, but from the bottom up.  Gary added that tonight will be his last CT function for Cablevision as he will be returning to New Jersey to perform his duties. 

 

Public Comment  Howard asked about a request he made to Sound View management sometime earlier to obtain copies on a regular basis of their minute book but he received a response that because of  legal proceedings during refranchising it was not  available to him at that time.  Howard requested again that Tom let CAC’s executive committee have copies of the minute books for 2005 and 2006. They should be readily available as a community resource. Sound View is a non-profit community organization. Tom reiterated that Sound View cannot turn over their minute books because it is not one of their past practices but the towns may be able to obtain a copy from their chief elected official. 

 

Adjournment at 8:42 PM.  The next scheduled meeting will be April 12, 2007, at  Woodbridge Town Hall, 11 Meetinghouse Lane, Woodbridge, CT 06525.  Directions enclosed.