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HomeMy WebLinkAbout06/07/2004 � � Telecommunications Advisory Committee City of Apple Valley June 7, 2004 7:00 P.M. Municipal Center Minutes l. Call to Order Chair David Westbrook called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. Members Present: Rollin Bible, Jerry Brown, Scott Hugstad-Vaa, John Magnusson, Dale Rodell, David Westbrook Members Absent: Others Present: Charles Grawe, Mark Moore, Beth Engel 2. Approval of A enda Mr. Westbrook asked for changes to the agenda and there were none offered. 3. Approval Minutes of March 1, 2004 MOTION: Mr. Magnusson moved, second by Mr. Brown, to approve the minutes of March 1, 2004. Motion passed unanimously. 4. Update on Charter / Comcast Interconnect Discussions Mr. Grawe reported that staff inet with city representatives from Burnsville and Eagan, the cable television legal counsel for all three cities, and representatives from Charter and Comcast to discuss the possible interconnection of the cable systems. Mr. Grawe said that some parties in the meeting were interested in expanding the interconnect concept to high bandwidth, beyond the sharing of several channels. The two cable CL�:T:Y3:: w.T� CI::T�::��} �T'e�JS.^.:: ���,}',II:�K� Y�2:1S 8.12C� �,:�^.1.^,.^, Yiiviii f.^�i `J?�P,.^�'�.'.S options of bandwidth provided in an interconnect. He said that the parties plan to meet again in the near future to discuss the price proposals. Mr. Moore added that Dakota County has indicated that it has available funding to help pay for the interconnect if Dakota County is able to achieve a certain level of connectivity through the project. Ms. Engel said that interconnects are in place in other areas of the state, but are not an especially common occurrence. � � (. 5. RFP for Audit Services with the Cities of Lakeville, Farmin�ton, and Rosemount Mr. Moore reported that the City of Lakeville approached the Apple Valley, Farmington, Rosemount Communications Commission about exploring a joint effort to employ an audit firm to conduct a franchise payment audit of Charter Communications. Mr. Moore said that the original inquiry included a sample Request for Proposals (RFP) for audit - services that would have essentially taken a snapshot of two points in time and audited the payments made at those points only. Mr. Moore said that the Commission declined the initial inquiry because the scope of the audit was too limited and did not seem to justify the expense which was not included as part of the 2004 Commission budget. Mr. Moore said that since that time, the City of Lakeville obtained several other RFP documents which would include a more extensive audit that would cover at least a full year's time. Mr. Moore said that the Commission has agreed to release a joint RFP with the City of Lakeville, but is not committed to going forward with an audit unless it so chooses based on the outcome of the RFP process. Mr. Bible asked if the Commission has any reason to believe that the payments are not accurate or if there is any impropriety. Mr. Crrawe responded that in February of 2004, the City received a payment in the approximate amount of $13,500 from Charter for incorrectly calculated franchise fees. Mr. Grawe said this might support an argument for spending $7,000 to audit the company and search for additional errors. Mr. Moore added that he and many of his counterparts in other communities advocate a regular audit schedule, possibly once every five years, as a good business practice. Mr. Moore noted that there was a recent article in one of the cable industry magazines about the growing txend of franchise audits. Mr. Grawe added that the article suggested that the frequent merging of cable systems led to errant calculations and noted that the current franchise was originally signed with Marcus and later transferred to Charter. Ms. Engel noted that the City of Rochester conducted an audit of Charter several years ago and only found $500 in incorrectly calculated fees. She �lso noted that the audit cc�uld reveal overpayments to the City. Mr. Westbrook asked from where the funding for the audit would come. Mr. Moore said the Commission currently has a fund balance that could be used. Mr. Bible asked where the Commission receives it's funding from Apple Valley. Mr. Grawe responded that the City's portion of the Commission budget is funded through the PEG fee, not the franchise fees which are a general fund revenue. Mr. Grawe noted that the PEG revenues which exceed the amount needed to fund the Commission and which have been less than $20,000 in a year have also been set aside in a PEG fund. 6. Preparation for Digital Conversion and Other Joint Powers Issues Mr. Moore said that professional level video tape recording equipment is essentially obsolete. It is very difficult to find professional video tape recording equipment for replacement of the existing machines. The Commission is currently planning a conversion to digital recording and playback equipment. The equipment would record to both a hard-drive as well as a DVD. The Corrunission and the Cities would retain a few video tape machines as well. The digital recording equipment would allow for the expansion of video playback via the web site and would make longer term archiving more feasible as archival space needs would be decreased. The digital equipment would r � � also allow indexing of ineeting coverage by creating chapters on the DVD. This would greatly enhance the search capabilities of ineeting content. Mr. Moore distributed a sample specificarion sheet of a current digital recording machine. Under the conversion plan, each City would purchase its own digital recording equipment, expected to cost around $5,000 per unit, as part of the 2005 budget process. The Commission would purchase the digital playback equipment. 7. Recent Telecommunications Le 'slation Mr. Moore said that the MACTA organization worked on a rewriting Chapter 238 which is essentially the state law governing cable regulation. The majority of the rewriting project was clarification and language clean-up as opposed to policy changes. However, there were two major policy changes that were included. Changes to Article 4 were proposed by the telephone industry and opposed by MACTA and the cable companies. The change allows for cities to decide if in one franchise agreement, different items can substitute for those items provided in another franchise a�eement, rather than requiring exact duplication of items in both franchises. This would change the concept of the "level playing field" previously used. The second major policy change was to Article 1 l. These changes would give cities more flexibility in scheduling a build out of a system for a franchise holder. Both issues may be challenged in court as they potentially create different requirements and performance standards of different franchise holders. 8. Resolution to Twins ProQramming Issue Mr. Moore noted that the Twins are now on Fox Sports net and Victory Sports has more or less been dissolved, eliminating the issue of the Twins being shown on cable television. 9. 2nd Ouarter Complaint Log Mr. Moore reviewed three complaints from the second quarter. 10. Coordinator's Report Mr. Moore briefly discussed events in the second quarter. He noted that the city staff is currently examining the possibility of requiring a line extension permit for Fiber to the Home (FTTH). FTTH provides a package of services including telephone, Internet access, and cable television through their fiber network. FTTH currently provides service to the Evermoor development, the vast maj ority of which is within the City of Rosemount. However, there are approximately 40 homes and approximately 20 cable customers in that development that are located within the boundaries of Apple Valley. FTTH holds a franchise with the City of Rosemount, but holds no franchise with Apple Valley. FTTH is required under its Rosemount franchise to build out to the rest of the city over the next several years. The current review of a line extension to Apple Valley would only apply to the homes within the Evermoor development and would not apply to � • � homes outside of that development. Ms. Engel asked for clarification as to why tlie City would grant an extension. Mr. Grawe clarified that to the extent that FTTH provides services provided to Apple Valley residents excluding video services, such as telephone or Internet access, they would not be covered under the City's cable television franchise. The City recently became aware that video services were also provided to a few homes in Apple Valley. He said the City of Apple Valley is reviewing the situation to ensure that the appropriate pernuts and/ or agreements are in place given that a few of the Evermoor homes are within Apple Valley's limits. Mr. Moore also reported that the Commission cities accepted the Charter proposal to offer subscribers pay per view movies as a compensation for the digital box outage. 11. E-Commerce and Business Development Issues There were no issues raised. 12. Other Ms. Engel provided a brief report on the digita.l service outage earlier in the year. A Charter. staff person from another system installed a software upgrade on the system. The upgrade contained an improper command for the digital boxes used in this system. An estimated 60 percent of the digital boxes were on affected by the software problem and required a hard reset. The challenge for Charter was identifying and notifying customers of the problem since there was no way to lrnow which boxes had been affected. Charter brought in additional support workers from as far away as Ohio to help fix the problem over the weekend of the outage. Ms. En�el said Charter exnects to launch Di�ital Video Recorders in this svstem later this fall. She said Charter is also looking at launching Video on Demand service in this system next year. Mr. Bible asked Ms. Engel to help determine why he receives SPAM messages addressed to other people and not to his account. Ms. Engel said she would contact someone in Charter Pipeline and have them contact Mr. Bible. Mr. Bible requested that he receive an agenda packet of the Cable Commission meetings 2S WeI7 2S �L2� mirnitec nf thnce mPPtinbc ��yhPrl they a,�rP a��a,l»�1�. Th� �th�r CCI;-im,i±t�� members also requested packets. Mr. Crrawe said he would add the Committee members to the agenda packet list and encouraged members to contact him or Mr. Moore for verbal updates of what took place at Commission meetings. 13 . Adj ourn MOTION: Mr. Bible moved, second by Mr. Brown to adj ourn the meeting. Motion passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 8:38 p.m.