February 2007 CFB Minutes

February 20, 2007

MEMBERS PRESENT

Kent Burrow, Acting Chairman
Lara Beck, Member

MEMBERS ABSENT

Peter Blum, Chairman

OTHERS PRESENT

Acting Chairman Burrow calls the February meeting of the Marion County Cable Franchise Board to order and announces there is no quorum so all voting matters will be tabled until the next meeting. 

 The Board will begin the meeting with the Cable Agency Report submitted by Mr. Rick Maultra, Director of the Cable Communications Agency.

 Mr. Maultra thanks the Board for the opportunity to highlight some of the things that the Cable Communications Agency has been involved with during the past month.

 Counsel received a response from Bright House with respect to the City’s specific data requests that were previously determined by group consensus.  Unfortunately, Mr. Maultra does not believe to be much, if any closer than they were before the request.  On a more positive note, in recent talks with Comcast, they appear to be ready to issue the City a check in the full amount identified in the 2005 franchise fee audit.

 Action Audits has reviewed the rate forms 1240 and 1205 for the limited basic tier for Bright House ’s proposed maximum permitted rates for their subscribers in 2007.

 Considerable progress has been made with respect to the IFD INET being connected to include Washington Township .  The Agency met with Comcast and put together some documentation with IFD’s assistance that Comcast requested of the City to pursue this matter further.

  Comcast has dropped the Agency’s contact information from their last billing cycle in light of the State legislation. Consequently, complaints into the office have dramatically gone down, in large part because of the missing contact information.  Where once the Agency could help customers resolve complaints with Comcast , we no longer have that ability, particularly if the consumer doesn’t have the aid of convenience of the contact information in front of them as before. 

 The Indianapolis Business Journal recently quoted the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission as saying “The IURC only has the ability to grant franchises. It is NOT empowered to resolve customer complaints regarding cable/video service and rates.”  Obviously this begs the question why the legislation removed that constituent service from cities and towns that protect its citizens in the first place.

 The Cable Communications Agency has been serving as a consumer advocate to Indianapolis and Marion County cable subscribers in assisting them in mediating cable complaints on their behalf.

 For the month of January, the Cable Agency received a total of 11 complaints for Bright House .  The high areas of complaints were primarily in customer service and billing procedures.  For Comcast , the Agency received 38 complaints.  The high areas of complaints were derived from billing procedures, customer service, and telephone service.

 That concludes Mr. Maultra’s Agency Report and remarks and he will answer any questions that the Board may have.

 The next item on the agenda is the Government Access TV Programming Report with Mr. Ken Montgomery, Manager of Channel 16.

 Mr. Montgomery will go over the January, 2007 programming and Production Report that was included in the Board packets.  January was a relatively light month for with a lot of meetings getting ramped back up again and also the holiday in the middle of the month.  Channel 16 still covered 39 different events for live and tape delayed meeting coverage totaling 52 hours and 25 minutes.  They covered a special meeting for the Indianapolis-Marion County Board of Finance which was new to Mr. Montgomery.  Channel 16 will also be adding the Marion County Commissioners meeting to their roster.  That will be a new regularly scheduled meeting on a monthly basis. 

 There were 18 hours and 42 minutes of specials and events production for the month of January and 2 hours of in-kind production for City-County and Government Agencies.  The total for new production in all categories was 73 hours and 7 minutes.  The in-kind services included a Continuing Legal Education for the Public Defender’s Office and a Charitable Campaign Awards for the Auditor’s Office.  $1,200 would have been the cost if Channel 16 would’ve charged for that.

 With that, Mr. Montgomery will answer any questions from the Board.

 The next item on the agenda is the Cable Operators Management Reports by Bright House Networks. 

 Al Aldridge, Director of Public Affairs and Buz Nesbit, Division President of Bright House Networks will present their operator’s management report that was distributed to the Board. 

  Bright House began the month with 58,614 customers and ended the month with 58,628, giving a system total of 14 customers gained for the month of January.

 On the incoming call report, Bright House handled 60,298 calls out of 60,810 calls received.  53,183 calls were answered in 30 seconds or less, which gave a call answer rate of 88.2% and a busy rate of 0.084%, as represented by them.

 On the Complaint Summaries Report, there were 11 complaints from 7 customers. 

 100% of service interruption calls were addressed within 24 hours.  There were no planned outages, but there were 25 unplanned outages that affected 3,222 customers.  The system reliability for the month was 99.99%, as reported by Bright House .

 100% of total service calls were addressed within the next business day, unless as otherwise directed by the customer.  There were no appointments kept outside of the 4-hour service window during normal business hours, unless requested by customer.

100% of standard installations were performed within seven business days after the order was placed.

There were 4.34 underground and 3.54 aerial constructions in Sugar Grove and Heritage Hill during the month of January.

The Indiana State Museum was the recipient of a "Save Our History" (SOH) grant from the A&E Network.  Students from an IPS school will be documenting oral histories of Indianapolis citizens.  Bright House met with museum public affairs and marketing personnel during the month to develop a way that the BHN could be an active partner in this local project.  The SOH project starts in February.

The Division was a sponsor of the Sixth Annual Mayor's Celebration of Diversity Awards Luncheon.  This event is a celebration of our community's rich racial, ethnic, and religious heritage and awards companies and organizations for their betterment of the workplace environment by inclusion of all people.  The Division was a recipient of the award in 2004.

The Division sponsored a spontaneous "Warm-Up with Bright House " day in their Indianapolis payment center.  Anyone visiting their payment center that day were offered a cup of hot chocolate or coffee to help fight off the cold weather.

Members of the Division continue to volunteer with the Indianapolis Public Schools Education Foundation, Gideon's Gate, the Indiana Cable Telecommunications Association, the YMCA, the 100 Black Men, LEAD, Inc., the Indianapolis Chapter, the Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Indiana Hemophilia Foundation, and IPS School 51.

The continued partnership with WDNI provided the required hours of local programming as mandated by the city’s franchise agreement.

Mr. Nesbit stated that he was a bit surprised by Mr. Maultra’s comments about not being any further along regarding the franchise fee issue.  He knows that Bright House ’s Counsel has had conversations with the City’s Counsel about the communications.  He was under the impression that they came to a reasonable solution to that audit.

Mr. Burrow responds that the Board appreciates Counsel’s response.  It has been reviewed and Scott Lewis, the Franchise Board’s consultant has responded. 

It is Mr. Burrows understanding that the Board will be bringing Mr. Lewis to Indianapolis and he is hoping to schedule a convenient meeting time to resolve the remaining open items on this audit and also carry forward and get a few other things resolved at the same time.

The next item in the agenda is the ETC Monthly Report submitted by Mr. Earl Harris and Mr. Charlie Wiles.

ETC Programming includes “Write in the Middle,” an eight part series.  Middle school teachers share specific strategies they use with their students and extensive video from each of their classrooms gives viewers an opportunity to see those strategies in action.

“Developing Writers” is an eight part series that involves practical and philosophical advice for teaching writing, while examining issues every teacher faces, such as high-stakes assessments and dealing with different students.  Viewers will observe how the teachers and their students work together to create writing communities.

“Learning Through Inquiry” is an eight part series that shows inquiry teaching and learning in action with real teachers and students in real classrooms.

“The Learning Classroom” is a thirteen part series.  The programs explore learning theory for grades K-12 in all subject areas.  Professional development for teachers is a major topic discussed along with applications that can be used in the classroom.

“Teaching Foreign Language” is an eight part series.  These programs will help K-12 foreign language teachers improve their practice by making connections between the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning and current in foreign language education.

There are no public speakers.

Mr. Burrow takes a moment to introduce new counsel Mr. Marc Sultzer and thanks previous counsel, Mr. Jeff Simnick.  Mr. Sultzer from Corporation Counsel will be assisting the Cable Franchise Board and the Cable Communications Agency.

Mr. Burrow announces the next Board meeting on Monday, March 19^th, 2007 at 2:30 PM in room 260 and adjourns this meeting.

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