February 19, 2008

MEMBERS PRESENT

Dean Farmer, Chairman
Richard Curry Jr., Member
Loren Heger , Member

OTHERS PRESENT

Acting Chair Loren Heger calls the February meeting of the Marion County Cable Franchise Board to order at 2:30 PM. 

The first order of business is electing the new Chairman of the Cable Franchise Board, Mr. Dean Farmer.  Mr. Heger asks for a vote.  Mr. Curry moves to approve Dean Farmer as the new Chairman, Mr. Farmer seconds the motion.  The motion is carried 3-0. 

Mr. Farmer introduces himself to the Board.  He served 7 years on the CATV Commission in Speedway .  Of those 7 years, he served 5 years as its President.  At that time cable complaints could be filed with the FCC and Mr. Farmer worked with Mr. Maultra of the Cable Communications Agency.  In 1996 a lot of that changed.  In the year 2000, Mr. Farmer was elected to a 4 year term to the Speedway Town Council.  After serving 4 years, Mr. Farmer was re-elected.  He is new to the position of the Cable Franchise Board Chairman but he has a lot of experience with the type of work that it does. 

Mr. Farmer proceeds with the agenda.

The first order of business is the Approval of the January 22^nd, 2008 Minutes.

Mr. Heger moves to approve the January Minutes, Mr. Curry seconds the motion, and the motion is carried 3-0.                 

The next item on the Agenda is the Cable Agency report submitted by Mr. 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.

 The Agency is still working with the University of Indianapolis and IUPUI and the transference of IUPUI as fiscal agent of the Educational access grants to that of U of I. Internally, there is some work that still needs to be done within these two institutions. Once that is in place, IUPUI needs to invoice the City for the ETC grant since they are the name on the contract that was executed.

 Mr. Maultra understands that AT&T has completed the interconnection of the Government Access TV facilities in order to get our City programming up and running on their video service known as UVERSE.  AT&T executives told the City that they planned on going LIVE on February 6 with the programming via a drop down menu on their channel 99.  The Agency has had numerous AT&T subscribers that have called our offices to report that they cannot receive Channel 16’s programming via AT&T.  This includes calling the subscribers back while AT&T technicians were on hand to evidently fix the problem only to find out that it requires a “tier two support” or support from another department.  Additionally, Speedway residents have also noted that they are not receiving the PEG channels on UVERSE as well.  The Agency has advised AT&T of the problem and is still awaiting their response.

 With respect to the Bright House audit review period of 2004-2006, the City is still waiting for a response that Bright House has stated that it owes the City.  The Agency followed up last week with Bright House with respect to this matter and did not get a response back. According to our auditor, Bright House owes the City about $73,000.

 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 1 complaint from AT&T regarding programming.  The Agency received 9 complaints for Bright House .  The high areas of complaints were primarily with service interruptions.  For Comcast , the Agency received 41 complaints, even though the Agency’s contact information has been taken off of Comcast ’s billing statement.  The high areas of complaints for Comcast were derived from programming, billing procedures, and customer service. 

 Mr. Maultra makes an observation to the Board with the regard to the complaint totals that Bright House is a local franchise and is required to put the Agency’s contact information on its billing.  Comcast is under a state issued franchise and only sometimes puts the contact information for the IURC on their bill.  There have been times when the IURC would receive calls, they would forward them on to the Agency and would claim they had no authority to take video complaints.  Mr. Maultra would like to note that even though the constituents and Comcast subscribers are not aware of a local advocate with the City to call to complain to, they have over 4 times the complaints as Bright House .

 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 goes over the January 2008 Programming and Production Report that was included in the Board Packets. 

Channel 16 did cover one interesting meeting, the Board of Finance which is just one annual meeting that was requested by the County Treasurer and they will cover one other Board of Finance meeting in March.  Channel 16 completed 47 hours and 40 minutes of live and tape delayed meeting coverage for the month of January.

There were 15 hours and 28 minutes of specials and events production for the month of January.  There were a variety of things covered including some Martin Luther King Holiday Observances, one that was done by the City-County and one at the State level.  One of the things Channel 16 is doing now with the new administration is the Mayor’s Night Out programs where the Mayor is going out to different townships and interacting with the communities.  Channel 16 did 1 hour of In-Kind Production for City-County/Government Agencies and 2 hours on Series Programs.

The total for new production in all categories was 66 hours and 8 minutes. 

Mr. Montgomery shares the Online Archives Usage Report with the Board for January.  He is pleased to report an all time high on the number of hits from people accessing the archives.  There were 11,830 hits and the previous high was 8,115 back in October, 2007.  There is a wide variety of meetings that are being accessed.

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

 Mr. Farmer stated that there are a couple communities that do not get TV2 and advises the public to go online and access these meetings.

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

 Buz Nesbit, Division President for Bright House Networks with Al Aldridge, Director of Public Relations presented the Operator’s Management Report that was distributed to the Board. 

Bright House began the month with 54,970 customers and ended the month with 54,759, giving a system total of 211 customers as a loss for the month of January.

On the incoming call report, Bright House handled 55,173 calls out of 56,610 calls received.  55,173 calls were answered in 30 seconds or less, which gave a call answer rate of 91.8% and a busy rate of 1.010%, as represented by them.

On the Complaint Summaries Report, there were 9 complaints from 8 customers. 

100% of service interruption calls were addressed within 24 hours. 

There were no planned outages, but there were 24 unplanned outages that affected 2,753 customers.  The system reliability for the month was 99.9868%, 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 was 0.01 miles of underground construction during the month of January.

Mr. Nesbit will answer any questions that the Board may have.

Mr. Farmer asks when the Board can expect a reply in writing from Bright House regarding the fee audit which was done back in October 2007.

Mr. Nesbit wants to make sure the Board is clear that what Mr. Lewis had done was not an audit, although Mr. Maultra refers to it as an audit.  Mr. Lewis refers to it in his report as a Franchise Fee Compliance Review.  Mr. Nesbit stated he is not sure what the scope of the request was from the City to Mr. Lewis.  He includes that Mr. Lewis has historically went and looked at information from the billing services and reports. And usually the wrong reports and then takes that information and does a calculation.  Mr. Lewis mentions in his report that he takes some of the data information and then does a recalculation of revenue and a number of other items.  It then causes Bright House to turn around and audit Mr. Lewis’s review and they are now in the process of doing that.  Mr. Nesbit expects that within the next 60 days they will have a response to Mr. Lewis.  Mr. Nesbit stated that historically evident in these reviews, it usually takes up to 18 months.

Mr. Heger stated to Mr. Nesbit that he is a Bright House customer and during the wind storms some of his channels were out, including ESPN and HD and asks if they would be operational able by that evening.  He added that his channels have been out for a few days.

Mr. Nesbit responded to Mr. Heger that he should call the Bright House office directly and he added that Mr. Heger may be an isolated incident because the call volume at the office was very low.

Mr. Farmer asks Mr. Nesbit if he can explain the 211 loss of customers during the month of January.  Mr. Nesbit responds that Bright House serves the old city limits of Indianapolis and looking at the population of the center City of Indianapolis, there is a loss of residents in that area.  Bright House is losing move outs and there are a number of vacant homes.  There are a lot of issues including the sub prime mortgage issues and foreclosures that is impacting the subscriber potential base.

The next item on the agenda is the ETC Monthly Report submitted by Mr. Chuck Fearnow, ETC President.

 There have been discussions with Traci Wells who is interested in producing two programs, “Lefemme ETC” (or “Woman ETC”), which is a program on resources available to working moms, and the issues and events that are relative to their lives as people, professionals and mothers.

 “Dollar Power: Economic, Political and Environmental Impacts of Consumer Choice” is a program that will follow the life cycle of products made in Central Indiana, examining how consumer choice plays a role in local economics, politics and the environment.

  Jerry Points , from the Stutz Building is interested in producing a program featuring local artists.  Elaine Bookwalter will assist him in firming up a program and helping him produce it.

 Earl Harris has been in discussion with Indianapolis Museum of Art regarding programming they have that they would like to put on the IPS stations, that perhaps it could also be put onto ETC.

 IPS interns are involved in independent projects.  They are currently producing a 30 second PSA and a 30-minute show that will be seen on the Educational Television Channel.  Current projects are: with Michelle Haddix and a public service announcement for Parental Involvement and a 30-minute show for Magnet Options.  Krystal Ighbaugh is doing a public service announcement for IPSAC and a 30-minute show for IPS Athletics.  Megan Patterson is doing a public service announcement for Save the Music Foundation and a 30-minute show for Bullying Prevention.

 The transfer of funds seems to be continuing.  IU is now out of the loop, and the remaining funds should be transferred from Rick Maultra to University of Indianapolis .

 Mr. Fearnow concludes his report and offers to answer questions from the Board.

 There were no items under New Business.

 Under Old Business is the Approval of the Amended ETC Grant Agreement.

 Rick Maultra explains that ETC (Educational Television Cooperative) has their head-end at the University of Indianapolis now.  IUPUI has been the fiscal agent for ETC for almost two decades.  The Agency feels that things could be much more streamlined and expedited with the University of Indianapolis as the fiscal agent for the grant.  The 2007 ETC Grant had the name Indiana University on it and since then IUPUI has terminated itself as the fiscal agent for ETC and the University of Indianapolis has accepted that, however the grant for 2007 for ETC of $41,050 does not reflect that.  After consultation with Corporation Counsel, the grant has been amended to reflect the changes from IUPUI to the University of Indianapolis and Mr. Maultra asks that the amended agreement approved by the Board.

 Mr. Heger moves to approve the amended agreement between the City and University of Indianapolis for the ETC Grant.  Mr. Curry seconds the motion and the motion is passed 3-0.

 Mr. Jim Smashey spoke under public comment.

 Chairman Farmer comments on a new product called AT&T UVERSE.  UVERSE is an IP based product and there are a lot of nice things about it but there are also a lot of things that are just not quite right.  One concern is the way the PEG channels are being handled which is public, educational and government.  Those channels are super imposed at channel 99 which will give a drop down menu.  The downfall is it takes anywhere from 1-2 minutes to receive a picture.  He finds that unacceptable.

 Chairman Farmer announced the next Board meeting on Monday March 17^th, 2008, at 2:30 PM in room 260 and adjourns this meeting at 3:13 pm.