November 2006 CFB Minutes

November 20, 2006

MEMBERS PRESENT

 Peter Blum, Chairman
Lara Beck, Member
Kent Burrow, Member

OTHERS PRESENT

Chairman Blum calls the November meeting of the Marion County Cable Franchise Board to order.  The first thing Mr. Chairman would like to do is welcome the newest member, Ms. Lara Beck to the Board.  Ms. Beck is a Mayoral appointee. 

The Board will be beginning the meeting with the Approval of the Minutes.  Mr. Burrow moves to approve the August 14^th, September 18^th, and the October 16^th, 2006 minutes.  Ms. Beck seconds the motion and the motion is carried 3-0.

The next item on the agenda is 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.

Comcast has filed for a State issued cable certificate with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) having done so under the provisions of the so-called Telecommunications Reform Bill House Bill 1279 that passed earlier this year.  From the perspective of the Cable Communications Agency, what this essentially allows Comcast is that the local cable franchise agreements continue in perpetuity while holding Comcast harmless to comply with the FCC Customer Service Standards that we have enforced consistently.  Not surprisingly, compliance with the FCC Customer Service Standards was not addressed in the State legislation.  Additionally, video related complaints are supposed to be handled by the IURC for those under a State issued video certificate.  The Cable Agency takes in over a thousand complaints each year from both cable operators with the decided majority coming from Comcast customers.  A major flaw with the Indiana State Legislation, unlike other states that have passed similar at the urging of the telephone companies, is that the loss of these constituents’ services performed by the local municipality comes bereft of any competition from the telephone company, which was the supposed point of the legislation.

Mr. Maultra is happy to report that the Indianapolis Fire department and Washington Township officials met with both cable operators to discuss bridging the institutional network (INET) between IFD to Washington Township , as a result of the merger between the two fire districts.

The City, through the Office of Corporation Counsel, sent a demand letter to Bright House Networks, to cooperate with the City and its agents with regard to the franchise fee audits for 2004 through 2005, yet to be performed.  A copy of the letter is included in the Board packets. With respect to the audit years of 2002-2003 for which the City has received only a partial remittance of revenues owed, the City auditors on this review met and were in concurrence with Scott Lewis’ findings.  It is Mr. Maultra’s understanding that Bart Brown has since visited with Bright House to vet out additional data gathering.

The Comcast rate review has been performed and the Bright House rate review for 2007 needs to be done.  The Board will hear these later under New and Old Business.

The Agency has been assisting the Information Services Agency on Wi-Fi data gathering as well as meeting with them extensively with respect to a web streaming venture that will be heard under New Business.

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 October, the Cable Agency received a total of 21 complaints for Bright House.  The high areas of complaints were primarily in billing procedures and telephone service.  For Comcast, the Agency received 70 complaints.  The high areas of complaints were derived from billing procedures, telephone service, customer service, and service interruptions.

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.

During the month of October, Channel 16 had a surprisingly busy month.  There were 42 different events for live and tape delayed meeting coverage which totaled 65 hours and 44 minutes.  There were a number of League of Women Voters Candidate Forums leading up to the General Election.  In addition, Channel 16 had a production that was done in cooperation with the Marion County Clerk’s Office and the General Election Inspector Training Video.  That is the training video that informs poll workers how to properly set up and run the polls.

 There were 24 hours and 25 minutes of specials and events production for the month of October and 4 hours and 52 minutes of in-kind production for City-County and Government Agencies.  The total for new production in all categories was 96 hours and 1 minute.  The largest number for the in-kind services would be for the Election Inspector Training Video.  $10,200 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 beginning with Bright House Networks. 

 Al Aldridge, Director of Public Affairs, along with Buz Nesbit, Division President for Bright House Networks will present their operator’s management report that was included in the Board Packet. 

 Bright House began the month with 59,057 customers and ended the month with 58,985, giving a system total of 72 customers loss for the month of October.

 On the incoming call report, Bright House handled 61,516 calls out of 61,908 calls received.  55,459 calls were answered in 30 seconds or less, which gave a call answer rate of 90.2% and a busy rate of 0.149%, as represented by them.

 On the Complaint Summaries Report, there were 21 complaints from 19 customers. 

 100% of service interruption calls were addressed within 24 hours.  There were no planned outages, but there were 30 unplanned outages that affected 6,536 customers.  The system reliability for the month was 99.97%, 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 0.04 underground and 0.07 aerial constructions on Meridian Street and in Habitat Homes during the month of October.

The Division was the Football Game sponsor for the 2006 Circle City Classic.  Bright House participated in most of the weekend events and sponsored a float in the parade for the first time.  Members of the Division rode on the float and passed out BHN mementos.  Their sponsorship provided advertising support for one of the largest amateur sporting events held in the City of Indianapolis .  This was their 19th year of involvement with the organization.  To date, the organization has provided over $1,000,000 in Indiana youth scholarships.

The Division was a sponsor of the Marian College Scholarship Opportunities Dinner.  This dinner/silent fundraiser helps to raise funds for the college' scholarship programs.  This was their third year of providing this scholarship.

 Al Aldridge was the moderator of a community-wide, 2-hour, Election Empowerment Forum.  The 16-candidates running for the 10 Indianapolis seats in the Indiana Legislature were invited for the community discussion.  The event was sponsored by 13-Neighborhood Associations and 2-Community Development Corporations and 3-churches.

 The Division was a major sponsor of the 2006 Heartland Film Festival.  The Division sponsored the Heartland Film Festival for the 2nd year.  The festival ran for 7 days around various venues in the city. 

This year Bright House was able to promote the festival through PSA's and using one of the Heartland Film Festival mobile billboards at their offices.

 A team of Bright House Networks executives and employees rolled up their sleeves and worked on a Habitat for Humanity home during the month.  The Division is a House Sponsor that provides financing for the Habitat Build Project and provides volunteers to actually build the home.  For the past three years, Bright House Networks has provided more than $30,000 of in-kind advertising support and more than $15,000 in direct financial support for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Indianapolis.

  Bright House Networks sponsored the "Lights On" periods for the "Haunted House" at the Indianapolis Children's Museum.  This was the first time for a sponsorship with the organization.

 The Division was a sponsor of the Indiana Tech Summit 9.  The event is a technology trade show that allows technology companies in Indiana to showcase their products.  With Bright House 's sponsorship, they hosted an information and product booth and a table at the Summit luncheon, which featured keynote speaker, Geoffrey Colvin, Sr. Editor at Fortune Magazine.

 Members of the Division continue to volunteer with the Indianapolis Public Schools Education Foundation, ICTA, the YMCA, the Walker Center , the 100 Black Men Indianapolis Chapter, and the Indiana Hemophilia Foundation.

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

 There is not a representative from Comcast to present their monthly report.  Mr. Maultra comments that it looks as if Comcast is below the FCC standards at 89% for the month of October. 

 Comcast will continue to file these reports with the Cable Franchise Board until their State certificate is granted.  Mr. Chairman asks Mr. Maultra when that can be expected and he responded it would be November 22^nd, 2006.

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

 The Indianapolis Public Schools has produced the “Teachers Treasures.”  This show will focus on a shop in place for teachers to shop for school supplies and prizes for students at no cost.  This show will profile the program and supply providers.  The show will be seen on ETC 1 starting in December.

 Charlie Wiles will provide the Development Report prepared for the ETC Board and the Cable Franchise Board.

 ETC is still working on an advertisement for ETC to place in NUVO free of charge.  Any ideas or submissions are appreciated.

 Mr. Harris and Mr. Wiles met with Bernice Rhuel, Wellpoint’s Diversity Director, to discuss plan for a television series that promotes good health decisions.  Tentatively titled “Making Healthy Choices/Breaking Bad Habits,” ETC has put together a draft proposal for collaboration with Indiana State Department of Health, Wellpoint, and the Governors fitness program, INShape, to underwrite the television series. The series will focus on reducing incidents of obesity, promoting active lifestyles, tobacco cessation and wise healthcare decisions. Earl and Charlie will be setting up a second meeting with Ms. Rhuel and Eric Deckers from ISDH in early December.

 The first program in the Global Speakers Series (sponsored by Marian College and Franciscan Center for Global Studies) is airing on ETC throughout the month of November and a second program is scheduled for December.  Charlie will be meeting with Franciscan Center Director, Pierre Atlas, and John Clark, Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research, to collaborate on a proposal to seek funds for producing and airing similar programs in the future.

 Other funding sources will be pursued to support these efforts as well. It is hoped that this format would work with other communities including the arts and non-profit communities. 

 Mr. Harris and Mr. Wiles will work to recruit student interns from IUPUI Informatics who will bolster our website.  They will pursue interns from U of I also.

 Mr. Chairman asks if Mr. Harris and Mr. Wiles if they have reached out to the Public Access Community and Mr. Harris responded that in early October they sent a letter offering ETC channels as a possible outlet for their programming.  They have not had a response yet.

 Mr. Chairman asks Mr. Harris to forward a copy of that letter to him for his review.

 Next on the agenda is New Business and the Board will begin with Item C, the Granicus Service Agreement for Webstreaming.

 There was a briefing included in the Board packets regarding the Granicus service agreement that is going to allow for the City to engage in webstreaming  of its government access television signals.  One of the important features with this, which is certainly of interest to the City, to the Council, and to the Mayor’s Office, who are very enthusiastically behind this endeavor, is that it is going to allow for internal training to be done in such a way that these things can be done in an archival way.  It will be very interactive.

 Mr. Maultra states as an example, if Channel 16 were putting together an Election Board Video or a Poll Site Educational Video, the poll workers could actually go to the Channel 16 website or perhaps it may be archived on the clerk’s website, they can bring up that video on demand and it can be seen over the Internet at a time that’s convenient for them.

 There are a lot of training opportunities for the City and the County with respect to this endeavor.  The costs on the Cable Agency side for the shared contract between the Information Services Agency (ISA) and the Cable Agency is $14,188.  The Agency proposes that the amount not to exceed $15,000.  ISA is going to pick up the other half of the expenses for this service contract.  Beyond the first year of the service agreement, ISA will pick up all of the expense and they will probably distribute that enterprise wide.

 Chairman Blum asks for clarity that going forward this will essentially be an ISA program and not a Cable Board program.

 Jason Buchanan with the ISA Department responds that going forward; the ISA Department will cover half of the expense for the next year.  The year after that, it will be factored into their budget and will then be one their contracts to be assigned to their provider which is currently Northrop Grumman.

 Mr. Burrow asks Mr. Maultra if this has a detrimental impact on the Agency’s budget for 2007 and Mr. Maultra responds that it does not.  The monies are being encumbered out of the 2006 budget as is ISA for this particular endeavor.

 Mr. Burrow states that the monies are being encumbered out of the 2006 budget to pay for this in 2007 and then in 2008 and then on it will be ISA’s responsibility.  Mr. Maultra responds that is his understanding.

 Kimberly Diller from the Controller’s Office wants to ensure the Board that the City is not paying for 2007 expenses out of 2006 budget.  The annual maintenance agreement begins now and the payment is due now or before 2006 ends.  It is very similar to all the annual maintenance agreements that most of the departments have where one payment is made for the whole year.  This expense will occur each year.  The expense will incur and will be recorded in 2006.  The contract will start now and will carry forward for 12 months.

 Chairman Blum asks when it is anticipated that this service will be available and Mr. Maultra responded that it is his hope to start near the 3^rd or 4^th week of December.  Legal is still working out a contract with the technical details and the pecking order in terms of when the installation of the equipment is going to take place, the software, the training, and these different trigger points within the contract.  Those have to be worked out between ISA and Granicus and then at such point the service will go online.

 Mr. Burrow asks if the Cable Communications Agency will be responsible for the archiving of footage or if ISA will do that and Mr. Maultra responds that the Cable Agency is going to be using a software called Media Manager.  It will digest the material as the meeting is going on.  For instance, rather than just going to the Channel 16 website and bringing up a City-County Council meeting, it will be digested in such a way that somebody can go right to a specific part of the meeting that has interest to them and bring it right up.  The intent is to have it very user friendly.

 Mr. Burrow asks for examples and other cities that are currently using this type of service and Mr. Maultra responds that one is San Francisco .  He believes they have between 150 to 160 municipal clients.  They are far and away the biggest provider of webstreaming hosting in the country.

 Chairman Blum asks what sorts of content will be available through this service. 

 Mr. Montgomery responds that the intent is to actually archive all of the meetings that Channel 16 regularly covers, whether they are live coverage or tape-delayed meetings.  Anything that Channel 16 covers on a regular basis as a meeting will get archived in the system and will be retained for a year. 

As the year progresses, the older meetings will drop off as the newer meetings will show up.

 Ms. Beck noticed in the briefing memo that was included in the Board packet that Mr. Maultra mentioned a colleague of his in DC that was experiencing several thousands of monthly hits from China for the different Council meetings.  She asked if he was planning on working with the tourism and developmental agencies as well.

 Mr. Maultra stated that has been a vision and a goal for years.  Once this process gets rolling, that is certainly something he would like to address down the line.  The number of hits for each program will be able to be monitored.  It will be extremely measurable and from that, it will give a foundation going forward to see the interest for particular programming.

 Mr. Montgomery adds to keep in mind that this initial contract is just for the scope of Channel 16’s needs for its live meeting coverage but there is certainly expandability and that is why the ISA Department is involved and very excited about this.  Their system wide applications can be looked at for both public viewing and also for Intranet viewing for people who are just members of City-County Government.

 Chairman Blum asks if this is going to be an ISA contract going forward and if the service is going to be managed in ISA or in Channel 16.  Mr. Buchanan responds that the service itself is outsourced.  For Granicus, it will be offsite.  The ISA Department will have management overview of the technical activity.  The ownership of the contract currently belongs to Channel 16 until 2008 when the ISA Department will take that over.  Channel 16 will manage and maintain the content from the start and going forward.  If things get added for other City-County departments, then those individual departments will be responsible for that content. 

 Mr. Burrow moves to approve the service agreement between the City of Indianapolis and Granicus.  Ms. Beck seconds the motion.  The motion is carried 3-0.

 The next item to discuss is the Public Purpose Grant for ETC.

 Mr. Maultra states that routinely in their budget, the Cable Agency helps with the operating costs for the Education Television Cooperative.  The amount in the budget for this year is $41,050.  That is the amount requested by ETC.  The City-County Council no longer requires this to be run through their committee since it is already imbedded in the budget.  Mr. Maultra requests that these monies be approved out of character 3 for the purposes of augmenting ETC ‘s overall budget for their operations.

 Chairman Blum asks if these monies come into the budget through the general fund and Mr. Maultra responds that is correct.

 Ms. Beck moves to approve the Public Purpose Grant for the Educational Television Cooperative in the amount of $41,050.  Mr. Burrow seconds the motion.  The motion is carried 3-0.

 The next item on the agenda is the Bright House Rate Order which was included in the Board packet.

 Mr. Maultra stated this is actually the Action Audits Contract Service Agreement and not the rate order.  Their discounted rate for multiple audits is $5,000.  Action Audits does the Comcast and Bright House audits for the City each year.  The Cable Franchise Board and the City is certified to review the rates for the limited basic tier of service.  The FCC conveyed to the City the opportunity to look at that tier of service for those who can least likely afford to subscribe to it.  When the review is done, it takes a look at FCC rules, rates, and inflationary factors with respect to what is called the maximum permitted rate.  This will cover Bright House ’s proposed maximum permitted rate for their filing to the Cable Agency for the year 2007, beginning and effective January 1^st.

 Mr. Nesbit suggests that before the City spends the $5,000 for the audit, Bright House offers to let their Vice President of Finance go through line by line and explain where  he came up with numbers.

 Chairman Blum suggests tabling this vote to at least discuss the alternative to having the audit done by Action Audits.  Ms. Beck moves to table the Bright House Audit.  Mr. Burrow seconds the motion.  The motion is carried 3-0.

 The next item on the agenda is the Approval of the 2007 Scheduled Board Meetings.  The calendar is basically the same.  All meetings are the 3^rd Monday of the month, with the exception of January and February.  Those meetings will be the next day, Tuesday, due to holidays.  All meetings are at 2:30 PM in room 260 with the exception of the 5:30 PM meetings in April, room 118, and August in room 107.

 Mr. Burrow moves to approve the 2007 Scheduled Board Meetings.  Ms. Beck seconds the motion.  The motion is carried 3-0.

 The next item on the agenda is the Comcast Rate Order under Old Business.

 Action Audits performed the rate review for the limited basic tier of service for Comcast .  They found that the maximum permitted rate at $15.32 and a selected rate by Comcast of $14.69 for November 2006 going through December 2007 fell within the FCC Rules and Regulations.  Mr. Maultra recommends approval of the rate.

 Mr. Burrow asks if this rate order needs to be voted on since Comcast is now seeking a State certificate and Mr. Chairman responded that Comcast filed the rate order before they applied for the State certificate.

 Mr. Burrow points out that this rate order is effective November 1^st, 2006 and Comcast ’s State certificate is not yet effective.  He asks if this rate order will then only be in effect for about 3 weeks and Mr. Maultra responds that is possible.

 Chairman Blum asks if after Comcast is granted a State certificate, if the IURC will then review the rates.  Mr. Maultra responds that he not aware of anything in the legislation that states the IURC will review anything.  He is not aware of any rate regulation going on.

 Mr. Burrow moves to approve the maximum permitted rate at $15.32 and a selected rate of $14.69 for Comcast .  Ms. Beck seconds the motion.  The motion is carried 3-0.

There are no public speakers.

 Chairman Blum announces the next Board meeting on Monday, December 18^th, 2006 at 2:30 PM in room 260 and adjourns this meeting.

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