Cable Questions ????
August/16/2009 13:33
The following guest blog posting was received from a Shores resident who did some homework to learn what is behind the cable franchise agreement the city council will consider at the August council meeting. Being aware of retribution already made against the author, I am honoring the request to keep the posting anonymous. The questions raised are very good ones.
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If it weren’t for the local papers, residents might have a hard time understanding some of the items on the agenda for the August Shores City Council meeting. The Council will be asked to approve the Uniform Franchise Agreement with Comcast and to enter into a participation agreement with the Michigan Suburbs Alliance. City Council members were asked to approve the “Franchise” agreement at the July meeting but asked for more information. Though we aren’t sure what additional information the council has been provided, from reviewing the minutes of the last Council meeting and articles in the Grosse Pointe Times, we hope the Council has a clear understanding of who is paying for what and out of whose checkbook the money is coming.
It appears as if there have been substantial legal fees paid for representation to obtain a 1.15% PEG (public, education and government channel) fee computed on gross cable revenues. These fees will be directed to the Grosse Pointe War Memorial in order to keep Channel 5 running, as well as providing the feed for the school district and the cable channel for the Grosse Pointes and Harper Woods. Grosse Pointe Shores is the only community that has its own cable channel. Let’s hope there are answers to the following questions:
1) Does anyone know how much has been paid in legal fees for representation and to whom?
2) Does anyone know how the legal fees are being apportioned among the cities and the War Memorial?
3) Have any of the beneficiaries of the legal representation refused to pay a share or any of the fees for this representation?
4) Does anyone understand the funding mechanism of the Conference of Eastern Wayne, the alleged payer for these legal fees? Are they asking if these fees are reasonable and necessary?
5) Since Grosse Pointe Shores apparently has its own PEG channel and since according to the Grosse Pointe Times article, the War Memorial will not have the staff or equipment to broadcast our City Council meetings, should the Shores consider reserving some of the PEG fees for the purposes of maintaining our PEG channel and broadcasting our city Council meetings?
In another “Times” article Grosse Pointe Farms council members were split on the idea of participating in The Southeast Michigan Regional Energy Office that will work as a consortium to obtain energy saving grants. Sounds like a great idea, but some Farms council members wondered if there would be true savings when any grants through the Energy Office would be repaid interest free over a 5 to 10 year period from derived energy savings and put in a fund for future projects. If there are no savings, who pays for the services of the Energy Office? Let’s hope the Council has a clear understanding of what they are being asked to approve – it may be worth pooling resources but if that is the case… we should make sure that we will be able to repay our “loans”.