NW-AR.COM Wiki | TelecomWatch / CableClarity

October 2004

The Times' headline writer must have left a question mark off Thursday's (October 29) front-page "Cable Clarity(?) " story. After stonewalling for weeks, City CAO Earnest pieced together yet another revision of the Cox franchise for the City Council, which arrived too late for the Telecom Board's Thursday meeting. This version is at: http://listserv.uark.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0410&L=telecomboard-l&F=&S=&P=3539, but was to be released to Telecom Board members ONLY. There has been no direct written communication between Earnest and the Board relative to the Thursday franchise, at least none publicly available. (See FOIARequestsToCity)We've also added a Telecomwatch catch-all at: FOIAGrabBag and CoxFranchiseOct28AndCounting. These include the CAO's random HedgedFOIAResponses to FOIA requests made to his office and to theMayor. (To date, November 10, we have no FOIA response from the Mayor's office.)

Watchmaster: The FOIAGrabBag is not for the faint of modem speed. Do not tackle this mix of files that total over 50 mb of imaged files with a dial-up modem, as a single file dowload would take hours. Even for those with a high-speed modem, it's a virtual scrap heap of un-indexed and unsorted FOIA non-responses that we've received from the City in October and November 2004. (We had to upgrade to a highspeed modem just for these files.)) We piled the files on FOIAGrabBag because, as crude as it is, the jumble of information isn't available anywhere else. As a whole, they also clearly reveal the lack of coherency in the City's franchise negotiations over the past 8 years.)

So why all the fuss and FOIA requests??

(Watchmaster: Because all of Fayetteville is getting a raw deal in the proposed Cox franchise, a document originated by Cox and based on a boiler-plate document used in Fort Smith. But we won't know what the City will present for a resolution or final agreement until we get a definitive answer from the City CAO (or from whomever will bring the agenda item before the City Council. See the latest October 2004 undate on franchise renewals by BrianGrogan, our former hired attorney, whose strong (and costly) renewal document(prepared previously with the help of our City Attorneys (see RedlinedRejection and EarlierNegotiations. These long-standing negotiations have now been ignored by Cox and the City, including a $40,000 stipulation in the current franchise that requires Cox to reimburse some of the City's costs for the negotiations.)

The good news is that Telecom-Board-member Steve Smith has insisted that the Board have a public hearing for our community so the Board can hear our thoughts about the latest patchwork franchise agreement, which was simply lifted from the Ft Smith franchise. (Public Hearing now to be held by CAT Board, see CATHearing) And Board Chair Susan Cromwell is writing a detailed letter (see BoardVSBullyboy) to the Council to restate the Board's conditional recommendations.

Another good-news item was a quote from City Attorney Kit Williams. The Times tells us that he will seek the addition of a stipulation similar to the $40,000 in the current (1989) franchise (but maybe more), which is to be paid by the cable provider to reimburse the City for attorneys and technical expertise required for negotiations. (Our current (1989) contract is a much stronger franchise than the boiler plate proposed by Cox.

According to the version revised Thursday, Earnest has now changed the contract to provide a five-year term, which was one of the key Telecom Board recommendations in September. (Actually, the Board recommended "no more than five year years and no less than three." This latest version also spells out the "return lines" that Cox will provide to connect the Quorum Court, University and School District , among others points, which were provided in earlier agreements made years ago, but were left out of the version drafted by Cox and Earnest earlier in October. He had no firm figures for the amount of money that the City has spent that might be reimbursed from the $40,000, although he said estimates were in the $30,000-40,000 range.

But there's still no clear path for the Telecom Board's recommendations to reach the City Council. Nor is there any assurance that their recommendations will be included with the "final" franchise agreement to be sent to the Council, since no version has been formally approved by either the Board or Cox. ( Although the Board reports to the Council, rather than to the CAO, Earnest now serves as liaison for preparing the agenda request , as well as lead negotiator in the franchise negotiations. These twin roles have allowed him to simply bypass the Board in the negation process, although the Times story says he feels that is an unfair characterization. (Theoretically, the CAO is also responsible for seeing that Cox reimburses the City for negotiaton expenses, per the current contract.)

Adding to the lack of "clarity" in the 5-year path taken by the franchise negotiations, the CAO apparently checked with Cox for their approval before sending the latest slight revisions to the City Attorney for formatting into Thursday's draft. According to the Times, Cox insisted on a seven-year contract before they would added three more return lines recommended by the Board in September.

Unfortunately, much of the above information was not available to the Telecom Board when it met Thursday. . More information will be posted to www.telecomwatch.us as it is released. but we still haven't had the courtesy of a formal reply from our FOIA requests to both the CAO and the Mayor But that lack of response seems to fit the no-comment pattern of recent months. A copy of the FOIA request is at: http://nw-ar.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TelecomWatch/FOIARequestEarnestOct7

(Everybody clear now? Or maybe you'd vote with me for a "no smoke" ordinance to snuff out City smokescreens?)

Watchmaster's Wikily Reader: (related story above)

'Each of us in Fayetteville has been ignored by Cox and the City's CAO in this latest attempted bypass of the Telecommunications Board. Our ordinance is is clear about the Board's role, but much fuzzier about how the Board's recommendations are to be brought before the Council in a quick and accurate resolution and agreement.

Locally, of course, each of us owns a chunk of the City's rights of way that are rented to Cox. We are entitled to fair market value for that rent, which has skyrocketed in value along with digital technology and our growth. Cox's rates have doubled since the negotiations began, but we receive no additional compensation from Cox. In fact, the new contract is nowhere near as strong as the one signed in 1989.

As importantly, by law, we each own a portion of the nation's airwaves, which we also "rent" to Cox via the franchise. Our part of this new digital spectrum that is managed by the FCC also has a higher dollar value that should be shared with each of us. Today Cox and other telecom services have fiberoptics that can carry television, plus the Internet, World Wide Web, telephone and data services. The dollar returns from these services should also have a mounting value for each of us. And, in past City negotiations, we have received payments in kind through our federally- mandated use of the local PEG channels (government, education, and public access (CAT), as well as substantial cash payments and services provided by the cable provider. Such negotiation terms are common throughout the nation.

But, setting aside the dollar value, the much more crucial obligation to us is that we retain a clear legal right to electronic public forums and news sources that are free of bias and monopoly control by any telecom or cable service provider. Our nation's media are now owned by a handful of conglomerate, near-monopolies, which are becoming more powerful with their near-daily mergers.

The good news is that, as a result of the Thursday Telecom Board meeting, each of us also will soon have a chance at a public hearing to voice our protests. We can speak out and let our leaders know how we feel about being bullied and stonewalled by Cox and the City in the negotiations process, as was so well described in a NWA Times editorial recently.

In the meantime, we'll try to carry the latest telecom updates on www.telecomwatch.us, although so far our FOIA requests to the CAO and Mayor's office have been ignored.'