Cable Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

[Music] It is 7:18. We're going to call this July 16th meeting of the cable advisory committee order. Uh, all members are present. I don't think we have anyone joining us on Zoom. And if there's any public input, we can start with that. And it's not on the agenda anybody wants to talk about. Um, I I just reading through the the licenses answered a question I've seen asked about cable on Facebook. Um, someone up I think in the north end of town keeps complaining that they can't get connected. And it finally I finally saw that now we have I think a big part of it is that now the cable company will go 250 ft but beyond that then it's the subscribers problem to pay to get in. Uh and I think that's the problem there and I don't know that anyone was able to tell them about that part of what was going on. We've always been very defensive about everybody licenses are service everyone

right but um apparently cable company will only pay for running a line you know so far so so this is like this this is 3 400 ft up some sort of so just to clarify the original complaint is that they can't get initial connection it's not a trouble with their connection it's they they can't get service. So I thought, you know, that struck me this afternoon when I was reviewing the Gro. So basically the I guess they're saying is that yeah, we'll give them service, but we won't we won't connect them up.

We won't dig that trench or or run that run all those poles. They provide that. We'll give them the service.

That's not good. back back in the day the thing was that the cable companies actually I think some might still have some um there was a mention of it somewhere um back in the day the cable companies wanted to only service streets that had so many customer option opportunities per mile so the less populated roads um wouldn't necessarily be entitled to get service we made I think we may have one of the early ones that got um serve every town, serve serve everyone, cover all the streets. That comes up sometimes like when you have a condo. Um Bob Burgerer had that problem. I think it was Bob. Yeah. Had that problem because they have to come in, they have to go through the private way and then they have to get into the buildings and get around the buildings and all that. And they couldn't it couldn't get on the same page. So, it has not much of that has happened recently, though. All the new subdivisions getting all kinds of wiring. Um, and most of the old stuff, it's been done since a long time.

So, you're saying that in the U agreement that you reviewed it was the 250 ft. So, that's for Verizon. I wonder do you think Charter has the same? I think I think it said I think they both had more or less the same. Yeah, we I didn't have Brock look at anything pertaining to uh but it's in the it's in the do. Yeah, I have all three of the Verizon on books here. Yeah. No, no, in in your Oh, in my in my in your summary. So, what I'm saying is in in that summary, we were starting by focusing on just Verizon. Yep. But it it's it talks about both.

It shouldn't. number five. I think it does. All I was simply saying is it just be good to double check if maybe charter is different and they could try charter. There it is. Number five. But is does this include charter? It's just No, it's all I'm saying. We haven't got you. Thought I said I thought I saw I understand. I understand. What I think all I'm saying to potentially help this person is to Okay,

this is only Verizon, you know. Um I saw some maybe not. Um I swear Verizon. Okay. Pretty sure that we're similar. Okay, perfect. Uh any other public input? Okay, nobody's on Zoom. All right, so we're going to continue reviewing neighboring community license agreements. Megan was good enough to get us Ashland. So that that was up in the in the packet to be reviewed. I don't know if uh I c I'll be totally honest. I certainly did not take time to review Ashland yet. No, I haven't.

Um I don't know if if you put that in a Grock as well. Not yet. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, it's a um um I did quickly pull up the charter franchise for even less than Verizon. Shoot. That's something to think about for renegotiation time. If we can get those numbers extended, for sure. That's a good There are some in some of them there are things about if you treat the other guys better than we get it too. Yeah. Like it's called most favored nation. And if they're different, see what order they came.

Let's not let's not worry them. Okay. Um, so what is what does everybody think about like we all just submitted we we have Ashley, but we none of us had a chance to review that yet. The Verizon Ashlin anyway. Um, I do like the idea of using AI for these reviews. I think that's a pretty cool um use of the tool to try to summarize it all for us. So that's that's great. Far more efficient. 100%. Can you can you tell do the graph the graph does? I'm sure. Yeah.

Because either that or you just yourself want to spend the time. So, uh, see, there's nothing unless anybody has anything additional about the neighboring licenses they want to discuss tonight. We can move on to, uh, current Grafton and Charter, the Grafton license specific to Charter and Verizon. Is there anything anybody wants to discuss about those specific ones tonight other than the meet? Well, are I just going to say, are there any other towns other than the three that we have now?

That's what we have now. Um, I don't know how many we want to compare. Um I know I reached out to several. Those are the ones we got back and she was able to get Ashlin. If you if there's a community you want specifically and you want to reach out and get it opened up. Some of them have a site. Oh, of all of them. Where did you find that? That's where I found the Ashland one. Oh, I thought you got it from Well, I reached out to people I know who work for the town of Ashland and they were like, "We don't have a cable committee. You can reach out to the Ashland like TV. Is the Grafton one listed? Yeah. Yeah, that's how I pulled up the charter.

How about um send us the be What What would you like? What towns would you like to review? Yeah, I don't have any specific thoughts. I'd be interested to see which Milford Milford because I've seen their setup. They were ahead of us very nicely.

They they're in a then they were in a storefront um on 140. I think it was on 140 but quite a nicely set up thing. As I recall they had us they had set up a place for cooking shows with the camera you know that All it did was look down on whatever was being cooked. At one time we were asked Yes. get uh put a basically put kitchen stuff in the South Craft studio. I would love that. I'd make a show so fast. Really?

Pies and every every um every week or two forever. Okay. Well, let's uh Well, why don't you build me a kitchen? Build me a kitchen and I'll make you a pie every two weeks. No, no, no, no. Yeah. No, we have You've got a What did you say? A pot pie or All pies. I love pies. I'm a competitive pie maker. I love me a pie. Mhm. Well, there's room on YouTube for that. And we can we can tie you in with I'm more of a grafted cable TV kind of girl. Yeah, but but but if if if we're making a show, then as long as it goes on Grafton cable, they can go elsewhere. And I think we had others that did that. Any interest in Upton?

Um okay. Um we'll see about Upton, but Okay. Upton. Um okay, piling it on. Didn't get back to you. I know Milbury was one. Milbury is one of them. I I don't have my notebook. I Is Milbury on that list? Nobody was one of the ones I contacted. Charters from 2013 and Verizon's from 2008. So quite dated. North. Um I don't know how beneficial Milbury would be given how old they are. You said Northboro. North. I've had a lot of interaction with them. 24 and Verizon from 2008.

Yeah. They have some interesting situations or they have them and I'm still interested in Shburg because Okay. You know, if they're different, we'll we'll know, you know, if how different it is. Yeah. You know, we could build our own electric system. Yep. So, Shrewsbury Celco is on here from 23, right? Sutton on there. We looked into Sutton and they never got Charter from 2012 and Verizon from 2008. There are towns I've never even heard of. Okay. In terms in terms of the reports, we're still going to keep Verizon and Charter separate from the town,

I think. Yeah. I This is going to be a little bit more for more reward for me. Oh, for sure. But that is I wish I knew about that. That is a huge find. So, that makes it a little easier. But I'm just saying each of those things is about, you know, 35 pages or so. It's a That's a hundreds of pages of stuff that it's But you could just send the AI link and just be like, "Boom, here's the link." Yeah. What was the Oh, is it the one that we've got? Is it something that has different terms

because it dates back to what 2004? was granted. I don't think it covers the origin. It was okay. Effective July July 15, 2008. 2008 for 15 years. So, and they haven't gotten a renewal even though they're beyond their 15 years, right? Um, but some of the terms in there reflect the way licenses were being structured. that far back.

Uh since then, in some of our more recent negotiations, Bill August in particular has been telling us the companies have changed a lot and they're pushing differently and you know, we're not going to do that kind of stuff anymore or there's all that kind of thing. So, that's there's a reason why they're different and it may also have something to do with why they don't have a new license. Yeah. Because It's going to be a big big shift in what they can get or what what it's all about.

Speaking of Bill August, I did shoot him an email to try to get a contact at Verizon and the response pretty much was in order to have this conversation, it's going to cost money and we're not in a contract here and I don't think I need to uh I think I can find a contact without costing money. Um, so I'm not gonna I'm not going to use him as a resource unless we're in a negotiation and we need him as a resource. We're gonna have to figure it out on our own. The purpose of having the contact is

to get a a complaints report. So, we were able to get a complaints report from charter, but we didn't have a Verizon one just for us to review. And I think they they provide us that quarterly or some in some interval just so we're aware of the complaints they're receiving. We we get a copy of that. called for in the license. It's called for in our charge. Y in the in the contract they have to provide us and they're not they're not doing that. What happens is that when the contract is signed, they give us one, but then that person gets promoted or moved. Well, no, but that I don't care why. I want to know if

they're they're they're not obeying the terms of the license, right? Is that true? I think um either Bill or the selectman through Bill if not it used to be it would be us with Bill's help makes a formal contact with there's a there's a process for the town to pursue the terms of the license and so you get you can decide bill or Evan the board got to figure out exactly who wants to actually exercise the board's power but the board I think in the end board is the lency and they're the ones who not a contract it's a license but they they're the ones I think if you read deep enough you'll even find some place about that although not sure where it says I think that there's something in there about contact you know there's a there can be a whole process that you end up with a hearing we had we had a hearing once to a public hearing that I think they they needed whichever cable company was probably chartered needed to come to and answer questions that was kind of But there's a process.

Um, yeah. I mean, I think you make a good point to to let everybody know that we don't have up-to-date contact information just to make everybody aware of it.

No, I Well, that's fine. Yeah. But, um, it's not necessarily our role now to do the contact. It's the people that have the license. They haven't charged us with contacting the company. They want to that's great down the overhead but um there's a there's a chain of command responsibility if we if we know and we confirm with the people of up there that we're not getting complaints. I I remember getting complaints the complaint forms from charter long time ago. They weren't real helpful back then, but

Yep. Um so I I would want to double check with the times to make make sure we're not receiving them and it's just not getting filtered to us too. That's that's also a possibility. The whole the whole point of me mentioning this was the contact information I was given for Charter and Verizon. The Verizon one was not relevant. It didn't work. It keeps it moving. Yeah. So that was the whole point of me mentioning that. But Bill used to chase that down for us periodically. Yeah. But I had that many times actually. Whatever his billable hour rate is, he did it without a billable hour.

Well, I think that is that was the other letting you know that that that seems to me have changed for this particular so when I reached out so I won't be reaching out again to Bill I'm going to try exhausting other options before that resource there might be might be on the internet I need to be more time on the internet so I did find a Verizon license that was executed in March of this year for North Reading but still Massachusetts and they have more update contact more updated contact information and I can't imagine North Reading's contact information is different than yours. Yep. So I love it. That's one option.

I lived in North a long time. We didn't have any cable back then. I was in high school college. Um they do have a studio though or they did have a studio. Now they gone to a new new high school. I don't know. They must um No. And maybe we should vote um to bring this forward to the town administrator that we're supposed to get these reports. We'd like to see them. We're not getting them. It says they have to be retained for three years. Retained by Verizon.

Um which includes the service calls installations that sort of thing. It's when we get Anyway,

could I move this inspection rights 30 days notice records retained for three years detailed proprietary information protection process horizon to justify confidentiality. Maybe I can make a motion if we need to to put this forward to the town administrator. If you'd like to make a motion, I don't think we need that. I can easily reach out, but but it's, you know, it's in our charge to do this.

We should do it as as we are. Um or we we can well, we make a motion to do it and you're going to be the one take it. If if that would make you feel comfortable, go ahead and make a motion. So moved. Nobody made a motion. So you would like to see a motion that I reach out to the town administrator's office to double check that they're not already receiving complaints reports and let them know that we have not been

well advise him that we're not seeing the reports and then pursue that. You know, are they getting it? If not, we should go through the provisions in the license to start getting them. Okay, I have a motion motion. I'll second it. Motion made seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? I opposed. Declare the motion carried. I always say unanimously because somewhere it says all votes must be done by roll call. Um, did you know somewhere in the in the state law

all all motions in the or maybe it's in the maybe it's in the in the town bylaws. Um, but then I say by unanimous uh you don't need to take I've decided you don't need to do a role write the do the roll call.

Okay. All right. Do we have any other discussion about the current Grafton uh license agreement with Charter or Verizon? All right. I will reach out to the town administrator's office and get that going. Um up next on the agenda is discuss meeting frequencies going forward. Is is everybody comfortable continuing to meet once a month or as we you know do we want to get spaced out while we're far between contracts and meet more when we get close to contracts or obviously right now we have stuff to be discussing. So um let's decide as we go along. Like I think we have an active thing now

so we got to meet next month and find out how that came out. Okay. um next month if we don't have anything on the horizon but maybe we'll be getting some more licenses and you know we'll see then where we are okay eventually Grock runs out of space there is a thing about how big of how many yes whatever they are tokens or all right so for meeting next month are there any dates that people would prefer Saturday mornings are good. No,

mostly because it would require staff to come in on I don't I don't want to Oh, you know that's another issue, right? We're supposed to have seen I think the quarter has gone by and we didn't. So, I don't think that's in our charge anymore. I think it was. Oh, I'd have to double check. I know I know both um I know the town administrator was going to come in and and chat with us on vacation and the department heads on vacation. So, they they were unable to attend this week. That's why I didn't even put on the agenda. I talked to both of them. They're all on vacation. So, summer figured that was fine. I can double check for August. Um once we've landed on a date that we want

I think our previous scheme what was it the second Wednesday of the month? I'm not going to be available on the 13th next month but if you guys want to meet without me okay how about the 20th? 20th is fine. We meet on the 20th is does anybody else have a cont. Megan, you want to text me or remind me? All right. So, I will check that that room is available and get that booked up. That room, not this room. This this I mean this room. This room.

Apparently, other committees like it. So, I want to jump on that. People have been using it, which is good. They should be great. Um, so approve meeting minutes. was good enough to send them to me last night. I did not or two nights ago. I have not forwarded them out. I apologize. I Everybody got them. Oh, everybody. Oh, you sent them to everybody. Oh, fantastic. Because I didn't. Perfect. So, if everybody's good, I'm going to trust you if no one objects and I'll move. You want to see them? No. Um, did you read them?

I don't think that I even realized that I'd gotten something new. Um, but I I tr I trust it to be adequate. That's the last time that our meeting minutes Okay. The last time our meeting minutes were referenced by anybody was before some people were born. Maybe. I don't know. We've had We've had people for longer than I've been born. longer than the we got cable in 83ish.

Okay. Yeah, definitely. 834. Yeah. 83. Okay. I think it was 83. Well, we got you started being able to plug into the cable in ' 83. I think, you know, goes back a little further to construction and whatnot. Probably the license and the construction. early. I remember watching them coming down the road.

All right. Do you want to look at these at all before we we vote? It's pretty quick reading. [Music] Okay. I can't read. You're on camera. If if I'm on there with with the correct office, which the town clerk can't do for the planning board, this planning board currently has two chairs on the uh website. This at least yesterday, a day or so ago, this is the one you saw already. It was just a few like two or three changes that had to be made for that were clarified issues. One of them was it has to say advisory committee at the top.

Yes, that's what it is. And uh there was also that Megan's comments were for everybody, not just for I mean it was not just the public, but it was also the employees of that you wanted to add that. Yep. So the other thing is for the June 11th when you submit this to the clerk's office, can you submit the Grock report as well? Yes, it's Yeah, perfect. So people want to read that. Should I put that in the packet going forward if we're going to keep referencing it? Might want to It's gonna change because it's going to have other towns in it and so forth. Um it's I need this back. Yeah, of course. Uh so it's going to have all these other towns incorporated with it as well.

Well, it's gonna grow. Okay. I mean, it might be a good packet thing for people to find quickly. We we don't have really a place for our committee to file stuff, right? What do you mean

paper? Um the planning board has an office where all the planning board minutes and exhibits and all of that go in file folders forever. We've never had a place where we could put our meeting minutes and they're just all of paperwork. Um I remember being asked for and rejected back at the beginning. Um and I think a lot of committees had that problem. That's why I have that many boxes full of stuff because was you know I I was keeping the records. I was keeping stuff in case if someone ever wanted anything. That's why I say that this is not too too The world's not going to stop spinning because we don't have a But if it's on if it's online, if it's going the right place at the clerk's office,

right, we're we're okay, right? Yeah. Okay. The clerk the clerk knows how to do also. But yeah, the meeting materials, what you're asking about meeting materials like the the other thing I think I should do on this report um is explain the origins of the data. So you you can't put that in the minutes. No, no. And in the report because the origins meaning it was pulled from that location the

So what the minutes are are going to be reflecting of like what we did and you and you do reference that in the minutes. You reference that it's an AI GR report. So you're just going to add the report the way it is. You don't have to add anything to it. No. What I'm trying to lead is that when when Grock produces the report, I want to add something to say that the content of what it produced came from. He should he wants to identify the source documents that you're feeding into to make it Grock. I identify them. I don't I don't assume you don't Aren't those adding yet another sentence to that first paragraph essentially because the first paragraph identifies the Sutton Verizon agreement 2008.

Well, but it doesn't say the origins of where they were. Say those origins are in the packet existing already. If people wanted those origins, they're already in the packet. Okay. They exist here. Yeah. And we'll have a bunch more. Okay. So you're going to add Ashlin, Milford, Upton, Northboro, Shbury to that list as well. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. Time out. I think we're talking about two different things. So right now we're talking about approving minutes and all I suggested was the existing report go in the existing minutes we're about to provide and then future reports go in the packet. Right. Yeah. I'm not going to amend what this was created. Right. But and that's not going in a packet either. That that ship sailed. So we're that document is going to get updated and in the next document you make

attached to that. Yeah. And then the next GR report you make with the additional towns that could potentially go in a future packet making it easier for people to look at and and find beyond checking minutes. Does that make sense? Yes. See, I think part of the problem is is that if you just have this as a separate packet, there's nothing to compare it with the other three towns. You need it to to show the comparison between them. So, it be all in one. All the towns in your next rock, not keep that separate and make a new one. It's put them all in one. This is version one and there'll be a version two that will contain our last meeting and this meeting

all combined at our last meeting and this meeting we looked at that Grock report with three towns right materials for this meeting or last meeting will include that information at another meeting we'll have a bigger package right and that meeting will have references to all of that Right. And it'll tell us which towns

uh and it'll give us the report on that basis and that'll be in the materials for that. I don't see what's so complicated. I just if you were thinking about having three and then these other five you want that comparison between Grafton and these. So because you want to see Grafton next to these. Yeah. Whatever just that's why I want to show all of them. We I am I am all right. I move we move on. I I don't see any dis I don't see what we're I wanted to emphasize to her. Yeah, you have twice or three time. How many times?

Calm down. Have you been commenting? Calm down. Calm down. This is not that serious. We're just talking about minutes and future agenda packets. Um, so I can take a motion to approve the minutes as presented. So move. I'll second it. All right. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? I opposed. Declare the motion carried. And then uh our next meeting date is going to be August 20th. And seeing how there's nothing left on the agenda. August. Um I can take a motion to adjurnn. So move. All right. That's not debatable. All those in favor? I declare the meeting. Good night everybody.