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HomeMy WebLinkAbout3171_001COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE A G E N D A Meeting Location: Meeting Date and Time: Board Room, 2nd Floor Tuesday, July 14, 1981 Public Safety Building 7:30 P.M. 112 East Northwest Highway CALL TO ORDER - ROLL CALL II. ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES OF JUNE 23, 1981 III. CITIZENS UTILITIES INDUSTRIAL BONDS The Citizens Utilities Company has made inquiry to the Manager's Office about the feasibility of our Municipality issuing Tax Exempt Bonds in an effort to assist in the financing of certain water improvements within their system. Apparently, the national corporation is seeking to raise funds across the country for various water and sewer improvements. For their sewer system they are Awwwwwwanumm approaching the State of Illinois; for their water July system, they have indicated a desire to aproach the Municipality. This request, in the Manager's opinion, is not quite within the commonly understood purpose of our Industrial and Commercial Revenue Bond Ordinance (Ordinance 2925). However, it appears to be covered under the definitions. Citizens Utilities is operating under severe time constraints and is seeking a resolution of intent from the Village which merely states that the Village is willing to consider such an issuance and if the issuance moves ahead, any costs incurred from the date of that resolution are eligible for Bond financing. A copy of a similar resolution issued for the K -Mart Bonds is attached for your review. A representative from Citizens Utilities Company, Mr. Ed Hyland, will be in attendance at the Committee of the Whole meeting. As of the writing of this Agenda, Citizens Utilities has not given an indication of the amount of the improvement. With the advice of our Legal Counsel, the Board should determine whether we have authority to issue bonds for this purpose under Ordinance 2925 or some other vehicle of State Statutes. Secondly, the Board should consider whether or not a significant benefit will accrue to our residents through lower rates because of the red�iced costs of capital. Thirdly, a policy definition should be considered because there is a potential that non- residents served by Citizens Utilities will benefit from such an issue. Finally, in light of the Citizens Utilities Company's inability to meet the policy guide- lines of the Joint Action Water Agency, the Board will have to consider whether Citizens Utilities is in fact making a good faith effort to purchase water through the Agency. (Citizens Utilities' letter attached.) IV. CABLE TV FRANCHISE DISCUSSION The staff has reviewed the comments of the Village Board from the 7/7/81 meeting and has met with Cablenet to go over the concerns of the Board regarding the proposed Franchise Agreement. There is a staff report attached which lists in detail the changes to be made in the Franchise Agreement based upon last Tuesday's discussions. The areas of advertising, inspections, expenses, plan review, system construction, complaint handling and the line extensions policy appear to have caused the greatest concern at the last Board meeting and will be focused upon in the following. The 11 municipalities that have selected to franchise with Cablenet jointly developed the Enabling Ordinance and the Franchise Agreement over the past seven months. These communities worked together on these documents to follow through on the premise that cable television franchising would best be accomplished and would serve the people better if i,t were done as a group effort. To succeed in such a group effort:, compromises were necessary among the wants of the municipalities involved and from Cablenet. The Franchise Agreement draft you received last Tuesday was the result of those initial negotiations between the municipalities and Cablenet. There were trade-offs on many items like inspection fees because the municipalities wanted other items like production studios and the educational loop which they felt were generally more important to the system. We have not received an opinion from Attorney Haupt whether advertising can be taxed by the municipality. A report will be furnished to the Village Board by Tuesday evening. Cablenet has agreed to permit the municipality to regulate advertising by granting the Village the ability to approve the amount of local advertising that is placed on the system. Cablenet has also agreed to pay out-of-pocket expenses for plan review and the handling of complaints. It would still be the Village's stance that permit fees would be waived for construction of the cable lines. A question arises regarding municipal inspections during construction of the system. Because of the type of construction that is involved, the 11 municipalities generally agreed that there is very little inspectional activity necessary except to monitor the activities of the cable company. The monitoring of construction would require random inspections generally of the line extension from the homes to the cable trunk lines and of some of those areas where the cable must be buried underground. For these reasons, the municipaJ felt that their expense for monitoring inspections TM would be very light and such inspection fees could be waived in the Franchise Agreement, Attached to the staff report is a list of procedures for handling complaints as it was presented in the initial Franchise proposal submitted in September of 1979. The procedures require: that all complaints be handled and successfully concluded within 48 hours of initial receipt by Cablenet. In that time, the complaint will have moved from the initial receiving office up to the Vice President or General Manager in charge of operations if it was not successfully handled by other personnel before. Cablenet has agreed to pay all out- of-pocket expenses incurred by the Village for inspections of complaints if it is necessary for our personnal to perform on-site review of any problem. The extension of the cable television system into any newly acquired portion of the Village will be done if such an extension is economically feasible. Language has been added to the Agreement to provide Cablenet with the ability to request relief from the municipality for extension of services if it can be proved that such an extension is not economically feasible.