Town of Princeton, Mass. – November 7, 2016 – 6:30 PM
BOARD OF SELECTMEN – Special Meeting Minutes
Chairman Stan Moss and Edith Morgan present and Jon Fudeman absent. TA Nina Nazarian also present. Charter represented by seven individuals; several members of CAC, the Advisory Committee and residents
6:33 PM Stan opened meeting at Princeton Center and Nina asked entire room to introduce themselves. Tom Cohan and Greg Garabedian presented overview and history of Charter Communications headquartered in Worcester for the Northeast region. Touted much expansion of customer service since 2012 with new CEO Tom Rutledge. Charter has merged with Time Warner and some smaller cable firms and is now 2nd largest cable TV franchise and has more internet customers than any other firm nationally. Many new employees, as Charter has brought call centers back to USA from overseas operations.
The company has offerings such as a 30 MB/sec service for $13.99/month for qualifying low-income/senior citizens. They noted benefits of a Charter partnership with the town, including the MBI contribution. Also, the extra TimeWarner territory brings addition of 20,000 more employees.
Charter promises to string cable by every address, aerial or underground, and go 250’ into driveways. For distances greater than 250’ they will cover up to $3,000. They discussed the investment in the commonwealth that Charter has with jobs, fees and taxes paid, etc. and serving 68 communities with 267,000 customers. They gave a presentation on TV Channel 3 and how it covers ‘hyper-local’ events such as high school sports and mayors forums etc.
Discussion continued around the western Mass. towns and the state’s efforts for “Middle Mile” and “Last Mile” coverage. Charter has a “hybrid” fiber/coaxial network in which the trunks are fiber and drops are coaxial. The Charter group invited anyone interested to visit their facility in Worcester.
Stan gave an update on the make-ready status of the poles, which meet specs for fiber-ready installation. He said the top requirements of any vendor is quick completion and 100 percent coverage of PMLD customers. He also noted that applications from the two who submitted—Comcast and Charter—will be opened on Tuesday Nov. 8 at 9 AM. Nina asked if Charter has factored into their financials for serving Princeton, to make the community whole on the expended costs for make ready. Charter indicated that they would respond after the applications were opened.
Charter group had questions about the license agreements with PMLD, Verizon and the PBMLP, but their legal counsel will sort that out going forward. Charter will subcontract the engineering and the actual construction. They anticipate budgeting the project and completion for 2017. They talked about upload and download speeds (60/5 or 100/5) and monitoring the network for “contention” which is slowdowns from heavy traffic, but added that would not be an issue in low-density Princeton.
One resident asked about swapping equipment. Besides going to the Charter store on Grafton Street in Worcester, customers can now order a pre-paid shipping box for returns and have new equipment shipped by UPS to the home. They said service calls are addressed usually within 24 hours.
Charter only uses standardized pricing and packaging now; there is no negotiating with customers, as may have been done in the past.
8 PM With no further questions, Charter presentation ended.
A letter of resignation had been submitted by David Cruise on the Advisory Committee. Selectmen voted all in favor to accept the resignation with regrets and have the T.A. post notice for a replacement. They will send David a letter of thanks for his service.
Nina has recommended the law firm of Epstein & August to act as counsel for the cable franchise negotiations. Selectmen voted all in favor to authorize the T.A. to negotiate with the firm and sign a services agreement.
6:45 PM Selectmen voted to adjourn.
Respectfully submitted, Marie Auger, admin. assistant
BOS Referenced Documents: Resignation letter from Cruise; request from Epstein & August
Marie Auger
Administrative Assistant
Planning Department
978-464-2100
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