Town of Princeton, Mass. – October 17, 2016 – 6:30 PM
Meeting Minutes – Joint Meeting Princeton BOS and Cable Advisory Committee (CAC)~~
~~~~~~~~6:35 PM ~Meeting opened with Board of Selectmen (BOS) members Stan Moss, Edie Morgan, Jon Fudeman; Town Administrator (T.A.) Nina Nazarian, CAC Members: Ms. Darcy Rowell, Chair, Mr. Paul Caneen, Mr. Phil Gransewicz, Mr. David Union, Mr. R. Lane Ware, Mr. David Hilton, Alternate, and residents in attendance.
CAC Charge and Information
Stan described the details of document transmitted to CAC members on the Charge and Information. Three main points are: 100% availability to all residents, a Fast build and minimal municipal costs. Discussions were carried out on this document. Primary outcome of the CAC is to issue the Issuing Authority Report (IAR) by 12/25/16 to any and all vendors who submit a Cable Franchise Application by 11/3/16 to Nina. Likely vendors are Verizon, Charter Communications and Comcast.
Chairman Moss made a motion to accept the CAC charge. It was unanimously voted to accept the CAC Charge. This document will be posted on the website.
CAC is to do research on other communities in the Commonwealth who have a Cable Franchise. Darcy has contacted the Department of Telecommunication and Cable (DTC), Cable Division, for guidance on IAR’s, contracts, etc.…. CAC is to reach out to abutting towns and other small towns with cable services for guidance and comments. DTC has numerous online documents of current contracts and limited IAR’s. Darcy is getting the DTC to send out the current Sterling Contract with Comcast and current Westminster contract. Greenfield also has a Comcast contract as does Dunstable.
Phil Granscewicz will distribute the Southborough IAR to the CAC and BOS. David Union will reach out to Dunstable for their license franchise, as it is a similar town in size to Princeton and research other community license franchise to begin to develop a Word document containing language for the various sections to review. This will allow the CAC to establish a document of the best language for Princeton and to prioritize recommendations to the BOS.
Stan discussed status of the Make Ready work which should be complete in six (6) months. Stan also discussed news from MBI that on October 4th, the MBI notified towns that the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the MassTech Collaborative Board of Directors had recently approved a revised Last Mile Program Policy, which updated the previous policy that was approved by these same boards in July of 2015. This should allow state construction funds to go to a private company like Comcast.
Three key Town Resources are available to the CAC, special counsel (when approved by Nina), Phil Leamen of Linx, for network design (when approved by Nina) and John Kowaleski, Chair of the PBMLP advisory committee.
CAC to meet weekly at 6:30 pm at the Princeton Center, Darcy to coordinate with Lynne Grettum. New meeting scheduled for 10/26/16.
8:03 PM The CAC meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted , Paul Caneen CAC member
| 
