Faced with a decreasing number of volunteers and less of a need for oversight, the Township Council has voted to create a smaller Cable TV Advisory Committee.
The current body, known as the Cable TV Advisory Board, which currently consists of nine appointed resident members, will be replaced in favor of a committee with more governmental influence to “streamline” the process for handling cable television-related policy decisions.
However, it will still maintain some public input. Instead of the current set up, the council voted unanimously on October 18 to create an advisory committee consisting of the mayor or his designee (a member of the administration), two Township Council members, and two members of the public — one appointed by the mayor, and the other appointed by the council.
Interest on part of the administration and the board members themselves has been on the decline as the issues needing discussion has decreased, and the suggestion over the summer was to “de-emphasize” the board’s role.
Councilman Charles Morgan worked with Steve Goodell, an attorney in Township Attorney Michael Herbert’s firm, to come up with a set of recommendations to the council for changes to the township code dealing with the Cable TV Advisory Board.
According to Goodell, the first area in the township code dealing with the Cable TV Advisory Committee provides for the formation of an advisory group to give advice on public programming and dealing with the cable television franchise agreements.
The second part of the code is the township’s franchise agreement with Comcast, which expires in 2016. Goodell explained how franchise agreements work. The township’s cable television ordinance allows service providers to come into the township and get a franchise, or the right to lay their cables in the public right-of-way — in accordance with state law, which specified that cable companies had to negotiate on a town-by-town basis.
However, a new state law was adopted in 2006, known as the Verizon Bill, which amended the way municipalities do business. The law allowed the cable companies to get their franchise agreements, either by going on a town-by-town basis or going once to the state, where it will receive approval to do business in every town in which it has already laid its equipment, as it did in West Windsor. Now, West Windsor has both Verizon FiOS and Comcast.
Goodell said that the third part of the township code governs the rules about how the station and programming is managed. The township has an agreement with the school board in which the township and school board split programming on the township’s cable channels.
At this point, Goodell said, the question was whether the township wanted to change how the committee is structured and also make some revisions to the ordinance to also make it clearer and more concise.
The draft ordinance is expected to be completed before the council’s meeting on Monday, November 15.
