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Regular City Council Meeting Monday,June 16,2014 Page 26 At the request of Councilmember McGehee, Mr. Coleman addressed the current PEG fee and proposed above and beyond the 5% franchise fee to address capital and operating costs of Comcast, which was addressed in Comcast's response to the Request for Proposals (RFP) and its codicil; averaging rates across the cus- tomer base for government access based on demand; and potential areas for litiga- tion. Coralie Wilson,NSCC Executive Director In addition to the summary provided by Mayor Roe, Ms. Wilson stressed the rea- son NSCC recommended denial of the Comcast franchise proposal, based on ca- ble company use of public rights-of-way through franchise fees and media sup- port for public educational and government channels, providing value to their network for I-Net. Ms. Wilson agreed, as noted by Mr. Coleman, that the franchise renewal process was set by federal law, and allowed for both informal and formal negotiations, advising that those informal negotiations continued, and had become especially intense over the last few weeks with some progress being made toward resolution of the top three issues: financial support for public education and government ac- cess channels and community media, the number of public education and gov- ernment access channels, and institutional networks and their transition. With all other verbiage aside, Ms. Wilson advised that the formal proposal sub- mitted by Comcast on December 20, 2013, in response to the NSCC's formal RFP sent out in July and allowing Comcast five months to prepare their response, pro- vided time for Comcast to clarify any issues they had, but no requests from them had been received. Ms. Wilson advised that extensive staff and consultant review had been done of proposals, followed by the Comcast public hearing and exten- sive public comment on that proposal, with the final analysis removing operating funds from the table. As stated by Mr. Coleman, Ms. Wilson confirmed that Comcast could not be required to pay it, but it was hoped that they would volun- tarily be willing to do so, even though it was not included in their formal pro- posal. Ms. Wilson reviewed the remaining issues, specific to equipment needs for NSCC and member cities, clarified that there was no reserve fund as alleged, but money came from city funding grants and a letter of credit required to hold during the franchise renewal. Ms. Wilson reviewed NSCC's and C-TV's operations, equip- ment, and access channels currently provided. Ms. Wilson referenced the Executive Summary, noting that if the City Council accepted the Comcast proposal as written, it was final and they would not get the benefit of any informal negotiations. If the City Council didn't vote, Ms. Wilson informed them that they would in effect be accepting the proposal. Ms. Wilson