Town gets what it wants: Cablevision agrees to five-year deal
It took eight months but Shelter Island finally hammered out a deal with Cablevision for cable TV service to the Island.
The negotiating team of Town Attorney Laury Dowd and Councilmen Ed Brown and Peter Reich came away from the table last week across from the Bethpage-based communications behemoth with everything they’d fought for. The number one priority of the team was to get a shorter life-of-contract than the former deal that ran for 10 years and expired last August. The new contract is for five years, shorter than almost all other Long Island municiplities, according to the negotiating team.
Getting a five-year agreement rather than a contract lasting a decade was a victory, the team agreed, since with new communication technologies appearing at head-spinning speed, locking the town into another decade-long agreement could leave the Island with an antiquated and costly TV delivery system.
As Mr. Reich said, “The way technology is changing we didn’t want to get married into a long term deal.”
Cablevision’s chief negotiator, Joan Gilroy, director of government affairs, didn’t return phone calls for comment before press time.
The new contract calls for 3 percent of every resident’s cable TV bill to go to town coffers as a franchise fee. (The contract is only about TV and not phone or Internet services.) The town received $61,735 for 2011, but 2012’s fees were not immediately available.
Ms. Dowd said the town will also receive a $17,500 grant from Cablevision, plus an annual payment of $2,800 for tree trimming services gleaned from DVR fees to keep branches off lines. This was important, she noted, because it’s not just TV lines, but phone and internet lines for many subscribers could also lose power in storms with branches downing lines. Two WiFi hotspots were included in the deal for Town Hall and Justice Hall.
Some items were out of the hands of the negotiators, such as specific programming and rates, which are set by the Federal Communications Commission.
Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Reich said the negotiations were heated at times but remained cordial.
The contract will be put on the town’s website and Supervisor Jim Dougherty said there would be a public hearing April 26 where the public was invited to discuss the new contract.
