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by George Wiley
What had been viewed as a potential battle-royale of a public hearing over the City of Redondo Beach's threat to revoke the franchise of Adelphia Cable turned out Tuesday night to be tamer than expected.
After the revocation threat was issued by the city two weeks ago, Adelphia quickly contacted the city and negotiations resumed to cure the dispute between the city and the cable operator.
Rather than revoke Adelphia's franchise, the council voted after lengthy discussion to do nothing and to let negotiations continue into February, when the city council will hold its first monthly meeting. At that time the negotiations will be reviewed, and the matter of franchise revocation will again be taken up.
If there was a theme to Tuesday's hearing, it was to blame the old franchisee, Century Cable, for past ills and to lay the groundwork for a friendly working agreement with the new franchisee, Adelphia Communications, which assumed control of Century last October.
Still, city council members felt that Adelphia had committed fraud by failing to notify the city of the pending closure of its merger with Century as required by law and by finalizing that merger before the city had approved the transfer of the franchise.
Under the city's prior agreement with Century, the city had the right to refusal to accept a new franchise holder.
The city claimed Adelphia fraudulently breached the old franchise agreement with Century by allowing the merger to close in October after giving Redondo written notice that the city had until Nov. 5, 1999 to review and approve the Adelphia franchise.
But when the smoke cleared, both sides agreed to seek higher, friendlier ground, if that ground could be reached.
Asked during the meeting how much the city had expended so far in its study of revoking Adelphia's franchise, city manager Lou Garcia estimated the amount at $60,000.
Wednesday morning, Mayor Greg Hill said he couldn't discuss the specifics of the closed session meeting held after Tuesday's public hearing or the negotiations with Adelphia, but he promised the city would pursue a financial settlement with Adelphia. He said the fact that the council took no action Tuesday should not be interpreted as a sign that the city was knuckling under to the multi-million-dollar corporation.
"We're not rolling over," said Hill. "We wouldn't have held the public hearing if we were rolling over."
Even though Adelphia is a national company with Redondo subscribers as a tiny fraction of its estimated five million customers across the country, Hill noted that Adelphia is still making "a lot of money" out of its RB subscribers.
"This is the one chance the city has to pursue equal or better service," Hill vowed. "Small city or not, Adelphia should be held accountable."
Hill said that while he believed Adelphia had indeed committed fraud in its dealings with Redondo, he was happy that since that time, Adelphia had "admitted they did make a mistake" by not notifying the city that the closure of the merger with Century was about to take place, before the city had approved the transfer of franchise.
Hill said Adelphia did have a "monopoly" as the franchise holder in Redondo, and he suggested that if there had been open competition for the Redondo subscribers "that would have been a whole different story" in how the transfer was handled.
"The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is pretty much a rubber stamp for these cable companies," said Hill. "Adelphia has a monopoly, and they can pretty much dictate what they want."
But Hill said the city would negotiate to recoup its $60,000 in expenses "or at least some portion thereof." Hill noted that he couldn't talk specifics about the dollar amounts being negotiated. He promised, however, that the city would diligently continue holding Adelphia to a higher standard of conducting business. "A principle is involved here," said Hill, "a big corporation commits a violation of the law, and they say 'Oh well.' That doesn't seem to phase them. That's why we were so agitated that they didn't bother to make the phone call to let the city know the merger was going to close."
Redondo, if he has anything to say about it, Hill made clear, was not going to be the mouse that roared.ER
City and Adelphia negotiating to make peace