TITLE
Recommendation to authorize City Manager to allocate Public, Education and Government (PEG) fee revenue equally among the three categories of cable access providers, each receiving one-third of the total available. (Citywide)
DISCUSSION
On December 16, 2008, the City Council directed City staff to conduct community outreach to obtain input and develop recommendations on the future use of Public, Education, and Government (PEG) fee revenues. In March 2009, City staff completed the outreach with community stakeholders and has developed a recommendation to equally disburse the funds collected by the City among the three PEG access categories.
Background
The enactment of the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006 (DIVCA) marked a major change in the regulation of video service providers in California. Essentially, DIVCA replaced the local franchising process with a State process under the authority of the California Public Utilities Commission. The legislation allowed incumbent cable operators, such as Charter Communications (Charter), to vacate their local cable franchises and begin operating under a State-issued franchise on January 2, 2008. Currently, the City of Long Beach is served by two State franchise holders:
Charter and Verizon.
Under DIVCA, Long Beach retained its five percent franchise revenues and traditional control over the time, place, and manner in which public-rights-of-way are used in these matters. The legislation, however, brought significant changes. For example, it enabled the City to establish a fee levied on State franchise holders to support PEG channel facilities. In September 2007, the City Council adopted an ordinance that set the City's fee at 1.04 percent of the cable providers' locally generated gross revenues. The funds are restricted to capital uses and cannot be used for operational expenses such as staffing and rent. If the funds are used for any activity other than capital, the local cable/video prov...
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