KANE — Kane Borough Council discussed the cable television franchise fee during the panel’s meeting on Wednesday.

During last month’s council meeting, a resident raised a question about the franchise fee they noticed on their Comcast bill. At that time, council president Gary Schul agreed to follow-up on the resident’s inquiry and provided a breakdown of the information he had received.

Schul discussed the topic with Cheryl McCabe, regional manager of government and regulatory affairs for Comcast.

“The contract we have with Comcast was done in 2013 for ten years and it included a franchise fee of five percent,” said Schul. “This franchise fee was created by an ordinance created back in 2008. This franchise fee varies.”

Schul illustrated this variance using his own Comcast bills that showed a dollar difference over the past three months.

“I asked Cheryl about this and she said this is varied because of the home shopping networks.  The better sales they have from the area, the more money they put back to Comcast for this area,” said Schul.

Councilman Tom Kase sought clarification, asking, “does that mean the more shopping on that channel, they pay back some of that revenue so that the franchise fee that residents are charged is less?” Schul responded, “that’s the way I understand it, yeah.”

Councilman Dave Walker then asked, “the franchise fee, doesn’t that come back to Kane?”

Schul said, “the last payment we had was October-December that was $13,410. Last year, Comcast paid us $39,000 plus dollars which is part of our contract with the franchise fees.”

“This is all built into the budget,” Schul added.

Public comment was made stating that the franchise fee was seen as an additional tax and unfair and some members of council agreed with that sentiment, which sparked more discussion on the contract language.

“This contract with Comcast is non-exclusive,” stated Schul.

Schul then said DirectTV and Dish Network were other options available before being partially interrupted by a local resident, who stated there was only one cable provider and there really didn’t appear to be a choice in that respect.

This sparked additional discussion among council members concerning everything from infrastructure investment made by Comcast, potential or actual resource utilization by Comcast and even right-of-way usages.

After several minutes of discussion, Councilman Denny Drost questioned borough solicitor Tony Alfieri. “What is the four or five dollar fee we’re talking about here?”

“What it is, is that we have an ordinance that establishes a franchise fee and then we entered into a contract with Comcast and we retain that contract which provides which of their services we get the franchise fee on,” replied Alfieri.

“The essence of it is we get five percent of whatever those specific services are that they paid on and that’s built into the budget,” said Alfieri, before going on to state within regards to the 2023 contract review, iIf council at that point wanted to change the ordinance to eliminate the franchise fee, you’re going to have to raise taxes roughly half a million to make up the lost revenue.”

Council concluded the discussion asking Alfieri to review the contract further to ensure the understanding was clear and correct.

Moving on to correspondence, Kase communicated the upcoming Kane Area Redevelopment Enterprise community clean-up event, K.A.R.E for Kane, is scheduled for May 12. This will be the seventh similar event and council wanted to move to get additional volunteers and project ideas scoped out for it.  

Councilwoman Melanie Clabaugh later added that 400 to 450 people could be expected at this year’s event.

Under staff reports, Borough Manager Don Payne provided an update on February’s recycling drive, saying the event drew in 73 people and more than 11,000 pounds of material. After the meeting, Payne explained that a de-manufacturing service out of Butler collected the items and would take them back to their facility to dismantle and recycle the waste components. The borough is currently planning another drive on Oct. 28.

The remainder of the meeting was business as usual with some committee report discussions and the proposed adoption of a social media policy under new business. During the last council meeting, Clabaugh asked for interest in adopting this policy along with establishing a social media account for the borough to use in communicating events and other information. The council was charged with reviewing an example policy provided by Payne.

The next council meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. April 12.