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e III. TCI CABLE FRANCHISE RENEWAL A. Ordinance Reading An Ordinance granting TCI Cablevision of Oregon, Inc., a re- newal of its non-exclusive franchise for the operation of a cable communication system; and repealing ordinance Nos. 5020 and 5303. Springfield City Recorder Eileen Stein gave the first reading of the ordi- nance before the Springfield City Council. Commissioner Roberts conducted a second reading of the ordinance before the Lane County Commission. Mayor Miller indicated that Eugene City Council could not take action on this item because the meeting was not within the Eugene city limits and said that Eugene would be taking action on this item at a later date. e B. Staff Report Bob Swank, Lane Council of Governments (L-COG), provided a brief overview of the issue. He explained that each jurisdiction is required to adopt the franchise agreement separately. The purpose of this meeting is to conduct a joint public hearing on this issue, as recommended by the Metropolitan Policy Committee (MPC). Mr. Rust requested clarification of Section 5.2 of the ordinance regarding encoding of the access channels. Keith Martin, Eugene City Attorney's Of- fice, clarified that the object of this language was to keep basic cable service from being encoded. However, if technology requires that signals be encoded in the future, TCI will need to seek approval from the agencies; the agencies should not withhold approval unreasonably. Mr. Rust indicated that all public education and governmental access channel should be made fully available to the public in the future. Ms. Ehrman asked if the recent programming changes made by TCI were discussed during the agreement negotiation. In response, Mr. Swank noted that program- ming changes are occurring in the cable industry throughout the country. As a result of deregulation, there has been a loss of local control of program- ming. Noting that she would be interested in adding the World Monitor Channel to the local cable system, Ms. Bascom asked to what extent the public can influ- ence local programming. Mr. Swank responded that Federal law prohibits the negotiation of specific programming requirements into the franchise agree- ment. Citizens with specific programming interests are encouraged to bring these interests to TCI. He said that in the past, TCI has been very respon- sive to suggested programming changes. e MINUTES--Eugene City Council April 29, 1991 Springfield City Council Lane County Board of Commissioners Page 2