St. Charles close to long-awaited deal with Comcast

St. Charles officials are on the verge of signing the city's first new Comcast franchise agreement in seven years.

Since 2001, the city has been operating under an expired contract renewed every six or 12 months, while negotiations with the cable provider were delayed by changing legislation and local telecommunications issues.

Mayor Don DeWitte said he expects the long-awaited agreement to be finalized by the city council Monday. It is nearly identical to the old one, he said.

"It's anti-climatic, given that the final form of the agreement keeps us at status quo," DeWitte said.

The only new addition to the five-year agreement, which includes an optional five-year extension, is a clause requiring the city to notify Comcast of potential competition, such as AT&T, which has approached officials about bringing its video television, telephone and Internet package to St. Charles.

"The big benefit for our residents will be that it now allows for the introduction of free-market competition in the video industry," DeWitte said. "I believe anytime competition is introduced into a market, it's beneficial."

As with the former contract, the new one requires Comcast to provide basic cable and free installation at local schools and a public access channel. The company would continue to pay the city a 5 percent franchise fee on its annual gross revenues, which amounts to about $375,000 a year, officials said. The deal also allows for a 35-cent customer fee that the city could charge on a monthly basis for one year to fund capital projects.

Approval of a new contract was delayed partly because of talks several years ago about a regional broadband network that could have changed the market's local landscape but never came to be and because of pending changes to telecommunications legislation, which wrapped up in the last year, said City Administrator Brian Townsend.

"The customers and residents of St. Charles have not been impacted because a long-term agreement wasn't in place," he said. "But it's good to have this resolved."