Should Portland grant a cable franchise agreement to Comcast of Oregon to continue access to the right-of-way and operate a cable system for a period of ten years?

The City of Portland operates a cable franchise with Comcast that allows Comcast to access the right-of-way (ROW) and operate their cable system within the City. The City is a member of Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission (MHCRC), which is the regulatory commission that monitors and enforces cable companies. MHCRC and Commission staff also negotiate and recommend cable franchise agreements to the member jurisdiction for final approval by the governing bodies of each member jurisdiction. (For detailed information on the operating agreements with the MHCRC, see the IGA. MHCRC contracts with the City of Portland (under the IGA) for administrative services, including staff to conduct the operational work on behalf of the Commission. Staff from the BPS Community Technology division provide staff to assist the Commission.The member jurisdictions of the MHCRC have been operating under an expired franchise agreement (FA) with Comcast since 2021. Since 2020, staff have been working with Comcast to negotiate a FA renewal; however, since that time, there has been significant staff turnover that inhibited negotiations and the parties‘ ability to come to final agreement prior to the expiration date.Negotiations between MHCRC staff and Comcast resumed in the summer of 2023 and have been ongoing until this past December. In January of 2025, staff recommended to the MHCRC the adoption of a resolution by the Commission to recommend approval to the member jurisdictions (Res. 25-01), which the Commission passed. Staff are now working with each member jurisdiction to present to their governing bodies the FA with exhibits for approval of the agreement.The process for the negotiations has been for staff to work directly with Comcast to negotiate specific policy and operational items while keeping the Commission briefed. The item of most significance has been the Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) fee that’s paid by Comcast currently at 3% of gross revenues. PEG pays for capital expenses for the infrastructure related to broadcasting the public, education, and government live meetings and recordings onto cable. When staff restarted negotiations in 2023, the PEG percentage offer by Comcast was 1.25%. The agreement that is before Council has a 2.5% PEG amount in the agreement for approval.Given the current climate of cable service in the member jurisdictions and the continued decline of cable subscribership (cable subscribership Multnomah County-wide is now under 88,000, down from 180,000 in 2010), staff did not have sufficient leverage to maintaining the same provisions of the franchise that were passed in 2012. Since 2012, the FCC adopted an order that allowed cable companies to recover marginal costs that they previously could not. The franchise agreement and ordinance before Council are the result of negotiations to leverage the best outcomes possible while abiding by current federal law that govern cable service.The agreement complies with all current federal cable service and franchising agreement law(s) and has been reviewed by the Commission’s outside legal counsel, which specializes in cable franchising and federal cable law. The passage of this ordinance gives Comcast of Oregon a 10-year franchise agreement and the general fund revenue impact is "neutral".

The reviewed sources do not clearly identify every existing policy, service, contract, or obligation that would remain unchanged.

This proposal concerns land use & permitting and requires action through Portland’s public legislative process.

MetroEast and OpenSignal are the two Community Media Centers who the MHCRC and the member jurisdictions work with to broadcast the Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) channels onto the cable system. OpenSignal is the Community Media Center that the City of Portland contracts with to provide PEG services. The MHCRC and Commission Staff have met with the Community Media Centers, MetroEast and OpenSignal multiple times during public meetings and closed-door sessions to update them on specific language changes in the franchise agreement and substantive policy updates. Staff met with the MetroEast and OpenSignal director level leadership for each organization in two extended meetings in July and October of 2024 to discuss the status of the agreement and specific concerns they had about the agreement. From the last October meeting, Staff brought back 11 items to Comcast for re-negotiations and was able to make substantive changes to 9 items which helped address some of the concerns raised by MetroEast and OpenSignal.