10-Year Comcast Contract Vote Looms Monday

Photos by Evan Brandt

Comcast representative Brian Jeter talks to borough council about how awesome his company is.

If you have something to say about your cable service with Comcast, you had better clear your schedule for Monday night.

That's when a public hearing will be held and it will be your last chance to have your say before council votes on a proposed 10-year-contract with the cable giant.

Before council to smooth things over Monday night was company man Brian Jeter, who talked about

how Comcast is, mentioning the new Xfinity store the company opened in the Upland Square Shopping Center and noting that upgrades are on tap for the building on Shoemaker Road, that houses 80 to 100 employees.

Borough Manager Justin Keller said he is frequently asked why other service providers are not in the borough and he said the contract under consideration does not prevent that. He said other providers like FiOS "aren't interested in coming here."

Keller said the deal with provide a 5 percent franchise fee to the borough, which works out to about $350,000 to $400,000 a year over the term of the contract.

Councilwoman Lisa Vanni provided the only pointed questioning of Jeter, which he deftly demurred.

She complained there are not a lot of options for picking channels or different levels of pricing, but Jeter said there are more options available than there were just one year ago.

Here is video of a relatively brief borough manager's report:



Council also heard from Tricia Reedy Jones, who was in town to talk about the importance of participating in the Census, which will begin arriving in mailboxes starting March 12.

She said Pottstown was totally lame 10 years ago and had two Census tracts that were undercounted by more than 25 percent.

What makes that even more lame is that in both of those Census tracts, children living in poverty surpasses 45 percent, meaning the children most likely to benefit from federal anti-poverty programs were undercounted, thus ensuring those programs are underfunded.

Reedy Jones said there are only nine questions on the Census and it only takes 10 minutes to fill out. Is it really too much to ask people? Come on, get in the game.

And with that, click here to see the Tweets from the meeting.