City Council Minutes 1984 01 17 - Laserfiche WebLink

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1/1'1/84 Page -15- Documentation to Justify Councilman Cussen responded by stating he Rate Increase fell: that the residents of the City are loo}sing to councilmembers as City officials who negotiated years ago with Storer and mosi'~ recently with Scripps/Howard, an agree- meni~ that does effect them.. He felt that if councilmembers just let this go by who's going to look after the public interests. Jusit because they responded to us in writing and don't feel that they have any additional obligation or an obligation to lower those ratf~s, he was not willing to accept it on face value at this time. Still felt the documentation was needed. Councilman Luce commented that he agreed with Councilman Cussen that it is Council's proper responsibility to look out for the pub:Lic's interest in terms of regulating whatt in effect is a utility. The Supreme Court in the case of TCI versus the City of Bou:Lder found against municipal regulation and he feared that we were getting into an are<~ that in a litigation sense is a blind allE.y or dead end. Unfortunately the Court tools away most of the perrogative of munici- pality to do much in terms of regulation. Wou:Ld hate to see the City with limited finan- cia:L resources pursue an area that he felt had been fairly well established. Although he :ahared Councilman Cussen's concerns, he dif:Eered on what we may be able to do on that. Councilwoman Morris felt that there were some areas that council could pursue. Agreed with Councilman Luce that we need not get into battles that will serve none of us any pur- pose; but it appeared to her that there were some areas that could be purused. The basic one was whether or not they are providing the same service that we were getting initially in addition to all the extras that they told us ewe are getting. As for the packages, she was not certain that we would get anywhere price-wise - didn't feel this would happen. The other areas such as the packaging, the remote controls, felt we could get somewhere on these type issues and should pursue them. She also stated that the Supreme Court ruled today that it is o.k. to video tape for home use and while that seemed to be a real basis for Mr. Lyone not wanting to comment regarding the capabilities of our VCR's - now she felt he would have to address that.