If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

Somewhere on a Facebook page I saw a question by someone as to why a borough council member would invite people to call him (Dave Fair, 642-7095) if they had been having trouble with their Zito Media cable service.

The questioner thought that cable service would not be within local government purview, unless, um, the cable fee was being collected along with the fee for garbage or sewer.

I had never thought of that connection, but perhaps it is natural to relate garbage and sewage with some of what is served up via cable—and dish, for that matter. But then, while I am writing this, I am listening to WPSU, and a Pledge Week concert, and they just played “Cara Mia” sung almost as well as Denny Bloss sings it, followed by Roy Orbison with “Pretty Woman” and “Crying.”

But yes, there is a comparable relationship between the borough government and the cable company. Just as the borough contracts with a particular company to pick up our garbage, it also grants a franchise to a cable company to provide cable television signal within the borough.

The nature of the relationship is not identical, of course. The borough has a distinct duty to provide sanitation, and potable (drinkable) water to its population, and garbage removal.

The borough handles the water and sewerage duties through the Borough Authority, which operates the utilities, or at least some financial arrangements.

The borough handles its garbage collection duties by contracting with a company that is in the solid waste business. Some history there.

Back in the day, there was a vastly different arrangement for solid waste. People put garbage out and “Lige” McKervey came along with his wagon or truck and picked it up and hauled it to his farm and fed it to the pigs. I’m not sure he even charged for the service, but I didn’t live in the borough in those days.

Then there was the era when the borough collected garbage and trash and hauled it off to its dump off Birch Run. There a lot of it was burned.

Came the environmental era, when we and our governments at various levels developed concern for the planet, the ecology, diversity of wildlife, and  feared harm to our and future generations’ quality of life if we continued to pollute water, air and soil.

Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and other books, and television documentaries and the news about Love Canal and the nuclear waste at West Valley, N.Y. raised our consciousness.

Government got into the act. The Congress passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and related measures. Burning dumps were outlawed, then sanitary landfills were mandated. It became much more expensive and complicated to get rid of the detritus of life, commerce and industry. Various major clean-ups were ordered at many former industrial sites. Pittsburgh Corning was under the gun to clean up its dump at Birch Run.

In the borough there was a period when garbage was not collected, and it piled up until that problem was worked through. Then there were various collection models, including buy-the-bag and buy-the-sticker. Then came weekly pickup in ordinary bags, in and out of garbage cans. The borough did not want to be in the garbage business, but outsourced the service.

And that is how it is handled today—except that SDS Casella’s contract with the borough calls for it to provide a zero-sort recycling service as well as a garbage collection service.

So the garbage service arrangement is a lot like the cable TV franchise, when you analyze it. The borough does not handle the billing, or collect the money from the consumers. That is done by the contractor. The customers provide the basic equipment or consumables, such as their own garbage cans and bags—but Casella provides the big blue bins and the service.

The garbage contract also entitles Casella to be the only garbage collection company doing business here, last I looked. It doesn’t have such an exclusive deal with Liberty Township, where it is every household for itself, but open dumping is illegal. Casella does have quite a few customers out there, and makes regular runs.

Back when there was a local cable television company, it had a local franchise from the borough. No other cable company was allowed to set or use poles  and provide that service in the borough. When another company bought the local one and added it to its considerable empire, it sought and received a franchise, which has been renewed repeatedly (this last time for 15 years, I think) by that company or another operated by some members of the same family.

Port TV Cable, Adelphia, Zito Media—each has had a franchise, a sort of monopoly granted to the company by the borough and other municipalities where it operates. No longer is that the only way to receive TV signals, of course. One can use satellite dish service, and some do. In some areas outside the borough, it’s the only way to go.

Yet that franchise is valuable indeed. With the exclusive right to provide cable service comes the opportunity to provide digital phone service and high speed internet access. Zito Media bundles those services or various combinations of them.

But the feds place certain responsibilities on providers of communications services. And franchisors require certain standards of performance. The borough is entitled to demand good performance, on behalf of the locals, in return for keeping rival cable companies out.

Turn your Zito Media bill over. See the municipalities on the back? Unfortunately this one is not on there, because Zito Media talked the borough out of providing that information to its Port Allegany customers. It would show where a Zito customer could call to complain about poor service, not so the borough would make the repairs but so it would have an awareness of less than stellar performance by its franchisee.

So that is why one council member offered to accept that input from borough cable TV customers who experience what they feel is unsatisfactory experience with that company that has the exclusive franchise from the borough. Just as they might call the borough office or a council person about unsatisfactory garbage collection.

Peace.