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FiberNet Advisory Board Minutes 04-12-2011MINUTES FIBERNET MONTICELLO ADVISORY BOARD MEETING Tuesday, April 12, 2011— 6 p.m. FiberNet Customer Service Office Present: Clint Herbst, Glen Posusta, Jon Morphew, Wayne Mayer, Dennis Sullivan, Jeff O'Neill, Jerry Olson (HBC) Absent: None Guests: Michele Hertwig, Alyssa Weldon, Bryan Rabe, Matt Henning, Brandon Smith, Brett Demarais 1. Call to Order Clint Herbst called the meeting to order at 6 p.m. 2. Additions to Agenda • Fiber Locating procedures (Wayne Mayer) — under #4 • Business wiring (Jerry Olson) 3. Consideration of Approval of Meeting Minutes — March 15, 2011 JON MORPHEW MOVED TO ACCEPT THE MINUTES FROM THE MARCH 15, 2011 MEETING. DENNIS SULLIVAN SECONDED THE MOTION. MOTION CARRIED 4-0. (GLEN POSUSTA ABSTAINED FROM VOTING.) 4. Operations/Financing Report — General Manager • Financial report — HBC has been working on a business financial report and are getting closer to a report for the Advisory Board; waiting to get March numbers from the City and HBC to blend into a financial statement. First draft of the Balance Sheet is looking promising. Collection of past due accounts — Started out with over $55,000 past due; took out accounts that had issues to resolve. Sent out over 132 accounts with about $47,000 past due. Results: accounts disconnected were 27; the balance of the 132 accounts have been remedied. Those that will not be collected at this time total around $14,000. Clint Herbst asked what the responses were from customers when they were contacted. Jerry Olson reported that FiberNet did everything possible to try to keep customers and make valid adjustments. The have a collections agreement now with Bullseye Properties, with them keeping 30% of what gets recovered from accounts turned over to collections (after disconnection). Clint Herbst asked what the plan is for turning accounts over to collections. Jerry noted that would be done when accounts are over 60 days past due. FNM will look into providing customers with a collections policy at the time they are signed up. This may help defer some of the collections cost. 11 FiberNet Advisory Board Minutes — April 12, 2011 Glen Posusta asked about setting delinquent customers on automatic debit for credit cards. Jerry noted that is a possibility but it would only be as good as their credit card. Dennis Sullivan questioned the process of charging for pay per view. Right now customers are allowed to charge them on their bill. Jerry said that currently the system does not allow them to restrict to credit card only, but they could do other type of restrictions. • Installation goals and objectives — Jerry handed out a list of services installed for December 2010 through March 2011. Average Revenue Generating Unit has been decreasing slightly which is of some concern. Wayne Mayer asked about porting of numbers and costs charged to FNM. He also verified that ported numbers stay with FNM. Dennis Sullivan commented on promos that Dish TV used to include with monthly bills and wondered if those could be used by FNM. Jerry said they are limited by what the content providers give to them. • Marketing report — Michele Hertwig noted that she is currently working on the website update and the new website should be ready by the end of April. Michele explained some of the changes including newly formatted tabs, common links at the bottom of the page, scrolling information. Michele is looking at making the site more user-friendly and understandable. Michele explained that they are finishing up a new marketing plan. A full page ad will go into the Chamber Directory. An article is going into the City newsletter due to go out in May. The billboard ad is ready to go: "Let us hook you up." The next steps will be to expand on this theme in other marketing efforts. Looking at putting something into the Promo Pak which goes to all households with 55362 zip code. Idea is to convey a consistent and constant message to the community about FiberNet. Glen Posusta suggested that information and image about FiberNet be put into community center. Clint Herbst recommended focusing on linking local community to FiberNet such as when the football game was televised. Jerry Olson explained that the Marketing Plan puts together a plan for the year laying out all the marketing campaigns, projected costs, marketing targets and more. Jon Morphew asked about possibility of doing a survey or research on why people are not signing up with FiberNet and try to develop a process for contacting those that are on other contracts to get them to sign up with FNM. a) Input from installers on marketing — Bryan Rabe talked about how to market to people who are under contract with other providers. One idea would be: customer pays the penalty for ending the contract and FNM gives free services to move customer to our services. We would not really be out the money as we wouldn't have those customers otherwise. Bryan recommended targeting groups of customers in these 21 FiberNet Advisory Board Minutes — April 12, 2011 circumstances. Jon Morphew suggested that we start targeting customers that already have boxes on their homes and/or drops. Jerry summarized the various marketing tactics that have been used and emphasized that it is important to continue to provide a consistent message. Alyssa is handling a lot of marketing in the office and Brett is focusing on marketing to businesses. With Michele's assistance, this is a collaborative effort to get the word out and attract more customers. JON MORPHEW MOVED TO AUTHORIZE STAFF TO PUT AN INCENTIVE PLAN INTO PLACE TO SOLICIT CUSTOMERS ON OTHER PLANS WITH A CAP OF $300 (WITH TRIPLE PLAY SERVICE). GLEN POSUSTA SECONDED THE MOTION. MOTION CARRIED 5-0. • Staffing alignment/work plan — Installs have been a little slow so some of the seasonal contractors have been laid off for now. Once the marketing picks up, they anticipate the work to increase. Matt Henning pointed out that the only area that has not been constructed is Kjellberg's Park. There was some discussion on the potential for wireless to serve that area. • Training_plan — Jerry explained that Matt and Thaddaeus attended a week long course on HPBX Troubleshooting and Provisioning, which is related to hosted services on the MetaSwitch system. They found that they will need to work with other vendors to help install the hosted services in business locations. • Fiber Locating Procedure — Generally one tech is sent out to do locates, which was usually done by Dan Stelton. Wayne Mayer commented that he had noticed recently that there were 2 techs together with one holding the flags. Staff thought that might be related to locating affiliated with the 7th Street streetlights; one of the persons was probably a seasonal employee helping out with locates. Wayne Mayer will discuss with Jerry offline. 5. Governance Ordinance • Recommend Council approval of current rate structure - JON MORPHEW MOVED TO APPROVE THE PRICING STRUCTURE FOR RATES FOR FIBERNET SERVICES AS PRESENTED. DENNIS SULLIVAN SECONDED THE MOTION. MOTION CARRIED 5-0. Jerry noted that at some point the Advisory Board will need to review rates and make some adjustments with rates for some of the video services. • Establish bylaws for AdvisoKy Board — City staff will prepare a draft and have the City Attorney review prior to bringing it to the Advisory Board. FiberNet Advisory Board Minutes —April 12, 2011 6. Consideration of Approval of Universal Service Two Year Plan (See attachment) Jeff explained that the City and FiberNet are working on getting approval for ETC funding status which would allow utilizing funds that can be used for underprivileged and similar uses. The Advisory Board was provided a draft for a 2 -year plan to review. Jeff explained that the plan involves bringing services to residents in mobile home parks and apartment buildings. JON MORPHEW MOVED TO APPROVE THE DRAFT CONCEPT PLAN FOR ETC APPLICATION FOR FUNDING STATUS. GLEN POSUSTA SECONDED THE MOTION. MOTION CARRIED 5-0. 7. Lawsuit Settlement Jeff reported that a settlement was reached with TDS at $1.5 million and money has been wired to City. City is currently working with figuring out attorney fees and settling with LMCIT. It was suggested that the City put together a press release to let the public know about the settlement. Jeff will work on this with Jon Morphew. 8. Outreach • Municipal User Group Meeting - Jeff O'Neill noted that they are still working on forming user group; should have more information at next meeting. • TISP presentation on May 4, 2011 — will include City of Monticello and several other public entities that will talk about partnerships in broadband network development. • MPR (see website for Minnesota Public Radio) — Advisory Group was provided a copy of the article. 9. Discuss Process for Filling General Manger Position Jerry explained that Jeff, Tracy (HR Director), and Jerry have been working on a job description for the General Manager position and an advertisement for the position has been released. Jerry is proposing that a small group made up of HBC administration and city staff would review applications and participate in interviews. Wayne Mayer suggested that they look for applicants that have experience with telecommunications management and development and not just administrative background. Glen Posusta agreed that it is important to hire a person that has considerable experience in telecommunications. Jerry commented on the job description which requires a significant amount of knowledge in telecommunications. Wayne Mayer also recommended they make inquiries into what kind of field knowledge that applicants would bring to the position. 10. Community Based Programming Update 41 FiberNet Advisory Board Minutes —April 12, 2011 PEG & Franchise fees — payments to Sherburne Wright Cable Commission — Jeff O'Neill and Cathy Shuman reported on the status of bringing the fee payments due to the Cable Commission up to date. These are required as part of our video franchise agreement with SWCC. The PEG fees have been paid to date and city staff is still working with HBC to work out the formulas for the franchise fees. 11. Future Items • Update of FNM website (see marketing report) Added Items: • Phone Outage: Thurs, April 7 - caused by a problem with the profile in Calix equipment. Longest that a customer was out of service was 12 hours. Outage started about midnight and found out about it at 1 a.m.; took until about Sam to figure out the problem. About 5 minutes was required to correct the profile for each customer. It was noted that Matt Henning and Thaddaeus Rousu researched and corrected the problem from Des Moines, where they were attending training. • Business Wiring — Bryan Rabe reported that it may be possible that Charter is using wiring that has been installed by FiberNet inside businesses. Wayne Mayer suggested that be reported to Charter to let them know what is going on. Bryan suggested that there may be some contract issues here. It is felt that the City should seek a legal opinion on this to protect our investment in businesses. 12. Adjourn WAYNE MAYER MOVED TO ADJOURN AT 8:27 P.M. GLEN POSUSTA SECONDED THE MOTION. MOTION CARRIED 5-0. Recorder: Catherine M. Shuman Approved: May 10, 2011 Attest: 6- /6 1 'Ll CitY,7A#nistrator FiberNet Advisory Board Minutes —April 12, 2011