PORT HUENEME : City Extends Jones Intercable Contract

The Port Hueneme City Council has granted Jones Intercable Inc. a 15-year franchise agreement worth more than $2 million a year.

The city, in extending Jones’ 20-year contract, will continue to receive 5% of the gross revenues from Port Hueneme customers, which amounted to $107,000 in 1991, Finance Director Jim Hanks said.

As part of the contract, the Denver-based company agreed to give $25,000 to the Hueneme School District to set up a television studio, and pay $8,000 a year in estimated engineering and maintenance costs.

Jones provides cable service to about 7,000 customers in Port Hueneme, or 70% of all households, said John W. Hutton, general manager of the company’s Oxnard office. Its basic cable service, which costs $17.50 per month, will be expanded from 31 to 34 channels next month, he said.

The council unanimously approved the contract in an urgency ordinance Wednesday. Jones’ previous contract expired in January, 1991, and was extended until Jan. 20 while city officials waited to see whether the federal government would let local governments regulate cable company rates, which it did not.

The new contract leaves the door open for that possibility, Hanks said. “There is a clause that, should the federal government change the laws to allow local regulation, this would be reopened and we could institute whatever powers we’re granted.”

In negotiating the new franchise agreement, the city did not contact any other cable firms about providing service to Port Hueneme, Hanks said. But Jones’ contract is non-exclusive, meaning that it would allow competitors to come in at any time.

“If another cable TV company wanted to come in, they could,” Hanks said. “It would be very expensive for them, but they could do it.”