City considers suit against Charter

A dispute between the city of Denton and Charter Communications over how to interpret federal franchise fee law may wind up in court.

The City Council on Tuesday voted to allow city attorneys to start litigation against Charter, which holds a franchise agreement with the city and runs a public access channel and studio. But city officials later said they were still negotiating with the cable company and no lawsuit was imminent.

Kevin Allen, Charter’s director of government relations, said he was “taken aback” by the city’s action because talks were under way to resolve the dispute.

“I really felt that with our agreement to not take any action to impact the studio or the PEG [public, educational and government] channels, that the city would not take any action, particularly public action, such as they did,” Allen said.

Allen said he still hoped to avoid a lawsuit.

The dispute revolves around the interpretation of the federal Cable Act. The law allows cities to charge cable companies a franchise fee of up to 5 percent of gross revenue in exchange for the use of public rights of way.

Denton officials believe the law allows them to charge the 5 percent fee and still require Charter to incur the costs of running the public access channel (Channel 25) and studio, city spokesman John Cabrales said.

Charter officials disagree, saying operational expenses should be counted toward the 5 percent cap.

Growth buffers county budget

Residents unlikely to see increase in tax rates as officials tally new needs

Thanks to growth, Denton County officials say, next year’s budget should be able to pay for a 4 percent raise for county workers, add 35 more employees to the payroll, and fund a substantial increase in road and bridge repairs without raising taxes.

County budget employees presented a recommended $181.2 million budget to the county commissioners Tuesday afternoon.

Commissioners would have to adopt a tax rate of $0.23490 per $100 valuation in order to fund next year’s budget, which is slightly lower than this year’s rate of $0.23589 per $100. That means county taxes for a $200,000 property would decrease about $2, from $471.78 to $469.80.

Even though recent economic troubles have made it difficult for other governmental entities to collect delinquent taxes, tax collection in Denton County has kept pace this year, County Tax Assessor-Collector Steve Mossman said Monday in an interview.

County Auditor James Wells told the commissioners Tuesday that they could expect comparable collections next year — which have been 98.8 percent of taxes owed three of the last four years.

“The outside economic conditions don’t seem to affect our collections,” Wells said.

Budget Director Donna Stewart told the commissioners that more than half the additional $10.4 million in revenue expected next year would come from new properties and higher valuations of current properties.

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