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Board Negotiates New Cable Contract Surprising Kings Point Residents

by Guest Contributer October 14, 2016

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Kings Point residents meet – mostly to protest switching from their current cable company. Photo by Joe Morguess.

By: Joe Morguess

With little advanced notice, Kings Point residents discovered that their longtime cable company would soon be switched.

On October 6, over 300 residents attended the Kings Point in Tamarac monthly board meeting, only informed of that agenda item just recently via a leak, and subsequent emails between residents, and the grapevine.

Unbeknownst to the residents, the executive committee which consists of three or four of the 13 people on the board had been negotiating over the past eight months with approximately seven different cable companies to obtain the best deal and service for over 8,500 residents in the community.

Details of new programming, features and terms of the contract – or even the fact that they were not renewing with Comcast were never communicated with the community through their Kings Point Life Newspaper, website or anywhere else.

Also, the board presidents from the 13 communities never informed their individual building board members nor held informational meetings at the local level.

The board had apparently preplanned to vote “yes” on a motion to sign a contract with Advanced Cable starting in 2017, and did so on Oct 6 over the objections of the previously uninformed residents at the meeting.

Approximately 50 residents were permitted to speak and most objected vehemently to the Board’s apparent acting in secret with no information given out in advance that Comcast would no longer be their provider of cable TV or internet service. Many were upset that the Board presumed to know what programming suited them, while others pleaded that the motion be tabled for a future meeting. Others objected that they would lose their Comcast email address, interfering with their digital communications with family and friends.

Still, the Board voted “unanimously” on Oct 6, to replace Comcast Cable with Advanced Cable in 2017. Programming information, channels, and details of the contract have not been distributed in writing as of mid-October.