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Minutes - San Leandro City Council Meeting - August 19, 1991 Page - 16 - PUBLIC HEARINGS (continued) Council Member Polvorosa referred to the prior question of service to commercial establishments, and stated that he knew of requests for cable service from businesses in the Pelton Center area who were told that the access would be too costly, even though access was available from a pole for residential service immediately adjacent to these businesses. Mr. Lacey said he did not recall these requests. In response to questions regarding busy signals on telephone calls to United Artists, Michelle Pestana, Customer Service Representative for United Artists, said staff is maintained at an appropriate level for normal everyday situations. She said an outage is an unusual situation and staff is deluged with calls when this occurs, and calls have to be put on hold until staff is available. She said the company normally doesn't to put a recorded message of the outage on the telephone lines, since they prefer to receive the calls to determine the extent of the outage. Mr. Lacey invited the Council for a tour and inspection of their services. Mayor Karp discussed a letter from United Artists regarding a study on cable rates. He commented on the Burns Bill , S. B. 12, and the Gore/Burns Bill , S. B. 1200, related to telephone companies entering the cable broadcasting market. Mayor Karp also commented on complaints from customers regarding a threat to disconnect if payment is more than 5 days late. Mr. Lacey addressed this, describing their process of notifying subscribers with a lengthy advanced notice before disconnecting. Council Member Corbett commented regarding a letter of complaint received with regard to receiving the system's programing scheduling guide. The letter also complains that U.A. does not respond to correspondence from customers. She asked Mr. Lacey to describe his policy regarding responding to correspondence. Mr. Lacey hadn't reviewed the letter to the Council , but stated that his policy is to respond to correspondence immediately. Council Member Santos recalled United Cable's original promise of 60 channels, mostly premium channels, and unlimited sports programming, and said he is disturbed to see that the future of sports programming is evolving into pay-per-view. He said this practice doesn't serve the public well , particularly the limited income and disabled community. Mr. Lacey said United Artists is only a vehicle for broadcasting these events. He said the industry is not able to control the future outlook of sporting event broadcasting due to the financial climate of the sports industry.