The City of Warren is holding a public hearing on Monday to review the “past performance” of Breezeline as well as “identify the future cable-related community needs of the city.”

The hearing, which will be held at 7 p.m at the outset of Warren City Council’s Monday meeting, is part of the cable franchising process.

“We encourage any residents of the city to come and express their concerns,” City Manager Mike Holtz said.

The city hired outside legal counsel – the Cohen Law Group – to facilitate negotiation of the next agreement with Breezeline.

“Franchise renewal is the best opportunity for municipalities to assert their rights with respect to their cable operator,” the firm said in a statement, “and to obtain important benefits in return for granting the cable operator the right to use its public right of way.”

What kind of benefits might that include?

A piece of the benefit is financial. Holtz said that the city typically receives about $80,000 from the cable company from a wide variety of actions and fees. That money rolls into the city’s general fund.

According to Cohen, benefits that can be negotiated include customer service standards, protections of the right-of-way, legal protections and ensuring a “state-of-the-art cable system.”

“The flavor of these agreements was to make sure the cable companies are providing the services, to provide decent TV and cable services, and to make sure the services were up to snuff,” Holtz said.

The franchise agreement is “the vehicle that allows municipalities to enter these agreements (and) provides municipalities with a laundry list of items that they can collect payment from,” he added.

While the city has had such an agreement with Breezeline and its prior iteration, Atlantic Broadband, for decades, such agreements are non-exclusive.

“If another cable company would want to come in, this does not give them exclusive rights,” Holtz said. “If some other cable company wanted to come in, (they are) more than welcome to do this.”

Holtz said that the number of complaints received by the city regarding Breezeline is now “much less than it was in years past.”

The agreement, he added, “truly exists to make sure cable companies are providing good customer service and have end users in priority.”