August 26, 2025
The Paducah City Commission met on August 26, 2025, at 5:30 p.m. (as indicated by the meeting start) in regular session. The meeting included a public hearing on a proposed cable franchise with Ritter Communications, presentations from the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Human Rights Commission, a municipal order for Riverport funding, adoption of several ordinances, and a discussion on alcohol sales hours and juvenile curfew. The meeting concluded with an executive session (no action taken).
Good evening, everyone, and welcome. Uh, it's always great to see uh kind of a crowded audience out there. We welcome people to come. I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order on August 26, 2025, and ask the city clerk to please call roll. Commissioner Henderson, please. Commissioner Smith. Here. Commissioner Thomas. Present. Commissioner Wilson, present. Mayor Bray. Present. I will ask uh Commissioner Wilson, please, to do the invocation tonight. We'll remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you on behalf of all of us who are gathered here for the many blessings that we have. Please be with the family of Steve De Little, who we've lost this week, who is a beloved employee of the city and the county, and who will be missed. And please continue to be with the family of uh Sergeant Ryan Hudson, who we lost with our Paducah Police Department and with our members of our police department, and look over for the same safety of all of those who uh lives are put in danger every day. We ask for your guidance as we make decisions on behalf of the city tonight. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the divide of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under Godisable with liberty and justice for all. Ritter's proposal included a detailed plan for service delivery, including channel lineups, technical specifications, and financial capability. A map of the proposed service area included in their applications shows that Ritter intends to provide cable service across a broad footprint of the city covering neighborhoods set on the south side, midtown, west end, and downtown Paducah. This broad service area demonstrates Ritter's commitment to serving a wide cross section of our residents and businesses. The channel lineup Ritter has proposed includes a full range of broadcast sports, educational, family, and entertainment channels, along with public educational and government access channels that are required under city code. Ritter is also demonstrated through audited consolidated financials that it has the financial resources to construct, operate, and maintain a cable system in Paducah. Tonight's public hearing is part of the required process under Chapter 22. City code requires that a hearing notice be noticed at least 20 days in advance, which has been done. This purpose of this hearing is to allow members of the public and city commission to ask questions and provide input on the potential cable franchise with Ritter. The actual ordinance approving the franchise will come before the commission at a future date. We are shooting at this time for September the second. If approved, this ordinance would authorize the city to enter into new cable franchise agreement with Ritter, moving them from their telecommunications franchise into a cable franchise framework that allows for expanded services to the community. With that, I'd answer any questions that I can and open it up to comments. Commissioners, I have a question. So does that mean you know, on the existing Paducah power poles, they just add their equipment to it? Or is there some sort of sharing agreement where uh they pay Comcast a fee for utilizing their infrastructure? How does that work? There will be a combination. Um there will be some things that will um need to run cable underground, some will be attachment agreements. Um so it it will vary. Um their footprint is across the whole of the city pretty much, so it's gonna vary widely from part to part depending on what infrastructure is already there. Um we do encourage people to use existing infrastructure whenever available. Um but part of the uh reason we do these cable franchises is um so that there is um giving back to the city as far as um what is what they have to do in our right-of-ways. Um so this would transition them from what they're currently doing under their telecommunications to a cable franchise. The from my opinion, the competition's great. The only concern I have is just that all of a sudden we got all these telephone poles in Paducah, which will become much more cluttered. We've got you know, Paducah Power running fiber, we've got you know a couple other companies running fiber, which will I think for the most part be adding more strands on there, so our uh telephone poles could end up getting pretty crowded, so which is uh aesthetically that's not a good thing, but that is a conversation we had with them previously when they entered into their telecommunications franchise because it would be the same kind of issue. We sat down with our engineering department and talked to them about that to how we can limit that to as much as possible. Thank you. I always I mean, I think that's an excellent excellent points that you made, Commissioner Smith.