Tuolumne County Municipal Code § 4.01 Legislative Findings and Purpose

authority to regulate the use of streets, public rights-of-way, and to grant access thereto upon certain terms and conditions; and

Tuolumne County has reviewed its authority under state and federal law, and has considered how it may exercise its authority to accomplish the following: protect the public health, safety, and welfare; effect responsible management of the public rights-of-way; meet the obligations of the County to manage and maintain the public rights-of-way; minimize disruption and inconvenience to the use of the public rights-of-way for transportation purposes; and ensure reasonable nondiscriminatory access to the public rights-of-way by secondary users; and

The public rights-of-way within Tuolumne County are a valuable and scarce community resource physically limited in dimension requiring Tuolumne County to manage them efficiently and to protect against premature exhaustion of the public rights-of-way as an economic resource, and to minimize the inconvenience to and negative effects upon the public from such facilities’ construction, emplacement, relocation, and maintenance in the rights-of-way; and

The right to place privately-owned facilities and fixtures in such rights-of-way for the business of providing cable and related services for hire is a valuable economic right to use a unique public resource that has been acquired and is maintained at great expense to Tuolumne County and its taxpayers, the economic benefit of which should be shared with the taxpayers of Tuolumne County.

Tuolumne County wishes to promote the availability of high-quality and diverse cable services to Tuolumne County residents, businesses, County government, and other public institutions; and to promote the availability of diverse information resources to the community, including through the development of advanced systems that can support public, educational, and governmental programming and high-speed access to the Internet; and

Tuolumne County wishes to provide opportunities to the public to obtain access to communications facilities for the purpose of disseminating and receiving information; to promote competitive cable rates and services; to take advantage of opportunities presented by cable systems to provide for more open government; to enhance educational opportunities throughout the community and provide opportunities for building a stronger community; and to allow flexibility to respond to changes in technology, subscriber interests, and competitive factors that will affect the health, welfare, and well-being of the community; and

In light of federal and state law, and the changes to local procedures required by them, Tuolumne County finds that it is necessary to enact the following requirements and further finds it appropriate to apply this ordinance to existing franchisees, permittees, and licensees to the extent possible and to apply it to those with pending or new applications to place facilities in public rights-of-way for cable and other related services; and,

Tuolumne County finds that it is in the interest of the public to franchise and to establish standards for franchising such operators in a manner that promotes these objectives and otherwise protects the public interest. (Ord. 2628 § 1, 2005)

Title are to:

Establish a non-discriminatory local policy concerning cable systems, and private communication systems that use the public rights-of-way;

Promote the availability of diverse, multimedia information resources to the community;

Provide for enhancing educational opportunities throughout the community and building a stronger community;

Encourage the provision of advanced and competitive cable services on the widest possible basis to the businesses, institutions and residents of the County;

Encourage economic development while preserving aesthetic and other community values and preventing proliferation of above-ground facilities; and
Establish the potential for universal access to video programming services for all residents and business. (Ord. 2628 § 1, 2005)