John Donovan of Osborne Road can finally take that ugly satellite dish off his Mott section landmark home. The Osborne Road resident, along with many of his Garden City neighbors, applauded the board of trustees for approving an 11-year Verizon franchise agreement, thus ending the Cablevision "monopoly."

After much discussion during an Aug. 16 public hearing, trustees voted 6 to 1 in favor of the agreement; Mayor Peter Bee recused himself from the public hearing because Cablevision is a client of his law firm while Trustee Tom Lamberti voted against it.

Barbara Patton, a consultant and advisor to the Verizon external affairs team, told trustees, "We're ready to deliver true cable competition here in Garden City." The village now joins the Towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay, along with villages like New Hyde Park, Mineola, Floral Park, Freeport and others, in offering residents a choice in cable television.

Brendon Pinkard, counsel to Verizon, added, "We're not here to replace your current cable television provider ... This franchise raises the standards of cable television in Garden City and enables residents to have a choice, a benefit they've never had."

Verizon officials boast FiOS (a fiber to the premises telecommunications service) will provide customers with crystal clear sound, greater reliability, better HD [high definition] channels, myriad customer service protections and parental control devices to keep the younger set in check.

The Garden City franchise agreement includes a 3 percent franchise fee (equal to what Cablevision currently pays), a one-time Public Educational Government (PEG) grant of $46,000, $13,000 of which is payable up front with $3,000 remaining per year of the 11-year franchise, and free FiOS service to several municipal buildings in Garden City, including the police and fire stations, schools and library.

Originally, because Cablevision currently provides this free service to the various municipal buildings, the negotiators, Village Adminisitrator Bob Schoelle and Village Counsel Gary Fishberg, thought it a duplicative service to include this in the Verizon agreement as well. So in lieu of that, the village negotiators opted to receive another grant, totaling $16,500.

Trustees during the public hearing, however, had much discussion about this, concluding that the $16,500 grant be replaced with the option of Verizon providing free cable service to those same buildings. This amendment enables the municipal buildings, including all the school buildings - public and private - to change over to a fiber optic network if they so choose to when Cablevision has to renegotiate its agreement three years from now. These buildings can also receive the service if Cablevision at any time opts to stop providing it.

In June of last year, the village received a draft of a proposed cable franchise agreement. Under Public Service Commission (PSC) laws and regulations, Verizon is entitled to a franchise agreement that places it on a "level playing field" with the existing franchise granted to Cablevision, whose term expires in 2010. Verizon could have accepted an agreement that mirrored the Cablevision agreement or negotiated separate terms. According to appointed chair of the Cable TV Committee, Trustee John Mauk, Verizon took the latter approach. Six meetings and numerous telephone conferences followed, resulting in 13 to 14 agreement drafts.

After nearly 11 months of negotiations, Verizon representatives said that although they have a five-year build-out timeline - required by the Telecommunications Law in order to leave head room for certain circumstances such as access issues - more than 80 percent of Garden City households are already FiOS equipped.

Paul Jameson, a senior counsel at Cablevision, told trustees, quite frankly, that the Verizon contract offers the bare bones minimum. "Why is there a five-year time frame for build-out if they've already equipped 82 percent of the village?" Jameson asked. "The Verizon contract could be examined, improved."

Kevin Shine, a Weyford Terrace resident and proud Verizon employee, told trustees that consumers save money when there is competition. Donovan, a resident expert in telecommunications who spent 24 years with Verizon, is in favor of competition. "Why not fiber optic-based cable television services here in Garden City?" he asked the board in a recent letter. Let's tear down the satellite dishes and use the crystal clear, maintenance free, interference free, un-tap-able resource called fiber optics."

Representatives from Verizon were elated that trustees approved the franchise that same evening of the public hearing. Now they must file an agreement with the PSC to obtain a confirmation order; the PSC's next hearing date was scheduled for Aug. 22.