District 2 Councilman Harold Wales chastised two local cable television providers before the Athens City Council voted unanimously Monday to extend or renew their franchises.

Charter Communications had asked the city to extend its nonexclusive franchise with the city until March 1, 2018, and Knology Inc./WOW had asked the council to renew its nonexclusive franchise until March 1, 2018.

Before voting on the Charter franchise, Wales asked if there were representatives present from the two companies. No one spoke.

With that, Wales said he wanted to make a comment before the vote.

“The problem we’ve got with these cable companies — and I think they are all at fault, especially these two because these two are the oldest we have in our city — is that they are not — I repeat not — coming nowhere near keeping up their equipment, the infrastructure part of it.

“In my neighborhood alone, and I see it in other neighborhoods, there are junction boxes — where the wires come out of the ground, there is a little box that sits over them — that are broken, that are missing and that are nowhere to be found,” Wales said. “In my neighborhood, I can show you where there are wires that have been in the street for anywhere from four to six months. No effort at all to come bury the cable. So, you run over it, you run over it, you run over it.”

In Decatur, Wales said, residents had similar problems.

“The City Council addressed the problem by writing it into the franchise contract,” Wales said. “This is how they solved the problem.”

He said he would like the Athens Council to work with Public Works Director James Rich and Mayor Ronnie Marks to look at doing the same for future consideration. 

“Because if it’s in your front yard, it takes away from the beauty of your yard and your house, not to mention children,” Wales said from a safety standpoint. “There has gotta be some electricity going through those ports. I want to fix everything that is wrong, and this is wrong.”

After voting for immediate consideration of the franchises, council members voted 5-0 to approve the extension and renewal.