 June 9th, 2020 governing board meeting of CV Fiber to order I'm going to start the recording and we are now recording. Thanks again to Orca for coming to this meeting as well and recording what we're doing here. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda. Okay, hearing none. I got one. Okay. Okay. The item number hard off partnership updates. It also be add off ISP update. Sounds good. I'd also, I don't know that we need to update the agenda necessarily, but I think during public comment if we could do some introductions because we have a couple again board shifts. Not really big changes, but just board shifts. Any other additions or changes to the agenda. Michael. I'll just do a quick report on COVID-19 funding. Yeah, that's actually our very first agenda item after public comment reports back about the, about the action at the state level I knew there was going to be more stuff going on so I, that's going to be a placeholder item for the foreseeable future I think. So I will let you start that one when we get there. Okay. Okay. Public comment. Any commentary on anything that's not on the agenda. Hearing none. Let's move on to reports back about recent meetings and action at the state level Michael, why don't you kick us off. You said you were going to do introductions. Oh, yeah, do that. Thanks, Siobhan. So, Jonathan Williams as you know had to leave the board. I'll be it briefly we twisted his arm and he was appointed as the alternate for Berry city replacing Lucas herring, who was finding it hard to have his day job and his job as the mayor and to be showing up for CV fiber stuff so Jonathan is back with us. And that's the modified form so that's exciting. Marshfield appointed select board member rich Baker who is here with us today can see him. And john Morris, who is currently labeled as couch because that's his couch computer is interested in becoming the primary delegate for Marshfield and John and rich if you want to take maybe just a second and say a couple of things about yourself and so we so we know a little bit more about you. Yeah. I'm on the Marshall select board for last three years I think and was on the planning commission for about eight years. I was hired, mostly, and used to work as the zoning director at Stowe and very city previously to that. Cool. Thanks rich. John. So I, I have a little tiny bit of experience with town government I was on the energy committee for a little while. And I worked as an editor my wife and I had a business. So we, we do, I had a lot of experience with graphic design and editing. I also have pretty good understanding of most technical subjects. And just looking to help out wherever I can. All right. Thanks very much john calm down Chuck, calm down. You can, you can see it can't you. John Chuck Chuck was one of the people I was suggesting you might work with on the communications committee if you decided you wanted to spend spend a bit of extra time on there and so Chuck Chuck is our chair of the communications committee so you guys can maybe touch base later. Okay. Okay. So let's do some reports back about recent meetings and action at the state level. Michael you start us off and we got some other. Some other meetings to fill people in on but I think yours today and in the last week or so can probably do a pretty good summary. Yeah. So, the house energy and technology committee has been working on a package of broadband support provisions to recommend appropriations committee passes as part of the big budget bill. Every few days. They get input from all kinds of providers and constituents who want different things, but every few days they have to change what they're putting in their recommendations because they get more information from US Treasury guidance, which restricts over and over and over again what they can get with the money what they can spend money on. And so the latest development was that anything that sort of theoretically broadband related that isn't specifically aiding somebody affected by the pandemic. Is not eligible. So all kinds of things that we were hoping to get funded. For vision, specific UDS funding and various different kinds of projects are now very narrowly construed and have to be related to specific students who couldn't get online during the lockdown and telehealth facilities but not telehealth consumers and so forth. So I won't go through all of it but the point is that there's a lot of disappointed folks and there are still a whole lot of providers at the trough trying to get money and sort of jostling each other out of the way saying you know this is more important than that and so forth. So this is kind of the ugly part of how legislation gets passed. But on top of it, it's not just state politics. It's federal politics and federal bureaucracy that's that's influencing a lot. I made a presentation today, probably the third time about why in the short term under this funding they should fund fixed wireless solutions, because it can get done this year before the funding runs out, unlike most fiber projects which can't. And there were people saying things like wireless, you know, basically they were saying wireless socks and you shouldn't spend any money on it but there. Unfortunately, the committee was very responsive and after the meeting they asked me to draft some legislation for them so that's what I spent my whole unplanned afternoon. And I was planning on doing other things but I spent my whole afternoon writing legislation. Who knows if any of it's going to even get through the appropriations committee. But so that gives you a flavor of what's been going on I don't know if you have specific questions of me or, or maybe that's enough anyhow. So I'll pass it back to Jeremy you can talk about something else now or. Yeah, so one of the things that I thought was interesting, and I actually went and checked that the assertion the folks from Comcast and the cable providers and from consolidated were there. Testifying today and Comcast said that they, they offer. They offer a little bit offerings that they have for not insignificant number of subscribers in Vermont which I just picked a random address on Main Street and Montpelier, and half of those advertised speeds that they had on their, in their presentation, were, were just not available. So I don't know if that's because that was too far away, but I'm, I'm suspecting that there's probably more to the picture. Then, then what they were saying, then, but yeah, they definitely want to, they definitely want to slice of that pie, and there's, they're saying well we can bring, you know, we can bring 25 three I mean even the, you know, consolidated saying oh yeah we can do 25 three. Yeah, yeah, but it's never actually 25 to unless you're sitting right on top of their, you know, their what that terminal there, but that's what I'm paying for and I never get it. But they admit that for years. The first time I ever heard them admit it publicly that they can't possibly achieve 25 three. So it starts and out the broadband definition even if they can deliver the full 25 to. So. Yeah, that was a little. That was that was interesting, I thought, I thought but yeah so in terms of what the coven money can be spent on I think it's probably not a favorable for us in terms of a source of capital, but it could be could be useful in terms of some other sort of nibbling around the edges, things. If the legislator legislator can get creative about it, then again everything that the energy and tech committee, you know, pitches over at appropriations appropriations might like I think like Tim said in the meeting. You know, crush it under their boot and move on and choose something else. So, so you might be spending spending a good deal of time writing writing your legislation Michael and then I know. But is it but isn't that the way it always goes. It's been that way for us. So there's another. So we talked previous and I think I sent a message out about the actually we talked about this the last meeting that possibility of having a CUT consortium, I'm going to sit on that. That was a meeting that we had briefly I actually there was some technical issues with my, not with my network connection surprisingly this time it was really just about software. So I will update about that during the consortium agreement discussion. We also had another, we had a brief sort of touch base with just to find out where they are and how we're going forward and we saw a little snapshot of a the spreadsheet and the business model and the business plan that they're working on right now which was which I thought was pretty good given given how far along they are and they said, I think what did they say Michael he'd be able to share like a preliminary draft of that that's really ready bit more for board consumption by the end of this week right. It might have been two weeks but it's soon. Yeah, two weeks. Okay, next week. Was it next week Jerry. Okay, thank you. So that's, yeah, that was very encouraging and it was, it was kind of nice. I'm going to put, but Jerry on set of color, color zero one. It's encouraging because he had it set up as an Excel spreadsheet and if we wanted to play with different take rates. If we wanted to change our assumptions, if we wanted to be much more, you know, conservative with our expectations for costs and this sorts of thing. We could plug it in there and it would sort of then propagate across what he had 10 years of forecasting or something quarter by quarter, and it was. Yeah, I mean it looked like I mean so as being sort of a data spreadsheet nerd I kind of appreciated looking at it and I'm going to appreciate having a chance to dig through it too but I think it compellingly makes the case for feasibility should the numbers work out. One of the things that I noticed and I don't know if you saw this in the Mansfield testimony Michael. Leslie's testimony today one of the things she said about the turnaround time for the Vita loan she said it was in terms of weeks. So like two weeks. Yep. So, we probably need to put that in our timeline that it may not take as long for Vita to move on this as we as we thought I thought it was going to take a much longer time, but if we've got pre vetted stuff that we can hand to them, it may, it may be pretty, pretty snappy. It may be but keep in mind they're a functioning business. And so they have more of a history. And we are not a functioning business. And their ask was very modest and simple. Okay, to share. But it's still possibly true, because if DPS does all the vetting and Vita trust them, it might go fast. So when I Oh, hold on. Let's let Ray go first and then we'll get you David. Yep. When you're talking about the coven 19 broadband funding we're talking about the federal money. And how is that the same or different from Scott's 95 million for broadband. They're one in the same because it's really, it's not even 95 million anymore. We don't know what it is, but it's 20 million. Well, that's he's, he's posing 20 million right now. And the, and the house is proposing 100. Yeah, except except they were given the instruction, I think it was 35 or 45. Anyway, But it's sort of, it's sort of depends on just giving the order. Anyway, David. I talked to Vita last week and they said it could take up to about two months and the critical thing critical path for us is the department of public service approving our business plan. That's that's good news indeed. And that's right. I think that sort of fits in with what our expectations were in the first place. But yeah, I'm not sure that it's, you know, two weeks, two months. It actually changes our trajectory. I mean to be obviously be much nicer to have things, you know, have have the, the loan ready to go sooner but yeah. Any other meetings or anything else folks want to report back on from the last last two weeks. Okay. Okay. Who met with whack. I did. Well, did we have a meeting. I was in a lot of communications. I think we're going to have a meeting and that's what it is. Okay. What is some very excited about working with their chosen consultant and RTC, which is a firm that specializes in representing electric coops and broadband situations. They have really, you know, it's been this slow locomotive pulling out of the station. They are now really excited. And they're excited about working with this outfit because they're going to have a meeting across the country who are allied together in a consort, a bidding consortium for RDOF funding and work as basically made the decision they are going for RDOF and they want to be part of this consortium. And they're going to pay their consultant an extra fee to do that. And they're encouraging us to consider joining with that consortium, which we can discuss again later when we get to that topic. The main point is that the work which has been on again off again on again off again seems to be pretty close to fully committed to wanting to build a fiber network on their polls for their use. And we're not going to have a conversation with us. But we don't have an agreement with them. So that's to be worked out if it's going to be worked out. Well, if we're going to do that. Could you tell me who is wet. Washington Electric Co-op, I'm sorry. Okay, okay. Okay. That's what they call themselves. And I recall, you'll never call for my electric co-op back. They hate it. So, given the window of time for when the short form applications need to be going in for RDOF, we should probably be looking at having that that agreement soon. I mean, we probably need to talk to them more concretely then. I think we have to and I think the business committee and where Greg Kelly and I is liaison and you should be meeting with them. Very soon. Okay. So yeah, so I think we'll probably need to kind of figure out how that's going to, how that's going to work if we are going to try to work with valley net or if we're going to work with. I think it could be kind of interesting if we end up competing with them. Hopefully that's not the case. But anyways, well, we'll figure that out. Maybe in the, we'll talk about that maybe in the later agenda item. Any other meetings folks want to report back on? So let's move on to update and discussion about private fund raising and loans. I don't know if, if, yeah, if Chuck or Phil, if you have anything to update about that. I don't have anything new to add. I did get a copy from Stan Williams of the, the last note offering, not there, not the bond issue, which is not terribly complicated. And if we decide that we do want to go that route, I think we can pull something together fairly quickly. But I think at the last meeting, we were kind of up in the air about going in that direction until. You know, what are the kind of funding is available per Stan's recommendation that we may not have to take that step if there's other, other funding, but as we're hearing earlier, that seems to be a moving target right now. Chuck, did you have anything? Yeah, so I met with the Vermont Community Foundation located out of Middlebury, and met with a couple of their principals over there. And they have decided to put a fair amount of their philanthropic efforts into broadband expansion in Vermont, which is great. And as I said, in discussing with them, they're leaning more toward trying to figure out how they can have a statewide impact rather than necessarily helping directly fund individual CUDs. I talked a lot about the emergence of this coalition that we're going to talk about more tonight and talked a lot about, you know, Rob Fish's activities with the state and how they could potentially support CUDs on a broader perspective. Some ideas they're tossing around are trying to help fund grant writers that could then volunteer their time to CUDs across the state and things of that nature. So I basically indicated to them that we should stay in touch. And as as they're thinking on this matures, we can certainly figure out how to help one another, but it doesn't sound like they'll be a direct source of potential funding for us at this point. Jeremy. Real quick Chuck, I'm sorry I missed the name of that organization. Vermont Community Foundation. Okay, thank you, Ray. Chuck, can you feel for how much money they have. I did not they did talk about. They have a grant process right now where you can get $2,000 to kind of kick, kick, kick things off and I said, well, you know, we're a little beyond that. I think it's point in time. Let that be for other CUDs were just barely getting started. But it sounded like on the order of magnitude their total fund is probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also on this topic, the somebody named John Roy. Some of you may know that name some of you may not EC fiber. He was apparently involved with the development of those promissory notes, along with Paul Giuliani. So he's giving a presentation. I just sent afforded the invite to you fill into you Chuck because you're sort of spearheading this. I may or may not be on that on that meeting but the idea here is that EC fiber reached out to him and said, Hey, would you be willing just to sort of talk out what happened back in whenever that was when they started with those promissory notes so he may be able to answer questions and get a better lay of the land. So, I've already asked if it's okay to add you to that so I figured if that's convenient for you then pop on it for whatever reason if neither of you can make it all. I'll join that. I guess I guess the question I would have on that is, if we're as a board really leaning toward tabling this concept should we save the social capital and and you know say hey you know what we're not really interested in pursuing this just yet. But you know we'd love to have this conversation down the road if we if we change our mind, just to save him the time and energy. He's presenting to all of the CUDs statewide so there's no, there's no kind of marginal costs. So, if you want to attend that's fine if not I mean he's still going to be presenting it so yeah I see that any K guys are there the folks from southern Vermont are there, because the question kept coming up in these consortium calls and sort of the various. Cross CUD calls that they had been asking those questions and I had, I mean we had already kind of talked through this at a superficial level with EC fiber but then folks at EC fiber said well okay. Let's just go and just give just give them a brain dump. Let's give everybody the brain dumps everybody can know where that is where where they started and Siobhan you had your hand up. Go ahead. The Vermont Community Foundation has 310.5 million in total assets in 2017. They got 49 million in contributions in 2017 and they granted out 15.1 million in 2017. That's huge. Okay, they didn't seem like they were at that scale based on our conversation but I was speaking to the people who are specifically investigating broadband expansion so maybe that broadband expansion is just getting a subset of that. Cool. Thanks for that Siobhan. Michael. John Roy was one of the two founders of EC fiber with Stan Williams. I think, regardless of whether we're interested in the promissory note path right now. Somebody attending there is going to pick up some IP from him that will be valuable to us. He's a good guy and he knows an awful lot and he was there before they had good money and stuck with them a long time so. I just checked my schedule and I can definitely join at the time that that is there so Phil feel free to join with me but I'll be there. What's the date and time. It's Monday from two to three or three to four, two to four Monday, two to four, two to four. Okay, that'll probably work. Good. John, I saw you had your hand up. Did it open to anybody or just they're keeping it restricted. This is really, it was on offer to communications you need district members but if you are going to be, if you're sending your letter of interest to the Marshfield select board, you know, some of whom are represented here tonight. Yeah, I'll, I can connect you with that as well. Just, would you send me an email to that effect and I'll forward that onto you. So, where am I in the agenda. Anything else about private fundraising and loans that we should have on our radar that we need to talk about our dog partnerships update slash art off ISP update. David you wanted to talk about the, you want to talk about this ISPs and whatnot. Yes. So, the date, we have had responses to the solicitation we made for not off and and our ISP provider. We got a formal response from Tilson cloud alliance kingdom fiber. And then we're the negotiations with work on the art off thing and then for some reason Valley net didn't read, didn't respond yet I've got another email out to Chris right here to find out what's going on. But those, we've got two formal requests. Tillson, so I'm going to meet with the business committee on this but Tillson's submittal was in the context of Alco and from our utilities. I think the reason that we didn't see one from Valley net is because this these discussions of the, the larger CU D consortium are happening and I think, at least from what I understand if, if it's going to go forward, you know, if Valley net's going to spearhead some art off stuff it's probably going to be in the context of a consortium of all of us together. So, that could be why they chose not to respond to us directly I mean that that that call certainly happened and there was that conversation like I said I got disconnected before I heard the whole thing but I'm Well, I mean this inquiry was as much for an ISP as it was for the art off funding so that's why it was sort of mystified that they hadn't responded. I mean, it could just be the fact that we've been talking to them about this for two or three years now and we kind of know know them as a, you know, as a contender. Yeah, it's just strange that they wouldn't have just said sent the courtesy email and said yes we're, yes we're interested but So over the next couple weeks I can see the meeting with WEC and their partnership and how it's having to make a decision who to partner with. And what are the implications of partnering with one or the other in the long term, and that both in terms of ownership and and the service saying and all those things so it's going to get pretty complicated pretty And we may have to have some actions regarding how we proceed in a good understanding and have a good understanding of what it all means, because it ain't going to be totally straightforward. So anyway, that's my report today. I just sent out a notice for business committee meeting for next Tuesday so it'll be on the agenda for their meeting. So, larger board is there anything that you would like the business development committee to consider in particular, when we're kind of getting to these really concrete decision points. Because we, I mean, the applications for the art off the short form that first step, that's June, or sorry, July 1 to July 15. We don't really have much time and it's likely that we are going to be making a pretty concrete decision about this at our next meeting which we're going to have to have another June meeting in two weeks. So if anybody has any sort of bigger ideas or thoughts that the business development needs to chew on at its next meeting this would be the time. Oh, I'll try. Thank you on that committee to Andy though. Yeah, I'm a honorary attendee. I'll try to go to this one. Um, yeah. I guess it's just our I mean really it's more an expression of there's so much uncertainty. It's very difficult and not uncertainty in a bad way but there's just a lot of different options and different things going around so it's going to it just makes the task that much more challenging. The focus is yeah I can't I can't offer anything concrete beyond that except that this is a challenge I get that we all got to kind of get focused on it but this is a challenge. So let me maybe ask a slightly more concrete question of everybody. You know it's, it's appearing that there's there's a handful of alternatives to going after this, this federal funding. It's unwise to not go after this federal funding that is certainly an option we can we can choose to not go after it I just think that that would be, I think personally I think that would be foolish. Because we're essentially allowing the federal government to subsidize someone who's going to come in and prevent us from, you know, hitting that mission of providing high speed access to everybody. So I'm looking at Valley net EC fiber as a partner, and or probably more like or WEC, or Washington or Watesfield Champlain Valley. I'm not sure that there is a, and okay, and there's a and I see there's a cloud Alliance Kingdom fiber option down there. Also, Watesfield Champlain Valley did not respond. Oh, they didn't. Okay, well so, so that was me jumping the gun there so so let me just remove them and put Michael and his, his group in there. So those are really. And Tillson to but I have some, I have some reluctance about Tillson and we can maybe talk about that business development but in terms of my own personal perspective short Tillson is technically in the mix. But I really only see. Again, me personally I see three options going forward, WEC Valley net EC fiber and Kingdom fiber cloud Alliance. Pros cons feelings about that and I certainly don't mean to throw till some under the bus if everybody's saying yeah we ought to go till sin and think about what those options are then let's let's start talking about what are the, what are, how are we going to decide. I mean, that's those are really our decisions. You know, how are we going to decide Siobhan. So, if we go Valley net, we're not doing WEC. Or, can we do both of those do valley net in this area and WEC in this area, or WEC does, you know, we've rent from WEC but we're doing the operator without I don't know that's why I'm asking. Because it so it sounds to me like we picked one and that's it. That's all we're going to do valley net isn't interested in doing any of the, the stationary stuff, mixed wireless, fixed, fixed wireless, I know this. And so, if we go with valley net, we're cutting off that avenue completely. And we have been historically reluctant to do that. So now it seems like we're going to have to make that decision first, because if we decide we absolutely are not going to cut off that route valley net is out of the picture. Not, I mean they're only out of the picture in the I draw thing they're still in the picture is an ISP. Oh my God. Well, because, because check it out, if WEC builds their own fiber, they're not going to be an ISP, they're going to be looking for somebody to operate it, and they could be handing those keys off to us and then we sort of hand those keys off as to it as like a subcontracting role out to valley net again, I mean it's I was just suggesting if we work with we could work with WEC on the fiber stuff, and then valley net comes in it as the operations. Everybody will be happy. But who owns the fiber and who gets the federal money that's why that's what makes it sticky. And the art of rules, art of rules prohibit conversations, even conversations between, you know, via third parties between bidders. Once they've signed up. So if WEC signs up as a bidder in a consortium or otherwise, and valley net signs up as a bidder in a consortium or otherwise, they can't talk to each other about the auction, or anything. And they can't talk to us. Because it's likely for the other to be passed through one way or the other. So it's, it's so that they can be a properly competitive and correct process Jeremy. So, but after the funding is awarded, like say, WEC got the WEC polls and they won that auction, and valley net one somewhere else, then at that point they could talk to each other correct. Correct. Okay. But but they also can't collude ahead of time to say you take this bit. You take this bit. I mean that's, there's some specific direction. And the FCC public notice thing that says, yeah, don't, don't do that. I mean, I mean, even though in some ways, you know, by the CUD is working together, you know, we're sort of implicitly implicitly staking out our territory. I mean, we wouldn't expect valley net just to go and say, Oh, well, more town. There you go. We got you. I mean, that's just, they, they wouldn't do that but we also couldn't just, we couldn't make an explicit agreement with them that they wouldn't that they wouldn't do that sort of thing. So, clarify, we couldn't. I'm sorry, but Jeremy go ahead. Oh, no, it's fine. Go ahead. I just, to clarify on that point. So like, hey, hypothetically want we wanted to check picked to pick kingdom wireless and and valley net. You know, to go for specific segments or specific aspects just because you know valley net doesn't do wireless, but we want to, you know, or that type of a situation, and we're not trusted to broker that we keep that separate or it would, it would be dicey, because if there's any, you know, if there's any sense of impropriety, or if there's you know any information that gets shared about one's bidding strategy, or bidding price from one to the other, then both parties get disqualified. They just go away. They do not participate in the auction anymore. And we might go for art off that we're going to go for the whole CUD geographic area we're going to target underserved specific areas. That strategy is going to, it's going to depend on who we're going to partner with. So, I mean, it's, yeah, I understand. Yeah. Okay. Jeremy. So it seems like if we go with whack, we can I, we can kind of only go for areas areas that have whack poles. They're going to run faster, because they have a limited area sounds like Valley net. If Valley net goes after it they're going to go after the whole state. Is that right with the CD consortium. Actually, I mean, okay, which would include us. I guess how would kingdom fiber and and cloud alliance. What's what's the different maybe Michael could speak to that about, you know, how, you know, would he be going after all, or would we be going after with him all of our territory. The first thing I have to say is my third annual statement about conflicts of interest. He don't talk. So, so I'm a member of the CV fiber board. I am also proposing a business relationship with CV fiber. I clearly have a conflict of interest here. I want to be careful not to violate anybody's situation in relation to that. I'm willing, and I think very able to talk in general terms about this whole topic. But I'll steer clear of speaking poorly of any of the other candidates or speaking up for my candidacy for this position. But just talk about what I see as really consequences of different different strategies, but I but it is risky and it may be better for me not to say. So I'm really asking you all to give me guidance on that. Yeah, this is Ken. I think, Michael, it is time on this topic for you to put into writing your proposal about what a partnership would be between Cloud Alliance and CV fiber. He did. And then, well, I submitted to the business committee to David. Okay, six major. And it's and it doesn't. That wasn't one of the questions to be asked answered. I didn't answer specifically that way. But I certainly can expand on it. Yeah, so maybe that's what we'll do during the business meeting is we'll send requests out to the various respondents. With specific questions to answer and then that body absent Michael will go through what those submissions are. So, just so everybody knows, I when I sent out this request, I gave I think there's seven criteria I asked them to respond to. So if there are more criteria we want to ask them, we can, but Michael and Tilson sent me complete responses to every question. So I developed a, I have developed a ranking sheet for all of the questions we asked against the candidate to submit them. So we have hopefully on next week. I have something to, to, to work on and I did like that question because it's now it is to me even more complicated than when I originally described the criteria because this thing with with WEC is pretty complicating itself, because it's a whole different model of them owning the infrastructure owning the fiber, but somebody else owning all the other infrastructure. I mean, it's all that over time, and then operated over time is a big different. It's a different model than I think we hope that Washington Electric would do this, but I don't think we had any expectation they would, they would come through on it. Who owns the infrastructure and how it's paid for over time and what the lease would look like is all complicated stuff, which is, maybe I have nothing to do with the odd off thing but it does relate to it so, but I enjoy. Yeah, are there other questions that the Business Development Committee should be, should be tackling should be sending to the potential partners as ISPs or as art off partners that we haven't asked I mean, so that was a, that's a good question I'm glad we kind of brought that to the front is there anything else that we had a potential partner coming forward. What would you want to ask them what would you want to know. So we don't have to, you don't have to answer that right now but you should hopefully be able to answer that soon. Yes, soon. And when's when's the meeting was we're going to shoot for next week. David, what was the plan. Tuesday, next Tuesday. Okay, yeah, I haven't checked my email I did see that something. 530 on Tuesday. Okay, so, yeah, by the by the weekend hopefully and then this can be sort of assembled cleanly. All right, anything else on art off that folks want to talk about. Yeah. Today's the day they dumped all the data. We now know really. It's been really long and I just during this meeting checked the website, and it doesn't say preliminary locations anymore it says locations. So, interesting, we can, we can update all the maps figure out what how much money is really available, which, which census blocks just disappeared. I didn't, I looked very quickly but I didn't notice the new rules for the auction procedure waiting for which affects bidding strategy and things like that. And there was another. There's another category of information that was supposed to come out today also but NC. I just saw the locations were. Yeah, they supposedly just had a meeting today to to accept the finalize that. So I'm still I'm looking at the auction 904 at FCC gov and it still says preliminary list. Or am I in the wrong place. Maybe it's by browser hasn't. You know what you're right. You're right, it still is. It should be coming pretty soon though. It was supposed to come out today. But it's very well still still might so we'll we'll keep an eye on it. Okay. Anything else on art off. All right, we are ahead of schedule by quite a bit interest from other towns. I have had a conversation with continue to have conversations with folks from Duxbury. And it's fairly likely that we will hear from them. After a lot of the heavier lifting of the summer is over, we may hear from them. August, September. And maybe they will be wanting to wanting to join us they sort of they just wanted to get a sense of how we were, how we were proceeding and, and so. I think they're not complete not completely sure about how, how we're constituted and they said, you know, what would you be a partner. Or would you be a subcontractor and I said, well, that's not really the way we work. I was like, well, if you join, then we're going to get you a service. That's just how because it's in our mission to give, you know, all of our member service. So we're not really in a position to subcontract in the way that you would think of, you know, some construction company or something. It's not, it doesn't work like that. That wasn't really, I don't think that was an answer that was terribly satisfying to them, but, and I was kind of hoping that that somebody from Duxbury would be on this afternoon or this evening to chat about this but he didn't, he's not here at the moment. And then, John, any, you want to talk about Washington briefly. I'll, I'll go ahead and go to the meeting on the 7th. July 7th. I'll wear two masks and glue plastic over my face or something because I've got a secondary health condition but yeah, well, I'll go. It should be, will be fine. Summer's going to be fine. Everybody's fine. It's all great. But yeah, I'll go because I really, I really don't think they're going to have a call in function. I do they even have a town hall they have a town hall right. I just, yeah, they just don't seem keen on that kind of I don't even know if they've had a June meeting, to be honest, I don't know if they've just been not meeting. But yeah, so I'll go in July and see how that lays. So, and so my my instinct about that is that they may be willing to move quicker than quicker than Duxbury anyways. And I think that's a kind of a logical geographic location but they're sort of They're kind of kind of late to the game, frankly, because we're going to have to read, refigure how we, how we think of them as we go through, you know, the next stages of our various projects. Moving on to CU D consortium agreements, everybody should have gotten a copy of the consortium agreement that I put in the email that I got from fx Flynn from EC fiber, everybody did see that. I didn't get one of those probably because I came in so late. Correct. Let me. I will just shoot that to you if I can find it. I think I have. You don't necessarily need to interrupt the meeting to do that. Okay, well, I just did chairs privilege or something right. Okay, so any, any thoughts about this. I mean this is a very skeletal agreement, you know it's really looking at not creating something quite so big as like a Vermont League of cities and towns but more of a vehicle for us to have a kind of a standard way to pool some administrative resources or have one place where we might do outreach. Not necessarily, you know, having a paid lobbyist or anything like that but there's not that much in terms of what we're authorizing this other organization to do. But there was a lot of interest and fair bit of like wordsmithing and kind of going back and forth about what what the various visions were for what this organization was and I think the general consensus and I certainly don't want to speak to everybody that was on that call. The general consensus was that we wanted to create something that was lightweight agile, and that wasn't usurping any of the heavier responsibilities that went with the individual CUDs and certainly didn't want to get in the middle of, you know, CUD on the CUD friendly fire. One of the things that generated probably more discussion after the meeting than during the meeting and actually I noticed there was some emails going back and forth with this board as well a bit was what we were going to name it. Because there's some people were nervous about Vermont Municipal Telecom Association. Well, is it going to be all CUDs or is it going to be other municipal telecommunications entities? Will we include, you know, the formerly known as Burlington Telecom? Will we include Mansfield? Will we include Newbury that's not really a CUD? Or are we just going to be our own fun club of only communications union districts? So any sort of general feedback about this? Should we go forward and sign something like this? I'm not asking for authorization to sign the contract as is because this is this is not done. So any sort of thoughts you might have, I will definitely take back. So I got to this agreement. The agreement is entered and I had to go lay down for half an hour. It was so boring. Couldn't they spice it up a little bit? Yeah. And I also I didn't see any mention of appurtenances in there. What about the appurtenances? Oh, just saying, you know, we got to take care of the appurtenances too. It was so it's so there's this doesn't seem to say a lot. It was written by a lawyer. So, you know, I, I, as you, as you know, from the last meeting, I like the idea of us grouping together and pooling effort, because you know, we're all going to need grant support and we're all going to need that kind of thing. That's a good idea. And, you know, I'm just the things that it mentions, I agree with. And so at this point, I'm like, yeah, this is good so far. And I can't think of anything to add to it. So I'll shut up now. This is David. I don't think it I think it should only be because nobody else. I don't I just think we're so unique that bringing other people just complicated. And I like your tie. I think the association of cuts or whatever the V cut a V whatever it was. So it's a simple. Yeah, like V CUDA I like because it's kind of like barracuda. I agree with you. Jeremy. I like the idea. I think it was good. The one question is I know that a lot of us are working pretty hard. Do we have people who are willing to take on the responsibility of going to the meetings for this thing as well as all the other meetings that we're doing. That is a terrific question and I'm so glad you asked it are one sort of paid person on the board. Yes. Yeah, so honestly, those meetings are happening already anyways, whether they continue to happen or not. David, you've got some weird thing with your camera where it's showing part of your screen. I don't know if that's intended that's that's kind of interesting. So, I don't I don't think that's going to be a be a problem having somebody who's going to be the liaison there. I think the place where we may end up seeing our quote unquote executive director would be within this organization, frankly, because I think depending on the legislation that comes out. In the next couple weeks, they may be explicitly funding this. I would like to see them explicitly funding something like this or at least, you know, putting a grant there so that we could hire somebody to be the, you know, CUD manager for all of us. Chuck. So the potential emergence of this this might be another avenue to open up that conversation with that Vermont Community Foundation, since they were looking at statewide initiatives. And, you know, so getting money to fund an executive director or something of that nature could be a very real possibility for this organization. Wow, that's a that's a really good idea. Okay, I will next time we talk about this I will at least mention it. Ray, I see your hand up. Yeah, so we did something like this in Virginia. When I was the executive director of the Northern Virginia Technology Council and set up technology councils throughout the state. The importance of that was for amplification of the message to all the legislators throughout the state they're all hearing the same message. And so this is a great vehicle for getting our acts together, deciding what it is we want, and making them realize how important it is for their locality or local region, and to support a particular policy or process or funding. And so that is probably a primary objective of an organization like this. You know what that is. Michael. Did you have your hand up Michael. Yeah, I did. I don't think kingdom fiber should be part of this. I don't think the unsealed community ever should be part of this. I don't think any for profit organizations should be part of this. But I do think that we shouldn't be exclusively see you D. I think any municipal solution in Vermont. There are similar challenges of CUDs. And I don't think we should cast them out as as poor orphans and leave them out of the party. I think we should help them. And they may help us in return so. What is that. I don't know what kind of entity you're talking about to not orphan. Oh, yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that. You know what I'm talking about. Ready. Nets. Newbury, Reedsboro, Craftsbury, Burlington, Tellecom. Well, not Berlin. They're private now, but all those others are municipals. They're not profit. But they're not actually CUDs and not CUDs. And I don't think they should be excluded. And that that's the reason I liked the other names because I didn't want to. in the CUD organization, but it's still a CUD organization. So I like the idea of it being a municipal telecom organization instead, but that's for all of it. Everybody will vote on what they want to name themselves, but I did pass my suggestions on to Jeremy and to Rebecca explain. Do you remember how long it took us to pick a name? Yeah. Yeah, I do. All right. Well, so I will not bring that question back to the board. But what's, so is there any reason why we shouldn't? I mean, is there any sort of like, you know, big thing hovering over, you know, cloud hanging in anybody's minds that would say why we shouldn't pursue this? I think it's a good idea. And the contract is simple and direct and fine. I just want to offer a little caution. And that is if this does form, it will change the way state funding is considered for CUDs. Or at least I can imagine that there may be a mechanism that goes through the association of CUDs rather than individual CUDs seeking state funding. And I'm not saying that'll happen for sure, but it's a possibility. So just as we enter, we just need to consider, because we're going to be more advanced than many of the others, we'll need to consider that possibility as it starts to happen. And I think some of that was thought of in item six in terms of whether this organization can assume indebtedness. And I asked that in our meeting. I just wanted to clarity why they thought to put this in. And they said, well, we didn't want this organization overshadowing. We didn't want this organization taking out loans to go build stuff for one of the CUDs or something in some sort of inequitable sort of way. So that made it clear to me anyways. So no, but I think that makes sense. You're concerned about how funding might happen. And yeah, I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. League of Cities and Towns gets funding that way too and sort of hand some of that out to the towns. But I think that in terms of the towns, they typically get their own directly. Jeremy? I think you just answered my question. But I guess I wasn't sure how the indebtedness piece would cover grants from the town. They're not going into debt if they're getting money from the state and then handing it out to CUDs as opposed to the state handing it directly to the CUDs. So I think that might have been more what Ken was saying. I see. So I mean, remember again that this would also be a democratically organized and controlled organization and that we would have our seats at the table. And if we don't like the way something is happening, if we want to advocate for the state not to hand down any grant money to this organization, we can certainly ask. We can certainly make that request. And if we'd say, be better just for the CUDs to be prioritized individually rather than collectively. So OK, so what I think I would like I'm going to try to do is with the other CUDs, try to nail down a final draft and hopefully have that at our next meeting. Final drafts. And we'll have something for you to vote on at the next meeting. If you're really feeling one way or the other about a name or about something in the contract or something that you feel really needs to be added or removed or changed, try to get that to me in the next week or so. And I'll make sure that that gets in front of everybody else. OK, anything else on the CUD consortium agreement or for that matter, the wet consortium? Anything else we need to talk about if we're going to be consorting with other organizations? Michael. I want to go back to Ken's comment. He's given me a real pause. I am a little suddenly feeling a little concerned. I think this thing is inevitable. I think it will happen. This organization will happen. But yeah, it'll be a democratic organization, a gathering of equals, a valley net with 10 or 12 years experience, us with 2 and 1 half or three years experience, any K with six months, some of them not even formed yet, some of them with 30 towns, some of them with four towns. How is it going to be equitably arranged if it's going to involve become a conduit of state money, for example, or other big decisions? I like the idea of it being an association that advocates for CUDs. But it does give me some nervousness about them having some power over our future. So maybe that, I don't know if I'm alone. Ken and I are alone in that. But if there's others to feel that way, maybe you need to communicate that as they're drafting the next version of the contract, the agreement. Chuck? So I do wonder if there may be a simple fix on that, which in the agreement itself, whether it would be possible to just put some language, specifically forbidding channeling of money directly, while allowing certain other activities such as directly funding executive directors or grant writers or things of that nature that could be shared resources for the CUDs, but explicitly prohibit money that funnels down to the CUDs. Can I offer an example? Because we talk about sharing resources. And I think we all have an interest in having some of the technical expertise shared. But as Michael noted, some of these are in an earlier phase. And some of the technical assistance they're going to benefit from, we won't benefit from. And again, I'm just speculating that as the state directs funds to the multitude of CUDs, they would want to have this association be the recipient of the funds for technical assistance. And I'm not convinced that it's a horrible idea, but we'll just always have to be ready for them funding some positions that we may not be able to take much advantage of. And therefore, the state will consider its obligation complete with regard to providing technical assistance to CUDs. And we may not benefit from it. So I'm not necessarily against it. Just be aware that that's a possibility. And as it gets structured and as the relationship with the state is formed, we just need to keep our position pretty clear about the potential to preclude actual state support for our efforts. All right, Siobhan, and then Rich. I was just going to say, I agree that we need to add language to any agreement that is clear about the CUDs have to get their funding from the state that it's not for their work, for what they're doing, that it's not what Chuck said. I agree with what Chuck said. Do you see this as someone, as they would have staff, like paid staff? Or is it just more of just the different chairs or whatever from different groups getting together? Because what I was wondering about and I'm totally new to this. I don't know anything about it. But is it a role for VLCT to just act as that's something they do. They coordinate towns. They represent. They basically lobby or represent towns and their interests. And they don't get funding, well, maybe they do, but they don't get something that's already has a structure that already does work with them. As opposed to a new, another organization or another set of structure. Yeah, so all of those things that you've said have actually been in the part of the conversation. And that parallel with the League of Cities and Towns, I also used to serve on the select board here in Berlin. So I always took advantage of the League's resources whenever I could. And yeah, and the folks that were in this consortium discussion appreciated that parallel. They didn't necessarily see this as being a vehicle for something like passive, providing workmen's comp or insurance. But they also didn't write that off. And I think initially it is going to be probably just the chairs or the delegates from the CUDs. But I think one of the things that we were looking at as a board within the last year or two is do we hire an executive director to do some of these day-to-day things that are being managed by volunteers? This is something we've advocated for at the legislature. But is there really enough work for us here in our CUD? And do we want to go through the bookkeeping requirements and all of the other requirements to hire on an employee to do these things? And we sort of kind of talked ourselves in circles and said, yeah, it'd be really great if we had somebody that we could pay to do this. And that was basically where the discussion went. So I think the other CUDs are also thinking that it might make sense to have some kind of centralization of some of the basic bookkeeping, grant management, administrative stuff, that because we're still small, we don't have the budget sheet that Marshfield does or that Cabot does or Elmore does. We're still so small. It doesn't even really make sense for us to spend any money on that. But now we're talking about a collection of CUDs that are eventually going to cover maybe the whole state. And there's a lot of commonalities and sort of growing pains that don't necessarily need to be there if everybody's kind of working from the same playbook. So that's kind of a long, rambly way of answering, I think, your questions. Did I get to all of them? I guess I was just wondering, have you talked to VLCT? Would they be, I mean, like you said, the resources like copiers, they got copiers. You don't necessarily, that's a small thing, but they have a payroll. I mean, I'm not saying they would fund anything, but a person could work out of their offices potentially. I mean, I'm just, you know, they're an organization that exists. All the stuff, all the stuff you mentioned, the difficulties of having paid staff and stuff. So it's not difficult, it's within something else. That's all. Yeah, so we did approach the Vermont League of Cities in towns and they said, funny, you're not a city or a town. I said, but wait, we're a municipality. They said, well, you can be an associate member then. I was like, well, what does that give us? And they're like, you can be an associate member. And that was really about it. It would not have made us eligible to join in their insurance pool because our insurance profile is so much different or whatever. And it turns out that we have a VLCT member, our alternate from Moretown is Karen Horne, the lobbyist from the league. So. I guess this David, I mean, the analogy that I see you do this is we have, I think there are 13 regional planning commissions and they have an association of regional planning commissions and they are actually, they're not quite a lobbying group that they try to take care of all the regionals needs. And it's not quite like the league of cities and towns is much more of a lobbying organization as anything else. CUDs were created by the legislature. So it's sort of in regional planning commissions were created by the legislature. So I don't know. I mean, that may be one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it anyway. Jeremy, I'd like to add something. Oh, go ahead to Jerry and then Jeremy. Yeah, there's, yeah. I'm a little concerned about adding another variable into our decision-making process. You know, we're really small right now and we're all volunteer and we're scrapping it together, but it's very possible at six months from now we'll be in a very different position with considerable money to spend and a consultant on board that'll be helping us actually implement and we'll be far, far different situation than the other CUDs other than EC fiber. So, you know, it's certainly a good idea to band together especially when it comes for lobbying and things of that nature. But I would be very concerned about adding another variable into our decision-making process. Our sovereignty, if you will. Thanks to that, Jerry. Jeremy, you had something? Yeah, I mean, one thing that just popped into my head and it's probably maybe not an issue but just popped into my head and would be if we're gonna be sharing technical resources, maybe sharing an executive director, would there be any possibility of conflicts of interest where this person might be asked to do one thing for us and something conflicting for some other CUD or might, you know, run, you know, see our information that we don't want public right now but is also part of this other organization. And, you know, I don't know, I'm just asking that question if that's something that could happen. I mean, that came up in conversation mainly in terms of competing interests. You know, so if there is, you know, does this organization have to, you know, choose their favorite child? And we want, the agreement, we wanted to structure it in such a way that it was lightweight and we didn't really ever have to make that sort of decision. But is it going to happen where we're going to, where we might not like what this overall organization does and it's because it serves, you know, another CUD matter. And I think the answer, of course, is yes. I think that's a risk we may want to take or may not want to take. I mean, having sat on the, you know, as Berlin's representative to the league, the league of cities and towns, you know, policy making, policy making meeting, and you get, you know, a couple hundred people from all sorts of different towns across the state trying to agree on municipal policies. Wow, that is, it's wild. It was really, really wild. And nobody walked away from there, totally satisfied. So, yeah. Yeah, no, so thanks for that. And I mean, I guess that's something that, you know, this is an organization and it will do what it wants. I guess my feeling is that it's a good idea and that we will probably lose more by not joining it when it happens than we would by not joining it. So that's my feeling anyway, but it's just kind of a gut feeling. So thanks. Michael. I agree with Jeremy there. This is worth joining. It is good to have an association to lobby for us in the legislature to gain resources for us and for us to share resources with others. There's nothing to matter with any of that. The only concern I have is with the financial arrangements and I think Chuck's poison pill idea would solve that and then we can proceed. I don't mind if someone gets a little more than someone else out of the deal, that's okay. I'm a member of WISPA, which is the Wireless ISP Association. It is the most sharing organization. We share so much technologically with each other and some of us take much more advantage than others and the little guys like me don't get as much as the big guys do, but it's really valuable. What I wouldn't want to have happen is what Ken was suggesting, that for convenience sake, the government says, oh, we don't have to think about all these individuals. Let's just throw $4 million out at the CUDs and let them figure out what to do with it. That's where it gets dicey and so let's just tell our association we want you to happen, but we don't want you to have that power. I can totally agree with that. Any other thoughts about this? So it sounds like generally people think this is a good idea with this, I think there's one, maybe two kind of main hangups. It sounds like that with some appropriately set policy, hopefully right in the contract here, we can maybe get to a comfortable place. That seemed reasonable. So I will add that or I'll add that and it will be lawyerized and we'll probably see it again at our next meeting then, but yeah, thanks for all that. Is there anything else that anybody wants to add to this before we move on? All right, we are in the home stretch and it's not even 720 yet, isn't this amazing? I have approval of April 14th and May 26th meeting minutes. We've had some good feedback about the May 26th meeting minutes. Jeremy, I think you got what six sets of updates and updated them and as far as I could tell, I didn't see anything else after everybody's revisions and I don't know if you remember the April 14th meeting but I glanced over it and it seemed reasonable. Does anybody have any changes or updates to any of those minutes of note? All right, so go for it, no. Both, I move that we accept both minutes as written. That's it. Okay, do I have a second? Okay. Okay, seconded by Phil. Okay, so any further discussion? All right, let's try to do this like we did the last time. I know we should be doing roll call votes but this is not a controversial one. I will assume that we have consensus unless somebody un-mutes and tells me to stop and ask for a roll call. So I'll give you a moment to unmute if you want us to stop and take a roll call. Okay, hearing no protests, no screams of pain, I'm going to assume that we have a consensus on this and the motion passes unanimously. Thank you, everybody. All right, we are at round table. We're going to be done before 7.30. So let's go from the bottom alphabetical order first name up. We'll start with you, Trev. How's it going? Anything you want to add for a round table before we adjourn? No, things are going well. Thank you and I am playing a little catch up. I know I had to come in late today and I appreciate the conversation. I don't have much to add tonight, thanks. Sure, thanks Trev. Tom. Oh, I'm all set. Good to see everybody. All right, thanks Tom. Rich. No, it was good to hear. Just, you know, good to attend a meeting to get a sense of what's going on. Welcome and thank you. Ray. Nothing, thanks. Thanks, Ray. Phil. Nothing, dad. Good meeting. Progress. All right, thanks Phil. Siobhan. Oh, I'm good. Thanks. Thanks Siobhan. Michael. Come on, don't let us down. This next two weeks, they're going to be very momentous for us as we make some choices. And which actually that prompts the, I'll just insert myself here. We will have another meeting in two weeks. So it'll be the same time, June 23rd. It'll be the same format. Unless all of you feel like you wanted to have an in-person meeting at some point, I don't really feel, I don't really feel like we need to do that just yet. So maybe we'll get to some point and we can all have a meeting with a pint, something like that, right? See, Ken's already beat us to that. Ken's already beat us to that. And Ray's already got it. Okay, so speaking of whom, and Jeremy's got it too, all right, Ken? Great discussion tonight, appreciate it. All right, thanks, Ken. John, from Worcester, I can hear you now. Anything to add, John? Okay, I heard you for a second. You can just shout out if you have anything to add. Let's move on to Jeremy. Oops, I'm sorry, I'm going in the wrong direction. I'm going in the wrong order. Let's do instead, Josh. Nothing more to add, thank you. Thanks, Josh. John, from Marshfield, anything you would like to add? Thanks for inviting me and I look forward to getting my feet on the ground. All right, thanks, John. Jerry? Nothing to add, thank you. Thanks, Jerry. Jeremy? Thanks for all your work, everyone, and welcome to all the new folks. And yeah, exciting. Mr. Jeremy, let's see, David? Yeah, I have only one thing. Last meeting we approved pying for the Board of Regional Commission grant. I just want to let you know it all went in and we applied for $675,000 and we should know at the end of August, I believe. That's all I have. Very exciting, very exciting news. Thank you, David. Chuck? I know pretty much everybody said this in the last meeting, but I'll take the opportunity to thank David because I know that was a monumental amount of work to get that grant out there. And obviously grants being grants, we'll see what happens, but thank you so much for everything you did to make that a reality because that was huge. So thank you. Thank you. All right, thanks, Chuck. Andy? No, appreciation. I did appreciate the link today on that. I did watch the committee hearing and I found that interesting. It was a, this whole topic has gotten quite interesting, but just generally thanks to everybody and let's keep going. Thanks, Andy. And just so you know, if you didn't watch the whole stream, they're meeting again starting at 9 a.m. tomorrow. They'll probably be going like nine to 11 or more and they will be making the final decisions about how to allocate that COVID funding. They have to have that feedback back to house appropriations by tomorrow at one, yeah, 1 p.m. They have no more time. So you will hear a lot of frantic scrambling around and saying, all right, fine, let's throw that away. But yeah, if you want to tune in, it'll be, should be something around the same link that I sent out or just go to the legislature and look for house energy and tech. All right, so last but not least, Alan. Yeah, so the discussion about a CUD association raised some red flags for me because one of the things I think I've learned hearing all the discussions about how broadband gets built out in this state, it seems the evidence is it doesn't work all that well when you try a centralized effort. I mean, the state I think has to admit it's failed over a great many years to really reach the goals that it's set for itself. And I think EC fiber showed me at least that one thing that really does work is a very local effort. So when I hear about a statewide association, I start thinking, no, no, the centralization is something we know has not worked. Why do we want to sort of move in that direction? So it was a really interesting discussion and I'm sure that it'll be interesting deciding what to do. I think the idea of having a statewide association of CUDs is a good one, but I'm not sure the implementation is really gonna work the way that people think. I think the state is gonna force it to be something maybe the association itself doesn't wanna do. And I would worry about that. Thanks, so it was a good meeting. Thanks, Alan. Jeremy, you wanna get the last word? Oh, I just had a question whether it may be more rhetorical than anything, but just wondering if the reason that the statewide efforts failed was because from what I understand, and I could be wrong about this, that they're trying to go through for-profit organizations. And was it a problem with being a for-profit organization rather than a CUD? Because I think that CUDs are a very different thing. We're not worried about pleasing some investor and making sure that our quarterly profits are 8% or whatever. So anyways, that was my thought. Yeah, I like blaming the for-profits. I'm good at it, I'm just kidding. All right, well, on that note, I am going to declare us adjourned. Thanks everybody for attending and we'll see you in two weeks, if not sooner. Thank you everyone. Siobhan, I forgive you for that. Hi, Michael.