 many additions or changes to the agenda? So Chuck, you had mentioned a discussion of the 2020 timeline as something we talked about in the last one. And I think where appropriate with the Business Development Committee or the Communications Committee, we can maybe visit that. Actually, no, I have a 2020 timeline. What was it that you said we were going to talk about? Well, so in the last meeting I had mentioned that we needed to nail down kind of dates and times for that. And at our meeting, we made a decision on how to handle that. But I can give that as part of my whole report. So we'll probably actually then strike the CV5 or 2020 timeline meeting and kind of pack that time into the committee reports back. OK, public comment. I just have one. Did you have a mail someone? No, it's all you. I'm on the USS Vermont Commissioning Committee. And I'm trying to bring these 12 meetings that I go to. But I know it has nothing to do with CV5. But I was wondering if you could bring them to your clerk's office and maybe hang them up somewhere. I'm going to leave them up here before you leave. If you could do that, I appreciate that. And if you're all welcome, it's A-B-L-A-T for submission of A-B-L-A-T. And what we'll do is we'll bring them to us. Kind of an exciting thing. I'll be representing the society structure because I am a sponsor. My shift is the USS trust. It will be fun. We all are welcome to come. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. So any other public comment? OK, Treasurer's report. Nathan is in his newish job right now and said he's swamped. So he couldn't make it tonight. We had previously got the bank account set up. He and I are both now set up on online banking so I can see into the VSEC account still waiting for checks to be delivered and debit cards to arrive. And yeah, that's basically the Treasurer's report on his behalf. He said he would definitely be here the next time, though. All right, next, Clerk's report and statement discussion. Susan, you want to tell us what you've been up to? Yeah, nothing much because I didn't say it. But I went to the post office in Calis and these accounts. And they gave me a hard time about having no proof that I was anybody that has anything to a CV driver. So then I went to the Secretary of State's office. Oops, I got something to sign. And I've been trying to get with Jeremy. He's been trying to get with me for the last week or two. But he finally signed it. So I'm ready to move on this. It's going to cost us $25 to file anything with Secretary of State, even if it's a renewal. I'm supposed this is how they pay Jim Conte. And the post office box has gone up. I'm not quite sure how much. I heard from the rumor, Mel, that it's gone up $10. So we're looking at $98, maybe $120 plus $25. Maybe about up to $150 for the two of them. Because it's all registered and nice little PO box. So I have you as an opening. I have Dave where he is tonight as an opener for Calis. Anybody else want to be on my list? Just let me know. So it's $150 total for the registration and the PO box? I believe it'll be around there. Okay. To me, for the last time, it was a lower amount. It was $92 plus $6 for the keys. And that's gone up at least $10. So I'm going to move that we authorize spending up to $200. Second. On a PO box and registration. Okay. So moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Okay. Motion passes unanimously. So we had $200 to spend there. And then the stipend. We had sort of sent a couple of emails back and forth about that. Right. Right. It would be helpful for what I'm doing here. If I could get some of the stipend that's been budgeted for me. And I believe that's $5,000. There's $5,000 for the treasure and $5,000 for the clerk. I don't have that budget in front of me. Does anybody recall this? Let's see. All right. So the budget that I sent out December 4th, 2019, which is remarked as the final. I'm seeing administration broadly as $10,000. I don't remember that we said it was going to be a $5,000 stipend to the clerk. I thought that was going to be expenses for the clerk. Although I think there's some, I think it would be reasonable to offer the stipend at this point. But I put that out there. Because we discussed the amount of work that's involved with the clerk's position taking minutes. And we would otherwise have to pay a person to do that. Not to mention all the running about back and forth. I think it was in October or November. Add $10,000 to the budget at this expense. Motion to second the discussion. Budget dollar flex and adding colors, blah, blah, blah. Such a time flows through towels, through plastic bags. Jeremy Johnson will work on the science version of mail on town. Operations expense on the operation expense. Right. For clerk and treasurer will be reflected in the budget under board meetings. Operations expense for clerk and treasurer will be reflected in the budget under board administration. The motion is made to add $10,000. But it's not really clear. So this is the point where I would hope that somebody else talks. My talking would be to recommend that Jeremy, you talk and figure out what's an appropriate thing and come back to my organization and vote on it. As opposed to us discussing saying $300 a month, $400 a month, $200 a month. I mean, if anybody has any thoughts of where we should start and if those numbers seem reasonable, then maybe we'll use those as a starting point and then you and I can get together. Well, I said it, a stipend plus include all the expenses. At mileage. Yeah. So I think that's reasonable. So we'll come back in March with something a bit more concrete. Yeah. And I have no objection to retroactive for the first of the year or something. Sure. Okay. I will add that to my, to our list of things to do. Anything else? Yeah. Susan, I wasn't able to add your name to the website in case that helps the post office process. Right. It's right there on the page about the governing board. I appreciate that because when she looked on it, she's put by my name. And, you know, I was kind of embarrassed. She looked at me like I was broke. Trying to open up a PO box. So be careful out there. Okay. Any other questions for Susan? Okay. Moving along business development committee slash consultant update. David is not here. But I assume somebody's going to report back for that committee. No business development committee. I wasn't at that meeting. I wasn't at the wrong location. So. I'm going to nominate Chuck to do the report. All right. All right. Way to throw me under the bus. Come on. Give me just a second. I'm going to look minutes. I actually took the minutes. So. Perfect. Well qualified. I can remember. I saw the agenda. I did not see the minutes. Yes. No problem at all. We are well ahead of time. Yeah. Would you would you like us to go go on to another agenda item while you do that? Sure. Okay. So let's let's jump ahead a little bit to insurance and grants update in sort of a brief back and forth with the Department of Public Service. They were willing and able to waive some of the insurance requirements, but not all of it. So. With Josh's help got a quote from Hickok and Boardman, who is I don't know the underlying insurance carriers. Philadelphia. And to get the process started and so that we could actually then you know, sign the contract with DPS. I went on a limb and I signed the paperwork to get us the insurance. My idea was that if for whatever reason, the board was not willing to pay for this insurance, I will just cover it myself. I've not. It's not been billed yet. I expect to see the bill shortly. But that amount is $504 for a year. And that's the minimum requirement. Not too terribly different than what we're looking for. But the Think Vermont Innovation Grant, it's just that DPS couldn't twist arms hard enough to get them to waive it entirely. So I communicated this to Clay, and that's kind of where we are. So the motion for spending up to $525 for two companies. I would very much like that. But is it in our budget? Is it in our budget? I believe we did put something in our insurance class. And it may still require us to prove that it's in the budget. So let me go back to the budget and I will... Insurance line and it was zero. Oh, wait. But we did put something in. So, but on the other hand, you know, legal or administration, I mean, you could file it under... Yeah, I think we were anticipating when we wrote that budget, like, well, if that got waived, then we don't have to do anything else. So the reasonable end to spend up to a motion to spend up to $525 from the admin budget? Any objection to that? I will second that. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor? Opposed? Abstentions. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. There was one caveat. No, no, no, no. It's in order for us to actually get the insurance. I sent you the language for this. I need to go back to my... to get the actual language that they wanted. Here's the agenda. So the language and I attested to it. I said, we don't have this policy, but I'm going to assert that we will have this policy soon. And it's about auto insurance. So the idea that if, you know, Frank is driving here to visit, you know, to come to a CV Fiber meeting and he gets a car accident, he's not going to say, I'm on CV Fiber business. Therefore, it's an insurance claim against CV Fiber. So the policy that we need to adopt the languages... I'll just make the motion. I make a motion that we adopt the following policy. That CV Fiber requires all board members, volunteers, and contractors using personal vehicles for CV Fiber related activities to maintain personal auto insurance that meets the minimum limits set by the state of Vermont. Well, thank you for blaming me. I was in the second. Okay. All right. So we'll give Frank the second on that one. It would just be your luck, right? I just need to tell you the roads are slippery tonight. Yeah. Okay, so let's adopt this policy fast before he gets in the car at seven. Okay. Any further discussion about this? Appearance with something like this when I was doing some work with the town and this would fit here, but we actually had to bring in proof that we all had insurance as opposed to just saying that we did... Right. They just, I mean, the back and forth that I had with... Someone, Karen? Somebody had... Kathy, Karen. Kathy, that was... She just wanted to essentially hear me say it. She said it was sufficient for me just to respond and say that is our position. If she asks for proof of insurance, I'm sure we can go through and do all that. I mean, I think we're all required to have insurance, a minimum level of insurance on our personal vehicles anyways. Yeah. I just, the only problem comes in the play that there is an incident that sometimes, for some reason, does not have insurance and that would obviously have to go, you know, we would be liable to it. No harm done in just doing it. So, um, well, I mean, if you want to send me copies of all of your insurance, I mean, that just seems like a rather... I was going to say... I thought about just an email out to everybody and asked that they attest that they have our insurance. You've got to reply back. You've got to paper trail and just file it. That is a wonderful idea, Ray. Thank you. Okay, so I will send that out. We'll do that follow-up, but we will still adopt this policy. Anything else on this? I'm noting that contractors and volunteers is in there as well, and we have to make sure that any future contracts that they provide for proof of insurance as part of their contracts. Which, the only contractor that we've had so far, he does indeed have that coverage, so it should be good. Anything else? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. Do we have your motion written down somewhere? Yep, it's right in the meeting agenda. Okay. So if you just go back to there, there's a quote. Uh, Chuck, you still need some more time? No, I'm getting it. Okay, it is your ball. Okay. So at the Business Development Committee, we talked about, we've said a lot of time talking about the inter-isle kickoff. Probably the most notable thing to note from that conversation was that the first regularly scheduled meeting was going to happen this past Thursday. And one of the things we are asking is that no more than four members of the board join to prevent open meeting requirements. But there are, people are encouraged to communicate with David and join if they're interested in doing so. We also went through a lot of the learning of the survey results. This was prior to you all having received them. Of course now you have all seen that data. There's some really interesting things there. And Andrew proposed that we figure out a plan to share those results with the community, which we then took into the subsequent communications committee meeting, which I'll get to in a moment. There are still a few things to do with that data. We need to collate the loan gifts and pre-subscription cross over with the definitely woods and probably wood subscriptions and create a strategy around how we approach people, particularly on the loan and gift front. Then we talked about a number of different grant and loan applications. We talked about USDA grant, FCC bidding on the World Digital Opportunity Fund, Mike spent a fair amount of time talking about just how complex that situation was. The E-rate loan and basically didn't make any decisions around going after those loans, but in particular the World Digital Opportunity Fund because it's not a recurring fund. It is something we do need to make a plan for whenever we're going to try to go after some of that. Around calendar and places for meeting, we agreed to keep the current schedule of the fourth Tuesday of every month unless it intersects with the need for a governance board meeting at which point we'll change it on an ad hoc basis. It will continue to be at the series green, series greens place in Barrie. If any of you had as much trouble finding it as the rest of us did and want to go, let me know I can help you figure out how to find it. Unlabeled. Just a couple of other minor things around we are going to suggest the inter-isle be provided with some suggestions around tour guides, around people who kind of know the Vermont Territory and can help navigate some of that. And then Andrew actually asked if we have inventory for first light. The answer was no. And so we're going to try to figure out how to get some inventory from first light and see if we can also suss out some pricing details from them as well. So that was the business development. Any questions? If a funding opportunity arises, what's the method by which that gets brought to the vacations for business development? That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. Michael, maybe you know that a little bit? If there's a funding opportunity, what's the proper mode by which that should be brought to somebody's attention? Sorry, I have an email. Should I send that to the board? Should it go to the board? Should it go to the communications committee? Probably the business development committee. We discussed this topic before. We have, and I believe, so actually, Siobhan, I think you are going to be the clearinghouse person for... For grants and whatever. And then Siobhan, then, if it's something that looks like we can go after then you can bring that to the business development committee or, depending on the timing, the whole governing board. Yeah. I think you are a grant specialist or something like that, right? Coordinator. I think that's the word we just said. Lovely. Okay. Anything else on business development committee or the consultants? I just quickly say about the RDF. So that FCC fund is only available to electric utilities or ISPs with a record of filing FCC forms for at least two years. So we are not eligible. But we can partner with an operator or an electric utility. And that's what we're looking at. Is that for the first round or the second? We're two rounds, right? Phase one and phase two. It's for all of them. Yeah. So even when phase two comes next year we still won't be eligible at that time. And who do you have in mind that might partner with us? Excuse me, who do you have in mind that might partner with us? You know, Washington Electric. Washington Electric or an operator. Okay. So the Valley Net Waitsville-Champaign Valley or somebody else nearby. So with regard to the consultant I'm not sure what information gets circulated about the discussion with them last Thursday. And again, I'm not sure what you folks were but what was very focused on the map and the identification of existing infrastructure possible connection points and led to a discussion about some possible early priority locations which I don't know how this body is supposed to react at this time to identify some specific connection points. They do recognize the value of working in Washington Electric space because of to use goals and perhaps even their line workers. But again, I'm uncertain whether this body should kind of have a discussion tonight or schedule it for March about what does that mean. Because the extent to which they identify priority is also the location in which they will do more detailed work which will lead us more closely to an understanding of what build out means. And so it is possible that they identify a couple of places and they do very specific and detailed call it engineering and there's probably a better word for it. Description so that we could say it would cost this much to build out 20 miles with this many customers. They could do that. But doing that they wouldn't do all 17 pounds at that level. Is there a decision to be made at this point or could there be in the short term? They have identified five potential regions that might be proposed. I think what they're going to do is narrow it down to one or two or three and then present them with more detail to us which we can then share with the board. But they haven't gotten to that point. Okay and so in terms of timeline do you have a sense that that would be something that we would be able to react to by the next meeting? It's possible. And are they coming at the end of February to look? They're going to be here between this meeting and next meeting with us for two to three days. And thus the tour guides that Chuck was talking about. So does it make sense at this point to sort of figure out who here wants to do the tour guide thing now? Because it seems like if it's going to be talking in the next two weeks it probably makes more sense while everybody's attention is on the business of the district that we should probably figure that out. I was assuming I would come from the committee but if somebody else wants to do that it's fine. I mean if the business development committee feels like they have this covered then I think that's great. But Susan said she's willing to help you with Woodbury. Okay thanks. My expectation was that they were going to present us with several sustainable alternatives based upon take-up rates and other kinds of things. And what I'm hearing I think is that somehow we're going to have input into that and my concern is putting the thumb on the scale okay I'm from Northfield and dammit we had 235 people respond to that survey more than anybody else in you know that isn't the way it should be done. I'm waiting for those sustainable alternatives and a rationale for why this one of that won't you go first. My sense of it is by next meeting we may be able to present their recommendations. That's a really early. Well it's not going to be the complete study but they're preliminary findings that they've already created maps with David Healy's great assistance showing densities showing where it where it doesn't overlap with cable where it does overlap with WEC and so forth and they've narrowed it down and they're working with the very important assumption that the department expects us to be revenue neutral or cash after three years and so they recognize they can't go to a sparse area and they can't go to a cable rich area and that's kind of what we all figured out all along and so they're narrowing down to places there may be only one or two spots that actually fits that bill but that's what they're trying to do and they've done a lot of mapping already and shared some preliminary maps with us. What are their best professional pictures? None of us are trying to influence them most of which we do and we welcome to come observe us not observe us. We're here to observe us. Any other thoughts or feedback about the consultant process or the timeline? Is there anything else to add about the CB5 or timeline for the rest of the year in terms of where the consultant is? It looks like we have maybe an idea for the next month. I think there's a huge amount to add. The whole understanding of finance and do we have a strong sense that where we're going we'll be trying to utilize full availability of Vita funding in our first request or does it make knowing that that may be more challenging to pass their threshold for confidence that we're sustainable or do we try to do a smaller project? And the idea of do we put some significant effort prior to the Vita request in finding other sources of finance such as presubscription such as customer investors and so when those pieces of work line up with the work from the consultant and again I have a list of other topics when does the operator when do we start defining the specific activities of an operator do we do that before we identify an operator for example because I think that's necessary in order to go to Vita to say we actually have a functioning business activity so we need to be very clear about the specific responsibilities of the operator and therefore how that fits into the budget and so a lot of these topics that need to be fleshed out that the work of the consultant can partly be informed but then can also move us in a hopefully a logical path towards certainly the one piece which is the application for the Vita I kind of thought that's what they were going to do for another example I don't think they will is that is what are we going to do about staff do we get a general manager chief financial officer that sort of thing are they going to answer that question they will I suppose if we ask it explicitly and then they can use their experience and work with others but I don't think if we don't ask it explicitly that they will answer it well I mean I think it was in there though because different business models we could be hiring our own employees there could be different approaches and one of the bits of language in there was do we go with an operator that's going to essentially turnkey run this thing I do recall that being in there too I don't know that they're going to answer those questions specifically unless again unless we ask them specifically and you're still early but in order to make sure we're using the consultant optimality to be able to identify all those kinds of questions to make sure that first first part they're on we're making sure we're getting everything but then as we get to that business plan piece again how do we make sure that all of those questions are appropriately laid out so that they can get the most effective answer I think we just need to start collecting what those questions are and if we hand those over to Fred and he says that's not something I can answer that's something you all just have to decide you should know that then yeah then we need to sit down we just need to say here's how it's going to go and probably we need to take those questions and the answers to one are going to lead to answers to the next so we may have to kind of string these in a row not like a Gantt chart necessarily but sort of one leading to the other so things like when do we start talking to people who've taken the survey and expressed an interest in investing I think that's part of this discussion for the 2020 timeline that we need to think about and I think we have the data now I think somebody just needs to start doing that outreach and say you know you said this on the survey because we can't get Vita funding unless we have the match so but if we walk if we don't do that legwork ahead of time then it's really there's really no point for the Vita funding because it's just not so that's exactly the right point we have to line up some financing early but we don't want to sell presubscriptions so we know where we're going we don't want to have presubscriptions and bury it if we're not going to go there or what so that's that point and I think the idea of a small project before the big one is probably not a good idea in my opinion if we ask the next specifically if they can help us with that yeah I think they could but you need a little critical mass if we do a little tiny project if you won't have enough income you raised like 5 different questions yes I did I did write them all down and my head's not good but they were all good questions I have them written down I will type them and circulate them appropriately that just means send them to you yes send them to me that's like the more the business and development committees and David and if we can start collecting these things and decide who's going to answer them and in what order they need to be answered I think open call for anybody who's like how is this going to work if you can drill down to a more specific question about how is this going to work just throw something quick out there about the presubscriptions I think we do presubscriptions in Barry just letting them know that we may not start there but if they want to see it succeed from the get go I think that's reasonable when we get there as long as it could disclosure I guess it's alright because I know I might be 4 or 5 years before they say something it could be longer than that but on the other hand people who want to see the project succeed if it's them putting in you know 12 months of $100 subscription and then when we finally move in there they just don't pay us for that first year whenever eventually we get that far and maybe they'll be out of the $1200 or whatever but if we're going to do these things we need to make sure we have that language so again answering those questions before we go to that next step or if we're doing promissory notes or do then we need to have our legal team going and putting those together before we start saying do you want to give us a loan and we can say here's the paperwork we can go forward with this it would be nice to have those in our pocket we need to use a crowdfunding source to raise that promissory notes really good questions regarding the business consultants project that they're doing and the other ones were things that we should be doing and the things that we should be doing we really need a camp chart of all those things and not be able to kick in with regard to the things inside the business consultant they've been on a statement of work if we didn't put in the statement of work some of those questions that you have hey I'm doing this for $30,000 here's the statement of work but so you know you can kind of push a little bit but don't expect everything but I can say that Fred and Dan and Steve on the phone expressed a lot of flexibility a lot of willingness to work as part of the team they do so I think if they want to make outrageous demands I think they're willing to look at all kinds of questions and I think some of the scope of work was appropriately general and some of these questions are sort of bullet points underneath broader picture things that are going to help them answer those broader questions anyways you may remember their proposal you know so many million dollars and so many dollars and this person is doing this and this person is doing that and once they reach that point it's possible if we're pushing the envelope we should say this is going to affect your hours and mean something else gets lost in which case we're prioritizing the portfolio business yeah I appreciate what we're asking for what the work product we did anything else on business development committee or the consultants Chuck Burt at Gmail Chuck Dot Burt I'm adding you to the little green light so we kind of put some things out there so Ken we're going to get some questions from you maybe we'll get some questions from other folks too so there's a thing to do but something that we brought up presubscriptions, gifts so gifts that's a little green light will help with that as we're tracking these things but having a process and having the documentation and having the legal sense and the legal backing to do these things I think we need to start that now and if there's anybody who's willing to coordinate on the promissory note process you could probably get those drafted soon I have EC fibers to work from that's maybe not the most appropriate thing to just you can't just really copy and paste it it's not quite the same but given that the law firm that we worked with to review the contract was the same law firm that drafted promissory notes for EC fiber I don't know that it's going to be a super heavy lift for them so but if we're going to go after the however many people there's a fair number of people 184 respondents across the district said they'd be willing to do a loan I think somebody needs to be calling every single one of those 184 people and say we're starting at 2500 or whatever and here's the terms thoughts about this I don't see like people like weeping saying I'm going to do it we're going to do it I'd be happy to help if there's 184 maybe if we get four of us we'll split the we'll split the numbers in terms of the actual reach out naturally communications community communications committee sort of things so sure we can get people from there but nailing down the legal contract that will be the loan or being able to I mean so gifts are going to be easier obviously because I think you just have to say we are a non-profit under the IRS section 105 blah blah blah and this is tax deductible and then with the presubscriptions thank you for sending those terms and that would be using those did you send those to the whole board? I think I just send them to you so we could look at maybe in the same request getting the legal contracts for a loan and a presubscription they're going to be similar ones going to be really really simple compared to the other I think it makes sense to start that process now with presubscriptions we have not a rate structure figured out yet that may come out of the feasibility standard because we're going to determine whether you ran it out and we're going to determine some rates at least example ones so maybe we can just say a presubscription credit so if they pay a thousand now that we're just going to we're going to count that as a gift certificate they can then reuse whatever so if they buy a lower tier or a higher tier it's not really we could also have a couple of tiers of presubscription even though they're not exactly tied to what the subscription amounts are that add up to such a credit what's that? so with regard to the loans and grants possibly not the subscription it sounds a little to me like a need for like a preview conference in which somebody as a president we invite whoever wants to come and maybe we do them over the months and we give a presentation about okay here it is we get Q&A we try to answer those questions out of this we develop the frequently asked questions kind of thing maybe we've got the loan papers already there and the grant papers are already there and then we have something to publish and they have something to go back with us making the phone call or whoever we're going to touch these people it's not going to be, may not be the same message and we're going to need some continuity and uniformity here on all this yeah we'll have a script that people are calling you know it'd probably be helpful if we had some practice beforehand and doing this invitation bringing people in yeah it's in the spring usually the old motorcycle VC raised you guys know about that yeah has anybody ever done that bitch but I'll talk to you afterwards I think it was a really good idea it's hard to figure out a fair amount of effort I was just trying to think of other things that you could tie in with I like the idea that it raises visibility and really it gets maybe some other people in the community and really engages people and it's an event you can publicize too I just think that I was just trying to think of things that we could latch on to every north mentor or whatever they are, some of those VC dudes over there they run a thing called Road Pitch yeah it's called Road Pitch but they do the motorcycle around and you know you do the pitches and everything like if we could even tie into something like that because those are the kind of people that you probably want to get in front of you know especially if we get lucky some of them are in the audience that might be the right type of people I don't expect that why don't you brought a bunch of people into the room they can ask us questions for actually able to think about it yeah well I mean it just raises everything it raises visibility and rather than five of us talking to all these different people giving these questions in it'd be nice to kind of do this so I've done I've done the Road Pitch I've done community meetings and I've done hold calls and the most successful was none of those three the most successful was Direct Mail with a follower phone call so get the script figured out into a pitch on paper send it to somebody who said yes I'm interested and then follow it up with a call after we do have an advertising budget at least that was my experience I'm not opposed to doing the other three I don't expect that if we had this meeting for example someone's going to just go up there and start signing okay I expect that it's going to be a follow up phone call with that and that'll be the warm touch but we're at 18 towns and so we're going to need several meetings because people aren't going to travel from one end to the other unless it's human we have to go 65 miles to go to Costco for friends people are used to doing this I just came from Canada but would you go to a meeting on a week day night in a town so maybe up in if we held it up in Cabot we hold it down in the center of the district so would you drive it to Montpelier on a week night to have people ask you to give the money if I wanted to learn more about it and provide you a look yeah I'd travel to Montpelier to find out if I'm willing to give you a billion bucks or $100,000 or something short answer yes so why don't we combine these two direct mail that has the pitch that has a meeting where Q&A can happen like you said and then a follow up phone call before and a follow up phone call after that's a lot of touches I think we'd learn something from the meeting before we set out on the mail I think this is going to be 10 frequently asked questions that we may not know in advance so how would you advertise the meeting? well we have a mail list we know who said that they were right just the existing mail well we know who they are they'd be excited I like your idea I think that there's a bunch of us here more than 18 and I think because it's like drop the idea that we're on board and say okay what would we want to know and then come up with a mailer a one page mailer so the 180 or whatever it is people that said y'all load the money just send it to them directly and invite them to the meeting in the mailer but he answered some of the questions about what our potential rates might be like how are we going to make money if you're going to loan us money we have to pay it back so how are we going to do that and we don't know but I think if you just call people or you just put an ad up someplace on front porch form or wherever and say we're having a meeting you're not giving them enough information for them to say I should go all you have is a tick mark on their form that they sent back the data and the improvement okay so we did I'm just we also did I've done this in Canada for trails where we've done community just to draw it was really a visibility pull people in kind of thing so I like the base concept I do think it's good but quite interesting so I think it's something we probably should figure out how to channel into a smaller group of people they might fit into the calendar discussion I don't know you know because you're also going to want to time this we're getting stuff back from these guys we actually had something to talk about we have real information we have a compelling need now to have money because we've got to go to the meet along it's all going to kind of start to one thing we do know is this isn't a one-off this is a campaign we're going to be doing this for the next couple of years and so let's go there crap together so one thing I've been thinking about doing since last spring and I talked with Josh about it it's doing like a a coal town thing like at the Orange Town Hall they just have an informational day it's like an open house and they can stop by and I would mention that I have food and I would put food out because that's going to get people in the door and they'll start asking questions especially in a town like Orange where money is a little dear and you know offering food and if it's on a week day on a weekend daytime they can go play and run around around the clerk's office the way they do so the parents will have they don't have to worry about childcare in the evening or getting their kids fed or something like that that's what I was picturing is that just Q&A and trying to raise visibility within Orange and maybe doing a co-thing with Berry Town because they've got a little bit more population than us a district-wide listening tour maybe we have a similar one up in you know Marshfield and Cabot or Plainfield and Calis something closer because my constituents are not likely to drive into off Hill York for a meeting like this they just won't but if I were having a barbecue at the Town Hall they'd be there so it sounds like we're not really ready to make any decisions tonight then I would like to make a motion that the Communications Committee will come up with a strategy and proposal for the larger board on how to handle this for board approval in a subsequent meeting. Second. Any further discussion? Does do you want to hold off then on doing the legal background work for the loan? I think the legal background work is helpful we might as well get that knocked out and then we'll have it when we are ready to actually go to the public. Any other feedback on what we should be assigning or passing along to the Communications Committee? I can easily do a class of service based on our budget to let you know what kind of rates we should be looking at like the monthly fees that's going to come out of the feasibility study that's a concrete part of the deliverable and depending on our operator it's going to be different. Anything else on Chuck's motion? All in favor? Opposed? Abstentions? The mover is abstaining so that passes unanimously with one abstention. Great, thanks Communications Committee. If you sign me the promissory though I'll take the first pass editing and let me know who our contact is for legal. And you will own that? So we should if you're going to own that legal process we are going to have to be willing to spend some money. I've not gotten the bill from them yet for doing the contract review maybe they just did it for free which is possible but they quoted me an amount at the beginning it was like $300 I just haven't seen a bill yet. So do we want to authorize spending money on legal? Given that it's in the budget or do we want to wait and hear what it's going to be before we proceed it seems a bit you want to wait until we have up until we have a bill? You're going to quote them I mean I can always do some preliminary work It would be helpful if our treasurer would at least send out some kind of statements every month I mean I'm looking at an old budget here that's at least three months old. I can send an email out with some information about the current bank account balance and I will have to see if I have access to who has access to that the non-profit online I think I do, Nathan does and what was that thing called? The website where you could go and donate from there Snowflake? No I think it was Snowflake or something like that whatever Snowball Something wintry So Nathan has access to Snowball and should be able to see how much is in there and we need to resolve getting that money out into the bank account because we're going to be spending it quickly soon Did we need to be creating any documentation for people that anybody get the threshold of giving I had a template letter that I sent out the last time we had donations quarter one last year and we could reuse that again if you'd like I'll send you that since you guys are going to be doing outreach Yeah, and I'll need a list of donors as well The letter and donor list I have another point to make about presubscriptions Sure Presubscriptions are selling a service to somebody They expect to get that service That money gets accounted for as kind of in a little escrow It's not necessarily escrow but it could be It's really not a way to raise money to build things We can't use it for that It's a restricted fund because it gets us on our way to having enough subscriptions to make it work But I think if we're talking about raising money to match Vita that should not be in that bucket It should be the promissory notes and the contributions and other grants What we've done in the past is what we did presubscriptions we literally did an escrow We were less of a setup And that money didn't get spent until there was service available and then we provided money to spend it I don't know the rules in Vermont but a lot of states have a lot of very particular rules about how you hold that money as well so we'll need to look into that It's not earned until a good service You certainly can't recognize that it's revenue or anything like that But there are also usually special requirements like California for example I'm pretty sure has a limit on the amount of time you can hold that money before you're expected to provide that service So we'll just want to make sure we're up to stuff on Vermont So our intrepid treasurer is not here so I'm going to assign this one to him to find out He is the accountant, the finance guy and having him do the background and looking at if we get presubscriptions what's what are all the permutations of what can we and can't do with them So that goes back to maybe we don't want to get presubscriptions from areas where we're not worth a certain amount of years If that's the case Yeah, so maybe they just be willing to do a small loan then Another thought is the group, the co-op that formed the girlings that tried to buy girlings and telecom but failed they raised their money on milk money I don't know whether they use promissory notes, membership or what but we might want to look at that's fairly public I think we can look at that I'm friendly with the people around the milk money so I can get some insight too but I think we can just look on the website to see stuff and we may be able to use a similar approach to what they did It's a different objective we're not offering pieces of our CUD Yeah, if you would follow up with the milk money folks and look at what's what's required I think that would be valuable because I mean any I think any options I mean going directly to the people who said that they were going to support us with loans or something but going on milk money that's also much more visible it's much more outreach and maybe there's folks that are not in our district that just want to support like keep ET local there was plenty of people who invested in that who were not in Burlington So I personally our King and Figer had a milk money campaign it failed it didn't raise enough so I returned the funds to everybody who invested So percentage wise how close did you get Low Well it would be I think it's worth exploring Yeah Successful grant funding requires a fair amount of funding It does Yeah We got investors from outside of the region but most wanted can I get service if I can't now Okay Anything else on business development committee or consultant stuff Still you, communications committee Right I'm going to go quickly because we're a little behind here The primary thing we talked about in the communications committee that everyone should be aware of is all of the various channels that we have as well as channels for maybe not exercising right now such as print publications and resources that say BT Digger in 7 days and so forth and really what it came down to is we decided that we needed to assemble a bit of a strategy around who we're trying to talk to why we're trying to talk to them and then we can back our way into what is the appropriate mechanism to talk to them and so we'll be putting together some proposals on that for the broader board to take a look at once we agree internally on what we think the best way to go on that is the other detail that might be relevant to folks is just around meeting times because the business development committee and communications committee share a number of members we're going to piggyback those meetings on a back to back basis so we'll be holding those meetings on the 4th Tuesday of every month again subject to whether we exercise our need to use it as a broader board we have the series greens office in berry until hopefully some day we find fair enough oh sorry one last detail and that is as part of putting together that strategy we're also going to try to make it such that we act as a resource for everybody here to provide messaging so if you have a need to provide messaging out to the community we should be able to assist with messaging that's either pre-vetted or has been constructed from other pre-vetted claims that we are comfortable as a body making so I would say be communicative about your communications needs just wanted to piggyback on that a little bit my primary care physician at CVMC he's a UVM family is piloting telehealth so I can do online with him and he's trying to get the others in his presence to do it too and so that's coming, it's here in central Vermont now so that's another little pancake turner that we can slip under people in badminton while we're talking about the hospital they also spend a fair bit of money installing network connections to the people who do coding at home so they save money by not having office space and these people just do that from home but they pay for internet connections to be extended to them in some cases where there's not cable or not a decent connection otherwise so this might be a good anchor partner as well and their coders live all over the place safe travels Frank I'm sort of lost here because we talked about a lot of things but seems still pretty cloudy, amorphous, etc there must be some time in which we want to have some money in the bank that we got from others and do we have an idea of when for sure we have an idea I think we should have an idea of when we're going to need money rather than saying oh I guess we needed that last month or last week or last year well I mean in terms of the project that we're currently working on I think we have we're pretty solid on how we're funding the project with interisle I think that's completely clear but that's going to use almost all the money pretty much well we have a fair bit of a fair bit of USDA funding that's available to us for these parts of this project too that's something that we pay for first and we get reimbursed so these bigger ticket things like if we do a four million dollar project we're going to need four hundred thousand dollars so do we need that to spend that not really that's really going to be part of the project that's going to be spent over the course of the next year or year and a half and I'm hoping maybe sort of suddenly elbowing towards Chuck that part of that strategy is going to be how does that cash flow look month to month or for the next year you know when is it that we actually need to have not presubscriptions but when do we need to have some gifts when are we going to start running into those obstacles where we just don't have the money in the bank to pay our bills but beyond that you need to I think you need to be able to tell somebody who's an investor we want your money to date tomorrow or the next day we want to give them a date that the money it isn't something that's how you all give your money and then you never hear from them and you sort of need to tie them down and so there's a date not a failsafe date but that there's a date that we want to start having income and by this date we want to have an assuredness anyway from reliable people that will have this amount I mean isn't that what you pretty much like you said you gave all your money back because on one project because it didn't meet the requirements and we don't have that I think to raise point this kind of comes to the idea of it would be really helpful if we had sort of had a Gantt chart if you would of some of the milestones that we know we have coming ahead of us so for example what is the deadline on the Vita application process and how are we working backwards from that deadline what are the other grant opportunities so Jeremy to push back a little bit on what you said I actually think figuring out the potential cash flow projections and forecasting might be something that's best done by business development but I could see it maybe being a collaboration between the two since there's a reliance on outreach so business development decides more about the timelines and communications is more involved then in the strategy for meeting those that makes sense we built a budget based on some assumptions we felt like we're going to get a $4 million loan for Vita it's going to be basically a line of credit not all of it up front we're going to be drawing down on it the $400,000 is that a match that was required up front or is that something that we have to be able to meet so we need $100,000 in September for grants loans or whatever and then the following March in order to kind of the burn rate on the $4 million is going to be this and it's probably going to start out slow and then it's going to accelerate or something and so we need to kind of know where we think we're going so we can do this other part is there something else besides a matching fund for Vita that we need to get some funds because for operational requirements or something else studies, campaigns, legal support so the budget for the three year budget might be a helpful exercise want to write it no somebody does I don't know what the burn rate is we're going to need an enormous amount of money in one year which year is that this year we're going to apply to Vita when the business plan is over we're not going to apply if we don't have any money it's a match do we need $400,000 up front I think so if I was Vita I wouldn't say oh you can raise $100,000 to match I would say you need to have all you need to show us that you're going to be able to do $4 million so otherwise they won't grant us I think we need to know the answer to that question and we certainly would have in our budget they were getting $4 million we put in there what we thought we were going to spend yeah that's true but I believe that even if it's $1 million we've got to raise that $100,000 before we go apply to them that's soon this summer give me a date July 1 okay now we need to do a campaign right away yeah right away that's and the answer to that question is whether or not you can do $4 million for $1 million attempts give us $1 million this year $1 million and $2 million we should ask them he did an answer but I think that the time being we should assume we're going to need $400,000 for an assumption that you can get $400,000 anyway and I'm assuming they can because hey they did it already down south so they got a lot more than $400,000 yeah I don't need about 7 years trying right but that was 7 years I will follow up with Yun Yong and ask her specifically when is that match needed when we apply for it my instinct was that yes it was needed at the time of application I'm looking at the application now they're asking essentially asking for your bank statement 10% match yeah 10% match I should say the way it's phrased is they will the $4 million can be up to 90% of the project and the other 10% has to come from somewhere so it doesn't end up being exactly $400,000 but that leaves room for interpretation in terms of maybe just show that you can get the funds over time of the project and that's where I need to follow up with Yun Yong especially if we also have some in kind so in kind could contribute to some of that I'm not completely sure that's going to be the line share so just on the constructive brainstorming does anybody know of an idle very talented person who knows how to do business finance do we want to create a position like our clerk or our treasurer to create an actual somebody can actually focus on this full time rather than us talking in circles we have somebody who's already offered in kind time to do this as part of our USDA application and we are not Stan at Valley Net so we just need to ask him because this is does something go with that as soon as you go yeah because to me this is an operational executive administrative whatever role it's something that somebody has really got to focus on and present us with ideas and things because we can all talk but none of us have bandwidth or time or the ability to follow through on execution I guess I just I'm sitting here going who do I know so it's got to be willing to do this or do we even advertise it's just something to think about we don't have to resolve it right now we've got to move beyond kind of whatever today so my marching orders that I have for myself here is following up with Vita to find out what the deal with the match is and finding out if we can have successive applications if we can go a bite at a time although I am with Michael on this one I think that we kind of really need to go for the gusto and the big projects first we should go for a USDA real development grant and a NBRC grant and propose that we're going to use those funds as match into the Vita and then we have much less money to have to raise from the public what was the second grant you said NBRC that was something we had talked about last year but I think we weren't ready yeah we weren't ready now we are and those grants are like in May so the timing is good the grant that Tom just sent me information out is up to $10,000 I don't know if you agree let's ask for that but we applied for this last year we didn't get it but they're asking the same kinds of questions and doing the same kind of thing apparently they liked our application last year but we've got a more solid application this year because we can talk about the legislation that's changed so we can work with LEC in our ongoing relationship with LEC and all of that so somebody needs to own the process of applying for the NBRC in a trivial process well well well I mean so somebody has to be okay some of the funds we have that might be the way to do it I don't so Jerry did the majority of the USDA Rural Development loan last year I wrote the thing for Mott loan David wrote the the big the DPS grant so it's tiring there's a lot involved again if I didn't have a full-time job and other stuff going on too I could probably do this but I think somebody needs to be the tip of the spear whether that's a person that we hire somebody to do it that's what I was kind of giving and that already can be a volunteer that's what we're doing in kind we treat it as a kind of treasurer clerk and at least give it as a kind of thing and then graduate but I don't know that might take a lot effort in and of itself it's not easy it's good to think about it and think of who you know that might so let's let's kind of pitch this over the fence timing and about whether we need to invest in somebody to do this or if we think that we can use our collective free time to go after another USDA grant another Northern Borders grant I know less about the NBRC process that's easier than USDA good USDA we can get up to 100,000 NBRC we can get up to 250,000 that's 350 and we have 30 you know we don't have to if we can get those grants that's going to be the latest we're going to do so I've never even seen these grant applications but are they onurus, are they 52 pages USDA is onurus NBRC is less so yeah our grant application aside from all the Selenius PDFs and things that had to be signed the actual application where you fill in the numbers is probably about 5 pages and then there's the narrative and the explanation which was 20 maybe more to get this into some sort of a cantaloupe when is the Vita application when we apply for it okay when is the NBRC do with the USDA it's typically in May it's typically in May but hasn't been announced yet when will they decide because when they decide is when we have the money that's matching for the Vita thing NBRC is not part I review them they're decided in August and then the governor is announced usually in early September and it sounds like Vita is about 12% and then that assumes that we've done this and as a fall back on that we've actually started the campaign and Mike did some grants at least come up with 200,000 between now and September and we and they should be done they should be parallel tracks and if we find ourselves at some point we're like oh we got a couple of really big loans from individuals and we hit that 400k then I think we can start applying earlier so we're going to be a grand person about 10k I have no idea any grand person we retain they're going to spend an awful lot of time with very few people gathering, sucking out the information from you the time that you would have spent actually doing the grant sucking all the information out and putting it on the forms I don't know why they're paying this person and that seems like a critical path forward and so advertising the front porch forward to begin with and something coming out of the communications committee real soon that's not like a plan or what well it sounds like something to give to the business development committee to take that, chew on it and flush it out, Siobhan are we willing to consider a grant writer who is not located in the world? I would prefer if they were here but I mean this still has to get done I have several friends who used to be grant writers all around the country and I'm asking them if they know how we can go about doing this but there's the possibility one of them may say well you know I could do that they're retired but I don't know if you can get a sense of their interest level if they're willing to do that especially knowing that it's kind of just a discreet project we have the we basically have the information it's going to be, you're right it's like sort of massaging it into the right format writing the narrative that expresses what we're doing I mean it's not it's not hard, it's tedious yeah so just for a second can we go back and just look at the 180 people I would imagine that I'll lend you money they weren't told that they were going to get 8% or 4% they said they didn't lend money but I bet you there's 4 people on that underneath that would lend money if they had some reasonable idea about the interest rate so you have an idea I mean you could do that tomorrow I mean money that earns money is what people that's what they do with the money and that's capitalism right so part of that part of that process is me getting the promissory note example that I have to fill who's going to look at that and then pursue with legal counsel what that looks like they should have a pretty good sense of what the rates are I mean my guess it's going to be like 7 does that seem reasonable Michael plus or minus I just seem to remember we had this conversation that's pretty high risk I think that's where EC5 was in 6.25 or 7 and then they bought them back when they were able to get but there was some interest payment to firm at times so that you could establish cash flow you could actually have revenue to pay these things back so yes these would all be things we need to package in there yeah I mean we're not going to know what those are until I mean the promissory notes they're unsecured loans so if things go poorly they don't get their money back so if there are 4 people and each of them has 50,000 or the date people and each of them has 25,000 I mean $50,000 to 7% does that have to change so it's better than you can get more or less anywhere else and even though yeah it's risky well that's how they make the money so no riskier than the stock market so we're going to borrow money and pay for a matching fund to borrow money $4 million for which we're going to pay an interest rate and actually the end of that rainbow is that it's going to be retired and borrow money because this is supposed to be kind of a bridge loan and in about 3 or 4 years from the time of the onset we will go out and finance that $4 million but we're going to refinance it with cheaper money that's a revenue bond and we're going to retire the Vita loan we'll retire this expensive 7% promissory note and hopefully be then stable and then we know a much cheaper 3% or 4% or whatever the bond rates are at that point and then yeah I expect every year there will be more as we expand and we'll just keep doing this Mike? Remember sure if somebody somehow has like that buy my boat you know if somebody has like a second degree connection on LinkedIn to him or something give him a call and say I can give you 7% just drop us a million he wouldn't go for 7 but you know it seems like we need that role and I just don't think we're going to do it with committees you know I really do think we need that role money is the most fundamental important thing for us right now and we need somebody to like execute this role you know and because without it we're going to fail that's just my key role I don't have an answer how to fill that role because we don't have any money so that's what Stan was Stan was he was on board I mean this is just for Washington County mental health services it's a great job description it's one paragraph without saying it it's exactly what we're looking for would you forward that to the board? thanks this is food for thought so I don't know if you all heard what Michael just said you want to say that again? sure he was Stan Williams who is now the CFO of Ballinette and has always been I guess and so he was the for free guy that we're looking for and that's the guy you and me is kind of offering us the previous arrangement in the USDA grant and he's already is there a reason not to the reason not to might be that he comes with the strings of Ballinette so if we have if we aren't ready to choose Ballinette as our operator it's kind of sleazy to ask him to do this and or he might not want to do this without some understanding that it would go to Ballinette so it's complicated so it was an upfront conversation that says we're not going to talk about easy fiber and us working together we just need his free services in order to get us going and he may be willing to do some of that and I think he's well no he might be generous enough to say yes I'm not sure we would have gotten this far without their help frankly and he committed to as part of our application for the USDA loan to a certain number of hours of his services at $200 an hour or something like that whatever his billable rate is so I expect he would hold up his end of the bargain but that gets us this far I think the amount of time that he put in at a comparable time for easy fiber at the beginning of their process was rather a lot more so he has the education yes I mean it would be him kind of doing the same thing that he's been doing for 10 years but if we wanted him to do more which he would the expectation is that that's going to be a transition to us hiring easy fiber hiring valley net as our operator which they have already expressed an interest in going there but that's again chickens and eggs and consultants that still need to do their work and I'm just wondering if we can ask the consultant what are our options do they see a good reason to not go with valley net I mean because I don't see that you know but if they look at it and they say yeah valley net is probably going to be one of your better options go for it you know I mean I don't know so I think there's a lot of people that think that I think the part of their deliverables part of the consultants deliverables are doing that evaluation that's going to come out of the report and it's going to come out of the report in terms of what the costs are so again we find ourselves constantly in the situation of chicken and egg you know we have this question that if we just made a decision and said go with it then we're closing a bunch of other doors which could be unsatisfying but it can move us forward what if we say look there's no chicken so there's no egg this is what we need from you just up front which of you can basically say that to him we need your services and we're not promising absolutely anything because we're not that far down the road and what this work is getting us down the road there's no so we haven't fought a chicken or an egg yet it's not a it's kind of positive that is a possibility but another thing is there are other people besides Sam Williams who have those skills I was just when I commented I said well E.C. Piper had someone on their board who had those skills well we may or may not but I don't think we do so we need to shop for somebody and it could be that guy but what if he's available tomorrow and everybody else is available too much later I mean we so I will I will reach out to him and see what see if I can figure out the contours and parameters of what he's willing to do and not commit us to going forward with this I know he's philosophically and ValleyNet and E.C. Piper philosophically behind what we're doing they're supportive they want to do the right thing by us they want to do the right thing by improving broadband in Vermont so how much work we can get out of him I expect it's going to look a lot like the number of hours that he committed to for the USDA grant so 10 or 20 so at $200 is not a lot of money no but but if we can get him to do these things for us that we need him to do so let me just put this out there what are the questions what are the jobs or the tasks that we need to put in front of him to get move forward with some of these things to write the grant for the NBRC and the USDA he will not I think it's part of my assignment here some of these questions some are appropriate for somebody like Stan to provide us early answers to as we need to go for discussion some go to the consultant but that's part of how I'm tackling tomorrow's assignment is to lay them all out so Stan would help us put the numbers together he would help us answer questions I am very strongly convinced and please somebody convince me otherwise I'm pretty convinced he's not going to write a grant for us write a grant so when you mentioned Stan before I said to Chuck I said well if pretty occasionally he's going to be developing the campaign for loans and grants or whatever Stan might be a great guy to talk to about their effort what they went through that would inform us to develop our campaign ok now that's a good ask we were thinking about it so let's take those things collect them and send them to me that's 24-48 hours what are those things that we can ask him to possibly do with that time as part of the USDA grant or maybe even slightly outside of it like I said he's willing to help I think I think even just having all of the needs organized in such a way there may be those of us among this body who could tackle pieces of it here and there if we were to divide and conquer and so I think if we just had an organized plan as to here are all the boxes we need to check that would be a valuable starting point but somebody so this is true and again it's not it's the it's not a difficult assembly it's just a long process you still need someone some one person that's going to be the person who goes and says alright Jared you can give me this information ok Chuck can you give me this information and to actually put it in there and type it up and assemble and stitch it together that's the person that we're looking for and if somebody's willing to volunteer to do that then yeah then we could all each take an individual part and do that and Jerry did that with the USDA grant and I eventually I did some of the other parts and kind of massaged it signed a bunch of the paperwork and then set us up in SAM and all this all that bureaucracy so yeah I know someone who would do it between between five and ten K I don't know if she's available she's very busy but she's no telecom ok so let's keep let's keep her in our pocket and as you're doing your outreach I was just trying to remember one line that Michael had said for the World Development Grant and the MBRC grant they're both due somewhere around May and the USDA is awarded in July August and the NBRC is awarded in August, September yeah I don't care about the awards so much well it's got to do with when you apply for the yeah I can understand that but as far as organizing and getting the grant together it's due by May yeah letter of intent usually six to eight weeks before so they know that she'll come pretty soon on the NBRC the USDA announced it came already would you forward that I didn't get the letter I can get it though but somebody just emailed me and said hey did you know that so I saw it do you remember which which grant it's called? World Business Development for construction rather than for feasibility like we did previously right now it's free and it's business oriented so you have to it's job oriented is this a business? we are a business but they want to know how many jobs we're in and generate we can do it but somebody's got to be a good grant writer to massage that language this was the same grant that we applied for last year we just had a different shape than what we'd be applying for this year so are we looking for a cab wrangler or stuff basically that we're early for somebody that knows everybody and says you had that job you had that job and when you done give it to them it's more like you just have to be willing to do the work and assemble the grant I mean I think sending broadcasts out to the whole group I mean it's again just collecting the pieces and putting them together into the right format so like I said just somebody who can sit down and spend 30 hours probably cab wrangler has to write I prefer this experience of a telecom experience that somebody coordinating well but they are a cab wrangler I mean they're not working alone no no no they have to suck the information out of us but they'll do it more efficiently than others so you don't think then that this person that works for easy fibers or not easy fiber but is that person is not a cab wrangler he's the one that's going to help us he's one of the cats yeah well that makes a lot of sense there's a RBDG rural business development grant applicant workshop this Thursday so I have a deadline of March 31st for the Northeast Kingdom Reap Zone part of the RBDG and hopefully the one for our region is later but we'll have to find out but the applicant workshop should anybody decide to go and do this is 2 to 4 pm this Thursday Green Mountain Powers Conference Room at 17 Green Mountain Drive in Montpelier 2 pm and it's a grant writing thing? it is an applicant workshop not a grant writing thing it essentially explains the process of applying for it I think I mean I'm not the person that's the thing don't think you're the person can you write coherently? can you write with cats? yes I have no cats I will go if I can great 2 to 4 pm I might be able to go so what's that 777 17 Green Mountain Drive okay next next to the Department of Labor and Department of Liquor oh okay oh yeah the liquor department it's the warehouse yes the warehouse yeah this is this is going to be roughly the same process I think as what we went through last year so David and Jerry and I do have some familiarity with it and we have some of our previous paperwork much of which will be the same so I'm encouraged if some other folks can go and familiarize themselves with the process too okay so we're getting towards the end here anything else communications community any other open questions that we need to make sure we either answer tonight or we get answers to at some point fatigue is setting in yeah can we work on what they expect the build out is going to take in terms of year 2 year 1 budget this year what kind of 150 miles a year or whatever that number is I hear Greg talking about some assumption 100 to 120 for 4 million okay so can we what is our expectation for that's a consultant deliverable that's part of the strategy that's how we get to cash flow positive in 3 years that we have to have that or Vita is just going to say it's nice that you want to build a bunch of fiber but yeah so we should hopefully have something much more concrete as part of not as part of the feasibility study necessarily but as part of the business plan that we should have in hand in May that's my I mean unless I misread the application that's our misread the RMP okay check in meetings those regular check in meetings with the consultants the first the kickoff as I understand it is Thursday right was or was last Thursday last Thursday was the first regular check in the kickoff and we're exchanging emails so it's is there a report out can there be a report out on there while there was I mean yeah we already covered we covered that in the previous business development committee consultant update it talked about where Fred was what he was working on and the some of the we're looking at soliciting for tour guides for Fred when he comes to visit in the next two weeks is that something clear I wasn't sure if they have like if they've drawn out what they're processing documentation like this is our plan of attack and if there's feedback it's going to come back don't worry about it we're going to cover stuff but most we told them we want to talk to them in two weeks and we wanted to talk to them in two weeks and we wanted to see incomplete maps just wherever they're at every two weeks and they're doing that do you want to see that Tom? yeah I think we should all see that so I'm I understand the desire for everybody to see sort of these little milestones and these little tidbits coming in here I'm afraid of the cooks in the kitchen scenario I agree there shouldn't be anything like that so could business development committee could you just package up just a brief summary of what the first two meetings have come to and deliverables we can just look at them expecting that we're not going to communications no business development committee yeah for the next meeting yeah sure it just seems relevant should we build out the road map for the next three years and know that's already being worked on by the consultants and just having that general understanding of what's going on well I mean the RFP and the statement of work the scope of work spells out what they're supposed to do and if you would like to see that we can probably bring it again but it would be nice to have the statement of work and then us knowing each meeting what are those concrete steps that they've taken how far have we gotten taking those boxes summary of progress that's a great way of putting it cool without those dicey details that cause controversy correct okay we're only going to bury him until you guys good one hilarious I have a request to the communications committee looking forward to town meeting we talked about kind of unified messaging most of us will probably be doing a report at town meeting so if possible it would be great to have not a written report but just some bulleted for what it's worth I had to write a report from my town's packet which was already due a couple weeks ago so I am happy to share that with the group in case you are not on the same wavelength thanks I'll share that with the entire board because I intend to give a little presentation on the floor we have a weird thing where we have a pre-town meeting where we do the presentations and then the actual town meeting I'll have to do it twice I'll do it once pre-town meeting here and then I'll do it once a town meeting there that's okay let's move on shall we so I did insurance and grants updates I think we're good with that CV February 2020 timeline got subsumed by the previous discussion we are at actually basically on time approval of January meeting minutes we sent those out thank you Susan for your work on that move approval okay moved and seconded any feedback or any other commentary on the minutes as presented I only had one and that was on the first page actually I'm sorry two my first name is spelled wrong again on the third line treasurer's report will be tabled to the next meeting Jeremy arrived and then was misspelled and the second line under results update and that should be just end with an N rather than an M actually it occurs again later on there as well which one so okay so that should be an HAN HAN there as well and then my name is just misspelled up there okay bottom of page two okay so let's so we can just we don't even have to do this a friendly amendment we can just make sure that the names are spelled right not that I mean that posterity is going to care right all those future historians looking at broadband and Vermont yeah yeah okay any further discussion all in favor opposed abstentions motion passes unanimously okay round table pass I was at the legislature last week presenting about broadband in the Northeast Kingdom and I heard a really interesting thing from an important legislator there's probably going to be more of either money so when that 11.8 million gets used up it's a good chance they like the idea of this thing and they want to keep going I'm retiring this year and I haven't picked what I want to be working on after I retire probably yeah all in favor all right but it's not going to happen until September or January depending on what our financial advisor tells us keep that in your pocket congratulations I got nothing either one or the other pass pass well we get done before the Iowa results are reported yeah the conversation we had last time about Starlink and how that might be one of our closest competitors what they might charge and I was saying like $80 a month being a member being floated around are they throwing out speeds? yeah not that I was a reliable member that I was a fan paying speeds but just where would we compete if we're in the same ballpark it looked like they were doing $200-$300 as an installation cost and then there's description after that but back to that well once we get set up they don't have to have the same price and we can have that be one of ourselves it sounds like the sweetspot whether or not not as much it would still be high latency is what? it says not acceptable latency it's 25 25 in microsecond 25 millisecond latency? I don't get that on DSL well so 25 millisecond latency to the satellites and back however they then backhaul it we can sell $600-$1200 here $600-$1200 for lower target? $23,000 I don't have a starlight question no anyways hypothetically it could be much less and we'll see if they can deliver in which case if there's anything like it's anywhere between where what we would offer and what satellite would offer I still think they're large we're local we're local anything else Tom? I want to make sure that the attendance is signed by everybody everybody signed up on the attendance I think it's over by Jerry sorry okay and so keeping up with keeping the legislature informed also I've been asked to present so Karen at the league of cities and towns a local government day is this Thursday and I've been scheduled with House Energy which are the folks that put together the bill that we're taking advantage of that Vita money and was that where you testified to so they're going to hear from us again or hear from another one of us I should say and so hopefully we will and so we'll continue to reiterate what we're doing and that putting more money into that Vita fund would be valuable especially seeing as how many new communications union districts are likely to be coming online next month so I think Rob Fish who postponed our meeting with us until next month he's going to have a lot of people contacting him a lot of stuff going because they're going to be asking so those of you that were here in the first three or four meetings hopefully it won't be quite like that but the growing pains they're going to be going through the same I want to be exactly like that well because Montpelier is not one of the towns in their district just saying I got that going wrong and on that note refreshingly I moved to be a jury