 It's 6 o'clock. I'm going to call the October 20th, 2020 special meeting of the CV fiber governing board to order. I've started the recording. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? A couple. Yeah, 1st, Tim and I talked a little bit about this, but I'm not sure if there's any sort of a shared file storage that we have that multiple people have access to where we can have all of our data in 1 place. Also, as sort of a backup, you know, in case someone has an accident. You know, we can not lose files. And then the other thing would be approval of the October 13th, 2020 minutes. Okay, and discussion of file storage. Okay, yeah, we'll put those. We'll put those at the end to check if we have time. Yeah. Sorry, I thought you were calling for comments on file storage. Nope. No, we're going to we're going to put that at the end. I'll hold my time. Okay. Any other anything other to add to the agenda? Okay. Moving right along, uh, Siobhan reports that it's, uh, right. It's beef stew. All right, update on RFP responses. Tim, you want to take that 1? Yes. So, um, as many of you know, we did send out a request for capabilities and interest. Uh, we sent out to 18 different entities and we received back 7, I would say, worthy responses. Uh, those included 1st light hub 66. Watesfield and Champlain Valley, telecom kingdom fiber and cloud alliance. Um, valley net, GWI and Tilson. So, um, you know, just as a, as a brief, uh, kind of background or, or summation. It really included asking them about what their capabilities were, um, separating out the fixed wireless. From the FTP options and then probably more importantly where, um, their interest lies in either talking to us further or future partnering. And I'd say it's, uh, certainly, um, going to be helpful information as we continue through, you know, talking about the opportunities, who's out there and what they can do for us. I think this will be a guiding, um, certainly a guiding, uh, finding to, uh, to helping with those, uh, with those future partnerships. So I have sent that kind of summation in a pretty busy sped spreadsheet through the bills, this development and then, uh, subsequent to Jeremy Matt and Jeremy Henson and I, you know, trying to figure out a repository where we can share where we can put the reports and all the responses where people can dig in a little further because mine is just a kind of a summary document. However, uh, I do think it's going to be, you know, kind of invaluable to, uh, to, uh, the future and, and, uh, what those, uh, what those opportunities are. All right. And so, so the next step is for the business development committee to chew on that. Is that right? Yeah, I'd say, yes. As, you know, as we're, uh, furthering down the road, I think that, you know, it lands in, uh, seems the logical place as business development to start to dig in a little deeper, roll up the sleeves and understand where, what, what the next steps might be out of those, uh, those, uh, findings and then, uh, taking the next steps, which some of them include, you know, things that are going to be discussed tonight that David will bring forth probably. Okay. Sounds good. Any questions for Tim? Okay. Moving along. Um, Vida loan update, uh, Tim, you had also had a conversation with, um, Yunyoung at Vida. Correct. Um, yeah. So, uh, Yunyoung and I have been going back and forth. Um, so I think things are progressing as far as, uh, you know, peeling back the onion on what the expectations are for the, uh, broadband loan that we'll be looking to apply for in the near future. So I've been in, uh, you know, kind of continued discussions of understanding their expectations and then subsequently being able to have some clear understanding of what we need to do to put together the most favorable, complete and holistic package to, uh, put us in a, you know, in a strong position to receive the, uh, loan funds that will be the ask in, uh, in that future. So, um, and we still, you know, continue to have dialogue and, and, uh, it does the promising. She's looked through things and certainly no red flags and, and I think, you know, from the work that needs to happen, it's, um, I think, you know, things are progressing. Certainly the feasibility study and the business plan work that was done by Interisle is, is going to help and then, um, some continued work on the financial front and then just kind of wrapping it, putting it all together for a specific ask as far as with the, uh, you know, the phase one, what the specific ask is and getting a little more, uh, detailed as far as how far, things will go, um, whether it's the blue route or, or beyond and, and getting pretty specific so that they can have, uh, something to, to consider and, and hopefully approve. Right. Uh, I guess my question is, do we have a goal, a deadline, a date, you know, like by one January, we're going to have submitted, uh, what needs to be submitted, the things that we need to execute between now and then. What's our, what's our timeline? What's the work plan to get there? I can talk about my thoughts or Tim, you can take a crack at this. Yeah, I guess I, I defer more to you. I guess Jeremy, as far as the, you know, the time expectations, it obviously is, uh, you know, depending on the amount of work and, and getting the T's crossed and the eyes dotted, but, uh, certainly, you know, I think your opinion would weigh heavily. So my, my instinct is that I, I would like to see us have an application in by the end of the year. Um, I think one of the, one of the things that's going to hold us back, that's going to make this, um, that we, that's going to slow us down is that we still need to get the financial audit or the financial review done. That is number one. Number two is that we need to make sure that we have commitment from the state that they're going to provide the matching funds for the loan. Um, I, I don't know that that's going to be onerous. Um, I don't really even know what their process is that just, you know, that just came out of the budget that was signed. So, um, those are, those are the two main things, you know, in addition to simply formatting the application and making sure that Vita has what, what they want. But, um, you know, the enabling statute for the, the bill that created the loan program said that Vita would be deferring substantially to the advice of the Department of Public Service. And if they, you know, if they approve with, if they approve our plan and they think it's reasonable, I think we have a much better chance than of securing the Vita loan. And Ray, you want to follow up a bit? Yeah. So it sounds like the critical path might be this financial plan, audit, whatever. What's the status of that particular element done? So, Tim, you had talked to Batchelder and I think we had kind of left that in stasis for the moment. I don't know if you have any other updates or any information that you need for that? No. Um, it's, you know, I'd say it's in the works of understanding what they need and, and getting, getting things moving along there. But, um, you know, I don't think it's going to be terribly onerous just given, you know, that the extent of our financials. So it is really checking, checking a box, but it's a necessary thing for getting the audit done. So it just, it just sounds like to me, if we want to get something in by, or say one January that this first bit needs to be contracted for, arranged for by one November, to give them three weeks during the holiday, et cetera, et cetera, a couple of holidays in there to get that done. So can we, can we get them under contract by one November? And it's 20 October now. Yeah, I certainly think that's reasonable and we've been discussing, you know, kind of the expectations. It's just a matter of getting kind of the financial information together. And that's been a little, uh, what, what, uh, we need to work on so that they have something to audit and look at from a financial perspective. So, but yes, I think that's reasonable. The thing, in my opinion, that's going to make it go really fast is that the number of our transactions, you can almost count on two hands. Exactly. So, um, it's really, there's really not much to it. So I'm hoping they're able to come in, take a look at it, and I think they will probably spend more time writing up, um, advice about process, you know, financial processes and, you know, how, um, how, how we approve bills and managing voices and whatnot. Um, but even so, um, you know, the, the complexity is really low for what we're asking them to do. So it should be a, should be a pretty short, you know, financial review that we can then provide to Vita and, and move along. But yeah, I, I, I think having that turned around by, by one December would not, would not be, not be a big deal. Go ahead, Ray. It sounds like the next bit has to do with getting a permit from the state to do the matching funds. And, uh, what's the process for that? And who is, who are the parties that are working through that? I don't know if there is even a process for that yet. The, the departments working through all of the cares, the cares act stuff, and I don't know that they see that as a, as a front burner item at the moment. I don't know David or Ken or anybody who has any other visibility in there. If you have any thoughts. I think you're correct, Jeremy. I think they're so busy trying to figure out the cares thing that they haven't even gotten to the loan matching money process. That's my understanding as well. Okay. So, um, yeah, maybe in the next few weeks, you know, uh, I'll shoot an email over to Rob Fish and ask, or I actually could probably just ask him at the, uh, the, uh, Vicuda meeting, you know what, no, I'm going to, I'm going to call him directly. Um, because it, because it would be good to know if there are things that we can do essentially to facilitate their work. Um, and then bringing that up for discussion with, with Vicuda's is, it's just going to, I think we'll probably get sidetracked. So I would rather just have Rob one-on-one so that we can find out what does he need from us? How can we support them? I mean, it sounds kind of weird, but you know, we're, what we can do to help them help us, I think is, uh, is going to be a mutual, a mutual win. Somewhere around, you know, one to 10 November, they're going to realize they can't do anything else. They're dead in the water with regard to the CARES Act. And so they have to turn to the next, the next things. They're out of the CARES Act stuff. And so that's when they'll start picking up, I think, our bit, but I think you're right. I think if we could get in touch with them now and see what we can do to help them, it's going to be beautiful for us. Ray, I wish that were the case, but, um, they are, their, their calendar is full until the end of the year with CARES stuff because there's still a lot of unspent money that they have responsibility for. They have to make a pitch to the governor's office and the joint fiscal committee about how to utilize that. So I, they, if you think November, they're not going to be taking a sigh of relief on November 1st. And they're also going to be, um, they're going to be chasing down all their oversight roles through the end of the year. There's going to be providers that have been written checks and they're going to be reviewing and looking at all the paperwork for that to see, you know, did, you know, provider X that got the CARES Act money, they're going to be chasing them down right till December 20th. I expect, but if I can sort of bend Rob's ear and see if we can essentially design the process, if we can say, here's our application for VEDA and can we just get a written commitment of some form saying that the state has established this fund to do this? And when that, I mean, and if that understanding, essentially if everybody understands that, then we can almost skip the process if VEDA is willing to recognize that the state is backing us for that 10%. So then it's just going to be us making a very concrete pitch for what we'd be doing with the proceeds. Any other thoughts on VEDA loan process or otherwise? Okay, moving along. Grant funding update and CARES funding options. I'm going to kick this over to you, David, if you've got some updates for us, that's kind of a broad agenda item, but I think we've got a lot of stuff going on. You're muted. So I just got an email back from Rob saying that they should have something so that we can apply tomorrow. So I originally had sent them the draft of what we agreed at the last meeting on project items and budgets, and he came back with some pretty good feedback about how to make it rationally acceptable. So we have to revise that a little bit. In my opinion, the making this happen and the timeframe that we've got, which is basically two months plus, it's really two months, and there's a lot to make all the things we said we're going to do happen. Some of them require getting contractors to help us. We don't have a formal bidding process that I know of, unless Tim does, and given the short term, I'm going to recommend if we find somebody who we think is competent to do some of these tasks, we have a vetting committee and agree to hire somebody. Because I don't, you know, waiting three weeks to hire, you know, put out a bid in hiring somebody to help us with marketing materials and outreach and canvassing. It's going to kill the program and kill us trying to get it done. But I look for the board's advice on that. I think the business development committee and the communications committee could probably handle this. But I want to make sure the board was aware of that. The other thing that comes into it, I mean, we have a number of projects in there that say we'll connect X number of people through EC5 or ValleyNet and through Watesville Telecom, Champlain Telecom, and Card Alliance. And I'm not sure we can pull all that off in the two months that we have, especially based on the discussion that we had last meeting about, you know, if we're putting up our money or the state's money that becomes our money to establish these connections, the infrastructure should be ours. And, you know, I have not talked to Watesville Telecom about that or EC5, but I think EC5 is probably an easier one to deal with that. But Watesville Telecom, it could be a, you know, could be a, what do you call it, a no-go based on what we would like to do with our investments. But we can, we will go over that bridge when we have to. I would like some help on that. And I see that Greg's not on the meeting tonight, but I think Greg would be a great person to help with that. But that's sort of my update on that. Ken, Ken has prepared a little document that he shared with Tim and myself on next steps to get things going. And I don't know if Ken, you want to talk about that or not. Well, I can just talk about that there are a number of steps. So we'll start with, we'll start with the partnerships with either, either or CV Fiber, I mean, EC Fiber Valley Net, Champlain Watesfield Telecom. We're going to have to negotiate with them. And, you know, the actual content of our negotiation is going to be, have to be something that we do in executive session. But I laid out in that the elements that are a part of our negotiation. And while they know David, that you said that there's a general sentiment that we need to own the infrastructure, we're going to be clear that that would seem to me a very, very, very difficult position on which to work with either of those entities, rather build ourself a future positive relationship and make sure they get us stuff or making sure that we can cover those two towns completely and maybe provide us a leasing revenue or revenue, a, what's the term, anyway, some sort of money after we give them the money to build. Anyway, there's a series of those topics. And as you said, yeah, we got two months. So if I think we really should establish a negotiating team, wrestle with some of those issues in the next two weeks. So there's that. And then similarly with the canvassing, and I think it helps in terms of promoting the department approving it, part of our canvassing is not just getting information from the potential customers, but it's getting information to them in regards to this emergency, because this is emergency funding. So the extent that we can link them to some of the programs that are available for them, that's a way I think we could promote that yes, this is an emergency use of the funds. And by the way, yeah, we established a relationship and we build a customer base. But again, it gets to the content issue, we need to come up with the content. And actually related to that, and that our first discussion about the loan at some point in the very near future, we need to come up with a pricing package, a pricing package that's the basis of the revenue piece for the loan, and our communication with potential customers. So again, in a fairly short time, going through Fred Goldstein's products, making sure that we have some concrete tables of if you're getting it at this speed, and that with any, you know, I don't know about data capturing that, but this is what a price is. We need to come up with that. We need to come up with that. And it doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have people aren't going to be making decisions based on vague, oh, we'll get you some service. So anyway, that's what I laid out. And I didn't play out all the steps for wireless. What's that? Oh, twisty light pole. So yeah, I just put it in the document, but it's just to, you know, we need to get the subgroups to really start addressing those issues in a very, very short timeframe. Right. So with regard to the marketing, the canvassing, and all that kind of stuff, it seems like we need to wind up with an RFP that goes out or a sole source thing. In anticipation of state funding, we want to hire somebody. But the important bit there is the statement of work, which frankly is the one that we've had some difficulty with actually defining what that job is. And that's what we need to work on is that statement of work. Once we get that statement of work done, Tim can handle the rest of that with regard to getting that out. My understanding of the conversation that we had with regard to the Wayfield Telecom and the other one, blah, blah, blah, you see, Fyder wasn't that had to do with the infrastructure. It had to do with who owned the customers. And at the end of the day, we own the customers. I don't frankly care about the, you know, the wires and all the rest of that stuff. We can lease that part and we can build that into the cost of the service. But the customers was the important bit. And so, and Tim needs to be in the center of that conversation, the dialogue with those, with those entities. And maybe there's one or two others who have the kind of the technical detail, but it's the customer bit. I see David has to hand it. What do you mean by customer? The revenue? The subscriber, yeah. So the subscriber revenue. Yeah, yeah, they belong to us. I don't, the wires I don't care about too much. We can release those. No, I think there's probably some mixed opinion about that. But anyway, okay. Well, we should, I mean, we, we have the time tonight. We should probably get those questions answered rather than just assuming things are going to move forward. And we just assign it to some negotiator and then it just gets worked out in some smoky back room. But Michael, why don't you let us know what you think? Um, there's lots of ways to go. But I would anticipate that most providers will not agree to either the position that CB fiber gets the customer or the CB fiber. Um, what was the first idea? I forgot the subscribers. Oh, it's the infrastructure. The infrastructure. I think that what's likely, I think the phrase you were looking for, David, was deal breaker. I think they will be deal breakers for Watesfield Champlain Valley. I don't know about EC fiber, but I think, I don't think Watesfield Champlain, you were shaking your head Jeremy, you've got inside. I've sat in meetings. I mean, who else was with me and see Andy from Cabot was with me when we met with them, gosh, a year and a half ago. And when we talked about the feasibility of us doing development and them potentially being the operator of us owning the customers and us owning the infrastructure, they said we could probably make that happen. And EC fiber has also explicitly said this. They were pretty cooperative, I thought, or willing to work. I'm surprised, but that's that's interesting. It's really not what I expected from them. But the alternative way to do it is kind of suggested revenue sharing. There's a bunch of different methodologies of sharing responsibility and revenue and so forth in these things. So I guess that goes back to the smoky room negotiating committee. I don't know. Well, and I think it also is going to depend a lot on this body's philosophy of how they imagine that these public resources being expended. Are they expended for the development of public infrastructure or are they expended just to get people's service? And there's nuances and shades of philosophy in there as well. But I think we ought to I think we ought to stake our claim in how what the parameters are that we're going to work with. Because if the board's opinion is that if we're going to expend these state funds and we must own the fiber, we can walk in there and say we can say that. In terms of negotiating tactics, that's something that we should probably keep for an executive session or delegate to a team. But I think that getting our vision and getting our philosophy here and getting it now, apologies, but again, we're at the point where you just have to make decisions, right? Yeah, so my recollection was something like we were going to have, we were going to get the state money, we were going to hire them to build it out. We were going to hire them to operate it for a finite period of time until we could assume the operations. But we owned all the revenue with regard to the subscription. And whatever their operating costs were, we were going to be paying them out of that revenue and perhaps other revenue. If that's not a kind of a break even number, obviously it's the total infrastructure, the total subscription is going to allow us to pay for all of this stuff. So, but at some point in time, whether it's 18 months or four years down the road, we're going to wind up assuming operational responsibility for it. In the interim, we're going to pay them to operate it and we're going to pay them out of that, those revenues and other revenue. And so I think our negotiating position is going in that we negotiate, we're hiring you to do this work, we own the infrastructure, we own the customers and you can operate it and we'll pay you a fee. Until we assume responsibility for it. Now take the deal or don't take the deal. Any other thoughts? I mean, so Ray has a proposal, Michael's suggestion was that that's not terribly likely to fly. Henry, you had a hand up, we'll do Henry then Chuck. Yeah, I guess, you know, having just reviewed the impact that the connectivity initiative has had on all of our towns, which I sent to Jeremy and to David, which looks at the percentage of the eligible premises that were satisfied by the connectivity initiatives to the broadband, commercial broadband providers. Unless we retain some sort of ownership, we're just again contributing to our own demise. It's just like the connectivity initiative where they had to get it to people. And in some towns, it was 40% of the eligible people in that town that we no longer, you know, we're going to have uphill battle to try to get them. So I don't want to add to that exacerbate that situation. Okay, Chuck. Henry, you made my point better than I ever would have. Thank you. If you want, I can send that link to the Tableau workbook to the whole board. I also wanted to send it to Rob Fish, but I wasn't going to do that without checking with you guys first. Yeah, I mean, I think it's worthwhile so that he at least understands the context, I mean, and how we can kind of interpret some of the results of that funding. Yeah, Henry, when I looked at your numbers, I mean, a lot of those services that were provided don't not fiber to the premise. I mean, it pretty much all fixed wireless rates. So the speeds that they're getting are not high, but no, you made a good point. And it'll be a little bit of an uphill thing to recapture some people who are happy with what they get. Well, I mean, if you listen to the commercial providers, they say no one needs more than 25-3 anyhow. So yeah. I've got four kids working at home. Michael. So not all the providers say that, Henry. What we're saying is we're happy that we can get 25 or better to a bunch of customers in central Vermont, but we expect that fiber will eventually overbuild and come to the fore. And then the CARES Act funding, from my point of view, was to bridge the gap to take advantage of some funding that a windfall the state had to try to help get people able to go to school and have telehealth and all those things. I'm absolutely certain that the department doesn't want to undermine the CUDs. They respected every single CUD objection that was submitted. Every single one. They never once overruled a single objection. And so I don't feel that we should see that so much as a threat. The other point I wanted to make going back to the earlier part of the discussion is that I'm somewhat convinced by things people have said in the room that if we're providing the money to providers to do things that we do have a certain legitimate claim to ownership one way or another. The other thing we can do is in exchange for giving up some ownership of one aspect or another, whether it's the infrastructure or the customer, the revenue, is to use the leverage to get them to build other places that we're not funding that would cover, for example, in the town of Moortown to finish out Moortown, that kind of thing. We discussed that as development committee meeting the other day. So I just want to get that out for the board to hear. Right. So, Ray, before we get back to you, I'd like to make a proposal. I would like to hear from some other folks that just hearing if you have opinions about this, because I would like to have this to a vote at some point, unless we can come do a consensus and we don't need to vote. But, Siobhan, what do you think? I'm trying to understand what we're trying to make a decision about. Because up until now I feel like we've been talking about, well, in some places we may own the infrastructure, but in other places we're going to lease the infrastructure. But in all of this, my understanding is the customers would be ours and that we would have an operator that was doing our bidding along those lines. But I thought that's where we were leaning. So maybe I'm, I've missed something. I feel like I've missed something. So let me see if I can provide some context. So this is still CARES Act funding. And we approached, we approached, what, three providers, David, EC Fiber, Watesfield Champlain Valley, and Cloud Alliance slash Kingdom Fiber to provide services by the end of the year. So we would be going to the state for the funding. And we would be asking them to build. And we have in the past said that we are going to, you know, our kind of main thrust was for us to own to own the infrastructure and to own the customers and to contract with an operator. This is, I admit this is slightly different than the shape of the project that we're looking at for Vita funding. And with, I think with that, that definitely, I don't know how we could have any other formula for that. That said, we have an opportunity and there is a fair bit of money here that's coming from the state. And we still need to decide the parameters that we are going to ask a handful of people or, you know, a couple board members to actually go and have that conversation. And then when they have that conversation, they need to know what's, what's possible. So if we are going to plant the flag in the sand and say that, you know, this is funding that the state is giving to us that is explicitly, explicitly for CUDs and thus public infrastructure. Are we then going to make sure that we own the fiber? Are we going to make sure that we own the subscribers? We need to decide this today for this particular bucket of money. And I saw Josh, thank you for the comment in the in the chat there. And again, before I get back to Chuck and Ray, I would still like to hear from some more people, but I do have, I do have you Ray and Chuck in the in the pipeline. So Jeremy, Alan, Frank, any of you have Frank want to start us off? Just something short and sweet. If you don't own the subscribers, you don't own the revenue. Fair enough. Jeremy or Alan, any other, anything else you want to add to that? I'm just going to go down through everybody, give you a chance. Jeremy. Yeah, this is Alan. So what I'm trying to understand is what we have to accomplish by December 20th. So we are not at any risk for having received money, but haven't provided the service that we guaranteed. I'm trying to just understand the risk here to us. Is that am I am I mistating what is the potential risk? Or it could it be that we actually, after December 20th, could owe the federal government a certain sum of money? Because either through something we weren't able to do or something that any of the three providers we've talked about couldn't do, we are now stuck with having to pay back that money. Well, I think we would certainly have to have that just like the state has with us. And it's our contractual obligation to the state. We would have to have whoever we contract with also on the hook for that. So no, this has got to be a pass through risk of if somebody's building something for us, and we've written them a check, we'd be darn sure that if anybody that's getting money has got to be delivering. So I think that's just got to be the tease that we cross in the eyes that we dot with the lawyers when we put this agreement together. And some of the parameters of this agreement, David has already been exploring somewhat. But this is actually in the form of the the memorandum of understanding with Weck, you know, that's we're thinking about, you know, if Weck is building infrastructure, there's going to be sort of a similar sort of arrangement, you know, who's doing what, I guess, is what the is what the answer that has to be the question that has to be answered. So are we on the hook? Yes. But if we're going to spend any of this money, somebody else has to be on the hook with us as well. And so well, I don't think that I don't think that we can completely get off the hook. And if we have to pay the government $120,000 as of December 21. I think we're going to be in a very bad position. It seems like a lot of Alan. Okay, so so Alan, you're breaking up pretty significantly. So let me see if I can if I can summarize. You're concerned about the risk of going after this this next bucket of CARES Act funding. Okay, it looks like we just lost him. Oh, maybe not. So this and we did talk about about the risk of this and the risk of this is similar to the risk that we're looking at for the other projects, the wireless project that we decided it was too risky and the timeline too compressed. Ray Truck and Henry, I do see you. I want to give everybody a chance to weigh in before we come back to you, though, as you kind of the main three sponsors of this line of thought. So Ken? Yeah, I like to think of this as a sequence of discussions and decisions. So in terms of Alan's last point, we're going to have a contract with the public service department. If indeed they agree first to provide us the funds, then they will also have to provide us the contract language. And they all also they're ultimately on the hook. So yes, we are going to have to make sure that they are comfortable with the level of build that that we've accomplished by December. But I don't think that stops us today from moving forward. And and and it is related to earlier discussions, we need to have the negotiation discussions with the partners to and yes, this will always be a factor that that we can't resolve right away. But is there that we want to pursue the funds, we want to have a partner to help us spend those funds? And yes, we're not going to take the funds unless we satisfy the terms of the contract. And yes, we're going to therefore have to do the contract. So the point is very important. But it's not a point that we decide tonight. It's the point we decide before we sign a contract with the public service department. So I understand your perspective. Ken, I think to a certain extent, I have to respectfully disagree that if even if we don't agree on the shape of the contract specifics, I think we at least have to understand the parameters broadly. And that if this board is saying that we want to own the fiber, then we need to go in to negotiations with that as an expectation. And we can sort of work out the, you know, the smaller bits based around that. And maybe there's some, you know, some give that's there. But I would like to hear from the board first, so that we understand how we're how we can even go into those negotiations, as if we don't know what we want, going into a negotiation in that position is a terrible, terrible position to be in. So I see some comments from Josh and Andy and Tom, Jeremy. So I guess I'm kind of going back and forth. I mean, I think it would be great to own the fiber and the customers. But personally, I would also be okay with just getting people connected and using that money as leverage to do something else. I would be a, I mean, not that I'm a voting person, but I would be opposed to just handing them the money to say connect those people. We need to get something out of it. But if we can get something of value out of it, that puts us in a position later on either gets rid of a very difficult place for us to build or, you know, gets a town built out for us. I mean, that's kind of our goal, especially if we can get some of these places built, that would be hard for us to build, you know, like part of more town, you know, I mean, giving them money to just build the densest area and we don't own anything that I don't agree with. But if we get something else out, then I'd be okay with that. And the other thing is what I mean, has the state weighed in on what they would require? Do they they're giving this to CUDs? Do they require that we own the customers that we own the fiber? Have they as the department weighed in on this at all? David, do you have any sense of that? I don't have any sense of the ownership, because I know Kingdom Fiber is doing something, a Kingdom broadband, any K broadband is doing something totally different. I mean, they're just looking for people to build things and let them run it as I understand it. Michael probably knows more on that one than I do. But the, you know, the department isn't in the goal of the COVID money is to get people serviced by the end of the year. And I'm not sure they care one way or the other how it gets done, they may, but I haven't heard that. Okay, Larry, I saw you had your hand up before. Do you have something you want to add? Hey there. I'm here in Middlesex stepping in for Bill Hayek for the next few months. If you know, being new to this, I'm just looking at this discussion about owning the customers or not is I think there's a lot of value in approaching the customers and establishing a relationship that they see as long term. And that the short term fixed wireless is just a stopgap until the fiber comes and not to have them see this as just fixed wireless as a service that they can get now. And maybe next year they'll get Comcast, but that they're actually signing up for, you know, a public utility that that we're all invested in and that this is a stepping stone to fiber. So to be clear, the projects that we're talking about, at least two of them, are fiber. So we're talking about other parties providing fiber to the premises by the end of the year. So at least, you know, Watesfield, Champlain Valley and EC fiber anyway, we're looking at specific towns where they might be building out, honestly, not even that many houses, but it, you know, it gets some folks connected, which is, you know, great for those folks. And but it does, like you said, it starts building that connection, it starts building that long-term relationship. All right. Anything from, let's see, who haven't we heard from? John Morris or Katharina? Not from me. I'm just listening. I'm really new to this. Thanks. Thank you. Any thoughts, John? No, I'm sorry. I feel like I'm pretty much out of the loop, so I'm just trying to catch up. Okay. Fair enough. All right. So, Ray? Yeah, so two bits. One is that this whole conversation has to do with what we're going to be telling our negotiating team who's not been selected yet as to what our position is. So this whole thing should be in executive session, number one. The second bit is that what we're planning to do, frankly, is execute design, build, operate, maintain contracts with delivery deadlines for these contractors. There's some design issues here. What equipment we're going to use, et cetera, et cetera. If we're going to plan on doing something the entire 20-member community that we own, that we're responsible for. Okay. So these are design, build, operate, maintain contracts. And they're for a finite period of time. And let me ask the question, who sets the rate? Who sets the rate? Does the operator set the rate or do we set the rate? If you think we set the rate, we own the customers. We fund the projects. If you think they set the rate so they can get paid for their operation, for example, and maintenance and profit and all that kind of stuff, is that the direction you want us to go in? Or we're setting the rate? So if we're setting the rate, okay. So there's some calls in the chat for us to go into executive session, which I think I'd like to hold off on for a little while anyways. I think the vision here, and David and the other folks who were sort of crafting this last, you know, this crack at this last bit of money, I think the idea here was not for us to engineer it, not for us to design it, not for us to select the technology, but simply for us to pay another, you know, another provider to do this for us. Now, that would mean that if EC Fiber is building, presumably they're going to do it in the EC Fiber way. If it's Watesfield, Champlain Valley, they're going to be doing it in the Watesfield Champlain Valley way. We can't do a design build negotiation and have anything done. Well, we won't even get negotiate, we don't even get the negotiations done by the end of December. It will simply not happen. So, and they will not be able to incorporate that into their network and turn people on by the end of the year. It's just impossible. So if we're saying, hey, EC Fiber, we might want you to go into Roxbury, then we can say, here's where we want you to go, how they do that, or maybe they have a slightly better way of doing it, and they just do it. But that chunk of infrastructure, I mean, from my perspective, again, this is my perspective and not everybody's, that that chunk of their network then is not really their network. It's connected to their network. That's ours, but it's our customers and they essentially brand those customers with our name. I have Chuck Henry, then Michael. So first thing I'd like to say is I was going to make the same comment about executive session. When we're talking about the specifics of negotiation points, where we even want to draw the line and taking a stance on that, I think it gives away our negotiating leverage to even be talking about that and seeing what sort of board consensus looks like. So that's point one. Point two is I think speaking specifically about Moortown, that the project proposed is detrimental to our ability to roll out future routes, as defined in the feasibility studies. It happens that the route proposed is along one of the more dense portions of Moortown, if you can call it dense, but it is dense by Moortown standards with the exception of our villages, of which we have a couple. And so it really concerns me to give money to wire that section of Moortown without any leverage being on the table that makes it possible for us to force, build out to the much more remote fringes of the community. And that's what we've seen the commercial players do all this time to Henry's point. And so I think I have a more detailed opinion on where I think lines of leverage may be acceptable or not, and I will not share those unless we go into executive session. But in the meantime, my general stance is we need to do what is right for Moortown as a whole and not what is right for one tiny section of Moortown. And in particular, since this is actually in the middle of one of the feasibility routes, I won't specify which, but because it's in the middle of one of the feasibility routes, I think it actually hinders the overall route and not just Moortown. My two cents. Okay. I have Henry, then Michael. So I want to piggyback something Frank said. And, you know, I was very much of the opinion that we need to own the infrastructure, but then I started thinking about it. And if we own the customers, you know, there's a real advantage in terms of the Vita loan, you know, so, you know, they're different asset classes. And so if we go into a Vita loan and say we own this fiber, well, so what? But if we go in there and we say we expect this revenue, then we're actually, you know, providing some real value to the cash flow projection, based on the fact that we expect income from these people that are going to be connected. So in terms of the Vita loan, I think it's more important to own the customers than it is to own the infrastructure. The other thing though is more general. And that is that I'm really wondering, I think part of what we need to decide is what capabilities we want to have, if not now, but in the future, you know, in the future, what do we want to do? Do we want to build people? Do we want to provide customer support? Do we want to provide operations, blah, blah, blah, you know? And based on that, we're then thinking about, you know, how we're going to go about getting into these contractual arrangements with people. Because right now we have no capability at all and we want to find out what capabilities do we want to have. And then once we figure out what capabilities we want to have, then we negotiate around the fact that we want to have some capabilities. Since we don't have any capabilities, we don't have a hell of a lot of negotiating power, except that we have the money from the CARES Act. Thanks, Henry. Michael? First of all, about going into executive session and negotiating positions, I agree with everybody on that. I think some things have already been said that compromise our negotiating position. And on the other hand, some of it needs to be said somehow and it was. It's really important to distinguish, as some have already, between the VITA projects and the CARES Act money. The VITA project is carefully thought out. We've already put months and months into feasibility studies, business plans, some designing, and much more will be spent designing it well. And that money will be CV Fibers money to borrow and CV Fibers infrastructure and CV Fibers customers. It's not one or the other. All of that will be CV Fibers. And CV Fibers will then generate revenue from that to pay back the bond or the loan. So it will have to be that way. And with that, you do it right. You take your time, you design it well, you figure out how you're going to integrate with other networks, whether our own or others. With the CARES Act money, we just don't have the luxury of any of that planning time. None. What Alan was saying at the beginning is absolutely right. There's high risk that these projects won't be completed in time. And I already signed over half a million dollars worth of contracts under the CARES Act thing. And I'm not a praying guy, but I figuratively pray every night now for an extension because it's going to be really, really hard for most providers to get their projects done by the end of the year. There are so many obstacles we haven't even discussed tonight, like supply, material supply, contractors, everything. Everything is going to be hard to organize in time. I'm comfortable talking about how we should negotiate, even though Cloud Alliance has been mentioned multiple times tonight. I don't expect that CV Fibers will send any money to Cloud Alliance this way from the CARES Act. I think we and the Business Development Committee pretty much put on the bottom of the priority list. And I frankly don't know if I could take on the assignment because the commitment's already happened. So otherwise, I would say I have a severe conflict of interest and I shouldn't be speaking about it right now. But I feel comfortable because I'm not buying for it. I'm not looking for that. I'm trying to figure out what's best for us right now. And maybe I've made all the points I need to make. I agree with Chuck and Jeremy and Matt and want to reiterate the thing I said at the beginning. If Watesfield Champlain Valley builds in Moortown, they need to build to those places that are hard to get to. Otherwise, it is going to jeopardize the future project in Moortown. So that's a negotiating thing that we're saying out in the open, but I think it's just a given. I don't see how we can get away. For Moortown, it's not right for CV Fibers. All right. Thanks, Michael. And before we go to Jeremy, who's next on my list, what do you think about going and doing these negotiations or not negotiations? Talking about these negotiations of the contract in executive session, but we're going to stick kind of a bookmark in this, come back to it at the end of the meeting so that our executive session will be the end of the meeting and that way any folks that are attending that want to continue to attend like ORCA, we can have some continuity rather than executive session then coming back. Is that okay? One of the things that we probably should do out of executive session before we go into that go and do that conversation is we should designate who is going to be on the negotiating committee or maybe not a committee, but if we designate one point person that can select, you know, one or two other point people to do this, then we can have a similar sort of organization as we did with responding quickly and with agility to anything that comes up because, again, appointing a committee then requires warning of meetings and such, but if we can appoint one person and that person can then loop in other people who want to be a part of the committee, if that's acceptable, I think we should do that, but before we do that, I want to make sure Jeremy has a chance. One point, not committee, negotiating team. So, yeah, but even assigning a team creates a subgroup of this body and still triggers, it's not language. We'll make one person the negotiating lead and then the negotiating lead will work with an ad hoc group of other folks who want to work with them. That way, we're not creating a sub body and that does not, that person is responsible for the negotiations. Yeah, okay. I thought they had said form committee, so that was anyways, probably just misheard. Anyway, so my point was, one of the things that I've noticed is that we're talking about both Watesfield, Champlain Valley Telecom and EC Fiber as being treated in the same way when they're kind of different entities. EC Fiber is another CUD and I guess that's, I'd be a little bit more comfortable just sort of handing them the money and their public entity and they go build that area. And I guess the other question is, can they just do that? If we just say give them permission to build in wherever they want to build, can we do that and have them go after this money instead and then offload the risk from us? I mean they're a CUD, right? Yeah, and there is a, but the idea here is that there is a per project cap or per CUD cap on these funds. They are already using some of it. I see, okay. Elsewhere, so we would be contracting with them to build in our territory. Now they can because Roxbury is a is contiguous to their territory. They can build there. That's okay, they can do that on their own. They don't even have to ask us. But what we were trying to do was to supplement the sort of projects that they're currently working on by having them build a project for us. And this has sort of similar shapes to what when we talked about towns, our member towns not being able to give us tax money, they could still contract with us. So if we pick on, let's say, City of Montpelier, City of Montpelier says we want CV fiber to build fiber here. They could use that and they could hire us to do that as a contractor, just like they could hire any provider to do that as a contractor. So again, this is us trying to find a way to creatively use the CARES Act funding in a way that we can conceivably get this done by the end of the year. And we might get to a point in the negotiations where we're negotiating, going back and forth. And then we realize, oh, okay, well, time's up. This is not going to happen anymore. But I think we need to at least chase this as far as we can. So sorry, so let's put a pause on this for a minute. Michael, unless it's urgent, if it's related to negotiation, we should hold it till executive session. No, it's not. It's related to Roxbury. Okay. I'm glad you see Fiber's building there. But I take exception to your statement that, well, it's contiguous to them. And if they want to build there, they can just do that. It seems to me that a CUD should ask a neighboring CUD if they can build in their territory rather than assert, well, we're already building there, so let's finish it. And I think I've heard a little bit of that from them. In Washington, we share that town. And that's so it's different. Roxbury is CB Fiber Town. And we know they built a little corner of it because they had to get to another of their towns. But then they started building in another part of Roxbury without ever approaching us. And I just thought maybe that should be mentioned. Are you, they did approach us. So I've known for a while and we have talked about EC Fiber having an interest. And I mean, they got a grant to study and do a feasibility study that included Roxbury. And that was a year or so ago. So, Well, I don't think the board ever voted on that. And maybe it was something that you knew about and discussed with them, but. Well, and so, yeah, I mean, part of our. Right, well, and so in terms of legally, whether they can or not, it's clear that they can under the CUD statutes, whether they should without consulting us. That's that's a different question. I think they should. I don't know the scope and the scale of what they're currently doing there. I did know that there were folks served in Roxbury before we were even a district. And that was something that, you know, when I was having those conversations with Irvin Carroll back in 2017. I knew those were there. So, yes, I think in the future, if you know, if we were to go and build, you know, up into what Danville or something, right, or somewhere else. All right, Walden perfect, perfect example. I wouldn't personally feel comfortable just saying, all right, well, let's let's go. We can, but I think that we're going to have better results statewide if we are better, better partnered than that. Okay, so let's let's keep this grant funding update and the CARES funding options item. Let's kind of just kick this to the end of the agenda. Is there anything else that we need to talk about related to this, though, that is not that is not negotiating, contract negotiating stuff, right? I mean, somebody mentioned that we ought to identify who the negotiator is going to be. So maybe we should settle that. Sure. Somebody suggested in the chat room that it be Tim. That seems like a reasonable person and then he can consult with the various people who've kind of already been involved in that already. Does that seem? Wonderful. I see your tricks, Chuck. Thank you for moving things along. So still though, Tim, you're okay with that being the lead on that? Yes. No, I feel like I'm already engaged and certainly, you know, take the lead of helping Corral, the right people to move the conversations along. Okay. So if you decide that you want to be a part of that conversation, why don't you reach out to Tim directly? And then we'll make sure that when that, you know, when we have that conference call or Zoom meeting negotiating with whomever that you're able to be a part of that. Anything else, David, on grants or funding or anything like that or anything that folks want to talk about? Don't we need to vote on the motion? Oh, I suppose we do. Thank you very much, Mr. Parliamentarian. Any further discussion? My notes in order. It's all good. No further discussion. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? All right. Motion passes unanimously. Thanks, everybody. Now, is there any other grant or funding updates, CARES money that you want to chat about? Ken? Yeah, I think we need to do an equivalent, not because we're going to an executive session, but in terms of the canvassing activity, we talked about sole source and this, but we do need to take some kind of positive action forward to to consider the content and process for doing the work that we're suggesting in applying to the public service department. Okay, so maybe we wait on that one until that agenda item when we're talking about that specific contracting, unless it makes sense to talk with us in a kind of a bigger funding grant writing picture. Is that okay, Ken? Cool. There are, so I did get, I got a note from one of our fellow CUDs, I think it was from, hold on, I'll just go to it, it was from LaMoyle and I'm not sure why she got it, but Montpelier has the community fund board and there's, I think it's like 125,000 Ken, I believe this is the way that they get around having a whole bunch of people petition for money on the town meeting ballot. If we thought we wanted to go after a smallish portion of that, I think we could apply for that and conceivably get it. Any thoughts about that, Ken? That'd be a tough, I mean, what would you, what would you suggest would be the benefit to the city of Montpelier and its residents? Speeding up fiber deployment in the region, I don't know, that's why I'm saying, yeah, I just got the email, so. Yeah, it's interesting, that would be a tough sell this year, I think as we get a couple years and we start thinking about how Montpelier becomes more a part of the system, then it's worthwhile, but right now really we're helping a lot of the surrounding towns and that'd be hard. Okay, sounds good and so don't forget also that we have the Vermont Community Foundation, we still, there is a still a possibility of seeking some funding from them if we have a, if we have a project that we would like them to help with, and that's going to be on the orders of, you know, a couple tens of thousands of dollars, but we have some possibilities there. And then there's some upcoming USDA grants also that are specific to broadband and there's still the USDA Rural Development, the Rural Business Development Grant that we got last time for the Feasibility Study and what not. We could conceivably go after funding for that for infrastructure and so on. I'm trying to think and then obviously we also can take another crack at the northern border grant, but we're starting to look into next year. That wasn't in, you know, it wasn't in the budget, but these are, I think these are things that we sort of need to keep our eyes on. Jeremy, you had your hand up and then Henry. I was just wondering when the deadline is for like say the USDA grant and some of the other ones. The Rural Business Development Grant I want to say is March, March, April, something towards spring time. The other one I don't, let me see if I can find USDA Rural Development, what is it called? Community Connect Grant. Community Connect Grant, National Assistance Eligible Applicants will provide broadband service and rural economically challenged communities where broadband service does not exist, must provide broadband of up to 25-3. Priority to those that demonstrate the greatest need, that's December 23rd. Yeah, that sounds right. So I can fairly chuck that in there. Anybody would like to spearhead? Another question is do we have a sense of, I mean, because I'm speaking for myself, I'm overworked right now between personal stuff and all these board meetings. I mean, is there enough money in these and are the reporting requirements minimal enough that it's actually worth going after the money and using our limited volunteer time to do that? Well, I expect the USDA process is going to be the same amount of onerous as it was with the previous one. I think this could potentially be a bigger grant. So that might make it worthwhile. The other reason that we didn't end up using as much of the USDA Rural Development money as we did is that we found that there was easier state money to use that we used in its place. So Jeremy, RUS money is more onerous to deal with than regular Rural Development USDA money and reconnects, I think, under the RUS. The Community Connect grant is Rural Development. But reconnects is a different one, isn't it? I wasn't talking about reconnect yet. We can certainly talk about that too. But if there are folks that want to spearhead this or if you think that we need to go after this, we actually do have a person contracted to help us do things. And given that December 23rd is before the end of the time that we have him with us, if so maybe Tim, if you'd like to take a look at that program and see if that's suitable for construction, if we could use that as matching funds or otherwise driving down our price of construction next year in the future. Yeah, and I did listen to a seminar the other day on the USDA Community Connect program. The application is pretty onerous, as you can imagine from the federal government. I think there's like up to 13 different schedules you have to fill out. One of the key provisions is you have to have a contiguous area drawn where no one has above 10 or one in that area. If they do, your whole application is thrown out. If they find one residence or business in that area, the whole application is thrown out. I don't know what resources are available. That would be critical to drawing the maps of what area you're applying for. That would be where you'd want to start. David, how does that sound? Could we draw a contiguous area of underserved that would be of a size that would make sense? Probably. It's pretty a squirreless criteria considering that we really don't know the exact name. The canvassing might result in giving us that information. There are pieces that when Fred did his feasibility work, he left off because they were too hard to reach and they weren't going to give us enough revenue to do it. But we could certainly build little spiders off of the feasibility work to meet these criteria, I think. I just looked at it. It's up to $100,000 to $3 million, so it's not small money. I don't know how many they've given out. They've been about $25 million this round, I think, that they were going to give out. So that might be worthwhile to make a call to Suzy Poland or who's the head guy of USD Rural Development for Mont spacing out his name. Anyways, we can find the information. That might be worth reaching out to Ben Doyle and see if that's feasible. When we were exploring the Rural Business Development Grant, we sat down with them and he said, here's all of the variables, here's all of the options that are out there. It was a great meeting and then we walked out with a whole bunch of paperwork and then we applied. So I think if it's suitable or if sometimes there's flexibility in these things, that it's not clearly advertised. And he might be able to say, yeah, you know what, this isn't really meant for Vermont, this is really meant for Wyoming or something like that. If there's some sort of insider picture, we can sometimes find that out. And it's now president of grant division trust. Oh, okay. Well, oh good. Good for him. Moving on up. Well, Suzy Poland is still there and she's still the nuts and bolts person at, you know, with those grants. So she would likely be, she'd be the person that I would go to first. Okay. Anything else on? I can take that, Jeremy. Cool. Appreciate it. Henry, yeah, we saw it. Yeah, I know we can't talk about it in this meeting, but, you know, the FCC auction is on the 29th to 20th today. It would be interesting to hear what the progress is, maybe an executive session or We would have to have a separate motion for executive session. I think you may just have to have to buckle up for a little bit longer. Okay. Anything else on grants or loans? Sorry, Henry. Okay. Moving along. Let's go on to hiring consultants for canvassing for writing the Memorandum of Understanding for Washington Electric Co-op and for building and maintaining the website. David, this is yours. So I put these on the, I asked Jeremy to put these on the agenda so he could move this along as expeditiously as possible, given the time frame on the grant. And so putting together, I think we had some discussion already from Ray having a scope of work develop pretty quickly and get an RFP out really quick. The Communications Committee is meeting this week. I think we could do that. I think I'd like to get some delegation of, you know, we do that, we hire. I mean, you know, we're going to have a budget. We know how much it is. Maybe it'll come in less. I don't think it'll come in more because we don't have it. But to come back to the board, I don't know what we have to do. The procedure for spending money in this group is not all that clear all the time. And we can spend a lot of time trying to figure that out. So that's why I brought this up. The time frame for hiring is short. I think we all have a few people. I know one CUD in southern Vermont has hired a web designer. So that, I mean, they're already familiar with what we need or what we could need. But anyway, the Communications Committee is meeting this week. And I think we should be able to do scopes of work on each of the items that we're looking for in terms of canvassing and web and marketing material and making sure we stay consistent with what the CARES Act wants us to do, which is to identify what people's needs are relative to telehealth, remote learning, remote work, et cetera. So that's where that is. I don't know if there's any discussion on that. I'll talk about WECC separately since it's a separate item. Does anybody else want, Ken? In terms of the canvassing, I wonder if we can contact the Center for Oral Innovation that has a contract from the state to answer that question specifically in the next four to six weeks, which is what is the especially COVID-related change in demand for telecommunications? If we were to write a kind of concise focus for the CV Fiber District and say, hey, can you put extra emphasis in your work on our area? We'll give you another 10,000 bucks. If Public Service Department says we'll give you $10,000 to do that work, but then we get a product specifically for our people. What kind of product are you talking about, Ken? Identification of addresses with very specific needs. I'm actually thinking of door to door or phone call, phone call kind of canvassing. I'm not talking about the best way to get real information from people. Yeah. Well, maybe they'll do it. Yeah. No, I'm glad you brought them up because there's one other company that's ready to roll and they're another one that can do it. There's probably some others locally that people ought to work. It's going to take a little bit of work to get this organized anyway in terms of what is the message? What's the survey form look like? What are we going to tell people we're doing and when are they going to get it or not get it? Those kinds of questions need to be dealt with. Anybody else? It would be nice if they're going door to door, if we have a bit of short literature that we could hand out. Oh, yeah. We have to prepare all that stuff. The messaging, made the t-shirts, so whatever we're going to have people branding, selling or providing, we got to move along here. Right. Yeah. So you may recall a month or so ago, maybe a little longer. Rob, I think it was Rob who was poking the school districts to come up with where the teachers are and the students are that might need connectivity. Might we get access to that information that might help us with this process? Yeah, we have that actually. We have the whole list of all those addresses. Yeah. Yeah. And I just did a run of addresses for Chuck and Tim the other day, yesterday, yes. Moving on to the WECMOU, which we can also talk in the executive session, all the same issues we just went through on providers and how we actually relate to them. It's actually similar items that we need to have in an MOU with WEC in which an MOU is not a contract. It's laying out the ground rules for how you go about doing contracting for services or vice versa. It's setting the ground rules between CD fiber and WECC in terms of them holding the fiber on the poles. And then we providing Equipro Co is we're going to provide service to people in their territory. So how we do that and make it work out for us and work out for them is a critical piece of this. I've drafted an MOU. I'm not the best person for doing this because I do not have the financial skills to say, oh yeah, you better put some stuff in here on that and covering your the various things. EC fiber is already drafted an MOU with WECC and it's very brief and to me doesn't cover enough for what I need to know to protect CD fiber, but they're already operational. I mean, they already have a network. They've already running in 23 towns. So they know what they need from WECC where we're in a different position, I believe. And so I have submitted this thing to Jeremy and Tim for their comment and advice on how to move forward on it. What kind of advice do we need to get from? What kind of, whether it's somebody like Fred or somebody like Peter Blum or somebody who's legal and financial in this field to guide us so we're making some good statements about how we want to work in the future. And I think some of this actually relates to the other topic that we've been talking about today. But they are moving along and they would like to get something soon from us. I think probably by the next meeting we'll have something we can, I don't know how we share it with the whole board, but somehow we need to get some, you know, action on it and resolve to make this happen. I'm looking actually, again, I'm sorry that Greg's not here tonight because I think Greg has a lot to offer on this topic. And it would be useful if he could help us with this. So maybe to move this forward, if we look to authorize the Business Development Committee to do the, to kind of manage the contracting and the RFP and or whatever for the canvassing for the MOU writing for the website. Is that, if you had that, David, would that work? Sorry, that should all go to the Communications Committee. So canvassing should go to the Communications Committee. Okay. The website should go to the Communications Committee. But the WECMOU is going to be Business Development. Business Development. Okay. So let's, yeah, I'm going to sort of fly by the seat of my pants. I don't have this typed out. Jeremy, apologies. I will, if somebody else can transcribe this as I'm, as I'm reading it. I'm typing it down. I can hear you right now. It's just not. Okay, I'll go slow. I move that we authorize, actually, you know what, no, hold on a second. How much are we planning on spending on the canvassing consultants? What's the not-to-exceed number? Yeah, hold on. Yeah, if we're going to authorize money, we got to kind of know. Yeah. Ditto, Ditto website, Ditto MOU. Yeah, and Chuck, if you... Okay. Okay. The canvassing outreach was $60,000. And do we have that in our budget? I mean, is that in our, the grant budget from the state? That's what we're putting in. And we put all things, this is on Chuck's advice. We put all three things into one item. And the three items are information, understanding the needs that you get our citizens, using information from other state resources, how to better communicate to the people, to tell people what's available to them, and provide the buying software to do the tracking of who's got what access to what service. And then... A recommendation, Jeremy, would be to, to move the full amount first within a breakout of the items that can be appropriated for after. Okay. So, all right, let's, let's try this. So, so both, so for, this is just for the communications committee for canvassing in the website, just those two items, not for the WECMOU, correct? That's the 60,000. Okay. So, I'm going to move that we authorize the communications committee to contract with whatever parties they need to, to, to do canvassing and all of the previously agreed to outreach activities, including the website for an amount not to exceed $60,000, contingent on the receipt of state funds, and including a provision to clawback funds from those contractors for non-delivery. I typed as fast as I could. I didn't get all of it, Jeremy. I don't know if you got all of it, but we may need to revisit starting at the second bullet point. I got whatever parties they need to, to one, do canvassing, to the website. So, to do canvassing and other outreach as, as previously, I think it was in the bid, right, or was in the grant. Yep. So, to do outreach, to do other outreach as described in our grant application, including website development. You also have the recording. Yes, that's true. But Chuck wants to move with this tomorrow and not have the recording, I imagine. Second. Well, hold on. I'm not done. I'm still restating the motion. Okay. So, you got the to do part, Chuck, right? I have no audio from you. To move to authorize the communications committee to contract with whatever parties they need to do canvassing and other outreach as described in our grant application, including website development. Okay. For an amount not to exceed $60,000. Got it. Contingent on state funding and including a provision to clawback funds from the contractors in the event of non-delivery. Got it. Okay. Now, Siobhan. Second. Thank you. Okay. Moved and seconded. Ray? Yeah, a couple things. One is that contracts are written, the CUD, not with the communications committee. And my expectation is that the communication committee may oversee this process, but hopefully, Tim is going to actually be the one who implements whatever it is they come up with. So, has that changed as your motion, any fact? So, we're essentially, I mean, so it's not explicit, but we're authorizing the communications committee to act on the behalf of the entire body. So, I mean, if it feels like we need to amend it to include that, then I'm happy to do so, Chuck. Tim is coming to all communications committee meetings going forward. I think that's going to be an important element of our success. If we want to make him a formal member of the communications committee to authorize him to run with certain elements we might not otherwise be comfortable with, I'm cool with that, but I'm also cool with the communications committee further delegating responsibility to him if the board has come forward with that. I don't think we need to either add him as a member with this with this motion. If the communications committee figures out some things and wants to hand off pieces to him and he has the time and his schedule with our contract, then yeah, let's, I would say, sally forth. Any further discussion on this motion? Okay. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Hi. Any opposed? Okay. Any abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. Thanks, everybody. Now, David, for the WEK MOU, do we have an amount that you would like us to authorize? You know, this is one that, oops, am I on? Yeah. This is one that we had money in the original $100,000 grant to hire a lawyer for help. So I would suggestion we use, I forget how much money that is, $7,000 or $6,000. Not to exceed $6,000 if we need help for drafting this MOU into a format that's legal and appropriate. Well, keep in mind, though, that that legal bucket was also for any legal review that we might have when we're drafting some of these other actual agreements for the rest of the year. So we don't want to tear through the whole thing. All right. So just to give you a sense of scope, reviewing the contract with Tim was a couple hours and was $500. So if we're asking them to do, if we're asking them to do like novel writing, like actual writing of contractual materials or legal stuff, it's going to take quite a bit longer. So eight hours. So if a full day is going to be a couple thousand dollars. Okay, not to exceed $3,000, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. So anybody have any thoughts about this one or the other? Yeah, Ken? Yeah. I think this one is very, very important and does have a lot of variability to it. So I do think spending a significant portion of the $6,000 is appropriate. So I would agree to go $3,000 and hopefully we, a lawyer would recognize that if that's enough money and if not, has to come back to us. Okay. So I'm going to make a motion in just a second. I'm actually just going to modify the one that I previously made. I'll stand by for a second while I type furiously. Get ready to unmute and second, Siobhan. You should just put me down. All right, we'll just. I vote that we kick Siobhan off the board. Put her down. At least by my own petard. So it's supposed to be voted on the rest by the rest of the board, but okay. So let's do, so move to authorize the business development committee to contract with whatever parties they need to produce a memorandum of understanding with Washington Electric Co-op for an amount not to exceed $3,000 contingent on state funding and including a provision of clawback funds from the contracts that should be contractors in the event of non-delivery. Second. Thank you for that, Siobhan. You are on it. Woe to anyone who tries to beat you to the second. All right. I'm just trying to push us along. It's all good. Any other discussion about this? All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. Thanks, folks. Anything else on this for hiring folks? And so when you get invoices, if you can make sure that I get those and I will write the checks until we get our treasurer back until she has more time, hopefully. Okay. Moving along, let's go on to the October 13, 2020 minutes. I move that we approve the October 13, 2020 minutes as presented. Second. Okay. Any edits or feedback for the minutes that Jeremy sent out earlier today? Do you want a minute to review, everybody? Okay. I'm not hearing anybody screaming with pain, so any further discussion? Those in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed or abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you again. Discussion of file storage. We had a shared folder that has not been kept up to date in any format. We also had our, I don't know where Jared went. If he didn't get reappointed or something, he was taking a lot of the stuff and was putting it onto the website as well. I don't know what happened to Jared. Anybody see or know Jared? Chuck? I don't know what's happened to Jared, but I do know he is still paying for our website, or at least covering it out of his own infrastructure. But I do have access to it, so I've been posting things like minutes and agendas and yada, yada, yada as well. Can't state I've done it 100% of the time, but I've been doing my best. On the file sharing, we do still have that folder, and David and I, at least on the communications committee, we've been leveraging Google Drive with a fair amount of success. I think it's still early for us to consider any sort of paid solution, although with the new pricing that Google has rolled out, a 20-member committee would be approximately 240 a month, just for reference, and that would give us all the benefits of the infrastructure they have and the better privacy that they have of controlling it in a more enterprise manner. That said, if we do need to start looking at a paid solution, it would obviously be good for us to look around a little bit and see what other options there are, though most of my clients have settled on Drive in recent years. As a public body, there may be some downsides I'm not aware of in leveraging that tool, and I also know there may be some strong opinions against that particular provider amongst certain members of the board. I just want to call out that I think we can continue to leverage Drive in the short term as we need to, but it is definitely something we'll need to revisit probably very soon. Okay, Jeremy. Can multiple people have access to Drive? Say I get hit by a car and I'm the drive person, we wouldn't want to lose all that data or have to go through a huge hassle to get it back. And I guess the other thing is, what's the process for getting people access to it? Because right now I've been storing all of the clerk files that I've been generating on the Google Drive associated with my CV Fiber address, which again, you know, if I got hit by a bus, you guys don't have access to that. Well, you have to do the share ownership level privileges to anybody else you want to have access to it, and they'll get full rewrite privileges and full copies within their own Drive. So particularly those of us who've set up the CV Fiber dot whatever town conventions so that there's continuity if we don't get hit by a bus, but we do step down and pass that on to the next delegate, you know, I think that's great. But also Jeremy has the Jeremy Hansen has the central Vermont Internet address where he created the original folder that has a lot of stuff in it. Okay. I mean, I guess my one feeling on that is it's fragmented. I've got stuff on my Drive, Jeremy's got stuff on his Drive. It's all here. It's here. It's there. It's everywhere. Not everyone has access to it. Tim was asking me about it and I was like, well, I don't have access to that. I've heard it exists, but I don't know where it is who owns it or anything like that. And I mean, it's good that it's not lost if you give, you know, read write access, but I don't know it. I feel like even if we don't pay for something, we should have just one place where we put this stuff. And, you know, there's the clerk files that go there. There's, you know, because I can share my Drive with Tim and I can share it with other people. But again, it's like, you know, six different drives and it's all over the place. No one knows where anything is. So I think it would be worthwhile doing something better, what that is. I'm not sure. So, so honestly, and I don't mean this to sound like super sarcastic or mean or anything, but this sounds like literally every job I've had ever. Oh, true. Kind of stuff is a little bit everywhere. I think what would be helpful is if we kind of maybe set some expectations about what sort of materials needed to go where and if we need to, if we're going to continue using the Drive. So if we're putting minutes in there, you know, we should have an expectation of who should have read access to those. Well, that's easy. Everybody, everybody in the world, we should have world readable, a folder full of world readable, you know, agendas and whatnot. But there's going to be other folders like maybe contracts that are probably public records to, I mean, all of this are public records to a certain extent. But what are the things that we're going to be actively sharing with the world? And so Business Development Committee should be shared among, you know, it should be a folder for them to share things. Executive Committee, I mean, not that we really meet or do anything, but maybe there's a something we can do like that. But I think if somebody wants to sketch out, I'm allergic to paperwork and bureaucracy. So if somebody's willing to just sort of put together a rough like standard of practice, right, standard operating procedure, whatever you want to call it, to and say these things should be like this. And then we can all endeavor to follow those. And if you need access, we'll just make sure that you get access and at least two people on each folder have admin rights. So don't ride, you know, don't walk cross the street together and be hit by buses simultaneously. Maybe that's the takeaway. But I'm okay. Tom, I see you have your hand up. And then there's some contracts or not contracts, but the feasibility study, the business plan, there's various other things that are not public access. And we need to have, you know, restricted access on those and be able to revoke access for those people who are no longer on the board. And, you know, some more concept of, you know, who's got that admin privilege and so forth. That's true too, which I think is right now. We have stuff on the drive that previous board members may still have access to. I can tell you that's that's definitely the case. I mean, because because I think there's some of these, I mean, there's there's nothing in there that's sensitive, I think we're not putting anything in there that's going to be stuff that we're going to want to redact. So in in in that sense, even though we have old board members that presumably still have access to it, I'm not I'm not too terribly worried about it. So I see Siobhan posted a service cloud words. Or is that just a review of it's just an article that lists several options for nonprofits to use for file storage if somebody wants to look into it. Okay, so it sounds to me and correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds to me like we like Google Drive is working okay, we just need to use it more regularly and in a more consistent way. Does that seem like a good move forward? If we decide that we need something more enterprisey or more space, just let's let's have a let's have an item on the on an agenda in the future to talk about spending some money on that. I expect that we'll we'll probably get there. So can you give me a link so that I can do that so I can make a clerk folder on there? And officially in your box. Okay. Thanks, Chuck. You rock. You rock. Answer the questions before they're asked. And maybe send that to Tim as well because he was asking for access to that. He's got it as well. Okay. You're a wizard. Perfect. Okay. So David, did you have a you're muted if you're saying something? No, I want Chuck to send it to me. Okay. Does anybody else want to link to the to the folder? Okay. Excellent. So we are at the point of so we got the minutes, we got the file storage down. So we can do let's do a round table after our executive session. So we're back to this executive session. And so this is going to be a two parter where we have to find the premature public knowledge, whatever. So I'll have a motion. Yep. Go ahead. Since I might be a party to the negotiations, I think I should recuse myself from the executive session and discussion. Any cloud lines type projects. However, the other part, the WEC MOU, I would like to be part of the discussion. So I'm asking if we could bifurcate the executive session so I could attend the WEC part and then leave. That's all right with everyone. Okay. So are we going to have as part of this executive session a discussion of the WEC MOU? That wasn't my answer. I thought I heard someone mention that before. I thought David said that he thought that we needed to discuss that maybe an executive. Yeah, you're muted. I think we can pass on what could now. Okay. So then, so then I'm going to recuse myself and Jeremy can vote for playing fields and and thank you everybody. All right. We vote to go and choose. Thanks, Michael. All right. So this is a, this is a two parter. So I'm going to start by moving that, that CV fiber finds that premature general public knowledge of our contract negotiation strategy would clearly place the public bought this public body at a substantial disadvantage. That was seconded by, by Jeremy, who is a, who's a board member briefly. Is there any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed or abstentions? Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. This next part is the actual going into executive session. I move that we enter executive section pursuant to and I'm going to paste this into the chat as well. One VSA section 313A1A to discuss the contract and contract negotiations with potential ISPs. Second. Second. Okay. Seconded motion. Seconded by Josh Michael. Pardon. That's a Canadian motion if you read it. Is it? But yeah, A1A. Oh, nice. A1A is also a highway in southern, southeastern Florida, but. Okay. Bye everybody. Bye Michael. All right. Any further discussion? All in favor of going into executive session to discuss the contracts and contract negotiation? Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed or abstentions? Oh, I'm sorry. Who seconded that? I think it was. Josh. Josh. Okay. Thanks, Josh. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. We are in executive session. Orca. So we're going to go through this. Orca, I'm going to ask that you drop out of the meeting. We do not expect any additional action after this. We can send them a message when we come back if they want to capture a round table and adjournment. I'm going to stop the recording. It's going to give Orca a moment or two if they're listening, otherwise they may just be leaving this to record until they get kicked off. So I'm going to wait. Let's see. Ten more seconds. I can always hope that they're sitting here in thrall. While we're waiting, if anybody else wants access to the folder, feel free to ping me. And just note that Google Drive has a really nice concept of being able to create a shortcut from one place to another. So if you have something like sitting in your personal drive, you can create a shortcut to it in the shared drive or vice versa. Okay, so I'm going to dismiss Orca. We should have had in that motion. I think everybody can agree to it though, because Tim is not technically a member of the board. We actually have to allow him in. Is that okay for everybody as a friendly backward amendment? Wonderful. I'm dismissing Orca now. Thank you.