 any additions or changes to the agenda? Yes, I've lost my picture, but just a little discussion to tap our creativity about what a $500,000 emergency plan for the state might look like. And is there any way that the CUDs can help structure that and perhaps tap certainly some of the product of that. A part of H966, which passed, is $500,000 for an emergency plan to be done by December. So anyway, just put on the agenda just for a little bit of idea exchange. All right, sounds good. I'm gonna put that at the end. Anything else that we have additions or changes? I would like to, if we can, I would like to move the two items reaching out to incumbent providers, the seven o'clock item and the 715 item, and move them up a little bit, move them to the front. And the reason is I actually, I'm kind of double booked on this. I'm gonna be attending a phone conference with the select board in Washington with EC fiber as well. And I need to go and get on that conference around 645. So I don't see my trustee vice chair. He said he had a select board meeting of his own that he was going to be going from that to this one. So when I need to go, David, I'm gonna make you the organizer presenter. If you could chair, that would be terrific. And if nobody else has any objections, as these agenda items came out of your committee. So I'd like you to, you can drive those anyways. Okay, let's see, public comment. Any public comment? So next item that we have, reaching out to incumbent providers about cooperating. Ken, you want to lead on this one? I guess I'd engage myself here. That was your motion, wasn't it? They all were, yeah. So we need, I'm trying to lay out in my mind here, what these next few months look like. But it's possible that in the next few months, we may actually establish some new internet abilities for people within our district. And we know that we don't have, we don't want to be operating an ISP at this point. So how do we move forward to identify? Let's say we have new fixed wireless capacity for folks. How do we find partners to go, to provide that service to those newly connected folks? So, and therefore for us, what mechanism do we use to really firm up the discussions with potential partners? And just for everybody's information, I posted the motion and the minutes. Thank you, Jeremy, for taking those minutes. Putting that discussion into the chat. If you want to go and see what Ken actually moved and what we were talking about. So I think, yeah, the basic idea was that we were going to send some capacity. We were going to send an email or make phone calls or make some contact to all of the incumbent providers within our member communities and say, hey, given that there's all this funding, let's, you know, how can we work together? And I think, Siobhan, you had a turn of phrase that was nice, like cooperative, something, something. But yeah, how can we cooperate, get people served? And like, yeah, I'm sorry, I did miss a part of that. Another reason for doing this, that was one part, but probably the most primary reason for doing this is that because of H966, other providers may be doing some expansion work within our area. And there may be some that we can have fruitful partnerships. And I know that one we've had a discussion about the possibility is, is Weitzfield, Champlain, they have part of more town that maybe they do a fiber extension and, you know, maybe that works for us, but it is to establish, so it's not just the operations on ISP, but it's just to put out the word to others that may be pursuing funds from the state to do some expansion work. And part would be nice for us to hear about it beforehand. And part would be nice for them to recognize there's potential partnership. And I'll say kind of the darker side is that Commissioner Tierney said Comcast is ready to work with the CUDs. And that we should at least tempt if there's anything there that's of value. And so I doubt they're gonna be sending us a note. So this is another way of priming that discussion too. And if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, but we can communicate back to the Public Service Department that we're challenging for some of those partnerships. Right, so I see some commentary from Ray. He posts in the chat, are any of them bidding Ardof? And then he says, Comcast and Transvidio will see us as competitors and they will. But I think the way Siobhan put it in the minutes is that this gives us the moral high ground that we said we approached them. We wanna talk to them about what their plans are. And if they go and apply for some of this state money that we can at least, if we want to say no, that we have some reasonable, we've sort of done the legwork to say, how can we do this in a collaborative way? My reluctance in the minutes was, I'm not sure that this buys us anything. I mean, all of the incumbent providers know that we exist. Some of them are willing to participate. Some of them are not. So what does this give us? And yeah, I'm not 100% sure. Aside from that, like what Siobhan says, the moral high ground, if we need to say no to a line extension, that's probably what it gets us. Ray's question, if they're bidding Ardolf, that's something that's on the next agenda item that I definitely wanna come back to. That quiet period doesn't start, and please correct me if I'm wrong, folks who are engaged in this process, that doesn't actually start until the 15th. So we can at least have a conversation before then, but then they still might be reluctant to talk anyways. But my suggestion to the business development community was that we come back to the whole board and just get a sense of where you'd like us to go. Do you wanna do this step of reaching out to the incumbents or what do you think? But Jeremy, I've had one thing if I can. Sure, go ahead, Jerry. You know, maybe an initial foray to see if anybody is interested in talking with us. I agree with you 100%. They know we're here and they haven't reached out to us, but I think it would be appropriate for us to reach out to them and see what comes to that, not that we need to pursue them in the way that we've pursued WECC because we know that this relationship is super important. But I don't think it would, I don't see it being a bad idea to just reach out and see what we get. Okay, thanks, Jerry. Ray? So does this have to do with the $11 million that was in the bill set aside for the ISPs to extend? Yes, yes. So the idea is that the CUDs have a bit of veto power to that money? Exactly. And so I've already, I sent an email off to George Goodrich at TransVideo and said, I wanna call your attention to this provision in the bill. And I wanted to make sure that you were aware of it so that you could take advantage of it. Okay, he said, thanks a lot. We are keeping informed of this. They must not be the only ones. They must have their own little associations keeping in the form. And as long as it has this little provision with regard to, you have to elaborate with or get the approval of the CUDs or something like that. Why do this? They'll be back in touch with us if they need it. I'd prefer not to do anything further than what I just did was call their attention to it here. Yeah, so and in the case, thanks for doing that, Ray. And in the case of TransVideo, I've also talked to George before, back probably a year ago or so. And I should also clarify that the recent bill that passed actually struck the language giving the CUDs direct veto power, but the veto power instead goes to the commissioner of DPS. And she has the ability to approve or not approve in consultation with the CUD. And she said to the legislature that she would give deference to the CUDs opinion about this. And she said explicitly that she's willing to kind of be the bad guy and say, no, if we say that it's something that we don't wanna do, she's willing to be that, to give us that sort of cover. So I see Alan and then Siobhan, go ahead, Alan. You're still muted, Alan. Would it make sense to table this motion for the moment until we, no, I'm not, okay? I think I'm having problems on my end. So if you can't hear me, can you wave or something? Okay, thanks. Might it be in order to move that maybe we table a discussion about this item until we've had the Ardolf discussion? It seems to me we're gonna get into maybe more background that would help us to better understand the second question of reaching out to other telecoms. I'm not making the motion now. I'm just asking if that might be a good thing to do. That's all. Okay, that seems, yep, that seems sensible. Go ahead Siobhan. So a couple of things. One, this is separate from Ardolf. This is not Ardolf, this is state money. The other thing is I'm not sure, this is not the best analogy that I'm gonna come up with but it's what popped into my head while we're having this discussion. I don't know how much bullying y'all went through in school but one of the questions that the people in authority often asked when you try to complain about this kind of thing is, well, did you tell them you don't like it? And that's where I'm coming at with this is it's we're telling them we want to work with them. And then if they choose not to work with us we can say to the state, well, we tried and they aren't working with us. And so their plans are now gonna trample all over everything we've been trying to accomplish. Veto that, that gives us a lever. But if we don't make that initial attempt it gives them plausible deniability to say, well, we didn't know we were gonna trample on them. Even though technically we're all aware of each other and they're big people and they could figure this out it's denying them plausible deniability is the way I see it. And it doesn't cost us anything to do this but it could gain us with the state authorities. And so that's my thinking on it but I am not utterly married to the idea of doing this. I'm just why I'm leaning on one side versus the other. Any other thoughts? So we have a suggestion that we table this until we talk about the Ardolf stuff. I'm happy just to sort of kind of sloppily segue into that and then we'll kind of go back to this. We don't have to be, you know, abide by the agenda so strictly. So is that amenable to everybody if we start talking about the next item, the Ardolf one? Greg, you wanna take a crack at it? Well, yes, one last thing I just wanted to find out. Ken, did you say it was $500,000? Well, that's a different topic. The department has $500,000 for planning that must be completed by the end of December and it's emergency planning. It's supposed to be how do you provide service in the very short term to address the COVID emergency. So that's not gonna be paying any of the incumbents money to do work. It's really just to lay out what is necessary, maybe better understand coverage. I don't know and I'm not sure they know either to be honest. Oh, it's not money to actually be building and providing service to anybody. That's correct. That's at least $11 million and there's also the cable line extension. Yeah, so it's well north of $10 million that is available for actual construction work. And I think we would want to be at the table, so to speak in this planning, on our input to be had. Yep, there's that topic too. Again, as a big Venn diagram, there's a lot of overlap in a lot of these discussions. Okay, so let's circle back around to a more of a discussion about that plan and what DPS is doing with that. Do we want to, yeah, let's talk about Ardolf. And I see Jerry put in chat that he concurs with Siobhan about this that we need to be on record to have attempted a conversation with the other ISPs out there. So the issues with discussing Ardolf plans in public session, Michael, could I have you talk about this briefly? Because you sent a pretty clear email earlier. Would you be willing to say something? Sure. Thank you. So the FCC is trying to protect all the bidders from other bidders cheating in the auction by colluding together, by figuring out how to divide what's gonna be bid upon to just share strategies, to figure out share costs, to do all kinds of things that would give them a leg up on other bidders. And they've taken the stance in many auctions in the past and other other actions that they pursue. And so they have very clear rules called prohibited communications and anti-collusion rules that regulate how all bidders behave. And the important thing to understand is that no two bidders can share any notes whatsoever about where they're gonna bid, how much they would spend, any of their strategies, anything in that regard. There's a long list actually. And that includes daring it with someone who might be a neutral party who is in a position to then share it with the next bidder. And so that neutral party is called a conduit. And so we have to avoid conduits. So we as a member of the consortium are a bidder. There's only one bidder, the NRTC is the bidder on behalf of us, but we are all as if we are a bidder. And so we as a bidder cannot communicate anything about our strategy, even what state we're bidding in and not be revealed. That's kind of laughable, but it applies to national bidders who are gonna choose which states to go to and otherwise. So that you can't share anything. So we have to be careful that we don't share information inadvertently through a conduit. So that brings us to not being able to tell government officials what we're doing, not being able to tell lawyers who represent other bidders what we're doing, not being able to speak to consultants who might represent other bidders, not being able to speak publicly as we do in every meeting because anybody can access our public meeting and therefore discern what we're thinking of doing. And there are other examples, but I think I've gotten the point across that in general, this all has to be done very discreetly in our case within our consortium. And even within our consortium, the individual organizations that are in the consortium may have to firewall off certain individuals from the rest of the organization so that it can be controlled well. If the FCC determines or even suspects or somebody informs the FCC that there's been any communication that is in violation of these rules, the FCC feels it has no choice but to come down really hard. They will throw you out of the auction, they will find you. If you have FCC licenses, they might revoke them. It's really draconian and they want it to be so that people are scared enough to follow the rules. And obviously it's possible to cheat, it's possible to work out wink, wink, nudge, nudge kind of arrangements, but it's really risky to do that. And it's basically patently unfair. And so I guess my conclusion is we can't talk about any art off strategy, where we're gonna bid, where we're not in our public meetings at all. We cannot share it with our consultants until there's some kind of legal arrangement made to protect that information from going to another bidder. We can't share it with an attorney, all of these different kinds and we can't share it with the department of public service. All of our friends there want to help us, we can't tell them. And because they all can serve as conduits. So the conversation I had with my dentist this afternoon about the, while we're waiting for the Novacan to take effect, I'm talking about CV fiber and how we were hoping to work with trans video and there's this federal bid thing that we're looking at and all of this, that would be wrong. Don't do that because he lives in Northfield and he knows the family. I'm sorry, go ahead. Because he lives in Northfield and he knows the family and he could have a conversation with them and not, okay, I'm just making sure I understand the point. So officially, officially the quiet period begins on July 15th. Some interpreted as the day that your application is submitted, which can be before July 15th. NRTC officials are assuming that it already started. And so there are different people who interpret that differently. But obviously if you're giving information that's gonna get back to somebody who will then use that information, that's a violation of the spirit if not the rule of July 15th. So Michael, I have a question. When you said we as a board can't talk about these issues, does that mean even in executive session we're prohibited from talking about these issues? No, no, the problem Jeremy raised in our business development committee meeting was we weren't sure what provision we can use to call executive session in order to talk about such a thing. But there's no reason you couldn't in executive session discuss it because now you're only telling yourself something and that's allowed. Yeah. You just need to be able to find competitive disadvantage. Yeah, well, it seems to me if the federal government is telling you you can't talk publicly about this, that's, I'm not even sure you'd need an exemption from the Vermont Public Records Act for that. But I don't know that, it's an interesting question. Yeah, but Jeremy raised it last meeting and we were gonna check it out. But yeah, I'm pretty sure the state grounds calling executive session. Yeah. You wanna make sure that we've crossed that T because there are potential parties out there watching our public broadcasts who might call foul and cross the T's. Jeremy, can I take a moment, a privilege that most people don't know yet that Cloud Alliance joined the NRTC consortium. So that means that Civic Vibe are discussing these things with me in the room. It's not a violation because I'm one of us. So that's important to know. Okay, so moving back to the main discussion. I guess I can answer more questions but I think it's fairly up at this point. I think we may be able to get around having to worry about the public records of meetings, rules. I have a suggestion. I don't know that this is the best option. What if we just had two people or a handful of people and they were just the designated Ardolf people? Because I mean, this is gonna be getting into the weeds and is it the sort of thing that our bid really needs to be discussed among the entire governing board? Maybe, maybe that we go into executive session but does it make more sense just to take two or three people and not make a committee just say these are the people that are allowed to do the Ardolf negotiations, work with NRTC and go from there and then just, and we just wrote back the visit and when we can talk again. But again, firewalling off those folks and giving them the authority to navigate the bureaucracy of the process. Any thoughts about that? Can I respond to that? Please. I think that that is probably the best way to do it but not the, I don't know what the adjective is. I would rather that the board be informed. I think the board members wanna know what's going on and I don't think the board, the whole board needs to know what number we're bidding down to and no lower that sort of thing or which specific census block groups we're bidding on but I think the board's gonna wanna know are we bidding on massive amounts of block groups or are we being selected based on the different blue and orange and salmon groups or I think everyone's entitled to note at least that general stuff and even that is prohibited information to share publicly. So I would say, yeah, probably we wanna have two or three or four people who get into the deep weeds on it about strategy and how much money for each block is too little to take and things like that but in general, I think it should still be open to the board. I think I have a middle ground. So go ahead, Allen, then Ken, David. So Jeremy, what your suggestion, suggesting would be parallel maybe, tell me if I'm wrong, but it would be parallel to us hiring a contractor to do the art off work for us going through the bidding process and so forth. And then those people who are actually involved in it as our representatives are reporting back to us as a board and what's going on. The difference with what you've sketched out is we haven't contracted with anybody to do this work so we're gonna have to figure out a way to do it within but create some sort of a group of people with expertise and the ability to talk among themselves without having the whole board to be involved. Is that accurate? Yes. Thank you, okay. I agree with that too. And my middle ground is I think it might be appropriate to have a small group of CV fiber be involved in designing what CV fibers perspective is in the bidding process, not have the full board be a part of that discussion because it's kind of bulky discussion and hard to contain but that small body then works with the consortium during those meetings to make sure that our interests are represented as they develop as the overall body develops its strategy and then the results of that then come back to the full board. So you're aware of what's going on and through the full board can provide a little bit of directional support to the small body but a lot of the discussion about strategy might be among a very small number of people rather than the full board. David? Yeah, my only comment, I mean, I agree with what's just been discussed, right? I want to come back to the other motioners on the floor. Does that motion get caught up in the Ardolf process? Michael? Wait, do we have a motion on the floor? Well, the recommendation about communicating with the potential partners. Okay, I thought I was worried that I missed a formal motion, okay. No. There is a recommendation from the business committee to do this, that's right. So my question here is, does Ardolf impact that discussion? I don't think so. Yeah, I think there's, we can send a letter to these places saying, we want to work with you relating to these state grants and the extension of cable services, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, without ever mentioning Ardolf. I don't think they have to be related. Well, if we get into where we would like to work though, wouldn't that be a problem? Our members are public knowledge. So on the other hand, there's this notion of conflict of interest and then there's the difference between a real and a perceived conflict of interest. And as a public entity, we always have to be aware that a perceived conflict could be just as bad. So if we're having phone calls and we're talking to provider X and that just looks bad. So I think we probably could before July 15th and just say, if you are, yeah, I don't know, or their attorneys might say, no, we're not talking to them about anything because we're also gonna be bidding. So- I don't see any value in asking any entity whether they're, I mean, we're all allowed to state where we've applied, we've filled out the short form and we are eligible to bid. And we can ask any other entity there and that's about as far as they can go. So I don't see particular value in asking around. I don't think it was asking around. I think it was, does the fact that we say we might be interested in working with you in the future, does that violate Ardolf just in and of itself? No. Because there's plenty of other census plot groups to serve other ways and without those funds and we already have a plan that did not include Ardolf in the plan, really. It was aware of Ardolf's eligible blocks but that plan is not targeted at Ardolf necessarily. So it's fine to talk to anybody about building whatever as long as we're not talking about the auction. Okay, so that seems a little bit counter to what you said before where we couldn't even talk about what state, well, I guess what state we might be bidding in. But it's like, it seemed, I glanced through that sheet and it said pretty clearly that any discussion of where even you might be building might be, I mean, not related to, yeah, okay. I guess you know more about it than I do but that's pretty good you're calling. You're realizing the subtlety of it and how the perceptions like Jeremy was talking about conflicts of interest and just perceptions of conflicts of interest. It can get there and so everyone should be cautious but you are definitely allowed to discuss normal business which includes for us construction and design. Ray? Yeah, so I think I recall we had a fairly lengthy conversation about releasing business plan, financial plan, et cetera because we were concerned about others finding out what our plans were and how people might come in and cherry pick our subscribers where they thought they could get some revenue from it. The ISPs aren't going to trust us. We go to them and say, we'd love to help if there's some way we can cooperate and they're thinking, why? At the end of the day, people will be making a decision between CV Fiverr and the incumbent ISP. Do you think they really want to trust us? It's like we're asking for their business plan. I don't care what they think. I care what the state thinks. This isn't for... I care what they think. But the state's the one that's going to be approving or disproving grants for certain activities. And so there's kind of a purse string there that they're holding that we have the ability to tap into. And that's what I'm concerned about. It's giving us, go ahead. And if we feel we have a legitimate interest in one of those plans, we should speak up otherwise, keep our powder dry. Yeah, you clearly haven't been bullied as much as I have been because this is not... This is straightforward. This is straightforward. This is just a step you have to do. This is performance for the sake of performance. It's not... It gives us a little bit of an edge in one arena, very small arena. And that's it. And I admit that it's sophistry, but that's all it is. But I think it's an important thing that we need to do on a little side. I mean, a little bit on the side of important, not hugely on the side of important. So I feel like I'm arguing for something and I'm sounding more passionate about it than I really am. I'm just... So anyway. Okay, so, Alan, I'll give you the last word and I think we should probably actually get a motion on the table and try to resolve this if we can. Okay, so I'm the youngest or four boys, family of four guys, oldest brother is 10 years older than I am. When I was, I don't know, seven or eight years old and I wanted to join the big guys baseball games, they would usually say something to me like, yeah, yeah, sure, kid, come on, come along. We'll find a place for you. And I'd end up in the right field. And of course, I would strike out all the time. And of course, they really didn't expect anything out of me and they were just trying to be nice and maybe get some kudos from their moms or dads for letting the little squirt play. That's kind of how I feel about this now. I don't think anybody's really serious about our baseball skills, because it's pretty clear we really don't have a lot of them because we haven't been in business very long. So I'm not too... I don't think the big guys are gonna really give us anything in the baseball game that would allow us to succeed. I think they're doing what their shareholders want them to do, which is to be a successful for-profit company. And that's why they exist and I acknowledge that and I think they do too. So I don't think this is necessarily a chummy kind of a... Chummy kind of a game that will be played. I think it's gonna be really competitive baseball with big guys playing who have played a lot. Thanks. Andy, you look like you might wanna say, I'll give you the last word, then let's get to it. Yeah, I guess my only caution with this and it's something I've brought up before is I worry that we view ourselves too much in a competitive or startup perspective and not in a public body trying to solve a problem perspective. And I just, these folks, the fact that we are scratchy right fielders that strike out a lot says a lot. And if somebody is a really good hitter and they deliver a good service into our community, that's really what our responsibility is first and foremost versus being a viable competitor. And I just don't, this worries me. It's a trend we've always had but and I get it and I'm not saying that it's wrong or right. I'm just saying you need to keep kind of open perspectives on what it is we're trying to do. Thanks, Andy. So I'm gonna make a motion that we, I'm gonna make a similar motion as what the business development committee did, not because I endorse it, but because that was the motion that came to us and I can't find the original motion, hold on. So I move that CV, the CV fiber governing board sends a letter to the incumbent telecom companies operating in our territory indicating that we'd be willing to discuss possible cooperative projects. And can I get a second or not? Second. Is that, that was you, Chuck? I was seconded by Chuck. All right, any further discussion? Okay, so we're ready for the vote. I do wanna do a roll call because I don't think that this is going to be a unanimous one. So let's start, I'm just gonna start for my list here. David? Healy? David Healy is an I. Greg? I. Ellen? Wait, sorry, who was that? I'm a little behind right now. That was... David was an I. Greg Kelly was an I. Allen Gilbert? No. Allen Gilbert was a no. Andy Gilbert? Okay. Okay. Michael? Yes. Okay. John Morris? Hey, John Morris is an I. Josh Jarvis? I. Javan? I. Hey, Ken Jones? I. Jerry's an alternate, sorry, Jerry. Ray? No. Okay. Jeremy, you're an alternate, Chuck. I. Okay, unless I'm missing somebody else, I'm gonna cast the final vote. I'm going to say no. But the ayes have it, nine to three. Unless my math is wrong. Motion passes. Who wants to draft that letter? Business Development should do that. Okay, let's have the Business Development Committee run with that then. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna be going to a meeting with the Washington Select Board. I get to get on a phone call with them momentarily. E.C. Fiber and we will both have representatives there to talk to them about their possibly joining them or us or both. Yeah, Chuck. What does that do to our recording? I'm gonna try to leave the recording going. Do any of you have the recording option on your go-to meeting? Dave, do you have a question for the writer? David, do you have? I said you were gonna have a recording option. You're muted, David. I guess you're muted, I don't know. Yeah, David's got an unusual icon next to his name. It's not a, it's not a human. You will never speak again. He says he's not going to talk to you. All right, so let's see. John, I made you an organizer. Who else can I make an organizer? Michael. I'll make it just for him. Jeremy, did you go? Whoops. Do you want me to start recording? I think that was David dealing with the log. Maybe he's logging. I'm sure he's restarting his computer. Jeremy, I wanted to make one comment before you leave. Go-to meeting. Quick, Michael. Jeremy, can you hear me? It's for Jeremy. He's got to hear it. You guys have lousy internet, I'll tell you. David's audio is not working now. Oh, Jeremy, can you hear me? Let me say somebody tell Jeremy. We are now Michael. I can't hear Michael. He's ready for you, Michael. Town of Washington has the most RDOF in our region. We want to get, we want them to join us. That's all. Say again? Okay. Michael says Washington has the most RDOF in our region and we would like them to join us. Thank you, Siobhan. Yes. And I will not say that after July 26th. Can you guys hear me now? Yes. So is Philip taking over the meeting? Or David? He doesn't know that he doesn't know, but he is. Oh, there's David. I had a, I left and came back so the audio would work. Okay. So do you have the con? All systems five by five. So Phil, when you weren't here, Jeremy suggested that I take over because you weren't going to be here. And since you're back here, I think you're still in charge. No, go ahead, David. I had the same problem you did where I completely lost audio and had to reboot. So I, I have no idea what's going on as far as the conversation. So if you do, okay. Well, the next item on the agenda was applying for PSD funding. And the business development committee spent a bunch of time on this last week and run the reasons we're having the special meeting is so we can move forward and applying for that money. And I'm going to let Ken who wrote up the memo that was attached to everybody's in the, I think Ken sent, yeah, Ken sent that to everyone. But anyway, there's a short period for this. Started to interrupt Jeremy Hansen just said in chat one sec, there's a hundred and forty five dollar cost for the webinar about non art off collusion. Do we want to pay for that? I don't know if we need to have that discussion before he leaves. Started to derail, but. But that means the whole bunch of people could attend, not just one person. No, I think it's per person. I think it's, oh, wow. Yeah, it's intended for members of the electric co-op national electric co-op association. NRTC member of that one. And so WAC and VEC can get in there for free. They can get, there's a way to get their lawyers or other associates in so they might be able to get one or two or three of us in that way. But I think it's crazy to spend that kind of money. There's lots of documents and webinars out there already on this topic that are free. Also aren't our consultants covering us for that? I mean, we paid 5,000 bucks to be a part of a consortium. That's what they do, right? We can ask them, but the information they posted showed that it was $145 for non-electric co-op members. We'll work on that. Yeah, I agree it's unnecessary. I don't want to deal with that right now. I want to go to the next item on the agenda. And so as I was saying, H966, which the governor signed on July 2nd, is we've got a number of items in there that we believe the business development committee believes we should be acting on as aggressively and as fast as we can. And so last week Ken drafted a sort of a section by section description of what he thought our roles were could be. And I don't know if you've had a chance to look at that document, but it was pretty good. But we would like to open it up to the whole board. And I'm going to let Ken lead us through his thinking on where there are good opportunities for CD5 to advance our mission through this bill. Yeah, so we'll start at the most obvious piece of money. There's $800,000 to be distributed to CUDs CUDs and maybe some structures parallel to CUDs with a cap of $100,000 per. So what that means really is there's $100,000 for us. The intent of this money is to help us participate in providing emergency telecommunication services related to COVID. Now, I may not have phrased that exactly the way the legislation does, but it is that intent. And that's very, very challenging because all of these monies are supposed to be spent by December 30th and not just spent by December 30th but actually provide value in addressing the COVID emergency. Now it is possible and all of you folks probably have an equal ability to estimate the probability that Congress will allocate more money for infrastructure investment. In which case it takes the 11 million or 11 million plus the state has for building out and expands it a lot. And that would be very exciting. And that would say that we could use, CUD and should use the 100,000 to really consider how to do our build out more fast. But in the short term, we can't necessarily put all our eggs into just that. How do we build out more quickly? But rather, can we respond to the emergency? What can we do to respond to the emergency? So tonight's agenda includes three topics that are specifically related to that 100,000. One is to ask for the 100,000 from the public service department and we will get it. There's really no question about it. But the other two are the business development committee's sort of first attempt to how we would spend the money. And it's in two pieces at this point. One is to extend the contract to Intel so that they could scope out what it would be specifically to expand fixed wireless within the CV Fiverr district recognizing that fixed wireless is something that could be installed in a small number of months so that you could get actually expanded service before December 30th. Mr. Goldstein sent around a note yesterday saying he could do that for $22,000, which is to identify the specific location for installation of poles and the use of existing infrastructure to put the transmitters that will improve fixed wireless service for a number of the folks in the CV Fiverr district. So for $22,000, he could develop what he calls a budget proposal. It would be the basis for us to go to the public service department and ask for money. And he could do that within a month. So that's a part of it that I think fulfills the intent of H966 in the use of the CARES funding. And the other part is for us to hire somebody. We've talked about it for months that we're a great group of volunteers and I really do appreciate working with you folks, but we need somebody working 40 hours a week. And to justify under the CARES piece, there are many of the activities that we can task an employee with that really does comply with the emergency response, but also a recognition. And in doing that, they'll also build capacity so that they can really get us ready for build out in 2021 on our main mission, the construction of Fiverr. So again, three pieces. One, let's ask for the $100,000. Two, extend the contract to interisle for $22,000. And three, let's aggressively seek an employee or a contractor that would have to have an end date of December 31st to use the money, but therefore hopefully we can get a very high caliber person, maybe not use all of it, maybe use some for some other support functions for that office, but to then spend the $100,000, which would then be the basis for our application to the public service department. We're putting in for a hundred thousand. This is specifically how we're going to use it. I think we'll be a leg up on the other communications union districts. Not that it's gonna be competitive. There's money for all of us, but in terms of the rapid turnaround, we can request very rapid just write us the check. This is how we're gonna spend it. So that's the basic pieces of the agenda this evening on those topics. And then there's of course a lot that we can talk about with regards to what are some of the specific activities that we can do and I'll just lure out one of them. Again, part of the federal legislation is they really do want us to identify particular types of addresses. That are with public school students that are having trouble with connectivity to their public schools. So in case our kids can't go back to school in September or can't go back to school in October, they have a better online experience than they had during the spring. So if we can identify addresses that gives us even more strength in applying for the state $11 million to do some of our work. And another subset of that group is telehealth. Both the medical facilities that provide telehealth services to their patients, but also I think some of the patients, chronic patients that can be identified today, if we can get them better connectivity so that they can truly participate in remote health activities, that really, really meets what the federal government considered in providing these funds and therefore will give the state great confidence in saying, yes, you central Vermont fiber deserve this money because no way is anyone gonna challenge its use. So those are some of the details of what could happen. But again, the three parts, 100,000 from public service, 22,000 into aisle, remaining 78,000 to support a contractor and the services for that contractor between an early start date and December 31st. So Ken, if that's not a motion, I would like to make a motion. So at least we have something on the floor for discussion. You wanna do one at a time? Do we do one at a time? I would do all three myself, but just because I think they're interrelated in a way that makes sense. I second the motion. This is Jerry. Okay, let's have a discussion. And just a second, Jeremy, Matt, for the minutes, I think you can use that summary that Ken had at the very end, those three big numbers applying for the money from the public service department, hiring, interisal, and then finding a contractor who will do the work for us. And I can't remember how much money was attached to each, but that's how I envision the motion if... I have that here. I took it down. 22,000 for interisal and 78,004 to hire a contractor or employee and to provide support for that person. Sounds good. Michael? I think we might, I think 60,000, 10,000 a month, or a little more than 10,000 a month, because there'll be less time than that, would be, still get a very high-quality contractor. And that would leave us another 18,000 to play with. I think there are a lot of good things we can come up with in the next, before the next meeting on how to spend that money. Because at one point, I guess it's no secret to Fred that we were thinking of paying him 40,000 to do what he's offered to do for 22. And so the 18,000 is that difference right there. And I'm not gonna suggest what we can do with it. I'm sure we're gonna come up with like 12 ideas and then we can vote on it next time. Can we state it as not to exceed? Sure. And that way we're not dedicating the full amount? Yes, and I wanted to add a couple things. First of all, just to be clear, we're talking about a temporary position that expires at the end of this period. December 30th, not even December 31st. And what was the other thing I was gonna say? I lost my train of thought. I'll come back to you and go to someone else. Any other discussion? Andy. Yeah, I just supporting Michael a little bit there because I have a back tick nervousness about our books right now anyways, in terms of some of the obligations and grant needs and miscellaneous expenses and commitments and where we are and other things that would be helpful to have some flexibility and use some of that money for meeting other needs. So that's all. Greg. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's part of this motion. We would need to define the responsibilities and our desired outcome for the consultant not just hiring a consultant. What's the objective? The material that the business development committee, Ken and I sent out last week, has a job description and all the other stuff in it. And it certainly isn't the final piece of work, but it's definitely, you have something to start with if you wanna kick it around and crack change on it or whatever, please do that. So I think, I don't know what it's gonna take to get the money timing, but I think we ought to be advertising or recruiting right now. That's my two cents. Anybody else? Alan. I just wanted to make clear, Michael, you would refer to somebody coming in, coming into a position, which to me means hiring staff. And it sounds to me what we really want the person to do this number three action is we wanna find a contractor who will work for maybe a defined period of time with a very defined purpose and goal. Is that, that's what you mean, right? That's what we said at the business development committee and I just do it for you. Okay, I just wanted to make clear what's on, thanks. Michael. I just wanna comment that the Department of Public Service is an overdrive already. They wanna get these opportunities out there because this money has to be spent really quickly and it's gonna take a lot of time gathering materials, gathering contractors to build things, just doing designing. And so that same applies to Fred doing his work and a few of us have been in dialogue with him today and yesterday about accelerating and getting that done because we have to be able to tell the department what we wanna do before we can even get the funds to do it. And so we're gonna need a lot of this information early. And that applies to all of the different projects, all of these different things that are coming up. There's gonna be a land rush from lots of providers, including the big guys to take the bunch of this money. And so we need to get it figured out fast because it is sort of first come first serve. The commissioner will be looking to get stuff to community organizations, but they have to be sure the money gets spent or they lose it. And so that's the point. Ken. Yeah, just to put a finer point on that during the last telecom advisory board meeting, Clay Purvis said he contemplated or considers to get the $11 million out the door by August 1st. So I haven't yet seen whether they're gonna put out that it's the same kind of RFP they put out every year for the connectivity funds. But he, as I said, he in that public meeting said he imagines getting those proposals in and decisions made by August 1st. That's a reason why when talking to Fred about getting our proposal together within a month is necessary. And to say he said he can do that. You're basically saying in two weeks, right? Yeah, but I also know what, yeah, I also know how hard that is as you folks might know, I'm trying to spend $125 million in five days. And we're not gonna be able to do it. Yeah. Any further discussion on this? I just wanna say on the hiring of somebody, I don't know if we want the whole board involved in that, but anyway, we can talk about that later. But you should review the draft position description I have. And you should also understand what the expenditure, the money is restricted to. So it's a pretty tight thing, but I think if there's no further discussion, I think we can go to a vote on this. Seeing none, I will take the vote. Is there anybody opposed to this? Seeing no, Jeremy, it's a unanimous vote. On the three items. So, David. Thank you, David. Is it the business development committee's responsibility to follow through on all three pieces? I would say yes, but anybody wanna clarify that? Is that in the motion anywhere? No, it was not. Okay, so let's just that we will do it. So I can go with that. I think it's the business development. Oh, sorry, David, go ahead. I'm looking for a new motion. Motion that the business development committee followed through on what was just voted, which is that we pursue this $100,000 and allocated appropriately. Any second? I second. Any discussion? I missed that. Who was that? Greg, okay, thanks, Greg. Any discussion? All those in favor? Anybody opposed to that? Aye, aye, aye. Okay, unanimous, Jeremy. I think that's all the items on the agenda. Well, I added one. Oh, you did, yes. Sorry, Ken. It's actually a little bit related. Yeah, I think we are in agreement that $78,000 is more than an individual deserves. So what would you do with an extra, let's say $18,000, but the item on the agenda is there's a $500,000 available to the public service department for doing emergency planning. So I would like to at least plant the seed in all of our heads about if we think about what our organization needs over the next six months. Especially, especially, but not exclusively, but especially if we can help with emergency response to COVID. Is there something that you would call planning that we might work with the other CUDs? And I know Evan Carlson has also been given this charge to consider whether the CUDs can work with the public service department and say we will participate in this activity. You give us some money, of course, so that the more local boots on the ground folks, boots on the ground people, us can participate in this activity so you really can get some things done. I don't have firm ideas at this point, but again, plant the seed among us. Can we participate with other CUDs? This, again, it's another, let's say another $50,000 for us to do some planning work that really strengthens our understanding of telecommunication needs among our clients. Great. Yes, one idea I would put forth is doing poll surveys. Allows you to really be much more accurate in the construction budget and also know really where you can go and where you can't go. Josh? Worked up the idea of, you know, contacting school boards in other areas or actually doing particular surveys to try to identify those school age children that we talked about earlier that may not be able to access. There were school systems where they did too. You know, things like that might be a worthy way to show that we can help in this emergency situation. I didn't ask Josh to set me up for this, but I'll respond to that because this week I allocated every underserved premises from the 911 database to every school district in every town. And I've drafted a letter that I think are a call. I mean, the question for me is whether the superintendents are the appropriate people to go to or is that the actual principal in the school? And that I now have all the data for every address. Now what we need the schools to do is say, yeah, there's a kid at this address that doesn't have service. And then we can tell the public service department, hey, we have a hundred people here and our Wi-Fi proposal will, our fixed wireless proposal will serve these people. I don't know if the school districts can do that because of FERPA. So this topic has been raised and there are some school districts that have done it, but they don't make it a public document. So we would need a non-disclosure, some sort of non-disclosure that they can provide us the information that's held within a very tight orbit, if you're right. This is one of the reasons why the state gave up on it because it can't be public. And the other piece of that in our proposal for the fixed wireless money, we can just say we're gonna serve a hundred students. We don't have to tell them where they are even. I would also add telehealth to that because for $50,000, we can do that kind of outreach. I think anybody underserved needs telehealth. So that's an easy one to me. Convince them of that. But we could look at demographics. You know, we could make a reasoned argument for that. Oh yeah, I think so too. Shevon, did you say the schools themselves are the best people to go to? No, because they're not gonna be able to give you, I think you're probably gonna be better off with the district supervisors. I agree. Let me ask Frank, but I think it's gonna be your district supervisors. In this discussion more closely than the principals. The principals are overwhelmed with trying to get ready for the school year. But I think the superintendents are aware of this discussion. Okay. So I realized in doing this work, I didn't know that Cabot was part of Plainfield and Marshfield and Danville and somebody else. They went a weird school. That's because your kids are grown now. Anyway, I have all the data. And so to the extent that we can move on this, Ken, you wanna work on this with me, I can do it. All the new manager can do it. But I think we need it for the applying for the fixed wireless money. We do. Michael. So first I wanna ask Ken a question and then I wanna talk about the 18,000. I still don't, and I'm not sure anybody really understands what that $500,000 planning grant is for because by the time the plan is complete, the period they're planning for has ended. And it's just goofy. There needs to be some way to absolutely accelerate it so it can be made useful. I'm not convinced it's gonna be over, but let's go with that. No, no, no, but that's not the problem. The problem is that the US Treasury says all this has to be used and utilized by December 30th or they're gonna claw back the money. So it's not a question of whether it's practical for use or not, it's these rules. Maybe those rules will change, who knows. All right, so I'll drop that. And on the $18,000, I was just thinking we're talking about contracting with an individual to do things for us. And I really support that. We could use that $18,000 for contracting with a low-skilled person to work on the fixed wireless project or to train somebody, maybe in several people, high school kids, who knows. We could consider it as a possible salary for, I don't know, whatever. So compensation for people who will help knock on doors, deploy stuff, up-fread, running around choosing poll sites. There may be some use that way, just a thought. Now, I agree with that. I think it was about, I mean, we probably even need somebody to set up our bookkeeping a little bit better. We need some outreach on our website. We need the door knockers things. I mean, just even publicity. We're not doing great at this at all. I think Ray is leading the pack when it comes to using Front Forge Forum. No, and actually, Jeremy. Jeremy puts all the minutes up on Front Forge Forum in Marshfield, on Plainfield. Where are you from? Plainfield. You're Marshfield, I know. Thank you. And anything is, I think the committee will come back and say, this is what we think we ought to be doing with that money because there's a lot of needs. And of course- Can I ask a question in there, please? Yes. And I don't know exactly who this question is to. Maybe it's to Ken. But when we talk about money that needs to be spent, there's a difference between the money being obligated and the money being spent. Are we talking about money being obligated? No. It's gotta be spent. Spent. Not to be spent. This is- Holy mackerel. Okay. Truck. An emergency services truck. Right. An education- It's a wire on it. Yeah. We'll start stringing the wire. That's our emergency plan. All right. Any other- We were on- Ken, do you have any more on that? No, this is- There was a Josh's item. We started with Josh anyway. Should we go into the round table so we can have this more organized? I think that there was approval of the minutes as an agenda item. Oh, I didn't see that. Okay. Approval of the minutes from the June 23rd, I can't even know. You know, I have to say, this COVID- What day of the month is it? So- Second. Second on that. All right. Any discussion on the minutes of- So that was a motion by David, seconded by Siobhan to approve the minutes. Yes. Okay. Any discussion? Seeing no- So I assume everybody's a yes on this one. All right. The unanimous on that, Jeremy. Ray's got his hand up. Oh, no, he doesn't have his hand up. Never mind. He has hands. Okay. I'm going to go around the table here. Michael, Grant Brompe, you're on top. We have a great secretary. We do. Thanks. Bill? I'll pass. Go on. Ray, I want to see you do jazz hands. Woo! All right. I'm good. Thanks, guys. Great. We're one step closer. Slow, steady progress. Allen? Yeah, this has been one of the worst Zoom connections I've had. So I've been missing some of the stuff which just reinforces my desire to try and move as fast as we can because I don't have the slowest connection in the world. Certainly don't have the fastest, but people are even worse off than me and that's pretty bad. It's amazing to me. We've been at this meeting for what, an hour and 15 minutes and we've gone through so much stuff, a real substance. We're talking about real money that's up there and a number of digits and it's great. It's great. It just feels great, the pace and the kind of stuff we're talking about. Andy? Just, yeah, general thanks, Ken. It was a nice package to put together and move in fast on this. So it was great. It's awesome. John? Morris? Josh? I just want to have you have the conversation. Ken? Yeah, I know this was a special meeting with the focus on this emergency stuff but I'll just say it and it's not going to be a surprise to anybody to keep moving on our overall work in terms of the, what do we call it, the pilot build and I forget what color it is but that first build to really think about when it's time to do outreach to some of those potential customers and find some of the dollars that will help support move that forward. We need to keep that right on the front burner because we do want to go to Vita with a package fairly soon. So let's, you know, the next meeting let's shift that focus to make sure we're really moving forward on that particular project if that's the one we want to go for. Jerry? Yeah. The one thing that really jumps out there are two things jump out at me. One, the incredible amount of work that's been going on and the things are moving so fast. And as folks have said there's real money involved and that's fantastic. I'm a little concerned that, did we barely make a quorum today? I'm a little concerned about the participation. I'm surprised because we've had good participation when we were having our regular meetings, you know, at the school at Berlin I'm just a little concerned about the participation. Yeah. 15 people on, okay, Ray. Good meeting, good work. Business Development Committee, Ken Jones. I like the idea of the mobile service truck when I get into the conceptual thing. And the reason I say that is that I think that we take some of this $100,000 and actually deliver something to somebody whether it's tablets, whether it's Wi-Fi, some kind of connectivity. And we're gonna find out real soon now that schools aren't gonna open, things aren't going to work. And we need to be there. We'll have some dollars, I think, to do something. Sounds good. Jeremy, ask. Chuck. Nothing tonight. Thank you, everyone. Oh, geez, Chuck. Anyway, this has been a great meeting. There's so many different things going on. I just wanna remind everybody in our Northern Board of Regional Commission grant application, we have money in there for a manager, too. So with this person that we get the contractor for this next month's works out, we hopefully will have some money to keep them going. So that's me. And I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. So moved. Close and famous. That's a little backwards, Siobhan. No, no, that's just by internet. It was just a little faster than you guys. Oh, okay. So anyway, that was a motion made. Okay, Jeremy, thank you. Yeah. Good night, everybody. Good night, everyone. Bye. Thanks a lot for being available. Take care. Bye-bye.