 So the meeting is being recorded. Well, call a meeting to order. And see if there's any public comment on items not on the agenda. And then one. What. Just want to let everyone know that tomorrow at one o'clock. David sheets. I'm Scott Bassage and myself will be doing a final walk through to look at the exterior painting of the town hall. Sign off on everything. If we think it's time to sign off. Or ask. Grady to address any issues that we discover. Okay, very good. Anyone who wants to is welcome to join us, but if we make sure you mask up. We get. Too many of us. Board members there, then we'll have to warn it. Yeah. All right. So. I have an addition to the agenda. At 109 this afternoon, I received an email from the agency of human, the secretary's office and the agency of human services. And I just got off that call about 15 minutes ago. And it was Dr. Levine and secretary Smith running the meeting and making. Updates. So I just wanted to put out. Some information. So I just wanted to. Pulling together a zoom call for low town officials. That included town managers or administrators. Left board chairs. Our state. Representatives for Washington County and senators. And I just got off that call about 15 minutes ago. I just wanted to put out. Some information. Dr. Levine compared the outbreak in Washington County. As an Amber alert. It's really serious in Washington and Orange counties. Currently. Washington County. Has. 40 cases for every 10,000 people. Which is three times. The most positive rate in the state in the whole state of Vermont. He said that. Right now we are Washington County and Orange County are an epicenter. 40% of all cases in Washington. And orange ball 44% of all the cases in the state are in. Washington and Orange counties. They're doing about 750 tests per day. And most, he said 72% of the outbreaks. Are from social events and parties. And they mentioned a specific Halloween party in our area. That happened on Halloween. That was in the paper. The one in the field. Right. But, but callous residents attended. That party. You know that he said that. He said that. He said there's little squirmishes in. About 50 different facilities, like in some nursing home in. North field has a small outbreak, but he said that the most significant outbreaks occur. From. These parties and social events. And this current wave will come in two phases right now, and we'll talk about that in a minute. And then we'll talk about that in a minute. And that's two of this recent outbreak. And the cycles last around 14 to 28 days. So he asked us what. The people in attendance, he asked us what they could do or what we could do. And I suggested that they put out a template. That we can use for. Making postings on front porch forum. And then we'll talk about what we can use because you post something from these VT alert, which I've done before. People pay attention to it. So they're going to go back and come up with some templates that we can all use. And he said it's hard because. When there's a small parties or social gatherings. People know people who know who went there. And you have to be careful because of HIPAA. And I think it was very interesting that they felt the need. To have a special emergency type meeting. With the people in Washington County. And they were going to go do one in Orange County because of the recent outbreaks. So I'll keep you guys posted as I. Get additional information, but that's. Pretty much when he said, when Dr. Levine said. We're an epicenter and this is should be. We're an epicenter and this is what we thought of as an amber alert type situation. I thought that was pretty significant. And he wanted to know what, what we were doing. And I said, initially we had. Close their offices. All government municipal type meetings were done on zoom. That kind of thing. And he applauded us for taking that initiative early on. So that's what I wanted to report out. Thanks, Denise. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Denise. You're welcome. So Joe, it goes to show that. Just one or two people. Cause massive outbreaks. Yep. One or two. Each one of those hockey rink was one person. It was not. Being fully open and honest. And my understanding is the Marshfield thing was. Cause by one person. Right. And what they said is, you know, like when you go to a restaurant, when you go to a restaurant, when you go to a restaurant, when you go to a restaurant, the reason they've closed bars, but not closed restaurants is because. At parties and social gatherings, people tend to drink. And then they tend to let their guard down and take off their masks. So he said, that's part, part of what happens. So anyways, that's my update. Thank you. I'll keep you updated on whatever information I get. And now we're going to talk about LGR grants. And I'm going to talk about the grant opportunity here. With regard to. Upgrading our broadband and internet service at the town hall and the town office. Through the grant opportunity, I think we've got $35,000. Is that right? Yes. $35,981. Yeah. And we've been investigating, as you know. Doing something different with our phone system. And all of this is related to COVID because people are working remotely. And it's certainly things that we can use. When COVID. Is, you know. History. But in the meantime, there's a lot of opportunities for things that we can do. We talked about. Different phone system. A laptop and scanner for the zoning administrator. And the data. Providing bread or broadband to the town. Office. So with that, I'll let. Cliff. Explain. Who is, who is friends. Sorry. It's Regina from consolidated and my partner here. Oh, you mean. That's Hans and your partner. No, gun or my dog. Oh, yeah. I don't know who Hans. Could you identify yourself, please? Hello. Hello. I know that Hans recently bought a house on County road. So he may be a new callous resident. Oh, okay. All right. So, Cliff, you want to. Explain. To everyone. We had a short meeting. Today. Nick and the office staff and Cliff and I to go over the options that we have. So I'll let Cliff. Spell them out. So, um, Thanks, Denise. As Denise described, we applied for these, this elder grant. We had some different ideas in mind as to what the monies could be used for. Looks like hounds is froze up until he's joining us again. From a different system. Yep. Looks like he's got Hans. Can you hear us? Okay now. You're muted. Okay. Well, we'll proceed. Um, Joys of technology. So we had some different ideas in mind. What would. Basically to qualify for this, this grant. Uh, it had to be. Needs related to the pandemic. And we had identified a few different needs. One of them being a, a upgraded phone system that would work remotely. Could be accessed remotely. And utilized by the office staff. We also looked at getting a new laptop setup for the zoning administrator. We also looked at the possibility of getting a new. Business account, which would allow for a greater number of participants in zoom meetings and give us some other. Uh, tools for facilitating such meetings. With an eye towards possibly having to conduct town meeting remotely. And then the other big part of that was looking at. Was there a way we could upgrade the broad broadband. At the town office. Um, Which has been a topic that we've discussed on and off. Uh, over the past year or so. Um, But with the office staff working remotely. That need is even greater now because of the challenges of not necessarily always being able to be in the office all at the same time. Initially, Judy had contacted Regina, who is, um, Here's the government account manager for consolidated. Is that correct? Regina. Right. Yeah. I take care of all, uh, town schools. Uh, private colleges and the state of Vermont account for consolidated in Vermont. Great. Thank you. And thanks for joining us. Yeah. Asked Regina to join us because I thought that there may be some questions that I wouldn't have the answers to. And she graces, graces graciously agreed to join us. Yep. Um, So initially Judy had contacted Regina and, uh, talked about what we needed and what consolidated realized is. What made sense, uh, financially for them to move forward would be to provide broadband service, not only to the town office, but to the town hall as well. They structured some quotes, uh, based upon. That we talked about the possibility of bringing the, uh, Broadband to one location or another, but it just wasn't financially feasible to do. Um, in order to give us a price that we might could live with. Um, It made sense to look at putting broadband to both locations. So the trick here is, uh, Consolidate consolidated would have to invest in expanding. The fiber network. And that would represent an investment for them. Um, So the first option involved basically looking at that. And saying, well, instead of having the town of callus pay an installation fee upfront, we could. Um, We could spread the cost out over a series of monthly payments for a contract. And I'll show you what that looked like. Give me a minute. To pull it up. Thanks for joining us, Sharon. All of these accepted. Um, Give me a minute. I need to open up a document and share it with everyone. So what we have here is a quote for, um, Consolidate to provide us with. Broadband access 200, uh, megabyte speed up and down. And, uh, No installation fees paid up front. And then they offered it at two different terms of contract, a five year term or a three year term. And as you can see the monthly costs are. Pretty high. And this is what the total package costs are. Pretty high. And this is what the total package would look like over the length of a five year term or over the length of a three year term. And we would bear all of that cost the town would. Any questions about. That graphic there before I move on. Okay. Hearing none. So then we asked, uh, I'm not going to show you all the scenarios. I'm not going to show you all the scenarios. Actually, there was a lot more back and forth involved here. I'm kind of giving you a shorthand version. Regina's been great because whatever scenario, we asked her to run. She went and did the homework and came back. So I'm not going to show you all the scenarios. But I will show you some key scenarios. We then talked about if we used some of the elder grant money. We looked at the monthly charges. And we looked at some different options. Let me just click and see if I can pull that up. This is what it would look like. If we took 25,000 of the grant money. And put it towards the installation fee. You can see how that would affect our monthly costs. On terms of the five year and three year contract. And how it dramatically changes the overall cost to the town. Because of the total cost of the three year contract. 25,000 of that would be paid for by the grant. So the actual cost of the town comes down from 84. 46. Yes. How come the monthly payment. How come the monthly payment. Is more on a lesser number. On a lesser number. On a lesser number. On a lesser number. 647 versus 531 for the 36 months there. It doesn't make sense or something wrong. When we went to this quote and Regina can verify this, but they basically spread the cost out evenly. Over the two locations. Instead of waiting the cost. To the town office. Versus the town hall. So if you look at the calm combined pricing. Of these two. What. 20. $2,354. Versus the combined cost of these two. Which would be $1,295 and 40 cents. Does that answer your question, John? Yeah, I'm not seeing those numbers on the screen. I don't know where that is. Okay. So. These two numbers you can see the sum right down here. Make it bigger if you need to. I don't know where I can just. Some is where. Oh, right down on the very bottom. Yeah, I'll just do it this way so it's easier to see. So in the first quote. The monthly fees were weighted heavier. At the town office, but in the revised quote. They decided to distribute the fees evenly across the two locations. Right. So this is what your total monthly would be. With nothing down and what the total monthly would be. I'm just looking at the three year terms right now. With the down of 25,000. What's the rationale. Cliff for. If there's grant money distributing evenly. And if there's not grant money waiting it to the town office. It was just the way the quote was constructed. When they first quoted it. She could just as easily change that. Take these amounts. Divide this in half. And it would be the same picture then. That's absolutely right. So it's not a question of. Somebody else might contribute to the town hall or anything like that. No. And we did talk about that possibility. But the problem is, is to qualify for these grant monies. We need to have gotten this done. We need to have this project done by the end of the year. We need to have this project done by the end of the year. And if we start trying to involve other entities, we're going to slow down the process. And it's going to be tight trying to pull it off as is assuming we move forward. Yeah. So what happens if we commit to this and it's not completed before the years and are we still going to hook. Is that the contract? I mean, is consolidated going to commit to that. And if it goes runs over. And then the general project. The letter of contract. The letter of the grant contracts says that the work has to be. Completed by the end of the year. Reading between the lines. I'm talking with my contact. Like if you're near the end, they're not going to shut you that they're not going to hold you to the full thing, but it's in writing the written contract says it has to be completed. I think there's some wiggle room there. And what Regina has said she can do for us is if we do commit to moving forward once she has the contract signed contract in hand. Excuse me a minute got to bring somebody else in on the meeting. Screen share for a minute. Okay, looks like they opted not to join us. Back to screen share. They have a fast track program at consolidated that is related to installations needing priority due to coronavirus. Regina, can you speak a little bit about that please. We basically, since the beginning of the pandemic, we developed a COVID-19 expedite process. And it's really where orders go into a specific queue they get assigned there basically babysat through the whole process so we don't lose time, you know, kind of on the internal administrative piece of the of the orders. They get out to dispatch more quickly. And it's just a streamline process. So, you know, we're about we're six weeks, which is really tight for fiber builds, you know, I'll be completely honest with you. I won't know if you even if you placed an order tonight. We probably won't have a clear idea of a solid installation date for at least a week, possibly more. And, you know, there's a lot of things that can go on. We can certainly, we'd certainly be able to show progress of an order in terms of, you know, the fiber build that our line crew has done, you know, so if we're getting close to that end of the year and you need to provide some documentation to say, you know, is this project 75% done is it 85% done. We can certainly do that there'll be physical work that we can that we can illustrate. But, but it is, you know, it is a pretty quick timeframe but we can like I said put it on that fast track and, you know, get get things flowing through the system as quickly as possible, and out to dispatch. Regina, you have all Regina you have all the materials to fiber optic and inventory and the connectors the junction stuff. Okay, yes, enough to do this project. Typically, where we get into significant delays is when we need central office equipment. Because you know, as you probably know, there's all kinds of electronics and, you know, any type of equipment is can be challenging to get and it's been that way all year. But this is just, I believe it's strictly a fiber build so we wouldn't have to rely on, you know, big pieces of CO equipment coming from out of state or out of the country. So maybe if you ran it starting at the clerk's office and go backwards, we can say it's connected to our serious selected offices. And they're just finishing up on their end and literally that would be better I think on paper, then them saying well they're a half a mile away from the office. That's interesting. I don't know if that's possible. But that's certainly something I can discuss with our engineering folks. I think that would make a big difference that we can certainly and it's a matter of the there is a piece of equipment that we need to put on site. It's a network interface device and I don't see why we couldn't get that there quickly. You know, so at least you can say well here the equipment is and then like you say now we've kind of got to build backwards from the the actual town buildings. Right, we would not be lying if we said our buildings are connected to the line. And then right in terms of what happens I mean things happen all the time where you get disconnects due to storms and so you're exactly the other end but yeah, I think that might be smart. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I think we can work with that. And I asked just a question that I may have missed this point in if I, if you guys talked about it before I came on. So Regina you're from. Yep. So, so my question I'm just going to be. I'm going to be candid is, you know, we hear over and over and over around town that, you know, at a residence we have the best internet that consolidated can give us. So, two questions, is this better than the rest of us have. And this is fun. Right. So what so okay, then to be provocative what makes the town so special that the town gets to have fiber optic than the rest of us have to get. Yeah, oh well. Sorry about your internet. You can get fiber optic as well if you're willing to pay for it. I mean that's this is an enterprise grade of service. And specifically what, you know, businesses would get many of our schools have this exact same site, same type of service hospitals, etc. So yeah, it's fiber, it's symmetrical so you're not going over the copper phone line, where you're going to get a slower upload speed than you do your download speed. It's an entirely different type of service. It's engineered differently. There's a service level guarantee on it so if the service goes down, we have to pay you based on how long the service was out. It's entirely different from DSL or cable modem that you might have to your home. And, you know, like I said, I mean you, you start we've put fiber in homes. It's a matter of paying for it. It's expensive. This particular build is costing, you know, upwards of $70,000. You know, hence the, you know, the high pricing and the, the upfront. Now, all this being said, bringing fiber to the town could potentially benefit residential customers or small businesses. Once it's laid because the closer you are to fiber, you know, kind of the less expensive it is to get out there so it may be feasible to bring it out to a residential home and it's never going to be as cheap as DSL. But it could potentially not be hundreds of dollars a month. So the other thing I've heard is that the level of service, etc. Consolidated is what it is because Internet is not a man mandated service. It's something Consolidated does out of the goodness of its heart. So what, what implications does that have long term if the town, you know, invests and relying on consolidated at this level. That's a good question. DSL and Internet and this type of Internet which is dedicated Internet is not a tariff product. So the state does not have. They don't provide regulation like they do for your phone line, or other types of regulated services where it's written right into the tariff, which is basically like a law that says, you know, you have to repair this service within X amount of time or the phone company gets fined. That being said, there's a service level agreement that goes along with this type of fiber service. And I'll send it to Cliff when we get done here. And basically it says if the services out for four hours or more and there are different increments that we will credit you, you know, a prorated one of the monthly fee. Sometimes it ends up being the whole monthly fee. So we have financial penalties written right into the contract to our customer. If there's an issue with this service. It's, it's also, I don't want to say it's, it's priority because I mean all of our customers are priority, you know, the 911 service the hospitals, public safety or they're kind of on a different level. But, you know, if we get a trouble report, this type of service is monitored basically proactively. So if there's a widespread outage or something going on throughout the state we generally know and we let folks know so it's it's constantly monitored. The service level agreement is, you know, you could see that right in black and white that there is a financial penalty that we have to pay if the service goes down for you. And I've got this type of service I've been with consolidated for over 10 years. I have all the schools, like I said the state, all the colleges, I have this service in probably 60% of the schools and not what, you know, I have for 10 years for some of them. They're all very happy. John wanted, John wanted to ask a question. So, so let's just say I'm guessing you run you're going to run the line up Moscow Woods Road from 14 down probably I'm not sure the exact route. Okay, but let's just say that's what it is. So we, the town of Calis with some federal subsidy will be paying for that line that fiber line from, say root 14 all the way to our two buildings. Do we own that line we the town having paid for it. And then that's first question and then second question is, do we have say over who can, in addition can connect to that line and the third question is, as connections are added particularly to connections to users that would cause high demand. Yeah, well that then have an effect on the ability of that line to transmit at the same level of quality. First of all, no you don't own the lines. We own the lines, which is a good thing because you don't want to have to maintain them. We know we've got a couple hundred technicians throughout the state who maintain our outside plant. We have other people hooking up to them this isn't like cable service where you put service into a neighborhood, and you get the first few houses and then you know kind of as things grow, you sometimes see a slow down. Nobody sharing these lines. This is fiber going from our central office to the two town offices, and that's it. Nobody else can hook into it it's not a matter of us coming out and calling another piece of fiber from a business along the way into the fiber and then sharing that service with that new business. If someone else wants to get a fiber connection. We can use the fiber that's going between the plant that's on the polls, but it's not a question of the service itself being shared. So you'll never see a degradation of service. The town's getting 200 meg download and upload. That's what you get. You could have 100 other businesses or homes subscribed to the same type of service it's not going to make any difference to what the town gets. Utilizing the same line. It's not really the same line. You've got your own. It may be on the same polls and in the same piece of fiber but that fiber can hold hundreds, potentially thousands of customers, because of the way it's my question. Yeah, so it's a dedicated line. It is a dedicated line to the town offices. Absolutely. Consolidated. Consolidates or sells again. There's been a lot of that. Yeah, I mean, you know that happened in 2018 our sale went through from Fairpoint to consolidated and they just took over the assets I mean when a, and that's exactly what happened when Verizon sold to Fairpoint. The company would come in and absorb all of the assets and all of the contracts and liabilities. So it from my customer's perspective when that happened. The only thing that changed was the name on their bill. There wasn't really any disruption of service from Fairpoint to consolidated our systems were the same. I was still around, you know their whole account team was still around. What kind of a company's buy is that fiber network and the central offices. That's the, those are the assets. All right. So, so the clarification purpose if I might. So, we have a dedicated level of service it's it's not a dedicated line the actual fiber optic would be available for other folks in town to hook up to so that I mean that's not a negative either. We can service on same level of service that we've contracted for and actually will be paying for if others wish to now connect from the point of acts from an access point that's now closer to their homes. Will they see a reduction in the cost to connect as a result of it being more approximate. It depends. We wouldn't have to build that that fiber. They could potentially get a lower rate. But it really depends. It's not a question of just taking a line, putting it in a house or a business, and then hooking it up to the lines on the polls and they have internet access. They've got to have their own port in our central office. And we've got to, you know, provide them with a specific internet access point. So it's, it's really hard to tell. You don't have to make that initial investment, most likely. But I don't know that their monthly fee would be a whole lot less than what you're paying. Because one one benefit and one selling point. I was hoping that would come at us was that now we have a fiber optic line, moving into the heart of cows. And not not as far from say Kent's corner and Maple corner, even my neighborhood and Sharon's neighborhood that that would provide us, you know, a shorter run to make connection. Yeah, a lesser costs, share costs, and if that would be a benefit, we could sell to the residents because kind of getting back to Sharon's original question. Town office gets this benefit and we're paying even still with the subsidy a lot of dough. Right. It's a third of a dump truck that we need to buy this year. Yeah. And that's a payment that's as much as a dump truck. And so if we could then market it and say, well, you know, we're starting to make this is also the beginning of infrastructure that would serve potentially the rest of our community. And we could subsidize down the costs overall to everyone else. That would be a huge deal. Yeah, I think you I think you can say that to some extent but it's, it's not like we're going to be able to you're going to be able to say okay now everybody can get 100 Meg for $50 a month. It just doesn't work that way with fiber but certainly the closer a business or a home is to our fiber network, the cheaper it is for us to get internet out to them. And therefore the cheaper it will be for them to subscribe to that service. So we've got a couple of we call it business one and we've got a couple there's a couple of other names to it that are, you know, a little bit cheaper than are this type of dedicated internet they don't have as good a service level guarantee on them, but you know still great service, you know, and that's probably in the $150 $200 range. And, you know, the closer we that the more fiber we have out there the closer they are to fiber, they should be able to take advantage of that. But it all kind of goes down to you know we got to look at it place by place. We are, we are also I don't know what could never happen but there's, of course I'm sure you're aware for Gina that there's a CV fiber entity that's looking to build out its member can fiber optic and there's a town who would be a major contributor. Arguably, if we didn't have it would no longer be a contributor, because we already have this that we've already. And so that in some respects as I see it may actually will actually have the effect of undermining the rest of our community's ability to get see fiber to roll out. It's in our interest to see that just have a have a greater benefit than just serving the town. All in the town office because it actually could have a negative effect on the ultimate build out in our town. So it'd be great if consolidated were to be able to make a greater level of commitment here. I want to go ahead. Yeah, sorry to interrupt I want to just underscore that I was thinking about it from the flip side. You know, what could that project do with 25 or $35,000 of grant money. But yeah same concern, you know we've got something that has to go the slow way because it doesn't have millions and millions of dollars backing it up. And that's generally how we have to do. There's not a lot of, there's not a lot going on at the Moscow would stretch, you know, even even if it's still, you know, that's really not that helpful to the to the community it's helpful to the town offices and comes with a huge price tag and then to the extent that people build out from that or two at two or $300 a month. That's all to consolidate it instead of this community effort. Yeah, you know I really can't answer to what their business model is or what their timeframe is. What I can do though is we have a community broadband team. I don't know if they've talked to the town of callus yet, but I can certainly engage them. And, you know, anytime there's, you know, there's fiber out there it helps their, their planning. So I can definitely have them get in touch with you guys, and see what they can do they may feel like they may have already started in that area but you know that that's exactly what they do is they look at areas they look at density, where the houses are, etc. Where our physical plant is do we have fiber out there, and they'll come up with a plan that makes sense for a community at a price point that makes sense. But for for broadband, not for the five. Um, you know, it really depends I mean it may be, it will probably be called broadband, but depending on the technology they're able to deploy if they can deploy some type of G pond technology, it'll be better than DSL. It may not be fiber to the prem, or it may be, you know it depends on on what the plant, our outside plant ends up looking like. I had a comment. Yeah, go ahead Rose. When the select board learned about the entity down on Lightning Ridge Road that was going with I think use this cable or whatever. Yeah, and they, they were interested in putting in high speed internet just for just for those two houses. I know John Winston inquired directly with consolidated and talked about how there's 24 houses here on Lightning Ridge, because there is high speed at the Calis elementary school. And what would it take just to bring it up the road. And so I know that, you know, John Winston has been in touch with consolidated over these last couple of months. He may be talking or whatever it's worth I mean. He may be talking with our broadband folks. I'll reach out to them tomorrow and I'll see. And I'll mention that name, John Winston. Yeah, John Winston. Yep. Lightning Ridge Road, because the school has fiber optic. Right. Right that's Calis elementary, right. Yeah, right. Yeah. So, I don't want to beat this course that I feel an obligation to keep acquiring and somewhat pointedly Regina. I don't support this, but this is exciting. But I need to do this. Explore these questions so CV fiber would be a competitor validated. And I would be concerned if we expended the, the, the money that we're seeing here on the screen. This cable and then consolidated management then said, it's not in our interest to provide this, the level of access CV fiber wants off of this fiber optic cable. And if they want that we're going to make them pay because we don't want them getting out ahead of us. And these are things that just kind of go through my head because I've seen these kind of predatory practices with not was consolidated, but with other companies and in an effort to gain competitive advantage you yourself said that this is not regulated. This is not a regulated utility, such as the phone is. And so that does give me concern. At the end of the day, consolidated is obligated to its shareholders. And that ain't us and that ain't definitely ain't CV fiber. And I would be, you know, I guess, I would like the contract to spell out that they will not use this that they will provide, you know, the same level of access to CV nonprofit companies in town to call us where they need to access this line as they would any CV. I'm sorry consolidate a customer I guess I would want that if we're going to make this level of investment I don't know if you guys have thought about that, or can do that, or comfortable with that but that's a that's a big deal for me. Yeah, you know, and I hear you concerned and I can certainly go to our legal department with that. So resigning a retail contract with us. Us providing access on that fiber to CV is a wholesale situation, completely different side of the house. I can't even speak to, you know, it's, it's almost a separate company, but that's who they would come to if they wanted to use our fiber. They typically do that a lot of these nonprofit or these municipal fiber companies end up wanting to own their own fiber, they'll have someone like a use this cable run it for them, but they'll actually own it. And that may be part of their if they're getting any type of federal money, or state money, they may have to own it. So I don't know of any companies, you know, sovereign that used to resell some of our services, but now they've run all their power via the federal stimulus money that came out 2012 2013. So I don't, I don't see how we could write that into a contract because you're not CV, you know, fiber either so you know I can I can talk to our legal department about it but I think it's it's a, my initial impression is it's going to be a separate issue. If they want to use our fiber, they've got to go through the wholesale channel and negotiate their own rate with that. So there's a lot of wholesale work so it's, yes, there, there are competitors, but they're, they could also potentially be our customers. So there's value for us in partnering, rather than being adversarial with a lot of these companies. Judy or Nick had any questions or comments. Oh, I just, I agree with the reservations that John says expressed. That that's understandable and I can ask our legal department tomorrow, you know, to kind of give me some guidance on that. I can't provide any tonight because I just don't know. My perspective is working at the town office and needing broadband as soon as possible for COVID reasons. And because we're doing finances, taxes, grand list dogs we have all kinds of data. Land records. Listers appraising. We have a really complex business governmental business essentially. We are a service to the town. We're serving 900 over 900 property owners and 1500 residents. And it's really difficult to do work without broadband. I haven't been following the details of CV fiber my sense is from reading glancing at their minutes that they're forming subcategories and subcommittees and that it could be a ways out. I'm looking at this as a three year contract where we have options at the end. And also, you know, this, this isn't the full. This isn't the complete graph that cliff has we have an even better financial option here that we can review that we have access to grant money. And this could be done by December 30 and it would radically change the office and our ability to work remotely. So I have kind of a strong advocacy for the town office and the town hall. The reason we originally separated out the quote was because we thought it might be cheaper if it went to just like it's not part of the contract to be able to do that. So, I don't want to compete with CV fiber but if they're four years out, and we're six weeks out. I think we need to think at it a little differently. I mean, how would you feel, excuse me about continuing this conversation and have Regina sign off now. Well, I want to see if Regina has anything else to say or anybody else has any questions for her first. Cliff has a hand up. Go ahead, Cliff. Yeah. Good questions. It's a good discussion I would like an opportunity to finish my presentation. So we're considering the whole picture. Also, if Regina could at least be with us for as I present this final option that might spur some other questions for her. And then, yes, once we've exhausted our questions with Regina then certainly we can discuss beyond that. I can also tell you that CV fiber in my understanding is that they're talking about putting together their own network, their own lines. And that's why this is this would be a way out. Down the road, it's going to be a very completely different picture of what internet options are available to the towns and people of Vermont. There could be options where there will be options actually for connections to satellites and space that will provide up and down speeds that far surpass what this even this connection would give us. That's the starling system that Elon Musk is putting together. So, you know, three years from now it's going to be such a completely different look out there. CV fiber may not need to exist because there'll be other options. I'll go ahead and present the third scenario that we discussed with Regina. And that basically is if we took the bulk of the grant money and applied it towards the installation fee. What would that look like. Is it going to give it to me. Is this the using the whole 35 K option. Yes. Give me just a minute, so I can pull that up. This is not cooperating with me so I'm going to have to do it the hard way. So if I think it's in find and select. Oh, I've got what I want. Yeah, okay. I'm going to give you $35,000 of the grant money and put it towards a down payment. This is what it would look like then the towns. It would cost the town over the three year period basically 39 K and bring the the total monthly down to what is that to shy of $1,080 a month for the three years. So we did it for a, it is a 60 month option, five years for a total of 42. That's correct. That's correct. So as you can see there's considerable savings to be realized if we're in a position to apply this grant money in some form. And I don't know now if anyone will have any questions for me or additional questions for Regina. If there aren't any. Regina, what is your availability if we suddenly have a bunch of questions. Certainly you can email them to me. I've actually got a another call I have to get on in about 15 minutes so tonight I'm kind of done. But yeah, you know, feel free to email me. I'm around all day tomorrow. And, you know, just let me know what your questions are. I'm happy that you are. You've let me join and I hope hopefully I answered as much as I could. Okay, one last chance. Any more questions for Regina. Regina one thing that would be helpful. If you could tell us the route that the line would follow so we would know where it's coming from. Sure. Yep. We'll also get back to us on seeing if you can start at the clerks office and work the other direction. Yes, yeah. And the questions you were researching through your legal department. Yeah. Yes, you know, I can pretty easily find out the route that we would take and most likely if we could kind of work backwards. But getting into a legal situation or getting some legal help may take time. So, you know, I know time is kind of of the essence. Just so you know that that could add days or potentially weeks, if we needed to negotiate a contract back and forth. And I think that would be strongly that we are not going to be able to address allowing CV to have any access to this line in a contract that we have with town of callus. That's going to have to be a separate conversation with CV directly. And a separate contract with them, if they even want to go that route. And generally, like I said, these companies tend to want to build their own network. Because it may not benefit them. I mean, if they, if they've got their own, they've got to have their own internet access point and brain. So if they're going through consolidated, there is probably no benefit to them to use our lines. But that's kind of where my knowledge ends as far as wholesale arrangements. I certainly appreciate your time and answer. No problem. Thanks for Gina. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thank you. If you could put those numbers back up again. I have some questions. Who is Hans? We don't know. So I'm looking at the $35,000, $36 month total. Why is that higher than a 25,000. 36 month total. Why is that $2,200 more? It would seem which should be less than 716. Maybe there's an issue with the formula. Let me take a look at it. Yep. It looks like there's an issue with the formula. I was hoping it would be an issue with the $35,000 formula. Meaning it's way high. No, that formula looks to be correct. This looks to be correct. It's good. Look at this. That should be correct. Yeah, the formulas look to be correct. Let me do. Let me do some manual checking here. We're folks asking about who I was. I'm sorry. I missed that. Yeah. Who are you? I'm just, oh yeah, I'm just. Oh, me. Hi. Sorry. Yeah, I, I live on County road near Martin road. And I was just, I saw this on some porch forum and I just wanted to listen in. And see what was happening. I'm new to the area. So I just was curious. Yeah, welcome. Hi Hans. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. Sorry, I was, I was late. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for joining. Oh, wicked slow. Yeah. It looks like it's checking out. Let me run it one more time. If you're making less. In payment amount. For the same term, then. $25,000 scenario where you're making a greater payment payment amount. For the same term. It should be lower. So, so what's happening, John is. This number. Versus this number. Okay, this is because it's the cost of the 36 months. At this price equals this. And this number is this plus 35,000. This number is the cost of 36 months, which is this total. Plus 25,000. Oh, I see. I see how you did it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not because you're spending more money up front, but the end cost to the town is less. Got it. Got it. Make sense. I always have problems with upside down math. Cliff. I sort of asked the same question earlier, John. Just because I'm not a mathematician. No, you got to stand on your head. And I'm not saying that I'm not a mathematician. I'm not saying that I'm not a mathematician. I'm not saying that I'm not a mathematician. I'm not saying that I'm not a mathematician. That's not what I meant to look like he's standing upright, sitting upright. So what are the other possibilities for this grant money? Is it, is it great? Is it grant money only for this project? So it's, it's the ticket for this or, or. Lose it or. The grant money exists because of COVID-19. A lot of people are doing their own work or doing their own work. Or trying to work her trying to deal with aspects of the pandemic. When we initially applied for the monies, we said that we wanted to look at the possibility of getting expanded broadband service to the town. That we wanted to get a laptop set up for our zoning administrator. So he could more easily work remotely. We wanted to expand our. to upgrade the phone system at the office. So these were the things we cited in our application. And what Nick learned is that we ended up qualifying and being granted $35,981. But the deal is, is we would have to initially put the cash out ourselves and then get reimbursed. But it would only work if the work was done by the end of the year. And Nick also confirmed that there was latitude that just because we said all these different things on the grant doesn't mean we have to spend all the money on those things. And what we learned is we learned some more information about the phone system and the phone system that we were looking at isn't really gonna be what we need so we can go with a less expensive option for about $3,000. And the laptop and scanner for the zoning administrator, I don't know, that's probably around a couple of thousand. I can show you what those costs would be. The phone system that we were thinking we were gonna need when we applied for the grant was priced out in the range of, I wanna say around $9,098 something like that. So what we found is that that system was way more than what we needed and we could qualify and get what we needed for a much lower price of around $3,000. So here's some additional numbers to consider. The telephone system would be $3,019.87. The laptop setup, this is based upon the setup that happened for Sandra's laptop. I actually think that it's gonna be a lower price than that because the zoning administrator will not need all the capabilities that Sandra has to have on her system. But we use that as a benchmark for getting the grant in. The Zoom business account would cost us $2,000 if we decide we wanna go that route. There's a less expensive option of just adding additional licenses, approximately $160 a pop for multiple license. We wouldn't get all of the tools that come with the business account, but it might serve our purposes. We also would take from one of these funds listed up here, six months of service for the new contract from starting January to the end of the fiscal year. And then going forward from that point as we create our new budget, we would want to budget that monthly cost into the town budget. So this is the funds that we have, we can draw monies from to pay for these others. This is the total of what these other costs would be. And that is if we use the 35,000 towards the broadband initiative. Correct. John has a question? John. So I'm just thinking, we currently have a phone bill, at least for the clerks, maybe the town hall too. Can we, if we have the high speed fiber optic, can we ditch the phone bill and do voice over internet protocol? And that's the first question. And the second question is, if we can, would this telephone system be adaptable to VOIP? And then the third question is, why is that Zoom business account so much because I literally spoke with my boss today and she's looking at setting up a Zoom account and it could handle a hundred people at a time. And it's $147 a year. So I don't understand why this is 2,000. So we have now. That's what we have now, that's correct. And what the Zoom business account is is basically expanded capabilities allows for up to 500 people has unlimited recording space in the cloud. And effectively it's 10 licenses. Right. So more than one. So it gets rid of the having to negotiate on the calendar. Right. It gives everybody an option to be able to hold a meeting at the same time. We could look at the closet. Oh, cool. And help with the meeting, right? Yes. Right. And don't forget this internet service, this expanded broadband service is going to be to the town hall. And we've talked on occasion about how the town hall could be overflow office space, maybe for the Listers, maybe for the ZA. When things get back to normal. Actually on that point though, somebody help me understand how having better internet in the town offices helps with working at home, helps with remote. I can speak to that. Right now, Sandra is working remotely all the time. And she is doing very detailed accounting work and she uses what we call, what's called NEMRIC. There's various modules in the NEMRIC and you may be familiar with it, but there's finances, taxes, grand list. And so because we don't have good broadband, she often loses a connection to our server. So she can be in the middle of creating the budget for 2022 and lose everything or lose the last two hours of work or suddenly it slows down when she's working on a deadline for a presentation for you folks or something like that. It can be very, very frustrating. So that is a big problem for working remotely, although she has access, the way it's been set up through RB Tech, she has access to virtually her desk, all that she would have access to if she were sitting in the office. When I work remotely, because there's isn't good broadband, I can't access, if I access things that I need, if Sandra loses her connection. So I can only do part of my job at home. I have access to land records because that's housed with cotton Ohio, but I don't have access to our shared documents, what's called clerk share, all hundreds and hundreds of files that we need often when we're communicating with people and sending them things. And I don't have access to NEMRIC, so I can't send a text bill, I can't look at the grand list. My hands are kind of tied in terms of what I can do at home. And Barbara can't really work at home much and that might have to do with her internet connection, but so yeah. And I think also looking to the future, when the Listers, I think we're gonna have, you know, a professional assessor at some point, and I imagine that person will wanna work remotely. I think that's just gonna be the wave of the future. And NEMRIC could be, if we had broadband, NEMRIC could be on the cloud and virtually any staff member who's working in NEMRIC would be able to access that very easily. So there's many, many benefits to being able to, also just the speed in the office. So those benefits alone. Go ahead, John. Those benefits alone are the selling point for me. Yeah. You know, I wanna see the office to be able to operate efficiently. And, you know, and like Judy said, going forward, I don't see us pulling out of this for four years, frankly, folks. So they're already talking about a new variant of this virus. So who knows? So I think this makes sense. And it's with the subsidy, it's cheap price. My only concern is, and I see close hand up and I'll be quick, is that we don't get stuck paying the full bill and we need to do whatever we can to get this expedited and make sure that it's clear from the state that if we're darn near close, that they're gonna help us out and make this happen. So if we get something in email and writing, that would probably suffice. But that's the only thing I'm nervous about. John, I could seek out that reassurance and writing, see if I'll give that. I can do that tomorrow. Okay, close. Thank you. I wanted to circle back around because John had asked a couple of questions. I only got to answer one of them because John, we were looking at this slide and you had asked about the telephone system. If we go with the scenario where we apply the bulk of this grant money to the internet access, then there's no rush to get these things done before the end of the year. We could then have the luxury of time of looking to say, okay, well, we've got expanded bandwidth. Would a voiceover internet protocol phone system be more appropriate for us? Yeah, that's true. And hopefully I answered two or three questions there. I think I got them all. Yeah, you did. Thanks, Cliff, that's awesome. You're welcome. Thank you. So my question tonight is, are we going to be able to make a decision tonight so we can get in the queue to make this happen before the end of the year? The longer we hold off, the more it gets pushed out. What are- I'd make a decision, but sorry. Well, I don't know where the lines are but maybe because contractual stuff can be an executive session doesn't mean that it has to be an executive session. But this is clearly us entering into a contract. Well, I don't think we have anything that we would want people to know or say about this. I mean, I don't. Well, I do- If anybody wants a session, we should- Well, I'll just repeat what has already been said. Has anybody talked to the San Mont Fiverr team? Are we- Oh, you're cutting- You're cutting in and out, Sharon, so I didn't really hear what you said. So my question is whether anybody has talked to the local Fiverr effort? I did speak with David Healy. They are quite a ways out for being able to do anything. And as I said before, it's my understanding that they're talking about building up their own network. So I can certainly circle back around to David and say, hey, we're thinking about doing this. Do you see this as undercutting this project in any way, shape, or form? That's my concern is that, you know, it's been about a year and a half or two years since they launched that effort. And I assume that they are working as quickly as they can being homegrown. And now we've got a little bit of money and a long comes consolidated. And we pull the rug out from under people who have been working on it. Judy, do you have an answer? I guess it's a question for Cliff. Jared, who, Jared, right, who at RB Tech, who we've been working with, he's our RB Tech contact. Isn't he a key player on CV Fiverr? Yes, he's the alternate to David Healy. He is, and he's very supportive of our efforts to try and make this happen. And I have talked with him as well. Right, and I just, it was my sense. He was really supportive and that if he saw this as a conflict with building out the town in general, he would have said something to us. And CV Fiverr applied for a Northern Borders grant to help them get started and they did not get the grant. So they would have to wait until about a year or more at this point, about a year and a half to apply again to get any kind of grants to do what they're trying to do. So I know that my Myers-Briggs type is like loving conclusion and a little impatient. And I guess I really appreciate the thorough questioning and everything that's been raised. I'm also really fearful of overthinking it and losing this opportunity and being kind of in the dark for the next few years. So I guess I would just hope that if you go to executive session to discuss it that you'll keep that in mind that I think this is a real opportunity. We have the grant money. If we move quickly, it may be able to happen in just a few weeks. And I think it would be dramatically positive for the town office. $38,000 sounds so minimal to me. We spent $30,000 on scanning the index cards. And that was uncanny timing. It's made the land records available remotely. And if we hadn't done that, and that was pre-COVID we had no idea of COVID. And now virtually everything, a 40 year search is available online. So we're in really good set for the land records. And this would just expand that same kind of remote access for all the other aspects of the town office services. And the town office services are for everybody in the town. That's right. I don't see us not voting on this. I think it would be foolish to not vote either way on this tonight. I also don't, I don't personally feel a need to go into executive session. But if anybody does, we should do that. And Judy should be invited in. That's the second part. And we can take 10 hours tonight to do it. But at the end of the night if we make a decision it doesn't really matter in effect, but I think we need to do this now. I'm very worried that if we delay beyond tonight we can legally vote on this that it just increases the risk to this project. And so I think we should make a motion. Somebody, me, somebody that goes with the, just blowing the whole wad there, the 35,000 applying it to this project. It's clearly COVID related. That's why we're doing it. There's no question there. But contingent on Nick getting that sign off from the state that we're not gonna be left on the hook for the full amount, losing subsidy because they haven't gone to 10 more feet to go to the final connection or there's a delay in setting it up at the main office or something. I think that would be a tragedy. And then lastly, I'll get off my soapbox. I believe this COVID thing is gonna be much longer. Unfortunately, our lives are gonna be severely changed by this for the longer term. And I see the legislature having to bond or whatever the state having to bond as well every state to roll out fiber optic FTP across the state and they're gonna have to pay for it. It's just the way it's gonna be like building the interstate. That's what they're gonna be faced with. So in all of that, John, was that a motion? I think we need to, I think we need to do this in two pieces. So that was, was that a motion, John? And if it- Wait, before we have a motion, are we gonna have Jim look at the contract? I mean, I'm obviously, I'm the one with the reservations here. And maybe I missed the discussion when I missed the meeting the other night. If I did, and I'm meeting behind, I apologize for that. But Judy, I hear you that we did caught, but that's very familiar. Everybody's, everybody does it. We were behind on that in terms of a town. This to me feels like a big company coming in, grabbing the, grabbing money. Are we not gonna have our lawyer look at the contract? What if she said Regina, that the liabilities go with the sale? I would wanna make sure the liability goes with the sale. They sell that company every 18 months. We don't wanna get stuck with the liability doesn't go with the sale and anything else that they think of. So here's what I'm thinking based on Sharon's concerns that we go with the motion that John made. I think there's a second motion we need to do, which involves the funding. And based on whatever quick turnaround time, we could maybe get, tell Regina, yeah, go ahead based on our attorney's review of the contract. So that we can get in the queue to get this done. Regina told me that if we gave her a thumbs up, she could put a contract in front of us within half an hour. It would certainly give us enough time to send it over to Jim and have Jim review it as well. If we go with John's motion, I would propose a friendly amendment that we authorized someone to sign it on behalf of the select board. This was also in the interest of doing it quickly. So that's what I got. Okay, so Regina could get us the contract it sounds like and we could get it to Jim tomorrow and tell him we need him to look at this ASAP, correct? Yep. Yep. Okay, and if he says, yeah, it's your standard contract, I don't see anything horrible about it or anything that raises any questions. We all want to get, we all want to see that contract, I don't get it too. Yeah, no, we would send it to everybody. And in the meantime, Nick would also be talking to his contacts to make sure that we have some latitude if it's not 100% completed. So we can make those conditions as part of the motion. I'll frame that as if the cable company gets it, 80% completed, where will that leave us? Throw out a hypothetical, like that. Well, 80% completed and fully complete within, you know, month. Okay. So that's one motion. Is everybody clear on that? You ready to vote? Oh, no, I'm not clear. Yeah, I would like it read back. Okay, Katie, can you make heads of tails of a motion out of that? Well, why don't I read you what I have and you can pause me and we can fix it if you need to. John Brabant made a motion to apply the entire amount of the LGER grant, $35,000 to this project, contingent on Nick Emlin getting a sign off from the state on latitude regarding the timing of the project. And then also we wanna put in there. Cliff Emmons proposed a friendly amendment allowing the chair to sign on behalf of the board to notify Regina to provide the contract and to include the town attorney's review of the contract. One change I would propose, Katie, it's not the entire amount of the LGER grant. We would wanna specify $35,000 of the LGER grant. It's the bulk of it, but it is not the entire amount because the grant is $35,981. Yeah. Okay. And I would propose that you put Regina's last name, agent for consolidated communications or whatever her title is. Yeah, good point, Rose. She's Regina Spelane, spelled like Mickey Spelane. And her title is Government Account Manager for Consolidated Communications. Okay, is there any further... And of course, yes, the Katie point of clarification and the motion includes the select board authorizing the chair Denise Wheeler to sign on behalf of the entire board. Signed that consolidated communication contract. Right, after it's reviewed by the town's attorney and anybody on the board who wants to review it. Right. Yep. Okay. Ready to vote? I guess I'll be first this time. I'm an aye. Cliff? Aye. Rose? Aye. Sharon? No. Okay, John? Aye. All right. Now the second piece to this is the additional cost and Cliff, can you pull up that little chart that you had with what money we have in reserve funds? So these are the other elements that we had considered as part of what we might be able to use some of the elders money for. There are still valid expenses even if we're not using those funds to pay for it. So we got Sandra to tell us what monies we had in various funds that could help offset some of these costs. And as you can see, we total those up and it comes to just shy of 69,000. And the costs estimated for these other items is just shy of $15,000. So there are funds available that would cover some of these other imagined expenses. But Cliff, we need to come up with the other $38,000. And we talked about. Right, well, what we talked about there was for the first six months of the contract, we would pull from the town office reserve fund. That's the $6,406. That's for six months of the new contract with consolidated. That takes us to the end of the fiscal year. As we develop our budget for the coming fiscal year, we would have to create a line item that budgets $1,080 a month, eight, for our internet to the town office and town hall. I thought we had to come up with the 38,000. No, that's a monthly fee. So that's the monthly fee, okay. So we wouldn't have to dip into our reserve funds too much. It would be, what was it, 6,000 and something, Cliff? Yes. So that's it. I thought we got reimbursed. We get reimbursed for the deposit that goes towards installation. So we would take $35,000 out of the town office reserve fund and give that money to consolidated. They would do the work. Once the work was completed, the grant, the Elger money would then be given to us and that money would go back into the general fund. Right, but the 6,000 something dollars for the first six months would have to come out of the town office reserve fund or the technology fund. Correct. Cliff, I have a question. Would it go back to the general fund or would it go back to the town office reserve fund? No, it would go back to the town office reserve fund. That's what we discussed earlier today with Sandra. So we could take this $6,468 and pay it out of one of those, well, I can see my arrow, but you can't. The technology fund or the office reserve fund and that money we would not get back. That would just be an expense. Why does the money that is coming out of the reserve fund necessarily get reimbursed? Is that a must or is that a, of course you could? No, I think Sandra said it was a must. I mean, if we take, I got a question. If we take, that doesn't make any sense. If we take 35,000 dollars out of the town office reserve fund or reserve to pay, it's kind of like a loan to ourselves. So it will get paid back into the same fund when we got reimbursed. That's what we do with the highway grants. We pay the money out and then we get it back. Because there is money coming back in. If there, I mean, because we also spend money that never is going to come back. Right, but this is not that case. This is coming back. I got a question for Cliff. Okay. Go ahead. So we have a monthly payment that I understand involves paying on a loan that's provided to us by consolidated communications, a loan for the installation of the fiber optic service. Does that also include our monthly service rate bill for use of that? Yes. Or is that- No, that's the total cost. It's to defray the installation cost and also to provide service. And that's the contract that she was talking about where if they suddenly weren't providing service to us, then they have to reimburse us for the length of time we're without- So what is the cost of service after, if we go with the 36 month plan, which we voted to do, what is the cost of the service once we pay off the bill monthly? That we would not be able to determine until we're three years down the line. Because they're gonna- In today's dollars, what is- I don't know, I'd have to go back- In today's dollars. I don't know, I'd have to go back and ask if she could answer that question. But our thought was- Because that's important. I understand if I could finish, please. What our thought was is that three years from now, the options of available internet will have changed dramatically and there will be competition for consolidated and they're gonna have to be more competitive in their pricing. Right. But still, we got a big- That's speculative. What we should be betting on is today's dollars. But it also informs me that, I mean, at 77,060 month, if that's inclusive of a, I don't know, $600 a month's utilization fee, all of a sudden the 77 may not be that expensive. You know what I'm saying? It may not be so much interest as it is the additional three months of fee. So I don't know what that number involves, how much, what percent allocation is to the monthly utilization, you know, service. You're talking about the 60 month? Well, both the 36 month and the 60 month, what percent, if we already had a line say, this was installed three years ago or 10 years ago and we had this line and we wanted this level of service, what would the cost be? And then we can then factor into, look at that 77,859 number and 73,808 number and understand, I mean, it could be that there's not that much difference, I'm sure there is, but it's just that that's just a piece I'm just curious about. I could give you a rough idea. I mean, I don't think any of us, yeah. I think it could be a rough idea. Okay. Of this total figure, 38,808, let me just punch this in. Okay, let me try that again. Okay, then to divide 36. Did Nick get off the call? No, Nick, I believe is still with us. I'm still on the call. I mean, that might be something we also go back to consolidate it again. I would, I can give you a very rough guesstimate, but I can't say this is qualified. But if, you know, using your suggestion of the fiber was already available and it was just a matter of paying for the service, the in today's dollars, the price for service to both locations under this contract is just shy. It's $1,078. If the fiber was already in place and we weren't having to defray the cost of installation, that price would probably be closer to $670. So we're gonna pay $670 a month? No. After we expend all this money? No, I'm just saying that's a rough guesstimate. But you have to keep in mind, this is an enterprise account. It's not your home internet service. This is 200 megabyte symmetrical fiber, 200 megabytes up and down. So it's a business. You got to compare it to a business service. That's a commitment that I was not aware. That's all. But it's a big deal. At the end of three years, we will have other options available. And I have to believe that the pricing will be better than that rough guesstimate I just threw out for you. Is there likely to be more competition out there in three years? Well, at the very least, I know there'll be one very significant competitor out there. And that is Starlink. It's already operational in the New England area. They're running beta and they plan on starting to roll it out within another year to year and a half so anyone can buy it. Right now, that service costs an initial investment of $1,000 and then your monthly fee is $99. There's no wires. You're talking to a satellite space to get your internet. So then why are we doing this? Because of the needs that Judy has expressed. I know I understand that, but we are committing this money and we're also now are locked into a $670 today's dollars per month. And I understand they could be competitive. No, we're not locked in. They may have to. At the end of 36 months, we're not locked in, John. But we've invested all this money in something we're not using. It's just whatever. I'm just trying to be able to understand this and I'm having a tug of war in my brain right now because that number threw me. I didn't even think of it before my motion. And I'm not talking about changing my motion. I'm just, it gives me pause because I'm gonna have a hard time. The question's asked at town meeting. I'm gonna have a real hard time justifying a $700 a month connection fee. Well, maybe it's better that I go back to Regina and very far what that amount would be. Go ahead. I mean, if I can then say, well, we got rid of a $100 a month phone bill. We're gonna do VOIP. We were able to, I'm just trying to like, this is such a short notice that we haven't had time to, I'm fleshing it out as we go. Post-motion of this. There's a bunch of concerns, I guess. Well, we're not committed to anything until we sign a contract. And if we don't wanna sign it, we don't sign it. We already agreed to sign it. We have to have a special meeting to not sign it. If Jim says to contract the legit, it's what it is. We can always withdraw the motion and give people a day to think about it, get Jim's input on this contract, see if there's more questions that we wanna flush out with Regina and do, we can continue this special meeting to another time and date certain. I'd like to leave the motion on the table, but at the same time, I'd like for us to schedule another select board meeting and we could just simply convene and say we don't need to change the motion based on us digesting it. I'd like to keep the motion on table because I don't want us delaying the motion to be the reason that we lose a project that we in the end want. And it's pretty big deal for the Judy. Could I just add something? I think it'd be interesting to add up all the extra fees for RB Tech to come and patch together various problems. There was a period of time where we were calling them probably every other day with this doesn't work, this doesn't work. I'm losing my connection. And those are added to our monthly fees for RB Tech. So I think that 600 bucks a month could just as easily be going to RB Tech to help us solve problems because we're frustrated. So I just want that to be added to the mix. That would be really helpful. I think I'm glad that we've spent a little extra time on it. Yeah, I think I understand the frustrations, Judy. I totally, I get it. And that is kind of, to me, that's a huge frustration of the world that we're living in right now with COVID. But it is a huge expense. And I like the questions that we're asking. And I think that the point you just made that we're spending that money in a hidden way would be actually really illuminating. So could we schedule something for Friday? When people look at their schedules? I looked at my schedule a few minutes ago. Friday evening. Friday evening, John, what time? You want to do six, seven? Yeah. I'm going to be driving back from New York so seven's better. Seven. Cliff, are you available? Yeah. Rose. Unless we can do it sooner. Rose, are you there? Let me run in the kitchen and get my schedule. Hold on. Okay, Sharon, what about you? I'm free, 2.30 and on on Friday. Friday's a long way off. Right. I'd like us to be able to do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, but does that give us enough time? I'd like the motion to remain. Well, if Jim says everything's good, it's fine. We didn't change the motion. So. All right, can we do seven tomorrow? I can do that. Yeah, I could. Seven o'clock tomorrow are people available. I'm looking at my calendar. So I can't see heads are shaking us and no. Yes. Okay. Cliff. Yes. All right. So when we get done here tonight, we won't adjourn the meeting. We'll just continue it to tomorrow night at 7 p.m. Sound good? Yeah. Yeah. All right, great. Yeah, can I just make a point? Yeah. I just want to reiterate my appreciation for the thoughtful consideration, John made, Cliff, Denise and Sharon. And yeah, I just wanted to say that. A lot of good questions, a lot of good thought. And I appreciate that. Thank you, Rose. All right, so we're done with this part of the meeting. Thank you all. Good discussion, good points. And it is now quarter of nine, I think. I would like us to go into executive session to discuss the personnel matter quickly. If I could, I'll make a motion to go in executive session, discuss the personnel matter. Is there a second? Second. Yes. Okay, let's vote. Cliff? Aye. I'm an aye. Rose? Aye, 844. Okay, Sharon? Aye. John? John? Yes. John? Yeah, I think he's frozen. Yes. Okay. Yes. All right, so we'll have to. Thank you so much, Katie. Tomorrow at 7. Thank you, Katie. Yeah, so you available, Katie? Thanks, Katie. Yes. At the same time. And Cliff, would you like me to post today's agenda? I'll put this on the calendar tomorrow for tomorrow. I'll email the office staff to let them know. Do you want the agenda posted since it's a continuation or does no agenda get posted? You don't, we don't have to. Okay. And I just want to make sure that Cliff, you'll send out a Zoom. Yes, I will. Okay, thank you. Good night, everybody. Good night, Katie. Good night, Katie. Thank you. Thank you, Katie. Thanks for joining us, Hans. Bye, Hans. Bye, Hans. Yeah, thanks for letting me just sort of listen in. You're in no problem. Have a good night. You too. Take care. Bye. Thank you. And bye-bye, Orca. Bye, Orca. Thank you, Orca.