 Okay, the recording is started. Let's call the meeting to order at 6.04. My apologies for the late start. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Hearing none. Is there any public comment? Again, hearing none. Jeremy, can you present the prior meeting minutes please? Motion to approve the August 8th, 2020 meeting minutes with minor corrections proposed by John Morris and the September 12th, 2023 meeting minutes as drafted. Second. Seconded by Siobhan. Was there a comment in the middle of that seconding? No, okay. Are there any opposed to the motion? Hearing none, the motion passes. Excellent, thank you. I don't see Laurie Beth here. Laurie Beth, are you here? In this meeting? Yes, yes, yes I am, but I'm bouncing between two of you. I see, you're on the phone, is that it? I'm on the phone, yes, with you and I'm on the computer with someone else. Well, thank you for your dedication, Laurie Beth. Are you able to go through a treasurer's report? I really don't have much because we haven't gotten any final figures, but we're reconciled for September. Okay, and the reconciliation for August had already been presented at the last meeting? Yes. Okay, yeah, we're definitely out of sync. Once they started changing the timing on their reconciliation, I don't wanna go down this rabbit hole right now. One option would be to move this meeting, but that means that every other meeting we have gets moved as well. So I don't know that we really wanna do that. So we might just have it be that the second executive committee would get the most recent reconciliation and the governing board would always be a month to six weeks behind. I think that's where that's gonna land. But that's something we can talk about at another time and probably have the finance committee verify all those dates. Any more discussion on treasurer's report? Of course, we're gonna talk about the budget at the end of the meeting. Oh, I'm trying to unmute. Okay, I finally got to unmute. Okay. Yes, I sent out the treasurer's report. There was only a $10 bill that we paid last month on Zoom and we got $0.55 in interest. We have no bills that are out of date that I'm aware of and we have nothing that's owed us at this point. So that you all have the balance sheets and the profit and losses. Profit and loss for the month is just short, very short. And everything else is profit and loss from April 1st until the end of September. So one thing to add to that as an update, we're almost there for getting our sweep account set up where we will be collecting fairly substantial interest on the money that we're holding in sweep accounts. It requires changing banks and a handful of operative things that we have to do but we're in the middle of doing that. So certainly by the next time we meet, we'll have a different report on that. Janiel, I see that your hand is up. Yeah, worth mentioning here. This might be the first governing board meeting where we've actually had customer payments. It certainly is the first governing board meeting where our customer payment went to the right account. So we now have two customer payments and I think that's worth mentioning. That's a landmark. Totally. That is a landmark, absolutely. Tom, I see your hand is up, your hand is down. Tom, if you're speaking to us, you're out of range or something. Sorry, team does not working well for me. I'm not sure what's going on. I'm gonna leave and come back again. My hand was not up. Okay, thank you, Tom. Sorry about that. Yeah, for your information, Jerry, teams, I had difficulty accessing teams myself. Yeah, that's not uncommon. It's been working well for me recently. I couldn't tell you why. But yeah, it's hit or miss sometimes, but we use it pretty much daily and it's got a pretty good record for regular users. But not for discussion now, but if you have alternatives, we'll investigate them. Janiel, you wanna go through and select who's gonna talk about what for the next few updates, please? Sure. Sorry, Jerry, just pulling up the agenda here. No, take your time. We're starting with the construction, materials and warehousing, operations and marketing. Yes, I see. Construction update and outlook. We got numbers today. I'll just give you the numbers that I have and that is 123 miles of fiber. That includes the backbone plus the MSTs. And then that would be 1,000 and to 76 passing. So we passed the 1,000 mark for how many customers that we could possibly serve, which is an incredible landmark as well. Lucas, you wanna talk a little bit about how we're doing on the, well, how we're doing generally in the top say four DAs that we're constructing in now? Sure, yeah. So yeah, she said 1,076 service points pass and that is between all four DAs. We are in the process right now of getting some customer installs queued up with weights field and those are in CLO one. So that's very exciting. CLO two is coming in hot now. We're in the last, I believe, 13 miles of that DA before we can test and start getting customers there and realistically, ISO one and ISO two won't be terribly far behind the way the numbers are looking right now. So a lot of positivity coming into the winner and I wanna add addition, we've also signed an agreement with Brookfield Sales and Service to get a generator at the Romney School site. So the harshest of winners will not deter us from serving the customers. So that'll be a nice feather to get on that site as well. Anything else, Janelle, if I'm missing? We do intend to continue constructing through the winter. So we will probably slow down. We have splicers back in the field as of today. So our cruiser, they were a little slim for a while and they're starting to pick up again. So construction is continuing even though it's starting to get cold out. We're getting our street sheets every day and we see that actually crews are increasing rather than decreasing as it's starting to get a little bit colder. So I would say that's great news. The other pieces that we were in really good shape with the OLTs, Lucas mentioned the generator and the OLT at Calis is up and running. I think that's it. Then we could talk about materials and warehousing. Yeah, one thing first though, Janelle, but for Tom, I'm gonna go to you in one second. We've been having more face-to-face meetings with Eustis at a management level and they are their goal, which is our goal, we're all dedicated to by the 15th of December having a total handover of all four DAs. So that means that CL01, CL02, RS01 and RS02 will be ready for installs. They'll be finished testing. They will have subscribers and we'll be able to do installs all through the winter and all through month season on those four DAs. That is our joint goal for ending this construction season. CL03, we're just having too much make ready problems. We may be able to get that in, but it looks like that's gonna end up getting pushed out into the next construction season. Tom, go ahead, sir. Thank you, you've mostly answered my question. It was for CL02 with that 13 miles left and then testing if you had a estimate, Lucas, on when you thought that would be completed and installs would start. Before thanksgiving is the intention. Yeah, hopefully, friendly is up beginning of next month and I have it completely ready to go by thanksgiving. Thanks. Go ahead, Janiel, with materials, please. Yeah, so as many of you may know, we've ordered most of the 400 miles of materials that we needed. We found out that we have some additional materials that we need to order. We ordered the long lead time items and then we're finding out that we need some additional things that are considered consumables that weren't on our bill of materials. They're just things that are needed in the field as you go and you don't necessarily have them on the BOM or the bomb. So we've ordered some of that. In addition, we have ordered materials that Ustis had lent to us or were using that were in their possession and then they ran out of some of them. Some things that traditionally Ustis was using and we realized that it would be better if we had them on hand because Ustis was running out. So we did order some consumables and some additional items that we need in the field and we ordered the long lead time items. Only things we still need to order for the first 400 miles to take us through the end of next year. We're looking at what is needed. We're doing a reassessment and we'll place an order by the end of the year, perhaps by next month for anything that has become a long lead time item in the past couple of months so that we're getting ahead of the 2024 construction season. So that's our plan for warehousing. We're gonna probably take a bit of a step back on some of the warehousing scope, be open a couple of days a week, most likely, take fewer deliveries throughout the winter, slower construction season. Michael, you have a question. Yeah, just getting back to, I assume that Woodbury is part of the COL-3 and the make ready obviously from Hardwick Electric has not happened. So I just wanna be able to tell people in Woodbury that nothing's gonna happen this season, this year, and then we'll have to wait for next year. I think that's realistic. Yeah, I mean, we've been really trying to get this done and we're not getting a lot of progress from Hardwick Electric, unfortunately. So I think rather than set people's hopes high and although we're gonna continue pushing, we need to set realistic expectations and chances are we're looking at Woodbury and COL-3 generally being part of the 2024 construction season. And Michael, if you're going to be talking to folks, please understand that we have paid for this make ready hundreds of thousands of dollars many months ago. I know the particulars and with the front porch forums that you asked me to post, there are a number of people in town that I have little dialogues with. And so, yeah, I just wanna be able to tell them what the expectations are. So, and I do worry a little bit about what I should and should not say, but I think I have a pretty good sense of that. Now I'm not blaming anybody directly by name, but Hardwick Electric is pretty much the only deal in town. So people know who I'm talking about without saying it. Right, and the crews have been right there. Their design has been completed many months ago. As you say, you know the story. Let me go on to a Siobhan. I see her hand is up. Go ahead, please. I was just thinking, would it be helpful if Hardwick and Woodbury residents showed up with helpful things like sledgehammers and shears and things to help work on the make ready? No. At the Hardwick offices. Hello, we are interested in helping with make ready chop chop. Yeah, I know that would help. The problem with paying another contractor to do the work ourselves is that we've already paid for the work. So we don't wanna pay for it twice and then be in a situation where we're trying to get our money back. Yeah, that's just not right. No, no. Jeanille, let me pass this back over to you for operations update. Sure, sure. I do wanna give Lucas an opportunity to fill in any gaps I might have left with any warehousing or materials. Is there anything you'd like to add, Lucas, to what I had said about that? No, I think you covered it really well. Okay. So operations, this is the most exciting piece because we're finally operational after five years of hard work for many people on this call and somewhere between, well, I mean, I got here, actually, I just figured out that I have been executive director of CB Fiber for one and a half years as of tomorrow, which is our ribbon cutting. And I've seen tremendous growth. It's amazing. I think a couple of days after I started this role in April of 2022, we had just received our first, we received our first fiber reels. And then December 6th, we started the construction and on December 21st, we had our launch celebration at the Callis-Town Hall to celebrate the beginning of construction. And here we are. And a lot has happened and it's been a lot of work. So the most amazing operations update is we are operational now. We have eight customers. We have our bank account set up. We have our customer accounts and we have people on high speed internet. So that is the number one operations update. We have eight customers now and we have seven more scheduled to be installed by Waits Field next week. And that list keeps growing. In fact, I believe there are about 95 as of this morning, at this morning's operations call, 95 potential customers, people who had signed up and CLO one. So that's how many people we could get signed up. Now, when the ground starts freezing, we can't do underground installs, we can't do conduit or anything buried, but all of the aerial installs will continue throughout the winter, as I believe Jerry mentioned. So that's the main operations update. We do meet with operations every week and continually have conversations around compliance and all the fun business stuff and as well as the practical serving the customer items. I see Tom's hand up. That's a good point to carry to people that we're talking to in the field that if you happen to be at a residence that's gonna require an underground line that it's going to be a few months longer before that's gonna be possible obviously because of the freezing and so forth, but it just might not be at the top of people's heads when they're thinking about getting internet. That's a good point. And it has to be when the ground has thawed. So it's realistically after mud season, that's when the undergrounding starts again. So it's actually easier to do some undergrounding right as the snow starts to get ahead of it because the ground hasn't fully frozen yet. So yeah, that's gonna delay things. Linda? So if our customers have their own conduit already underground, can we still do installations for them? Yeah. Yeah. So long as there's room in it, yeah. That's gonna, so every, the general answer is it depends on the site assessment. So every weights field has to go out and do a site assessment, but as long as it can be performed and they've already gone underground and they can pull it up or push it up, then yeah, but it is subject to an assessment. R.D. Thank you. Who does site assessments? Do we have a list of providers? Actually weights, yeah, actually weights field does that for us, though the operator does site assessments. Are potential, can potential customers contact weights field and get an assessment, say immediately to know what their prospects are? Well, it depends on what zone you're in. And if you can sign up for service, then yes, you can sign up for a site assessment, but everybody in the district can't just call up weights field and say, come look at my property and what, because the reason for that is we have to hang the MST or install the MST tails and then an analysis has to be done from the MST tail to the point of connection. So it's a, it's a more in-depth engineering survey rather than just going out and checking it out. So we do need to have the construction complete and then the go list released from NRTC to weights field in order to assess the site. Understood. I just as a footnote here, I was going to consult the map to remind myself where Cabot is located and the maps are unavailable on our website. That apparently there's been another website redesigned and those maps are not, do not appear. Yeah, I believe Cabot is 123, is that a one or three? Yeah, you're in the Marshfield OLT zone and that will be the spring construction. Got it. Yeah, I understand. I'm reminded, I knew we were in with Marshfield but I just wanted to note that I couldn't find the map, couldn't access the map on the webpage. It was moved around because I just checked and it looks like the map, so the map was at the top and now it's sort of lower down on the bottom of the homepage. So if you kind of have to scroll down in order to see the maps, we have two maps up there but you are right, we are going through website redesign. Multiple maps are confusing people. So yeah, Olivia's done some amazing work on the website, looks incredible. Yeah, it looks very clean. It's just that when I go to CB Fiber Services, expanding, click the map to see where service is now. No map appears, but that's just a footnote. I don't want to get hung up on this conversation. Thank you. I'm Jeremy, I see your hands up. Yeah, I was just going to point out that the other reason that Wastefield isn't going to want to do site visits until closer to when install would be is that they don't get paid for the install, they don't get paid for site visits until the install happens. So we don't want them going out and doing site visits in Williamstown or Plainfield until they're actually ready to start installing there. That's a really good point, Jeremy. Yeah, the site assessments are not a pay point for them at all. Yeah. Right, okay, good point. By actually- Can you also move on to marketing? Actually really quick, Jerry. Just I'm trying to do the attendance and there are two Davids on the call, one David Lawrence and then there's a David guest. Is that David Mannix? Is it David Healy? Oh, a David Healy, okay. I didn't see your picture there. Sorry, David. Oh, wow, yeah. All right. You want to talk about marketing? Do you want to move on to marketing, please? Yeah, well, the big event is tomorrow. Maybe Olivia can talk a little bit about what? Olivia, you've been here for what, six weeks? If that five or six weeks, what a whirlwind. You've really brought us to some amazing places with your marketing skills. And not of least, tomorrow we have our ribbon cutting. Would you like to talk a little bit about what you've been doing for marketing in the past few weeks and what the event tomorrow is going to look like? Yeah, absolutely. So for tomorrow we have to shy of 50 RSVPs. I suspect that there will be a couple of others who did not RSVP that will come in. Our agenda has been sent out to all of our panelists. We have everything pre-drafted so we know exactly what to expect in terms of questions. It will be a moderated panel. We will open up the floor for questions at the end of the last 15 minutes. There are a couple of residents who saw our forum posting that RSVP. So it's a really good group of CBFiber, local partners, residents. So I suspect that the conversations will be really, really constructive at the event. In terms of media, we did send out a media advisory prior to the event. Our press release was run on one of the local podcasts, which is great as of Friday. And we're suspecting that there will be more press coverage after the event. There is a press release ready to go after the event that I'll be sending tomorrow as soon as I arrive back home. So we've done everything. If you are going to be at the event, you'll see a couple of new marketing collateral items that were curated and customized for our refresh design. As you've noted on our website, we have a new retractable banner. We have new postcards with a launch QR code for tracking purposes. We have new business cards for CBFiber staff and we have new yard signs that are going up to local households. I've been working with David to get approval for local property owners in high traffic areas. So we've really expanded our library of refresh collateral and we're really hoping that this makes a presence moving forward, at least in the town of Calis. I'm also hoping that this is a scalable process and it'll get easier for us moving forward. So as we do events for launches, we will have all of the collateral ready to go. So there was a lot of starting from scratch for this event, but I suspect it will get easier moving forward. We also did the Berry Heritage Festival a couple of weeks back, which was a brand awareness event. In terms of our goals, we received a lot of feedback from attendees to help solidify our mission. People were really, really intrigued that we were community owned, locally managed in central Vermont. And that was, we had a competitor across the street, but those were talking points for our volunteers that really helps stake our flag in the ground. But the next question was, when? When will you be here? And of course, you know, Berry is not in our immediate timeline, but we're hoping that helps, you know, raise a bit of brand awareness for CV fiber and the most positive light. In terms of other updates, we are working on another iteration based on friendly feedback. We are doing interviews with our friendlies for RSO1 and RSO2. They are going through our website. So as we test the website, we are iterating on some of the communications and messaging to make sure we are practicing our brand pillars for transparency. We want to make sure we're transparent and not over promising, but we also want to help guide people along the journey as well. So that is my next goal in the upcoming weeks to help expand the library of communications, messaging on our website because that is the first point of contact for the majority of folks that hear about CV fiber. I think that's about it in terms of marketing. Excellent. Thank you. Tomorrow's a big day. There's so many big days. They seem to be just rolling across the calendar recently. So that's all good, very good news. Any more discussion on our updates? If not, I'm going to hand this over to Alan to talk through some recommendations for our human resources policy. I believe everyone has received drafts in advance and hopefully you took advantage of that. Alan, it's all yours, sir. Can everybody hear me okay? I've been having trouble with the connection too. Yes. I see shaking heads yes. So I'll go ahead. So I did send out some documents. Hopefully you've looked them over, but quickly what we're doing tonight is we're reviewing some revisions to the current personnel policy and the revisions regard bullying, harassment, and discrimination. That's in those topics are in two different sections in our current policy section eight and nine. If you remember when we adopted the personnel policy, we included that it was subject to review by legal counsel. I think we all agree that was extremely necessary. That review's been happening over the past two months and what we're doing tonight is a direct result of the first jab that legal counsel has made at some of the most important parts of the policy. What I sent out to you the other day, I guess it was Saturday or Sunday, I sent out two documents, both of them are PDFs. One is a PDF of the two sections in the current personnel policy on these topics, bullying, harassment, and so forth. The other is a clean PDF of the revised version of the topics as suggested by legal counsel and then reviewed and approved by the policy committee and also by the executive committee at this point. If you've looked over the documents, you'll see that the numbering is a little bit different than what it was originally. And that's what makes it difficult to say we can sit down and compare line by line what we have currently and what legal counsel suggested we have. So that's why we gave you the two different hard copy documents in the hopes that you had some time to go through them, especially the second one, which is the revised version, to see if you had any questions about what we've done, what legal counsel suggested, and how we're moving forward. So what I'm going to do is let Janiel just give a quick overview of the process we've used to go through the review and then we'll open up the floor for questions. Thank you, Alan. The policy committee has done a lot of work on this human resources policy, this personnel policy. We decided that it was important to have a personnel policy that guides how CV fiber wants to be, how we want to treat employees and folks working with us and that we want to be a place where people want to work, where people feel safe working and productive. So we started with a template from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and we took that and we reviewed it as a policy committee. We looked at it and made some changes to it. It was previously adopted subject to counsel review as Alan stated. And then we received comments from counsel and it maybe tripled the size of the document. It was 12 pages to 35 or something like that. So we spent a lot of time going through counsel's recommendations. Now we decided to prioritize two very important sections of the policy rather than taking the policy as a whole. We wanted to prioritize the bullying and harassment sections because we felt that they are extremely important and all of the policy is important but we wanted to prioritize these and they're huge. They're a big lift. So we reviewed them as a policy committee. We reviewed counsel's comments for those two sections and then sent it back to counsel with comments and received yet another go around, made a few very minor adjustments and then adopted it at policy committee and at executive committee now to be recommended. It was recommended by executive committee to the governing board. Now the sections that we're looking to approve tonight are only those two sections that I mentioned, sections 16 and 17 to the personnel policy but we are in the process of going through all of the policy. So we are talking with counsel about additional changes to the policy as a whole. And tonight we are only concerned with the bullying and the harassment policies. Thanks, I wanted to make sure that people understood when I sent out the copy of the revised policies there are numbers on the top of the different sections, section 16 and section 17. What's going to happen is if we approve the language that is in the revised policy document these sections will become section eight and section nine in our current policy. And that's one of the weird things we got to deal with because we're not doing everything all at once, we're doing these two sections first. So we're going to be pulling out the eight and nine that we have now and inserting what on the sheet I sent out is known as section 16 and section 17. But the content is addressing the same thing, harassment and bullying and so forth. Are there any questions that we can, we can answer? Our D has his hand up, go ahead, R.D. You're on mute, R.D. Are there any passages, Allen, or parts of the revised policy that you wish to draw our special attention to? Are there any passages that gave you particular difficulty or that counsel drew your attention to? That's a great question, R.D. For myself, there were two things that struck me when we got back this very large package of suggested revisions. The first was there were a lot more examples that were given about what some of these things, what exactly is harassment, what makes up for bullying. And those examples I think are really, really important. It makes it possible for people to have a better sense of what exactly we're trying to watch to make sure that we don't have people violating. In many cases it's actually state or federal law at this point. The other thing that I think is really, really important is the process that counsel included in the revisions that basically just says what we're going to do when we do have a complaint file with us. It takes you through the process we're going to use. It's a pretty standard process. It's based on what other, I believe, non-profits use. And I feel really good about that because when we adopted the policy originally back in August, I think we all realized that there were a lot of, a lot of holes in it. And the biggest one was the fact we didn't have a process that was sketched out within the document itself. We just gave very general terms. So I'd say those two things. And Siobhan, you're on the meeting too, I think. If you have any questions, I'm sorry, comments or Linda the same for you. And I can't see on my screen if John Morris is on the call, but please feel free to pipe up if you want. They're all on the call, Helen. And Michael Gray does have his hand up though. Okay. Yeah, I would agree about the process. You really need to have something stated in what you do in case there was an incident. But I just, when you say counsel, Janiel, I'm not really sure who the counsel is, but I know that VLCT does offer that at usually a much cheaper rate than most lawyers, just from my town government experience. And then I just want to comment that I don't receive any of this stuff. I have no, I have never seen the personnel policy. I had to request a connecting information from Chuck for tonight. So I'm not receiving any of this to review. I don't know how. Do you not have a CV fiber? Michael, you don't have a CV fiber.net email address? I do, but I think Chuck mentioned that it's not functioning. And I don't know how to access it to be honest with you. So yeah, I'm kind of in the dark about a lot of stuff. Well, Chuck has his hand up and I'm sure it's to address your issue. Go ahead, Chuck. You're on mute. Can you hear me now? Yep. All right, great. Yeah, Michael, I can see from the admin interface that you've not signed in to your CV fiber account. And I can help you with that. What I'll do is I'll issue a password reset and I'll send you an email to your personal address in a few minutes that will contain your updated information and a link where you can log in. And that's where you'll get all of this information going forward. Okay, so it takes an active role on my part to connect and if I know and have that link, then I'll know to do that. Yep, and so you can log in via their web interface. You can also, if you have like Outlook or Thunderbird desktop apps, you can log in that way. You can log in in the Outlook app on your phone or if you use like an iPhone, you can log in using the iPhone mail app. Okay, yeah, I'm pretty much a lead out. I don't think I probably have the Outlook app, but that's about it. I'll help you with it. Okay, and just have one other thought that's gone now. Okay, yeah, maybe it'll come to me, but. David, I see your hand is up and then RD again. Yeah, I just wanted to say that unfortunately of note, you cannot forward the email to an address that is actually more useful for you due to policies. That's a little unfortunate. It means that I'm a little behind on my mail here because I have to make a conscious effort to go look at mail someplace else, but just be aware of that. I have to do the same. I have two email programs open at the same time, all the time. RD, go ahead, sir. Alan, one more question for you. I noticed that the investigation is called for as a response to complaints of harassment or bullying. I have not read the full policy, but is there an investigative procedure that's described in detail? Yeah, there is. If you had the document, it is on page five, if it were printed out in the first section, which is section 16, and it is a full page. It's called discrimination harassment, sexual harassment, and retaliation complaint procedure. And basically what it does. Okay, that's it. It's there. Great, thank you. I will read it. Okay. Alan, would you consider making a motion? I have just put it into the chat. It should be there. I see it. The motion is that I move that the governing board accept the amendments to section eight and nine in the current CV fiber personnel policy as reviewed and approved by the policy committee and the executive committee. Second. Seconded by Siobhan. Any additional discussion here? Michael, again? Are you okay with me voting yes, having not looked at this at all, it just sounds like the vetting was all proper. So otherwise I would have to abstain, which is technically a no. And I don't really want to vote no. So that's understood. That's fine if you want to participate with a positive vote. Oftentimes we rely on our colleagues here to do the legwork for us when we haven't had the opportunity to do it all. So that's not uncommon. And that's also why we go through the process of sometimes it's a work group and then it's to a committee and then it's to the executive committee and then it's finally to the governing board. So that's part of the process, Michael. That's fine. R.D., is that a residual hand? No, no, that's a residual. I take it down. Sorry. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Any additional discussion then? Hearing none. Are there any opposed to the motion? All right. Any abstentions? Again, hearing none, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you. That's a lot of hard work, folks. Thank you very much. It's a step. It's a step, but very good. Thank you. Thanks for your work. There's more to come. If I can just thank again, Linda and John and Trevon on the policy committee. We've all put a lot of work into this. Janiel's been fantastic in guiding us and working with legal counsel. And I think it's all come together in a really good way. It's a document that's really looking very good, I think. But there's more to come. Just realize this, because we have lots of comments about all the other sections that we haven't shown you yet. We're working on those. Excellent. Thank you, Alan. Thank you to everybody that put into this. Much appreciated. Next on the agenda is our budget. Let me start a little bit here of where we are. This budget has been in development for since the summertime. We have been working. One of the things that makes this budget different from previous year's budget is that we are bringing experience to it. Now that we have some operational understanding, now that we have construction understanding and all of the things that last year we were hoping to be able to do, now we're actually doing them and we're bringing that experience to bear in the development of the budget. And that's been a very important thing. And Janiel and Ray have been working really hard on tightening up the actual things that we're doing with the forecasting that needs to be done for a budget. So the budget, as you've seen it because it's been sent out and has been discussed in multiple meetings, it's been approved by the finance committee, pushed up the chain of command to the executive committee and approved there and pushed up to the chain of command. Now it's landed here. What happens next if this budget is approved here, it moves on to the towns where the towns in our next November meeting of the governing board will have the opportunity for public comment. So the budget needs to go to the towns by the 21st of the month I believe this month. In our November meeting, there's a public hearing on the comment that's a part of our governing board meeting. If you remember, we did that last year. We had a special time slot that was the public comment on just the budget. If after we get through that public comment, we move the budget farther down and in December, we can adopt the budget. That budget will be in our town meeting booklets, right? So there is a space of time between approving this budget to move forward and actually adopting the budget in December where there will be more refinements made based on additional information that we're just not in control of at the moment, especially on the revenue side, we may have better information on what kind of grant money and what kind of loan money may be coming to us next year and that will help us understand what our construction expenditures will be and we'll be able to sharpen the pencil a little bit. But what we're presenting tonight and what you've already seen, I hope you have been able to take advantage of having the budget presented to you in advance. What we have here is at this point in time, the best budget we've ever had and by best I mean the most accurate, the most information formed, the most informed is probably the best way to put it. So I'll just walk through this really quickly but I will take questions all the way through. So at any time, please put your hand up. On the income side are $4.7 million in grants, that is a hard number. We know that number. We are asking potentially if they can squeeze out some additional grant money, we don't know where that stands, but we've asked for it. But that's not included in the numbers that you see in the budget. The revenues are purely subscription revenues and those revenues are at the end of 2024 with a predicted rollout of how many folks are going to be able to be subsidized and able to be subscribers as we continue construction and continue rolling out. That $860,000 number is basically some total of what we would have received come December 31st. We have a $5 million debt identified in there and that is something that is a placeholder. We are working with an actuary actually PFM is their name. They were originally hired by Vecuda to perform services for, they have a master service agreement with Vecuda and we have a scope of work with them and they are helping us identify potential lenders and we don't know what that number is going to be. We are putting together a pre prospectus, if you will, a request for information for those who might be interested and there's at least 40 banks that they believe are worth sending out our preliminary information to and that should be out by the end of the month. Maybe it's the beginning of November. So all this is happening in the last quarter. So we have $10.5 million in projected revenues. Our expenses are broken out a little bit differently this year than they have been in the past. And we've made a distinction between what is purely administrative, which is only $300,000 worth of expenses and what is operational? The operational expenditures are almost 2.5 million and those operational expenditures include staff salary, they include installations, they include what we have to pay to Wingsfield Telecom, they include an estimate of maintenance, et cetera, et cetera. So most of our expenses, which when you looked last year or two years ago or under the purely administrative heading, now most of our expenses are either in operations or they're in construction. Our construction expenditures are six and a half million dollars, most of which is the labor for hanging fiber. Our pre-construction numbers are quite low. We only have 300,000 in pre-construction and that's because most of the design services are done, most of the make ready is done and most of the permits are done. When I say done, they are in the bag paid for, right? So we only anticipate something on the order of $300,000 of pre-construction, but we will have almost $6 million of construction and construction related management. That number is flexible. That number will change based on how much we have to spend because the one thing that we absolutely will not do is spend more than we anticipate having. So the money has to be pretty fast and hard in the bank before we're gonna obligate anything with a contract. So that's how we're moving forward and six and a half million dollars in construction related expenses is what we're hoping to accomplish next year. And if we can accomplish that, we're basically doubling what we did this year, a little bit more. So we'll be beyond 2000 passings. We'll be pushing, we won't quite be at most likely, but we'll be pushing a thousand subscribers, 800 something subscribers depending on our take rate. If we can have David Healy knock on everybody's door like he did in Calis, we'll have a 55% take rate after the first couple of months. So, yeah, we'll see if we can get David to do that next year. We do include debt service, which is a simple number, 6% of the 5 million we believe we hope to be able to borrow something on that order of magnitude. I'll mention that debt because it's important. It's an interim debt. It's not meant to be a long-term debt. It's an interim debt that gets us to the point where we can go out to the bond market or to more favorable instruments to do long-term debt that would absorb the 500,000 that we would be asking for now. Everybody knows this. This isn't some slight hand. This is the way it's being presented. And this is also, by the way, exactly following in the footsteps of EC-Fiber. Scrambled against some kind of interim debt until you can get 1,000 subscribers, which at that point you should be able to stand on your own two feet, which are numbers show we can and then we can go out for revenue bonds or whatever other favorable instruments or more favorable instruments are out there. So that's the plan. So we have income of $10.5 million, expenses that total up to almost $10 million and what's called reserves or residual of $700,000. When that's said and done. I'm happy to answer any questions. There are spreadsheets, of course, that go behind all of this in excruciating detail, which as I said, we've been working on since July and brought to the point where it was approved. This budget, as you see it approved by the finance committee and then approved last week at the executive committee. Henry, it's been a long time since we've spoken. Welcome. Hi there. Yeah, I was just curious that grant number, what does that assume we're getting for grants in a general way? Just an update on the grant outlook as part of the budget. That basically assumes that we get all of the money that was allocated to us from the Act 71 grant. So we have either in hand or have already spent something on the order of the 85% of the Act 71 grant money. 5% of that grant money, we have set aside and told the VCBB to hold it because that's paying salaries for next year. You know, if the creek rises and we can't do anything else, we have salaries paid. So we're holding that money set aside. There's another 10% of the money that we've been allocated that is performance based. That happens after we've done the testing. That happens after we've got subscribers. There are, that those funds are withheld by the VCBB until we've got those done. I need to be, Henry, we've either spent or is sitting in the bank. And it's all obligated somewhere. So there's no bead money in this budget. There won't be any bead money in next year's budget either, most likely. That's what I meant. Yeah, no, I mean the following budget. Because bead is going to be very slow to roll out and very uncertain as to what those numbers are or what those numbers will be. So we're hoping that sometime in 2025 we'll have a better sense of when and what bead money will be allocated to us. And it may be that in mid 2025, we need to make a budget adjustment for that year for bead money. If there's any to be had, hopefully there will be. Keeps going further and further out. Okay, thanks. Yes, sir. And more and more complicated. RD, sir. Kerry, would you run through the process? Where this budget goes from here? Am I expected to present this to the Cabot Select Board? Where do I take this budget in order to get us to adopting it formally in December? I will send an email to you and your Select Board that will include this budget and that will invite them to the November 12th meeting. When we'll take public comment from the towns on this budget. So you don't necessarily have to move this along but I will see see the delegates when I send this budget out to the Select Board. I am a member of the Select Board. So I'm going to get the double whammy. You'll be doubly notified. Yes, and will this budget, can you break this budget down still further? I'm still, I'm looking at it. I'm still confused by the personnel line under administration. I'm not sure what that means. And it's only one of several questions that I have as I go through this budget. I would appreciate a more granular breakout and perhaps some annotations so that I know what I'm talking about when I present this at our next Select Board meeting. Sure. So the personnel in administration are some of the fees that we're paying for administrative assistance that's going to individuals. For example, our note taking for our meeting minutes. We have basically administration, like I said before, everything was under administration. We didn't have separate operations as a category. So now we have separate operations as a category. So anything that has to do with operations is now no longer in the overhead heading of administration, that all of that now is in the category of operations. So our staff is in operations. Some of the legal work, the licensing that we have to do, the office supplies, all of that comes under the heading of administration as opposed to what are the things that we have to have our hands on in order to provide service. And I can rather than spend the time now, I can send you the backup sheets and you can ask many, many, many more questions. Thank you. John, your hand is up, sir. I'm sorry, John. I think you're on mute if you're talking. Sorry about that. I was on mute and then I had my mouse on a different screen. I think you just said that the budget meeting in November is going to be November 12th. And I'm afraid my mind might have wandered, but the 12th is a Sunday. No, it's the 14th. My apologies. Yeah, it's the same. It's this meeting next month, second Tuesday, and we will take a time, a very specific time on the agenda that will be 20 minutes for discussion on the budget last year. I believe, correct me if I'm wrong from what you remember, but I believe nobody, there was no comment. And I put the item on the agenda too late and we were hanging around waiting for the clock to tick. So this time I'm going to put it earlier in the agenda so I don't make that mistake. But yes, it'll be the 14th, John, at our regular meeting. Thank you. Any other discussion on this budget? All right. Well, hearing none, let me make a motion. This is great. I'm really pleased that we didn't need to go into executive session. The more, it's just a personal quirk of mind. The more we're outside of executive session, the better I feel. So let me make this motion. Whereas the governing board must approve a CV fiber budget in October to be sent to the member communities by October 21st for their review and comment. Whereas the governing board must conduct a public hearing on the budget at its regular meeting on November 14th. Whereas the governing board must adopt a CV fiber 2024 budget in December. Whereas the finance committee and the executive committee have approved and recommend the CV fiber 2024 budget to the governing board for approval. I move that the governing board approve the CV fiber 2024 budget dated to October 23 for distribution to the 20 member communities. Second. I heard Jeremy on that one. Soft voice, but it was in there first. Thank you, Jeremy. Is there additional discussion on the budget? Hearing none. Oh, Chuck, go ahead, sir. Yeah, I would just like to take a moment to say a huge thank you to the collaborative efforts to bring this thing out. Budgeting is hard, but it gets particularly hard when you're talking about a subscription-based business that is actually collecting revenues and our next year is going to be huge for us. So I know a ton of work and revision and thought went into this budget. And sadly Ray's not here to hear this but a huge shout out to Ray and thank you to the entire finance committee for all of their work in getting this to the finish line. Bravo. Absolutely. Huge shout out to Ray. Additional discussion? All right, hearing none. Are there any abstentions? Yes, I would like to abstention. You would like to abstain? Yes. Okay. Jeremy, do we still have a quorum? Yeah, let me check, I believe so because we have that and we have, yeah, so that would put us at 14 voting members. Excellent, thank you, Jeremy. Are there any opposed to the motion? Hearing none, the motion passes with one abstention. Thanks, everybody. This is really, really good to get behind us as a piece of our foundation for moving into 2024. Absolutely amazing. Jeremy, go ahead, sir. Would you be able to paste the text of that into chat so I can snag it for the minutes, please? Yes, or do I just email it? I'll email it to you, it's so much easier. Okay. Yeah, okay, thank you. And I'm also going to present the recording to you and Sybil in the morning. Okay, perfect. Yeah, but that's what I do. Okay, if there's nothing else, folks, let's adjourn this meeting at 7.09. Is there anything else? Okay, I'm stopping. Thanks for your help for your work, everyone. Yes, thank you, everyone. Stopping the recording at 7.09. Bye-bye, goodnight.