 All right, I am calling us to order with a tight quorum at 6.19 p.m. This is the CV fiber regular board meeting for July 11th 2023. I am calling for additions or changes to the agenda. I am making a change to the agenda. I'm moving the action expected items to the top so that we can get them done in case we lose quorum before we complete and so that's the change I'm making. Do I have any other additions or changes to the agenda? Yes, I have one. Okay. I would like to add change in fiber connections to people's homes. And if people don't want to bring that up on discussion, I'm happy to send people an email about it. Could you type into the chat what that you want that to say, please, as an addition? Because I'm not sure I understood what you said, Alan. Oh, that's because I have my fan going in the background. Hold on a second. Go ahead, Ray. Alan, you'd be the first one to say that that wasn't warned. And I'm shocked, shocked that you'd want to have, you want to bring this up. And then nothing isn't a good topic. There's an ongoing discussion about that in the background that you're probably not aware of. But in any event, it's not been warned. Well, actually, it's a construction update. And I think it's very much something that we can... Please, please. This is really important to talk about, Ray. Can you tell me what the item is again, please? Yes, I put it in the border. I put it in the chat. Okay. All right. So we will add that discussion as part of the construction update and outlook. Any other changes to the agenda? Okay, I'm hearing calling for none. Is there any public comment? Chuck, you got something to say? You did move the action items to the top of the agenda. Yes, I moved the action items to the top of the agenda. Thank you. All right. So the next action item is meeting minutes approval. Jeremy, do you have a motion for us? Yeah, a motion to approve the May 9th, 20.3 meeting minutes as drafted and the June 13th, 20.23 meeting minutes as drafted, but with minor corrections by Alan Gilbert. One second. I heard R.D. first. So R.D. seconded motion by Jeremy. Do I have any discussion of the minutes approval? Hearing no discussion of the minutes approval. Do I have any objections to approving the minutes? Any abstentions? Hearing none, the minutes have been approved. The motion passes. The next item is communications committee appointments. Chuck. Yeah. So the communications committee held our elections in our last meeting and elected myself as chair and Linda Gravel as vice chair per our procedures. Only my election needs to be ratified by the board. But at this point I will step back and abstain from further conversation and let you all take it from here. Motion to approve Chuck Burt as chair of the communications committee. Second second. Motion to approve Chuck Burt as chair of the communications committee was made by Jeremy, seconded by David Healy. Any discussion? Hearing no discussion. Do I hear any objections to approving this motion? And do I have any abstentions? Chuck Burt is abstaining from this motion. This motion has been approved. Chuck Burt, congratulations. You're the chair of the communications committee. Thank you. Thanks for my condolences. All right, the next action item is GIS services contract. Who am I to honor for that? Is that Ray, Janiel? So I have a motion drafted, but was there somebody else that wanted to speak to that? Linda or David, perhaps, Janiel? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because yeah. So we we are in need of GIS services. David Healy, who has retired from Stone Environmental, as has been doing a lot of our work for our GIS work. We really need a professional paid entity to do our GIS work. It is a heavy lift and it's extremely important. Stone Environmental is also the contractor for the state and has special knowledge for the GIS, specifically for the CUDs and for the broadband build out. So it is very important that we that we use this contractor as a single source. OK, Ray, do you want to go ahead and make your motion and then we can enter a discussion? Certainly, whereas C.B. Fiber has a continuing need for GIS services in which you're compatible with the VCBB GIS mapping and whereas Stone Environmental is under contract with the state to provide GIS services to the VCBB. Whereas on 6 July, the executive committee vote to recommend that the Governing Board approve sole source contract with Stone Environmental is move the Governing Board approve a sole source contract with Stone Environmental, given its synergistic services and the need for C.B. Fiber to maintain its mapping compatible with the VCBs mapping. Second. Motion made by Ray, seconded by Jeremy Matt. And can I have any discussion? Does anybody have any questions, thoughts, observations? Anyone? I just want to thank David for his services with GIS. He's been really, really on top of this. So thank you. Thank you, David. You're welcome. OK. I'm not OK. Allen, go ahead. Go ahead, Allen. Yeah, I just wanted to point out that at the executive committee meeting, we did discuss the possibility of a conflict of interest and determined that there was none. And I just wanted to let people know that we're cognizant of the other fact that David was an employee and the way our conflict of interest policy is written. We do have to ask if the person might have a conflict of interest to the person has to give an answer and state why he or she thinks there was no conflicts. And David did that and we accepted his explanation and believe there is no conflict. OK, thank you, Allen. Anybody else? All right. I'm hearing no further comments. Do I have any objections to this motion? Seeing no objections. Do I have any abstentions from this motion? David will abstain. David Healy abstains. Yeah. The motion passes. So the next item is authority to execute agreements. So I have a motion on this one. OK. And basically, you should all be aware that things are happening fast and furiously. And there are all kinds of requirements for authorizations to be given and executions of permits and easements and one thing or another. And while the statute says all contracts are signed by the by the chair, the board can give authority for the executive director to do that. And so the executive committee has is making a recommendation and I have a motion. And if I can find the beginning of this. OK, whereas Section 3067 of the Vermont Statute governing CUD states that the chair of the board shall make and sign all contracts for the district upon approval by the board. And whereas the board under the statute, therefore, has authority to approve contract as well as signing authority. And whereas the CUD fiber procurement policy defines incidental purchases as acquisitions of supplies or services up to $10,000 under the federal acquisition regulation FAR 2.101. And whereas CUD fiber procurement policy exempts budgeted items from board approval, whereas the practical day to day operations of CUD fiber time is of the essence. It is sometimes necessary to expedite the signing of agreements, including but not limited to utility agreements, agreements with permitting agencies with entities from whom CUD fiber may need an easement. Whereas on 6 July, the executive committee voted to recommend that the governing board grant authority as described in the motion, it has moved the governing board grant authority to the chair and to the executive director or to either of them to execute agreements where operations necessitate the signing of agreements which are necessary, budgeted, and such incidental purchases consistent with CUD fibers procurement policy. So moved by Ray, seconded by Jeremy Matt. Woo-hoo, Jeremy. Do I hear any discussion of this motion? Really quiet out there. No objections, no discussion. Do I have any objections in this motion? Is anybody voting no? OK. Do I have any abstentions? I'm not seeing any abstentions. Motion passes. All right. The next thing is the personnel policy. And that one is Alan, I believe. You are muted, Alan. There we go. I have my fan on. So we are. The executive committee is bringing before the governing board the personnel policy that was first proposed by the policy committee. Most of it was put together by Janiel and the policy committee reviewed it. If you remember, we brought it to the governing board at the June meeting and it was asked that it be sent to the executive committee. The executive committee looked at it twice. We gave input possibility for input to people to from people on the executive committee during the time period between the two meetings. There was some additional comments that were made. So the policy committee that you should have received from Jerry contains all of those comment, all of those changes that were suggested. There actually weren't very many and very few of them were in any way, shape, or form substantive. So what you have is a clean executive committee approved proposed policy, except I want to point out a total of three sentences that are yellow shaded. They are in pages four and pages six. I'm sorry, page four and page six. What happened at the meeting was there was conversation about adding a couple of provisions, one of which would allow in reporting harassment that additional people other than the current governing board chair and the current executive director be the people who could receive a complaint of harassment and there was conversation about we really ought to appoint other people, perhaps that could be other board members, perhaps it could be other people connected to us and we couldn't come up with anything on the moment. But after the meeting was finished, I thought about this myself and as I was cleaning up the policy, I decided that we could say simply that personnel who wish to report harassment should file a complaint. Again, I'm on page four right now. To file a complaint with and existing again is the governing board chair, the executive director, we could easily add other CV fiber personnel as appointed by the governing board. So that is one change that I would recommend and the second important change comes in the next paragraph down on page four. It's simply a sentence that was added that says procedures will be developed for the investigation process. I think there was some concern in reading this part of the policy about harassment, that it was a bit vague about how the, how an investigation of harassment would take place. And one of the things that we have not done and were very cognizant must be done is we have to develop procedures for how investigations are being conducted. To do that, we have, I think maybe Sharon at some point is going to talk about this. We've been, we've been talking with some legal folks who would be willing to take a look at our policy. It should be reviewed. And it also is probably going to meet some updating anyhow because of some changes the legislature made to harassment policies this past session. But what we're, we plan to do is to work with that person, work with, work with an attorney on developing, developing the procedures for how an investigation would go forward. It's not uncommon to have a policy that doesn't have procedures baked into it, but that are developed later. And they of course will come before the board for their approval. But putting language in the policy was something that I thought we could do just so people know that we're not done with making sure this policy gets carried out the way it should be. It's just the procedures having yet been developed will be. And then I said there was a third yellow spotted section. And that's on page six. And it simply is the same thing, but to a different part. This is about the, it's a different part of the harassment section. It's the same language other CV fiber personnel supported by the governing board. Could also be people who could be designated for a folks to report sexual harassment complaints. So what I'm going to suggest is I'd like to move adoption of the personnel policy proposed by the executive committee after its review of the policy is developed by the policy committee. And. If. Once we enter discussion of. That motion. I would. I would. I would make a motion to amend. The policy so that we can put in those three sentences that I've just described to you. If you think it's a proper for me to make a motion to something I've proposed adoption of, I'd be happy for somebody else to make the same motion that I was hoping to make. But I think it's pretty harmless stuff because. The ideas came from people who attended the executive committee meetings. And I think we all agree they should be there. So we would recommend that. Okay. So I need a motion. So I'm putting it. I'm putting it into the chat right now. Yeah. Jeremy has his hand up. Right. But Jeremy. Can I do it? Can you talk when I don't have the motion on the table yet? Is it is it not about the motion? I can talk if you record if you recognize me. Right. But is it about the motion that we don't have on the table yet? It's a no. It's not a discussion. It's a comment. Okay. We can make the motion to approve it with those things. I don't think we need to make a motion and then amend a motion because we don't have an emotion on the table. I think you can make whatever motion you want, Alan. I actually put in the chat just now adoption of personnel policy proposed by the second committee after review of the policy is developed by the policy committee. So I, I could withdraw that and amend it. Jeremy to what you suggested. That's fine too. I think we need to make sure that we're crystal clear that we're moving. We're doing something. We're bringing something out of the executive committee and we're immediately amending it. I didn't want people to think I had snuck something in. So I just want to be crystal clear on this. I'd like to second his amendment. We don't have a motion on the table because posting stuff. So for clarity, Alan, I had put together the motion and I think I had assembled the motion and for the executive committee as well. Move the governing board approve the personnel policy proposed by the policy committee as amended. Just now subject to legal review, which was also part of the executive committee. Recommendation second. Okay. So I have raised motion. And Jeremy Matt second. So that is the motion we'll go with. Alan, do you feel a need that to amend this motion or does this motion cover what your concerns were? I want to make sure that people know what I have added was not the language. The specific language was not reviewed by the executive committee. It was they brought up the idea of executive committee. And I've tried to put that in. Okay. Not be able to do that during. I understand what you're saying. Okay. So Alan, would you make a motion to amend? And already I'll get to you in just a second. I'm sorry. I didn't have my people list up to see hands. So Alan, would you make your motion to amend? You want me to write something in chat. I don't think we need a motion. You don't think so. Can we accept a friendly amendment or do you want a formal motion to amend it? Alan. Well, it's, it's not. So I can understand. Go ahead, Alan. Move to amend. By adding. Three sentences. That deal with. Appointment of additional personnel. To be. People to receive harassment complaints. Yes, that I think that. Go ahead. Second. And. Language. Stating. Procedures to carry out these policies will be developed. Okay. And David, you second that second portion as well. Okay. So we've got it seconded. We got seconded. So now we are. Discussing the motion. As amended. You know what we're talking about. We're talking about. This document as a. Oh my God. R.D. Go ahead. Okay. I believe the document as presented by the executive committee is. The document without the yellow passages. And I think that the original motion is. To adopt the policy is presented by the executive committee. The amendment should be to add the passages in yellow highlight. Once we do that, we will have amended. The policy that the executive committee presented to us. And then we can then vote. Yeah, we have to vote on the amendment. I think is what R.D. is saying. Correct. I think there's a lot of operations here. I disagree. And the reason I disagree is raise original motion. Had the language. As amended. Right in the motion. I don't believe we need this secondary. Second order. Motion at all. I think we could drop it. And just leverage the original motion. Okay. I think we can go ahead and. And know that the as amended is baked into it. One person's opinion, of course. If I may. I appreciate this. I appreciate the simplicity truck, but there. Nothing has been amended until we. Until this meeting amended. Yeah. And that's the purpose of the as amended. In the motion. That's the thing is it hasn't been though, right? So this motion is to amend it. Except, except it. All right. So I think what we need to do is we need to rain. And I need to accept a friendly amendment to adopt the motion. Then we do the motion to. And then we vote on everything. Correct. Everyone happy. Okay. I'm not convinced it's necessary, but if it makes Alan happy, let's just. Let's see if you feel better. Okay. Perfect. I'm all about. Let's make Alan. I can't wait for civil to write this up really. Good. Good luck. I'm taking notes as well. So just. Okay. Let's see. Put it in the chat room. Go ahead though. Okay. Those amendments are really important too, because what, if somebody feels they've been harassed, they need it to have a safe place to go. They can't just go to the executive director or the chair. So it's an extremely important amendment. I just want to put it out there. Yeah. No one's arguing about that. Yeah. So we need to most, do we need a motion to amend? We have that. We have that. And we should vote on the motion. Do I have any objections to the motion to amend? Hearing no objections. Do I have any abstentions from the emotion to amend? I'm seeing no abstentions. The motion to amend passes. We are now voting on the motion to adopt the amended policy. As amended. That we that we just amended. Do we have any discussion on that? I am hearing no discussion. Do I have any objections to adopting this personnel policy? As amended. I'm seeing no objections. Do I have any abstentions? I am seeing no abstentions. The motion passes. We have a personnel policy. Go us. All right. That was all of the action items. I'm going to go back to the top of the agenda. Thank you. Thank you to everybody to work on this. This was a lot of effort. It was incredibly important in helping us to get this together. And we really should have done this a long time ago, but we've done it now. So thank you very much. R.D., your hand is up. Is that a no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry. Okey dokey. All right. So I'm going back to the top of the agenda. Treasurer's report. You've been very patient with us. Lori back. Thank you. You are muted. I'm not hearing you. Okay. I hit the wrong button with my elbow. There we go. There we go. I sent out various financial statements. One is a year to date. One is for the month of June. And what is July up to date? I have not gotten notification from Bonnie that they have finished the bank reconciliation. So it is still a preliminary statements. Anybody have anything they want to discuss? Add question about the report. All right. We'll move on to the next item financial and grant support update. Is that Janiel? Right. Yeah, sure. We met with, we met with NRTC about helping us with grant readiness for the reconnect loan that will be coming out in September of this year. It's a loan grant combination federal through the USDA. And we're going to be applying to that. We're also looking into VEDA that's Vermont Economic Development Authority financing of up to around $5 million. It looks like and that would be a gap loan. And we're also working with PFM toward bonds going to the bond market. So we have those things going and then of course there is VEDA and that is a longer term that's longer term funding. But the state of Vermont got 228.9 million dollars allocated to it. It's going to be a competitive process meaning we'll be competing with private sector. And we don't know when that money will come or how much will be. There are many requirements to it such as matching. And as I said it was competitive. It is competitive. That is likely not going to come until early 2025. So we have 2024 construction season and lights to keep on. And that's where we're coming up with VEDA reconnect and bonds. Linda. Am I muted? Nope. You got more. I would just like to say that the more revenues we bring in the less debt we have to concur. So please all delegates when we're coming to your area to your districts please join into the events that we are currently running so that we can bring in more revenues. We need volunteers for these events. Revenues revenues revenues. Thank you. Cabot. Cabot. Cabot. Any more observations or comments? All right. The next item is what was that? Construction update and outlook including a discussion of the installation thing or who's you want to go ahead. Janie all that too. Right. Yeah, sure. The piece that was added as a quote unquote amendment to the agenda is that CV fibers this distributed split design means that we have designed our network to not hang fiber on every single pole. That's because it's a rural area. This is not an atypical way to design the network. And therefore when drops are calculated from the fiber to your point of connection that will not necessarily be the closest pole in the road or the right of way to your house. It may be in some cases depending on where your home is or where your point of connection is, but it may not be. So the distance and the cost of the drop from the nearest fiber hub pole will depend on a site survey. And we realized that looking at our website that this was very unclear and wasn't specified. And so I made changes to the website to make it exceedingly clear that this is how it's going to be that costs will be determined based on last hub pole to the point of connection due to the fact that this is a distributed split network. There are other construction updates, but I wanted to lead with that because I know that it's something that everyone wants to or many many people have brought up recently. So I didn't want to let that go. But I also want to mention from a construction standpoint that we now have 12 crews in the field. Because of the recent rains they pulled back some crews where we cannot do work but we are actively building in Romney School 01 and 02 and splicing in CL01 and 02 waiting on Make Ready for CL03. So we are actively constructing in four DA's at this point. Okay. Alan go ahead. Yeah, I have to tell you the guys who have been up here in Romney School so-called hub it really is mostly Worcester and the crews that have been working up here. These guys were working yesterday until four o'clock in the afternoon. It was unbelievable and they've been up most weekends. They work long hours and they have pretty well all the time. Most of what they need to do Hampshire Hill Road which is a two-mile, two-and-a-half mile road that juts off of Minister Brook Road and eventually connects to West Hill Road which is what's going to take the cable eventually over to the Romney School area in Middlesex. But one of the things this has made me cognizant of is getting a lot of questions now either in person or through email or by telephone about very specific information about what happens next. I first learned about the change and the design of how we'll do connections because of somebody who had found out from somebody stringing fiber near his house that the line was not going to go as close to his house as he had thought. And when I started digging to try to figure out what the heck was going on, what I found out was that this guy is one of those people who before had fairly close access to a pole, a single pole, and he read on our website that connections will be from a pole. And when he found out that that didn't seem to be the case, I started hunting around and realized that there's actually a different kind of connection system that we'll be using. And that in his case, he actually might be quite a distance from the hub and you can be up to 2,500 feet from a connection at one of these hubs. And you're going to be responsible the way that we currently have our charges set out. You're going to be responsible for paying a dollar a foot for every foot after 400 feet. So if you are at the furthest point from one of these hubs, as opposed to a pole that might be nearby to you, you're going to be paying a total of $2,199 for a hookup. That really, I got a note from somebody. It was just vividly angry and very upset that this could possibly be happening. And it's somebody I've talked with before and he's been very interested in getting connected to CV fiber because he doesn't want to go with other providers because of the way he's been treated. He's been treated just like the same. He's been treated the same way. He's being treated the same way by us as he's been treated by the other providers. So I'm trying to work with Janiel and others to try and try and use the ARPA money that was first that it wanted to be used to connection of homes in the town to try to figure out a way to smooth this out so that somebody who just by circumstance ends up not being near a hub doesn't really get stuck with a $2,000 bill that he or she wasn't counting on. And I think that's especially true if it's a low income person. I mean, that's just, I just can't, we just can't let that happen. That's, we have to have greater equity if we say we believe in some degree of equity or something like this. So I'll stop. If anybody's interested, I've actually come up with a more with a written explanation about all this because I think it's somewhat complex, but it's actually pretty straightforward once you realize how the new distribution system works. Okay, RD, you're next. Are there maps of the hubs? Do we know where the hubs are? Yeah, we do. It's part of the system. Yeah, it's part of our design. Okay, I am. I'm not sure I can extract that data from all of the maps and data that have been presented to us over the last couple of years. Is there some way to produce a chart, a map of the hubs so we know where they are and how far our underserved and unserved potential clients are located far from those hubs? Yeah, so we have requested that information from NRTC who is our design engineer who did the design. We can do it ourselves looking at each individual map, but we can extract more general numbers like estimates for how many towns or how many houses in a particular town what the cost is going to be. So that's from our perspective so that we have predictability of that and NRTC is getting us that information. But then there's another question and that is how the consumer knows. And I think that's actually a more important question. So how the consumer knows is when weights field goes out and does the site survey, they do the estimate for where that hub pole is based on the design. But that's how the consumer or the customer would know what the drop cost would be. Yeah, we can always put those charts and maps on our website and potential consumers can determine for themselves how much it's likely to cost them to run a drop to their home or business permit. That would be a GIS question. You very well maybe write RD as far as whether that's feasible to do. I know we just put mapping up on our website for construction passings. So I'm not 100 percent sure if that is feasible or what the lift would be to do that. But that's something that we can question, especially now that we're going to be retaining stone environmental for GIS work to see if it would be a feasibility so that the consumer can see where the hub site is based on our design and therefore what the potential cost might be. Okay, RD, I'm going to move to John Morris. Go ahead, John. I just like a whole lot better explanation of what we're talking about. I want to take a stab at this one. The fiber is going along specific routes that has been designed by our designer. There's little magic boxes. No, it is not. There are little magic boxes called MSTs that are on the fiber. How far you are from an MST is what determines how much your cost is going to be for the drop, not how close you are to a poll. It's how close you are to the MST that is on the fiber that is being strong, not necessarily on a road that you're on, but maybe the next road over. Does that make sense? The thing that you're missing, I think that explanation, is that we're not running the MSTs necessarily all the way out to the end of a particular road. Right now, the way our design goes, there are some places, particularly in dead ends, where we go up to a certain point and then even if there's a house and or some polls beyond that point. Am I to understand that this is only about dead-end roads? No. But that's a useful case to think about. Well, it's not the only useful case, apparently, and I need to know all of the possibilities because I need to be able to talk to my constituents in a way that makes it clear to them before they get some kind of wrong impression because I feel right now that I've already gotten the wrong impression and now I'm feeling like I was told the wrong information before. So I want to ask a different question and see if you guys can answer that in a way that makes sense to me and is truly accurate. So if my constituent sees the cruise running fiber on the telephone pole that's at the end of their driveway, is that the telephone pole that they have to measure to to get the 400 feet? Or is there another telephone pole where the hub is actually located? If they're running it to the pole in that person's yard, they're all set. It's the person who is three poles away of person houses, multiple houses that are three poles away. That is the different story where you can end up with multiple feet going there. So it's what these splitters are and this is complicated because a splitter can serve four houses, eight houses, 12 houses, and 32 houses. And so depending on what the network looked like in your neighborhood, I mean for example in my neighborhood there are three, there's a four-way splitter, three poles away from my house. So to get from that splitter to my house, it's going to have to connect to two more poles and then get my underground to my house. So what I'm aiming to do, and this may not be the solution for anybody else, I'm having all three of us sign up at the same time so that we can split the cost of the distance. But it's I can tell you the average distance, the numbers we got early, preliminary numbers, the average distance from a splitter to a house is 600 feet. So on average we're exceeding it by 200 feet than what our policy is. But there are cases where I forget, I did a table on the percentage by distance. The bulk, the majority of people are under 400, 50% is under 400, but the next 50% ranges all over the ballpark. And so if my neighbor who is further along the road chooses to get CV fiber before I do, then I'm going to be able to take advantage of their expense. Is that correct? We're working on that one. Yeah. Daniel, how do you feel about that? Yeah, so we're talking to Watesfield now about doing a cluster, that would be considered a cluster drop where they could do a drop along the road to multiple neighbors and then the neighbors would split the cost of that. Oh, what John is suggesting is he's going to wait to his neighbor. Yeah. Okay, so I want to, I have a couple of things to say here and I'm going to take over for a second. This is a real problem that we have got to address. This is not just like, I can manage to swing a couple thousand if I have to by shifting some money around in my budget. My neighbors are never going to be able to do that and there are tons and tons of people in our district who are never going to be able to get that and we cannot possibly dangle this carrot in front of them and not and just make it impossible for them to get connection. We just can't and right now even if we put a map on the website so people can look at it, a lot of people aren't going to have time to look at it. That's or they're not going to calculate it out properly or something like that. I'm not saying don't do that. I'm just saying that is not a complete answer to the issue. A lot of people don't even understand how maps work anymore and it's just I am really concerned about this not personally because I talked to Lucas and found out I really don't have anything to worry about. My neighbors are all going to have stuff to worry about and Alan's example that's going to make people feel baited and switched. There's no two ways about it. In the long run these drops it's like when the electricity came out where there were some properties I was looking at when I was building a house I was going to have to pay several thousand dollars to get electricity to the expense but for the most part people already have the power lines to their house so they're expecting to not have to do big long installs to their houses. This is how we've been billing it. We haven't been telling people this and so I think that may be part of what Alan's big concern is and what do we do to fix it? How do we offset that? Are these your hands still up? The suggestion. I thought I heard a suggestion for this and that was town ARPA funds. Is that not what Alan was suggesting? It's not going to be sufficient to cover the extent. No, it is not. Jeremy, you've been waiting patiently. Excuse me. I think you called on me. Go ahead. Sorry. We allocated our ARPA funds last year and it's not part of the information that my select board was in possession of when it voted $50,000 of ARPA funds to CB fiber and at my insistence wrote the check at once. So this is new information and it is not obviously it is not information that governing board members have had and it's certainly not information that our potential customer base has had. Those who are under and underserved. If you don't know exactly how many people have the long runs how do you know that ARPA funds from your town won't cover it? I can tell you that $50,000 of ARPA funds is not going to cover all those drops. Furthermore, that is not what we were anticipating when we made the appropriation. We certainly anticipated perhaps subsidizing some potential subscribers or directing that service be provided initially to certain locations and cabinets. But this exceeds the information that we had at the time we made the appropriation. It certainly exceeds the information that I have had to this point. I'm going to ask you to stop there. Jeremy's been waiting patiently. Go ahead Jeremy. It's a really tough thing because you're right. I felt the same way that you do and John that this came out of the blue that I was not aware of this when we were talking about what had been made and this had been a decision that was made. At some point I think we are going to need to do a cut saying we're not going to cover something that is over X distance from the pole just because I don't know that we can afford it. That's the other piece is we're trying to make this affordable and I don't know where that cutoff is but I do think we should cover some of it more than we have. I don't think we should have an average install being 200 feet longer than I think based on Dave's preliminary thing I don't think we should have an average install that is 200 feet longer than the maximum that we will pay for. I don't know what the solution is I'm done I'm kind of wandering I'm sorry. David go ahead. I have to tell you that somebody has been involved with the design for almost two years, a year and a half until I looked at some of the make ready work and design and detail in the last three months I was not aware of this particular problem but at the same time when they told us they're going to do a MST multiple split design I didn't know what that meant and we just didn't ask the right question at that time to really understand what it meant and so it's not like I feel a little blindsided or stupid for not fully understanding how they were designing the network so we could have explained this earlier and then better understood what this is going to mean financially to the district and to individuals this doesn't get the person who does have a splitter at their pole and their house is 3,000 feet away we're not going to pay for that but for the person who's you know 1,000 feet or 1,500 feet away from a splitter when there are two more poles between his house and the MST that hurts so we got to figure this out okay John I'm going to let Linda go ahead of you because she hasn't had a chance to address this yet go ahead Linda thank you I think we need more data we can't really make a decision upon how to fix this without more data of knowing exactly how many people would be affected who really want service in other words because there may be people who are far away but they're not interested in service because they've already got some service they're very happy with we need to know more data exactly about how many people would be affected by this who are really interested in service okay John and R.D. I'm going to let Chuck go ahead because Chuck has not spoken to this yet thank you Sean I actually was going to make a similar point to what Linda was saying we just don't have enough information to even begin to take action on this yet we need to know things like you know if we were to cover that gap between the MST and the closest pole when somebody subscribed what would be the financial impact on us what would that do to the rates we have already determined and set and advertised how would we cover that how would that change our construction plans over time because it means we potentially run out of money a little bit sooner than we are currently anticipating we will run out of money we like I would propose that we probably need some sort of task force to go off and try to accumulate some answers to some of these questions to bring back to the board before we take any action on this other than acknowledge that hey we certainly have a problem on our hands of our to contend with second okay and now John Morse I have two points that I'd like to make the first is I've heard several people say that we simply can't afford to do this to cover this distance this additional distance that is beyond what it sounds like most people thought it was going to be one point I'd like to suggest that maybe we can't afford not to cover that because if we get the reputation of being the same as all of the other internet providers then we are going to lose subscribers and if we lose subscribers we are losing a lot more than just a little installation fee of a few hundred dollars or whatever it is and also if we simply the case that half of our subscribers who might subscribe are going to be above the limit and they end up having to pay and they don't do it then that's we're limiting ourselves to only half of the people out there as being possible subscribers and now I've forgotten what the other point was so I'll leave it at that thank you. I just want to point out that we have known what the grid looks like from the get-go we just didn't nobody told us that we weren't going to cover the grid it was an assumption that we all made that we were going to cover the grid we were going to lay fiber wherever we needed to in order to reach people who were on the grid and wanted service we never proposed to serve people who were off the grid we didn't want service from telephone companies or power companies I've told people in Cabot who were off the grid if you're off the grid you're all fiber we have no responsibility to serve you but we do have a responsibility and we've stated a responsibility to serve all of the people who are on the grid who are unserved or undeserved according to our standards this changes this is a change in our presentation this is a change in our mission and I think it's a disastrous one we're already being poached on some of our backwoods by other providers and I it's kind of shocking to me that that this essential apparently essential component of our design has never been made explicit and that so many governing board members are unaware of it if we're unaware of it where has it been how are we going to explain this to our constituencies okay I've said enough all right Jeremy Matt yeah I mean I definitely hear you already and agree with everything that you said I also would note that we're substantially more expensive than what Phidium is offering already without adding another however many million dollars in install fees and are we going to lose customers because we have to up our rates you know another person to cover this I don't I really I don't know what the answer is which is why I agree with Chuck that we need to get to the bottom of what the numbers are what the costs are and then make a decision that's informed based on actual numbers like what is this going to do to our ARPU rate if we cover this that's my two cents sounds like finance committee to me okay so I don't have any more people with their hands up I want to wrap up this discussion we do have an issue we have a messaging problem we have a money problem and we have to work on getting data to figure out how we can best address this Allen has his hand up go ahead Allen you're I just wanted to say thank you for allowing us to be discussed one of the things that's going to get very complicated is that when when towns gave money ARPU money to CD Fiber they have the opportunity to designate how they would like that money to be spent and one of the options was specifically for making connections in your town so if you remember these were MOUs that were developed and signed by the town select board and by the CD Fiber board so we have an obligation now for that ARPU money that was designated by some towns for connections to use it for that if we think there's a problem the problem is not all towns gave ARPU money to CD Fiber so that pool is not going to be available and second of all even if you did give ARPU money but you didn't designate it that you wanted it used for connections I think it can be argued we don't have an obligation for us to use the ARPU money that way in that particular town so I really am worried that towns are going to all of a sudden be in very different situations and untangling the inequity of this is going to be very very difficult OK, RD go ahead with respect to your point my select board has never been offered an opportunity to designate a targeted expense about the ARPU funds that we donated that has not been part of the dialogue and my RD I'm going to stop you there because that's part of the standard language of the MOUs that was part of the MOUs that was part of the yes I know we would have the opportunity to make some kind of designation some kind of appropriation of our ARPU funds and they would have to be expended in town but so far there has been no process at least none that's been presented to my select board on which I sit by which we have an opportunity to assess the needs in our community and designate where those ARPU funds are going to be expended in Cabot OK, RD at this point I'm going to stop this dialogue and suggest that you look at the MOU that your town signed and read it again because there I looked at ours and ours was specific and we had the option to opt into a number of different things and Drops was one of them and but yeah so there's there's issues agreed there's issues there's problems we're not sure how we're going to handle it there is a great inequity here and we have to we have to address it and I think we can move on now because we're not going to solve it tonight and I think that we're all a little surprised and upset and we need more information we need more data we've got a request to NRTC those doobers is that who they're okay for more for more data so we can determine the extent of this problem and and figure out a course of action we'll figure it out I believe in us okay so is there more to the construction update and outlook that you wanted to say Janiel oh Chuck Chuck's got his hand up Chuck it better be good just before we close that issue I would like to suggest we have a clear path of who is going to be accountable for running with getting some of that information and answers is that Janiel is that David who should that be who is going to own you making sure that you know we get somewhere on the issue and Alan do you were you going to address that point you're muted yeah I really think it's got to be Janiel I mean this is something that she's well versed in doing because of her background and because of her basic intelligence and I think we need somebody who's not directly involved in this in sense of being a town delegate I mean I'm really worried how I'm going to explain this to my town and some of my friends and I would like to have somebody like Janiel be in charge of looking at this with lenses there that are clear and don't have a lot of fingerprints on at this point okay alright so how about this Janiel is going to report back to the board at the next board meeting on the status of getting information data for us to you know the scope of the problem cost blah blah blah blah does that make sense I'll get I'll get numbers from NRTC so that we understand the scope of the financial impact okay what what this is going to cost for each town and also the first step with the emo uses to hone in on the specific intent because everybody had a general intent but the specific intent about X dollars and how it's going to be allocated is a conversation that needs to happen at least with the first five towns where we're going to go live soon so I'd like to start with those conversations with using the select board and or the delegates for those first five towns to to talk about allocation of ARPA funds okay and Janiel can we rely on you to do that as well yeah those two scopes are go hand hand because the allocations will will impact the total costs okay Chuck and Jeremy your your hands are up and I don't want to extend this conversation further we have more agenda items I know just a quick suggestion for Janiel is to differentiate between private roads and polls that are along public roads because I think that that might be a differentiator in people's minds so if we get numbers that could be split by that I think that might be useful for the discussion yeah I don't know we said grid we said people on the grid we didn't differentiate private road and town road when we said people on the grid so I'm with R.D. on that one we said people on the grid polls owned by consumers versus polls owned by consumers yeah we'll see how NRTC can break it down for us in the most predictable manner okay cool cool cool alright I'm closing discussion on this where'd my agenda go who stole my agenda construction update and outlook no you shut up Jeremy you shut up the rest of the meeting no I'm just teasing you alright so the next thing is do you have an outlook that you wanted to discuss since we don't have Lucas here well or should I just move on well we do have a map up it's been a month since we've met with the governing board so if anybody doesn't know we have a map up on our website now that shows all of the passings on a weekly basis where we've already placed fiber so if your address has been passed you can go on to our home page and see where the passings have been made and that is where fiber has been dropped and soon when we go live that will be green dots those red dots will turn green John where on the website can we find that yeah you can find that right on the first page if you go to the home page it's front and center right to the right on the on steviefiber.net on our home page okay thank you the map is a little messed up at the moment okay Jack I'll talk about that later John your hand is up yes I just wanted to know do these addresses getting back to that previous issue do these addresses does this mean that these addresses are the fiber has passed by the closest pole passed on that closest pole but they're still going to have the potential to have another 2,500 feet beyond getting to the pole okay yes that means that we have built out the fiber to pass that address but that doesn't mean that they won't have a very long split or there aren't other poles closer to them thank you any more construction or outlook just hoping that the cabinet gets lit next week we are yeah so we're working with our friendlies we're working with our friendly landlords on three different aspects of testing the network they're testing the billing system they're testing the network itself and they're testing the subscription of the services so those three things are all happening right now we're running into you know issues that we're working through and that's the point of testing the network so we have eight friendlies that we're working with in callas or in the first distribution area callas and Worcester oh yeah yeah right exactly David did you contact Chuck about that issue Janiel David Lawrence I'm recognizing David Lawrence yeah I just again so I guess I didn't understand the passing either and I just want to make see if this is an accurate also phrasing it just means that those addresses are ones that the access goes within 2,500 feet of that address well it's actually that we're done building fiber as close to that house as we're going to build fiber to that house on our network design that means that you can sign up for a site survey so that you can get service right so that tends to imply though that it is within the 2,500 limit it does tend to imply that the MST is there so that means that yeah the longest MST is 2,500 but you could still have longer distances David Healy you've wanted to jump in and make my message clearer so the network has an MST connection to your house and how many poles it goes through is undetermined there's no magic number of 2,500 feet from the MST or is it 40 feet from the MST so it's a pretty it's a pretty random number of feet from the MST to these locations so the passings they mean there's an MST that serves every house that's being passed that's all it means it doesn't tell you how far it is I'm not asking for it I think it makes my original statement accurate then that does imply that there is an MST within 2,500 feet I couldn't tell you okay I can tell you the longest distance is but I don't have the spreadsheet in front of me right now 2,500 is pretty close to it that's the longest is I recall the longest distance between an MST and a house right okay all right topfisher I know it's still quite early but do we have any sense yet of how or if this weather event we've been experiencing is going to impact our construction Yes it already has and unfortunately we got a call from Eustace this afternoon that said that they had to pull some of our crews and put them in N.E.K. because they couldn't work on the roads where they were going to be working so yes it has already impacted us the good news is that we were concerned a couple of months ago that we might during this summer season lose crews to the hurricane seasons down south and then we really lose them we'd lose them to the out of the state and right now they've been repurposed to the N.E.K. so they can turn around and come back when it's safe to do so that means that yes it has been impacted and the crews have not gone as far as we were concerned they might go if they had to be put to some other emergency in the south or something like that okay is there any more construction update or can we move on to marketing services and community relations okay moving on to community relations and marketing services Janiel so we are hiring a community relations manager we have four interviews scheduled this week we decided to go local we wanted to hire somebody who is local to the area Vermont at least and with marketing experience so we are going to be interviewing for folks and hopefully by next month we'll be able to make a vote on a recommendation for our marketing professional Linda we have sent out postcards I think we sent out so far four different sets of postcards we are setting up an event for the Berry Heritage Festival coming up on I think it's the 28th and the 29th of the month and we are looking for volunteers to help with that event all these are trying to get people subscribed to our service so we really can get more revenues out of this David Healy is having two workshops coming up on the 18th and 27th is that right David yep 18th and 27th yep for the town where we are currently building in so you should invite people to these workshops postcards I think about 1500 postcards went out about David's workshop two workshops coming up so marketing has started we are doing events and postcards on a rotating basis based upon Lucas's telling us when the trucks are arriving into that district that's the first set of postcards that are going out anybody have questions about the marketing that we are working on I wanted to say I'm trying to be fast you all are ruining my record here that I'm a little concerned about going to Berry Heritage Days but we are not going to be in Berry any time soon Berry Heritage Festival covers all of Washington County I have been doing the Berry Heritage Festival for the last five years with the Democratic Party and I can tell you it's a lot more than just Berry people excited to just always stay away from there okay too many people marketing services and community relations are we done with that one that was what we were just going over that is there any more on that I need to work with we need to work with the delegates from the first five towns where we are lighting so I've actually invited the delegates to those first five towns to our community outreach meeting tomorrow morning it's an optional meeting but I did send the invite out to those top five first five town delegates we also offered a what you need to know training to those those delegates last Friday and we'll continue that was recorded too we continue to provide training and part of it is this drops connection and how you communicate with your town and then when we move into the MOU and ARPA allocation discussion then I'll want to have close communication with the towns the select boards and or the delegates and we would like to have the delegates involved in the community outreach events like what David is doing in Calis is great we also had postcards as Linda said going out for that event so a big part of the community outreach is working with especially the delegates where service will be offered first so that we can get our messaging straight and get delegates and the towns involved and there's a message task force that works on that just getting out the messaging and so if you want messaging we would prefer that you use the messaging that is being put together by this task force Tom I intended to be an admin cookout last Friday feedback is that I got repeated statements of well I've already signed up for notifications to find out more I've already signed up and the information I got up in the workshop that's how you will find out I had a really hard time hearing you I'm sorry so the main point was folks who have signed up for notifications maybe a bit confused about you need to sign up again to get service oh you know what exactly that isn't yes Tom that is exactly the issue I'm running into with the friendlies right now and I said hey did you bring that to Chuck's attention no Chuck is on vacation I didn't yet but I will yes we have that glitch and that's something we talked about with weights field today it is actually a crowd fiber bug it is a problem with their system because they want to prevent duplicative entries so they've made it so that if you've already signed up it basically puts you in this corner and it's becoming problematic because that's how we're testing our system is in phases so it's a problem that crowd fiber intends to fix is working on but the time frame has been kind of loose like I guess on Friday it was being done right now but we don't have a date certain so Janiel if I understand if I signed up as a pre-register not a friendly and now I can sign up I go into I can go into crowd fiber and I end up in this loop right now there is a glitch yes and Tom is mentioning it and I've heard it from the friendlies as well so it's a problem that is a problem that crowd fiber it's a bug in crowd fiber so could we delete all the pre-register it's not all over again I don't think that's the case Janiel I think it's just the way that the friendlies got signed up through weights field yeah but Tom is saying he's heard it from other people as well and we weren't sure if we were going to see it with other people but we know that it's a problem with other with other CUDs because it's something that Kurt is working on with Ellie right now at Maple so we do know it's a problem beyond just our friendlies Chuck it's unfair to crowd fiber to call this a bug it's designed and working as they originally intended it to the problem is it's just a really confusing user experience and our users are getting confused because of that and so the work that crowd fiber is doing is to streamline that I wouldn't hold our breath on any sort of immediate immediacy in terms of getting a resolution to it but I will say that it is working exactly as was intended and as we knew it would work and it's just really confusing to them. There is one quick change that I think we can make that we can make on our side that I think will make it a little bit clearer and easier and so when I'm back in the state later this week I will start to drill into that to see if we can make that change but the point being that we do kind of have to live with this for the time being and the best thing to do is to those folks that in order to register again, which we do need them to do, they need to be prepared that it's going to send an email to them and that they need to click a link in that email in order to continue with that registration which is a little bit wonky but that is the way it works. And we went through this in testing by the way. So I signed up as a pre-registration for CLA-1 I have not gotten an email. Can we take that list of pre-registrance and send them a special email that says okay, you are now open for a regular sign up and here's a link to click. Yeah. Yes. Well, yes. And Tom, that's what we did with our friendlies and they weren't getting the email and that's where it got confusing. And that's what I've been working on and that's what I brought to Waits Field today and that's where they said crowd fiber had to fix it and I know it's not a bug but it is very confusing. If they're not getting their email and, you know, our friendly checked spam and it wasn't there and she checked to see that it came from somebody else and couldn't find it. So it is extremely confusing. This is why we need friendlies. Yeah. So far only one friendly has tried this as far as I know, right, Janiel? I think only one friendly was successful which is not a good rate. We have 28 people. No, that's because I helped her. We have 28 people. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm sorry but we're running late and we've got one more item on the agenda. Is there more to do with the website and marketing update that the board needs to know? Okay, no. This is the last item on the agenda. This should be short. This is going to be short, right, Janiel? Is this Janiel? Just to make it clear, Janiel is not responsible for us being over. It's us, us Mouthy board members. I'm looking at you, Jeremy. You can't see me looking at you but I'm looking at you. I'm sorry, Janiel. To be fair we did start 20 minutes ago. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Were you going to do the legal engagement? Since I don't have Jerry here. Sure. So we are, we are. Yes. We are retaining the legal council for HR. And that is no action expected. So we just wanted to give. It's just an update. It was approved by executive committee. But yeah, this is. Yeah. And the purpose of this legal council is to help guide us as we implement our personnel policy and help us do procedures and make sure that we're reviewing the new law that has come out. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Right. Because we didn't do this before and we need to do this because we have employees now. Does anybody want to have any discussion about that? It's going to be applied to the governing board. Yes. Absolutely. To the governing board, the governing board is explicitly called out in the policy. I'm going to go ahead and adjourn this meeting. This meeting is adjourned at 741 p.m. Thank you all very much. You've been very kind. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.