 So let's call the meeting to order at 6.02. Thank you. Let me also ask that anybody in the meeting here, please, if you're not speaking, please be on mute to help us with the background noise. Thank you. All right. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Hearing none. Is there any public comment? Hearing none. I wanna do make a comment or an announcement here. I am not going to seek reappointment come May. And I need to step down. This is just way too much for me. It's definitely affecting me. And if the board wants to take up a vote prior to that, as long as we have it warned, I'm certainly willing, you know, for that. But I certainly won't stand for reappointment in May. So I just want folks to know that. And if anybody wants to talk to me about what goes on behind the camera here, I'm happy to talk about it. So if you can see what you're getting into. But I see hands raised, Siobhan, Tom, then Janiel. So, Jerry, I just wondered, does that mean you wanna step down immediately or you're willing to serve through till May? I'm willing to serve till May, but I'm also very willing to step down in advance if somebody wants to step up and is ready to, you know, wants to jump in. That's okay. Really appreciate the notice. I'm done. Yes, well, yeah. Okay, Tom. Similar sort of thought, but also thinking it might be good to have some more overlap with a position as important as yours that there's like a month or something or you can help relay the role. Absolutely. That's why I'm giving so much notice, right? So that's, you know, I can share information. I can help in any way that I can or I can just get the hell out of the way, whatever is required. But of course I'm willing to help. I think that's pretty obvious. Janiel. Yeah, Jerry, I just wanna say that I think I speak for everybody here when I say that you are tremendous at what you do. And I know that you have a really, really demanding day job that goes well above most day jobs into the weekends and evenings. And your business, financial and construction, project management, Acumen, has really carried this organization far. And it's been tremendously helpful to me in the past 18 months or whatever since I've been here. And I just want you to know how much I appreciate you. And thank you very much. Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that considerably. Shall we move on to the prior meeting minutes? Mr. Matt. Yeah, motion to approve the November 14th, 2023 meeting minutes as drafted. Second. Delayed second by Siobhan. I didn't know what that delay was about. Maybe you were getting somebody else an opportunity. I was trying to eat my soup. Okay. That's a second from Siobhan. Are there any opposed to the motion? Any abstentions? All right, hearing none, the motion passes. Thank you. I know that Lori Beth has been having internet difficulties. Lori Beth, are you with us? And are you able to walk through a treasurer's report? I don't see Lori Beth on here. I do not. Janil, you had some contact with her today. I mean, I guess if she comes in late, we can always rearrange the order, right? Yeah, she did imply that she would be here, but she is having connection issue. I know she was having a high speed internet issues and was looking to possibly be joining on her phone. So we can just go back to treasurer's report as she joins if she's able to. Okay, that's good. Then let's talk about our budget here. As folks remember, we approved a draft budget months ago, I believe it was October to send forward to the towns. We had a public meeting to get commentary from the towns in November, of which there was none. And then between then and the beginning of December, we sharpened our pencils and finalized the budget, made some changes on the margin. But it's basically the same budget and most of our expenditures next year, construction related expenditures are really funding dependent as they were in the previous budget for the most part. So that budget was finalized by the finance and audit committee brought to the executive committee, approved by the executive committee as a recommendation to the governing board. So with that kind of background, I'll hand it over to David Mannix who has been working quite hard on this budget and has done quite an excellent job for us. David, are you available to talk through this? If you're speaking, I'm not hearing you, but you don't appear to be on mute, but I'm not sure. Sorry, I was diligent and I muted when you asked us to and I forgot to unmute, so my apologies. So on the screen, I've got the approved budget from October 2nd in kind of the middle of the screen here, what Jerry walked through the town's approved. And then in working with the team after that date, we came up with a revised budget on the left here that has better insights into what we're doing for grant applications and also miles of completion that we'd like to do in 24. And what the screen shows you is that comparison between what was approved on the second, what we're presenting tonight, what we've reviewed with the finance committee and with the executive team. So starting kind of at the top there, you can see our grant position has changed a little bit on the ARPA dollars and the available funds moving into 24 based on some accruals we had to take for some accounts payable that we held in 23. So that changed the carryover dollars a bit from 4.6 to 4.3 million for expenses that we've already incurred in 2023. So we drew that up and then we looked at the subscriber revenues based on down here when you see the budget assumptions, instruction moving from 205 miles to 302 and the associated DAs was that decision. Basically our subscriber revenue listed a bit by $200,000 based on a more aggressive buildout schedule than what we had originally planned. And to support that buildout schedule on line three here, we moved from a debt from, yeah. Sorry to interrupt. I kind of think that we might not want to put what DAs were going to be or we're considering building in in a public meeting because if someone sees that and says, oh, well, why didn't you build to this DA? I think we should try to keep that. I mean, not, it's not, you know, hidden but I think that that might cause us public relations problems or could. My apologies. I'm still trying to learn the art of working in a public environment. I'm not good at it. I'll give you a pre-disclosure on that right now. I'd like to share data. So that's probably one of my shortcomings. And I like that too. And I don't think that it's necessarily private. I'm just worried about it from like a public relations. You know, there's one guy in my town who is. Okay. He's very argumentative. Anyways, well, I guess, I guess, I guess what I will say is that we put a lot of thought into being very clear about what we're going to go after versus what we're not going to go after in 2024 and make sure that we have all the metrics around that like the miles and, you know, the costs associated with that built into the plan. And that's what we're sharing with you today is that difference between kind of what we knew back when this was initially approved and where we are today with what we like to go after. So having said that, it's a little bit difficult to show you the differences here on this view, but basically this is kind of where we were initially and on the approved budget versus where we are now. So to get to the bottom of it, we've got an income going from 10 million to 12.9 largely driven by an increase in short-term debt requests going from five to 7.5 million. And then the expenses that are associated with that growth are kind of detailed here. You can step through each of the different buckets. The biggest expense change is in the fiber labor category where we're investing more in construction to achieve that target. And then at the bottom, you see the income going from 10 million to 12 expenses going from 9.8 to 11.7 and the debt service for that loan going from 200,000 to 450. And with that, the reserve lifting a little bit from 7.45 to 1.1. So the cliff notes on this is we're going after more miles of installations in 2024 than we initially planned for and we're asking for more debt. And what we're asking for tonight is this board approve these changes. David, was that a motion? Yes. Second. No, second. Me second. Cheater. Okay. There was a motion. There's a motion to change the budget as presented and as recommended by the executive committee, seconded by Jeremy. Are there any opposed to the motion? Hearing none. Are there any abstentions? Very well. The motion passed. Thank you. We have a budget, a real good one. As I've said before, our budgets are getting better all the time, not necessarily more accurate because it's the, it's the future we're projecting, but certainly there's a lot more observation and knowledge and experience going into it. David, I saw your hand was up. David Healy. I was trying to hit the reaction button for clapping. It was the hands, but it was wrong hands. All right. Well, better to see you smile. And that's even better than clapping. Thank you very much, everybody. And for all the work that went into this site. I know it was quite a lot. Let's see. Lori Beth, I see that you're in the meeting. I'm sorry if you were here before. And I skipped over your name. Would you like to do the treasurer's report at this time? Yeah. I can't really do that because I don't have regular internet access. This is just on my phone. Gary, you're on mute. Oops. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. So I think we're going to do the technical difficulties have to, have to, have to skip this. Skip this item. Can you tell us off just off the top of your head? Lori Beth. Are there any headwinds we need to be aware of here that would have come out of your treasurer's report? Or are we sailing smoothly? I think we're doing okay. I have not, of course, gotten the bank reconciliation yet because it's still before the 15th. I won't be getting that until either Friday or Monday. But I don't, I'm not aware of any, of any explosions coming up at all. Okay. So, so next month, which will be January. You can present the December reconciliation and we'll, we'll, we'll be working with reconciled numbers. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see. Can we then go to our construction update? Janiel, are you ready to discuss that? Sure. So I'll go through the, Lucas is not able to join us tonight. So I'll go through all of the, the things that traditionally Lucas will go through. I also want to piggyback on what Lori Beth said, and that things are smooth sailing. I, we, I could save this for another update, but just financially we, we now have an operators bank account. We have about $11,000 in the bank account from revenues. This is a first for us. This is, this is a big deal. And it's worth celebrating. So congratulations to CV fiber for being a, a, a, a, a live high speed internet operator. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to thank you for being a live high speed internet operator and, and for, and for having those revenues in the bank. This is the best financial news for us. It's like we're putting on our big kid pants now. You know, we really, we really are. So up to now it's all of our funding has been grants. We are a business. We are running a business. This is, yes, it is a nonprofit. Yes, it is a municipality, but, but this is such wonderful news and a really, a, a, an important step in the right direction. With that, I'll move into the construction report. We have six crews in the field now. We are, we are close to being live in our next distribution area, at least for friendlies. We are thinking probably by the end of the week. We plan to continue with the construction season throughout the winter. We do, we're planning on going down to two weeks at the warehouse. So we've allowed the construction crews to know that kidding, that kidding up the materials for construction will have to happen on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the first quarter. That does not seem to be an issue. We are, we are, you know, we're, we're looking at, we're looking ahead at that. But so that construction doesn't slow down. In addition to the construction of the fiber internet, we're also working on installs. Waits field is doing approximately eight installs a week and, and to be, to be increased. I recognize that this goes into the operations update as well, but we do have 46 customers as of now. We have passed 1,419 passings as of this morning, which, which is 183 miles reflecting fiber and MST tails. So that's where we're at. Waits field has hired two new drops crews so that we can start to increase the rate at which we install customers. So we are, we are in an upward trajectory. And even though it's now snowing outside, we look to continue on our construction. Fantastic. Any, any questions for Janiel on that so far? Janiel, do you have any, anything else you want to talk about materials and warehousing, or should I just morph into the contract? Would you like to talk a little bit, give a little background up about the, what's in this contract? Yeah, I will. So for the past 18 months, we've been working with a company called Wild Blue Yonder. They've been tremendous at our warehouse management and our inventory management. And every time a curveball comes, they, they, they are up to bat for us. It started out when I first started, we were getting fiber delivered on Main Street. And there really isn't an elevator. I mean, I guess there's an elevator, but you're not going to get fiber in that elevator. And there were, there were trucks coming from places trying to deliver our fiber reels on Main Street. And it was a mass and, and Wild Blue Yonder stepped up to bat for us. So we were, we were paying them about $21,000 a month for inventory management for what they're doing is they were keeping an eye on all of the materials, managing and upkeeping our inventory, kidding it out to the construction crews, complying and maintaining compliance with OSHA and OSHA. And, and taking control of the, the safety of our materials, which means cameras on it, audit support, things like that. As we got later in the year, we realized we needed more audit support after we went through our first audit and we needed to have more, more heavy duty oversight of the numbers that go into inventory management and support for spreadsheets that were being required for our grant recording and things like that. So we ended up doing a part time employee on a contract basis, which brought our, our rate up to about 26,800 a month for the flat rate. And then moving into the new, into the new year, we decided that since we do require so much audit support, we'd like to have that person on the regular contract. But we decided that because a lot of the time the warehouse is over staffed, we could actually cut back on some of the warehouse staff taking deliveries in. And part of what allowed us to do that is because we've already ordered 400 miles of materials. So most of the big shipments have already arrived. So there needs to be less support from the warehouse side of things, just taking inventory in and out on a physical level and more support for the numbers. So we adjusted those, we adjusted those personnel. Our current contract will start with the same company under a different name, by the way. They, they rebranded from Wild Blue Yonder to straight line broadband, but it's the same exact company. They're just targeting more the broad, the broadband industry. So they changed their name. And the, the terms are the same as, as the first contract. However, we're now, we're taking on the license for inventory management, which I think we probably should have been doing from the beginning, but this will give us a bit more owner, legal ownership of the inventory management. And practically speaking, we've taken more control of it since Lucas has started and is taking on a lot of the inventory management purchasing roles as well. So the car, the rate that we're looking at going into now is $31,000 a month. So there is, there is an increase. And for the first quarter, we're looking at going part time. So that'll save us $45,000 in the first quarter due to the slower construction season. So those are the terms we've negotiated for warehousing. And I should also state that they are managing our warehouse, our box yard, that is the outside yard, as well as to the extent we still need it. And we do still have reels there at the WEC yard. Now I see, Mike, you have your, your hand up. Yes, how are you? Yeah, I'm with Barry town. I guess the question is, I've seen, I haven't seen in any documents or data that I've combed through on the, on the website or anything else that you guys have had indicating, I guess projected timelines for certain towns slash cities. And I was wondering like, because if I update my select board in Barry town, they're going to ask, they're never really going to ask, well, when, when are they going to do it? You know, when are they coming into Barry town area? So I don't really have an answer for that at this point. So I think, right. So I think the best we are trying to be more clear, more transparent about sequence of build. And this probably goes into, this is probably better suited for Olivia to answer when we get to the marketing update. She did put out an amazing year end report that goes through each of the areas that we're building and the order. Now. Yeah. Yeah, Jerry, or actually, yeah. Jerry, did you want to add to that? Yeah, I just want to add one, one thing, Mike, and that is that we are, we are really focusing on the areas that have the most underserved or among the most underserved. And that's, that's where we've clustered our initial construction work, even though we're, we're, you know, we're, we're, we will be designing and, and, and building out to get all of the underserved in CB fibers territory. We've started and, and are still building and will be in 2024 for the most part in areas where the, the underserved are clustered. We might pass some folks that are served to get to the underserved. You know, you got to go go down route 12, no matter what you do. So we have to do that like everybody else. But then when we go out into the hinterlands from there, we're really focusing on getting to the underserved. So regardless of what the, what the month or year might be when, where, where you fall on the schedule, that is the logic behind where, where we are. Okay. Yeah, Jerry, I agree with you totally. I have no problem with that at all. From, from the data way back in the beginning, when I first started this, I saw that in Barry town, there was only like 50 addresses. I don't know if that's gotten bigger, small, whatever. So obviously Barry town is not going to be, you know, on the, on the high part of the list, because you've got other areas and towns and cities that probably need more, a lot more. I just say, when I go back to Barry town's legboard, they're going to ask, and I want to try to give them some type of general air, you know, not a specific, obviously, but a general idea, okay, is this going to be, you know, full of 2024? That's going to hit Barry town kind of thing. Well, I'll tell you what we can do, Mike. I don't want to answer off the cuff and give a wrong answer. And the reason I say that is because we really don't go by town. We go by design areas and design areas can have multiple towns that it touches on or a single town might have multiple design areas touching the town. So we'll go back and we will take a look to see if any of the DA's that we have, you know, where our plans are for the DA's and where Barry town, you know, the underserved in Barry town might fit in those DA's and we will give you a better answer than something that would be off, off the cuff right now. I was just wondering if there's a way, is there a way to like create, and obviously this is not specific or you're not going to go to the timeline, but a general timeline for all the CUDs that are part of this to say, okay, this is what the general projection is for each CUD, for each town slash city, you know, and what we project, which might change obviously you know, depending on a lot of, you know, circumstances, but there's nothing out there where someone can look at it and say, oh, okay, Barry town falls in this area, you know, or even like, you know, Montpelio falls in this area, you know, kind of thing. So I'm just wondering if there's a way to create that type of table. We, you know, we haven't really been making our full build out plan in that way, in a detailed way, that transparent, but there are lots of hands up so let me go to the hands I have Jeremy and then Siobhan, thank you. I mean, for my point of view, creating a document or a table like that is incredibly dangerous because we don't know when, for example, the federal deed money is going to come in. We don't even really have an estimate of the year that that will come in, maybe 2025. I mean, we're not certain. We hope that it'll come in, but we don't know when. And that's going to massively impact how quickly and where we can build. If we put out a date, even if it's just an approximate like we would like to be in Barry town by 2025 and then we don't meet that there are likely to be some people who will have taken that as gospel and who will get quite upset with us. I mean, that's that's what I'm running into with people in Plainfield who are who seem to have gotten into their head that service was promised to them and then they're mad that we didn't build there first. Kind of makes it hard from a marketing standpoint. Let's put it that way. It makes it hard from a lot of standpoints. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. You're next on the list there. Olivia sitting there. Yes. Yes. Yes, it does. So I've got, I've got several people in my constituency. I've got a lot of people who are in orange who are honestly not even on the planned map right now because they're very tricky areas and some of them were maybe going to have to deal because the shape of the mountains were probably going to have to get say easy fiber or somebody to serve them rather than us. But we can't say we have no idea. So the best I can tell people, and this is what I tell them all the time and I've been saying this for the last five years is everyone means everyone, everyone in our district who wants internet and is on the grid. We're going to get there eventually. We don't know when because we don't control supplies. We don't control the federal funding and we don't control the, the, the vagaries of the market and things like that. So the best I can offer a lot of my constituents and they seem okay with this because I think honestly, if I gave them a date, they wouldn't believe me anyway. But those are orange people. So, so I don't know. But you know, I tell them, we're going to get there and they seem okay with that. I mean, you know, they're disappointed. I'm not saying next month, but at least I'm giving them an honest answer and I think that that counts for something and I'm done. I hope this is helpful to you. It is. It is. Thank you very much. Okay. And I, we still will do what I said and follow up and see if we're touching Barry town in, in anything that we have in the, in the very near future and we will let you know. Okay. I'll touch base with Olivia through. I know she's, she's emailed me a couple of things. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. Getting back to our contract. I think we were getting pretty close to making a motion. One thing that I hadn't mentioned previously is that. This contract has worked its way up through the. Through the. Committees like everything else. And last week at this time. We were asked to approve the contract and the contract was approved as a approval. So with that. I would, I will make the motion that. We, that the governing board approve. The contract with straight line broadband, formerly wild blue yonder. To continue their inventory. And warehousing services for CV fiber. Through the coming year. Second. or there any additional discussion Tom go ahead it was not it was either Tom or myself I'm sorry Tom go ahead I'm I caught the how much it was that we're currently paying a month I didn't catch what the future amount would be and if that's being held back is it within 10 20% of the amount that we're currently looking at her yep yep yep we're currently paying 21 plus 58 21,000 plus 5800 which comes to 26,800 for our current services and we will be paying 31 thousand dollars on the new contract so I mean the the rates have increased but this is much more tailored to what we need in this phase because our needs have changed a bit but you know don't forget though for the first three months we're only paying half of that so when you look for the year it's it's almost a wash yeah that's right thank you for reminding me Jerry so for quarter one for January February and March we expect because we expect a slower construction need we're paying 15,000 a month for each of those three months so yes that's an that's 45,000 that we're saving by going down to a limited warehouse schedule just for the first quarter great thank you any additional discussion we have a motion it's seconded are there any opposed to the motion are there any abstentions hearing none thank you very much these guys have been going on a month-to-month while we have been negotiating with them to try to get this right and kudos to Janiel for for working this through thank you everybody let me go back to my agenda I think guess it's back to Janiel operations update and outlook and then when you're done Janiel you can hand it over to Olivia please yeah so so the operations highlight is that we all that we have 46 that we have 46 subscribers but also and that we're increasing our rate at which we can sign people up by by increasing the drops cruise and and also that we hope to we intend to get that second distribution area lit at least for friendlies by the end of this week they're just going through the final testing so operations isn't it is in very good shape we're also working with weights field they're charging us a flat rate for our drops and as we go through the connections we're realizing that some of these drops are really long so we will have to go back and renegotiate some of the details for the those services we haven't had enough data to go there yet maybe after we have our hundredth customer we have to go back and look at the numbers but but for now that's the that's where we're at with operations and I guess we could go into marketing for from there sure go ahead Olivia please unless there are any questions any questions on the operations update for Janiel okay Olivia please go ahead well I'll start with the hot ticket item of last week which was our year end update all in we looked at the at the data at the analytics and the amount of traffic that went into our website 24 hours afterwards was actually three and a half times higher than what we've normally experienced on our site so all in from a brand awareness perspective really really you know nicely done from a lead generation perspective we had over a hundred people either sign up as paying subscribers or pre-register on our site so again from a lead generation perspective I think we really you know hit the target there all in the amount of email communications that came in there was a lot there was a lot of buzz you know we saw everything we had questions about conduit DIY we had questions about why am I not included you know within the current build plan so some of the things that we did afterwards were you know we were reacting to some of the inquiries we've set up a conduit alias group for example so if anybody well has a conduit related question that that communication is really streamlined we've created an FCC challenge page on our site that was recently launched it essentially goes through you know what does it mean of being qualified as underserved or unserved and how can I challenge that we've had a couple of folks that have come to us and said well that's not fair you know I'm actually not getting the service that I should be getting so we're going through that process of educating but also leading folks to the right resource to make sure that they're able to continue their journey and if we have enough challenges then we'll certainly you know we can we can go back and take a look at certain addresses and why they're not included in the current build from another perspective from an email communication since it did so well I'm actually planning a January update I'm trying to figure out whether this should be seasonal so every couple of months or whether we should commit to a monthly basis there's not all too much you know new material that goes on from a month to month perspective so maybe we'll streamline that from every month to every season for example that might be the best way to go but again we'll revisit that to determine what the next schedule is for for the email communications moving forward everybody should have heard from me in some way she performed regarding their town bulls and inserts town meeting days coming up so everybody should have received a copy of the town bull and insert and everything was sent to your town clerk as well moving forward also our holiday card is coming out next week so everybody will be getting a copy of that and also we sent over a delegate survey for information if you didn't receive a copy of the link I can certainly send that over but I would love to sit and meet with you all for just the 30 minute session moving forward just so that we could really start planning outreach for your town you guys know your town best I would really appreciate your feedback thank you any questions for Olivia there's a there's a lot of good work going on there quite a lot of good work and she didn't mention all the fire drills that she does every time somebody has a question that is asking the wrong question and then doesn't understand the answer they got so it goes through a whole do loop and there's a there's a lot of that as one can imagine any additional questions for Olivia all right if not let's go on to a funding and audit update um I'll start this off uh first of all the audit um we are engaging or have engaged uh the same audit firm that is going to do the single audit for us again this year they did an excellent job for us last year um they were extremely helpful in in us getting everything aligned and really coming through that first single audit so cleanly um I was extremely impressed uh that they were able to understand what we were doing and translate that into uh the the appropriate procedures that are needed uh for a single audit so I thought they they were extremely helpful for us last year and I believe they will do just as good a job for us this year um and this is uh the two things one this is not a choice we have to do this very detailed level of audit every year especially now that we're receiving more than 750 or spending more than $750,000 of federal funds so we are required to do this and secondly there are very few folks that do this kind of audit um when I was looking I had started looking for an auditor a year before we needed our first single audit and I went through everybody in Vermont that I could find uh and couldn't find anybody that was interested in taking on this business they are in New Hampshire um and they have a lot of experience in the telecom industry and they really have been a good fit for us so that's the audit update the funding update um we got bounced out of the VCBB presentation yesterday where we were we were supposed to continue our discussion um of our funding situation and our grant amendment to modify our grant that got pushed out into January I guess that's just as well the VCBB is so busy um we really want to be able to grab their attention when we do present and not have them just waiting for us to be done so they can get on to the next thing so I'm I'm hoping that um January will be a good opportunity for us and really as far as we're concerned between now and January we're fine so it's not as if that's holding up any of our work or any of any of our progress um and then and then also in uh as far as funding goes uh we have an RFP on the street as they say for our bridge loan um with responses due January the ninth is that correct Janiel I believe it's January the ninth um and we will I believe that means we will have an update for yes what's the second Tuesday is the seventh no that's January 23 I'm sorry anyhow we should have it in time for our second Tuesday uh governing board governing board meeting um and Janiel is there anything else you'd like to oh David has his hand up hold on go ahead David and you're on mute David um you also gonna have the VCBB put this RFP out to there for five or six firms is that underway or has it been done yes yes Rob Rob has it um he was on the list of people to get it from a PFM okay thank you yeah yeah so it's be it's being distributed through two venues thank you David yeah that's correct Janiel is there anything else you'd like to add to that particular uh funding and audit update well I want to point out that we got four positive responses to our request for expressions of interest that the RFP was based on so we we we are feeling positive about the the ask we did ask for um up to 13 million dollars in funding um so we're going to be able to compare the terms of the responses um terms like how much when we can draw down what the interest rates are things like that so um maybe there's going to be some direct opportunities maybe some underwriting opportunities so we're going to compare and contrast what what the market says we can do and I'll add that the ask is that size because we've added the potential match for Bede which probably won't be until 2025 but you were under the impression that you may need to show that you have somehow the match part of which can be working kind by the way so we have no idea how much the match is going to be we don't know how much our funding is necessarily going to be so we're trying to to cover all our bases so that we are in position to take advantage of whatever opportunity will follow us. Janiel would if oh Olivia go ahead please well I also wanted to mention on the funding front uh legislative day is coming up end of January so we're putting together our messaging and communications plan in terms of what our ask will be on the legislative front as well um there's a couple of hot ticket items that are uh interrelated with broadband and so we're putting together our messaging there to see if there's any you know additional asks that we have and this is more on a unified sister CUD front. Excellent thank you Henry good to hear from you. Hello there um I just wanted to ask about um in terms of the financing organizations that you've received bids from are are any of these Vermont um agencies or are they all commercial lenders? What I will tell you we we it's you know it's part of a closed process so we can't real really go into a lot of detail here Henry but I will tell you that I know that there is at least one institution that is Vermont based um that is going to be potentially underwritten that has expressed interest. Now we haven't received actual bids yet but there has there there also has been there has been interest yeah yes. Thank you Janiel. Spot on well would you like to move into the uh finance manager update Janiel and uh if you need some assistance from the the folks go after it. Yeah so so we are as an organization moving into the next phase where we're we're looking at all these different funding options we're we're we're getting more mature in our ability to budget uh we're going to into our second audit season so we are we are going into a new we have subscription if the uh subscriptions now so there's a lot of changes what we've done is we've taken a step back and looked at what this organization needs in the next year going forward what do we need what do we have what do we need what do we have we have treasurer we have executive director we have finance committee uh finance and audit committee chair vice chair and the committee itself um we have our auditors we have our CPA um so we we looked at but all of the roles that need to be filled statutorily and practically um and from a regulatory standpoint to comply with all our grant requirements um and so we put together a job description and that is the gaps we got to fill and so we put out a job posting for a finance manager and that that listed all of the things that we needed to fill um and we got four responses um we interviewed four qualified candidates all relatively local um meaning they have some tide of Vermont they have a house in Vermont they work out of Vermont or they're based in Vermont um one of the so one of the candidates is a an expanded scope of work so rather than a traditional individual applying we we also heard from um an expanded scope of work from our current CPA and the the group met and we interviewed everyone and we um we made the so I don't know how much detail we want to go into because we're still we're still in a position of deliberating even though we did make a decision we still have to go back and iron out all of the details um based on information that came out of the meeting um so we are now assessing all of our options okay so we we know that we need to fill this role um but we also know that we we need um we need to have certain roles failed by executive director by the um by the finance and audit committee by the treasurer by all of the existing roles and in order to make sure that we have the appropriate um safeguards in place um for compliance we're still going through all of those details to make sure that we make the right recommendation to this board David you want to add no it's that's well said I think one of the challenges of the committee is it's not a full-time role at this point so it's difficult to find somebody that can put 15 to 20 hours in and um you know have that match between what we need and what they're willing to offer so that's been one of the challenges that we've faced as a committee for as a working group yeah I would add that it appears that there have been some good candidates and that there's there's there's been some good back and forth um and evaluation of those candidates so we will I believe have a finance manager um in the coming weeks or months and you know maybe it'll maybe it'll be a final approval on our January meeting or probably not good to have a special meeting between any time now and and our next governing board meeting so hopefully it'll be for our next governing board meeting I know David loves the special meetings but we're gonna we're gonna try not to do it yeah I mean it's a really good position to be in really we we do have solid candidates and we are very lucky to be in that position. Any additional questions or discussion about our finance manager update? Okay next um I think I'm gonna flip this around a little bit Janiel do you want to talk a little bit about delegate training and then maybe Alan can fill us in on where we are with changes to HR policy or however however that works between the two of you please. Yeah those two things are definitely connected so I'll lead into it um but yes we we are as an organization we are wanting to be more supportive of all of our folks and that includes board members and it includes um employees and we want to have a clear a clear uh policy or policies that are supportive that we want to be a great place to work uh whether you're a board member or an employee we want you to feel supported and to know where your what your expectations are so what a cv fiber expect of you so toward that end we are working on our our policies and I'll let Alan speak to that but in addition to that we we want to train the board um Olivia mentioned that she had put out a board delegate survey and that's a that's a great tool for us to start to start to get some feedback we did receive several responses um but we we haven't received responses from everyone and what we would like to do is sometime probably in the first quarter to do some board training that will encompass some of this human resources personnel that's encompassed in the policy that Alan will discuss um but but also just what's expected of you and what do you say you know Mike you had some really good questions earlier about what do I tell Barry that kind of that kind of stuff you know we really need to help support our board members um to the to the best of our ability so I'm looking at something probably in the first quarter to start on more holistic training as well as some human resources training we can go into personnel policy if you'd like Alan oh um but but Mike did have a but Mike yeah did you have a question you're on mute Mike you know I I've come into this while you guys are already up and running and it's really I really feel like I'm a distant planet I sort of have no what's going on um all the time so any kind of delegate training would be really helpful I I really feel that I could have benefited from that and still can um like Olivia has mentioned sending out all these things to the delegates I haven't received any of that and I don't know where to look for it so you know that kind of stuff um you know it's uh would be very helpful to to new board members especially including myself I still feel like a new board member Chuck do you think you can help fill that gap does does does Mike have a CV fiber email address and Chuck I have a you know I'm used to emails coming to my email address I'm not used to going and looking for other emails um Chuck has filled that gap and that's how I was able you know I hadn't um received any information about this meeting tonight and I sent an email this morning and then I realized oh I have this other thing um which I'm still not that familiar with but I was able to find it and find the information so so Chuck has filled that and I just don't commonly go there to look for stuff I don't know when things are coming out um so um so it's been a little bit of a challenge for me to keep up with what's going on understood Chuck do you think maybe you can get in touch with Mike and maybe you can use an alias so that things get bounced into his his typical inbox or something like that um unfortunately that is disabled at the domain level for CV fiber um that was part of the settings that came in the recommended package for a public entity uh largely because uh the risk profile here is that if you have stuff coming in and out of your personal email address your personal email address your personal emails could get wrapped up into discovery should something go wrong and they need to to do uh uh discovery but um that said uh you know if people are willing to take that risk I I think it's possible for our IT group to change that setting I don't think it's a mandatory setting so it's really a a decision we would need to make as a as a policy uh for this body as to whether we would allow that sort of forwarding to occur or not um it's definitely a projector but you know I'm sorry Chuck Chuck this is Mike Milo with Barry uh just to just let you know I have the CV fiber email forwarded to my personal email and it's working yes and you have to go into the settings of your CV fiber email no uh unless unless unless our IT department changed that very very recently uh that actually breaks your email um and and makes it so it it doesn't work the way it's supposed to um I'll take a look at your account and see why uh it appears to be working for you and nobody else uh but everybody else who's tried to do it has gotten blocked in doing so and I've had to like spend time unwinding it but wait don't turn it off I won't I won't turn it off if it's working for you like I you know I'm not going to be the bad cop here but I get it to I get it forwarded to my Yahoo email interesting I'll take a look at that but um maybe maybe our IT group did make a change on that front already um um but uh as far as the last time I looked at it which was a few weeks to a month ago um it was still set that nobody could do it for themselves that had to be done by the IT group okay no problem all right somebody has their hand up Christopher go ahead sir hi sorry I don't um I don't mean to put a damper on things um but I I probably would be the bad guy and say I I think it's a really bad idea to have uh company email forwarded to a personal email address um you know being in the world with uh in integration security that's a it's a very very bad practice and a slippery slope um and can get out of hand really really quickly for the reasons that that Chuck mentioned so um if if if it were to come to a vote on it I would adamantly vote against uh opening that up I just wanted to say that thank you understood and I don't expect that's coming to a vote here I was just hoping that maybe maybe Chuck and Michael could get together and figure out something that that would help him out um you know knowing that I just should go and look occasionally um was is uh probably the best solution for me that that that would probably work yes I'm so used to things just coming to me that to to go look for something um it is just not part of what I do yeah and I will say that if you whatever you use for email you should be able to set it up so that you can you can receive your cd5 or me email in the same location whether it be you know outlook or or mac mail I think even gmail allows you to check email from another client I don't know maybe Chuck you know I don't know off the top of my head but I will say uh because uh most of the delegates are on the web-based cv5 or mail um one suggestion I've had that's worked for a lot of people is if you bookmark your inbox right into your bookmarks bar on your browser um and then and then it's right there and you can see it and it's just a single click to get to it and that can help remind you that it's that it's there but just a suggestion thanks chuck okay shavon I have tabs that I never close an outlook is one of those got it no comment on that Alan uh would you like to update us on your on your hr policy uh discussion sorry I don't mean your hr policy you know what I mean my hr policy I love this guy you know it's like a baby uh we're getting close I think we had hoped to be able to present it to you tonight but we have continued to go back and forth either in discussions we've had at the policy committee or uh questions with that we've had that have gone to our legal counsel which then requires him to review it and to get back to us so there has been some back and forth the good news is I think we're really being very careful about what we're going to present to you and it's going to be in pretty good shape when you see it we're hoping to be able to present it at the january meeting uh and you know I do have to warn you this is a pretty hefty document it's uh I think about 35 pages and we have done two of the biggest sections already as a board we've approved a couple of those two sections but there's still a lot of other stuff that you're going to see in the personnel policy that I'm sure you're going to want to at least understand or to know that they're there because it's a very comprehensive effort to try and put in order something that we really should have done before we hired our first employee uh and the fact that we didn't do it then means we're catching up and we're really working as hard as we can and doing the best job that we can if you want to get a sense of the discussion you're breaking up on a salad or it's either my internet or yours but it sounds like you're breaking up a bit yeah it's mine because I'm back on my consolidated account and having trouble with the big boy with high-speed people yeah I'm done that's it unless people have questions for the january meeting we'll we'll read ahead be available for us Alan hopefully the it all depends if we can get legal counsel to go through the last stuff we did last week in time for us to get it to the executive committee which has to has to go through the executive committee and then the executive committee has got to give its approval before it can come to the board and it's possible calendar wise to do that but it's just a question of how fast the individual pieces are moving for us jerry that's okay so it could be February but your intention is read ahead material prior to the meetings hopefully yes well we don't want to talk about a 35 page document that we haven't seen in the last minute yeah exactly okay I got it well you have seen a big chunk of it already yeah yeah but we don't I would my preference wouldn't to be not to have a three-hour meeting editing a document with 30 people correct we want to avoid that at all costs thank you david maddox you're up sir yeah hey alan is there training on this policy part of the launch or does that come after the approval it probably should come after the approval because that's when we'll know what's going to be enforced uh or what what what's going to be in the policy they're give committee level or on the board level so we we we want to have a stable target before we start organizing training around that okay but it's on your roadmap to do the training as well then yeah yeah that seems like that makes good sense thank you alan we very definitely are going to be covering this okay thank you any other questions for alan or kudos for his uh his internet provider who's disrupting our meeting okay all right the last the last agenda item here is uh is two part one i oh go ahead chuck i think you're still muted chuck or something but it's uh it's related to this agenda item so feel free to give the context first and come back to me oh okay what what i'm going to say is that we have committees that could use more members and we we have committees that some of them need a chair some of them need a vice chair and there probably isn't a committee that couldn't use another helpful set of hands so i wanted to put that out there for everybody if you have the opportunity if you think you have the time uh if you if you could please you you know who are everything's on the website you know who our committee folks are contact anybody contact me janiel um olivia and and we can see about getting you uh connected with a committee uh we we we do really um need the help that's one part the other part is the vcoota membership uh we had two delegates to vcoota if i am correct and now we are down to one is that correct david janiel i think that's where we're at oh i'm the i'm the primary delegate to vcoota um david david heli are you the are you the um are you are are you my backup you tend to be on those calls a lot so i thought maybe you were oh you're you're actually on mute david ray was the alternate i was just going to meetings because i know a lot yeah you do right that that's that that's what i thought so i'm i'm uh i don't know if anybody wants to stand for this now and we could have a vote but um i don't mean to put anybody on the spot in that way but i just wanted to let everybody know that this is a very important link for us uh this this association of vermont cd's and if you're interested you can either stand for it now or you can talk with janiel and get more of a sense of what's going on there and and we can take it from there now there's a number of hands up so before i go to any of the hands is there anybody that wants to stand for this position or anybody that wants to nominate anybody i i think there's a candidate david i think there's a few issues here though i think that i should explain what vikuta is and what it entails so that people know what they're standing up for but also we don't want to we don't want to forget that i think don't we have to don't we have to talk about the chair for the finance and audit committee and the and the membership for the communications committee right okay so there's a lot going there's a lot in this one agenda item hey i'm i'm sorry i my internet um well there's lots of ways to describe it but it it went dead for a few minutes there or at some point um i was talking about vikuta membership did you guys finish that discussion is is is is there anybody though that is before i get to the other quite hands up is there any jerry jerry what what janiel suggested is uh that she might want to give a little bit of additional overview on what actually being in that role uh pertains before soliciting people to see if they stand um jerry jerry matt did slip in a motion for for uh david which i will second right here and now because i was going to nominate him uh as part of my hand being up so uh we we have a motion on the floor that is now seconded oh okay uh david are you are you willing to take that role on yes or a nomination at any rate but yeah it would be good if janiel gave a summary of what the vikuta is all about because it's something that we're paying membership dues to and you should get an idea of what we get from them yeah i think we're paying about a thousand dollars a month i mean it's not nothing it's it's a it's a fee and and we what it is is it's the vermont um c u d association um we meet we meet once a month for the board but we actually meet a lot for the different committees we we have finance um vikuta finance we have uh vikuta legislative and policy we have a make ready group um there's going to be a sub committee looking for um share a bead for instance is one of them so we're we actually meet at least once a week and it's probably more than that um what we do is we're with the organization of c u d's they all get together and talk about shared interests planning the legislative and policy day that olivia was talking about um we have somebody looking at all of our financial needs and assessing what where we can share resources um and marketing um we're talking about how to strategically work through make ready issues um so if you have a specific interest in furthering the c u d's interests not just c v fiber but all the c u d's because united we are stronger um and and it's a very important organization we also have we have worked with shared purchasing in the past we got less expensive fiber um by doing those shared purchasing we've talked about other sort of shared resources and we're just in the beginning phases it will expand so v kuda entails just sitting on just that monthly meeting but if you want to get more involved um to push the c u d interest forward uh you would have the opportunity to do that and david you have been tremendously knowledgeable in that the other the other role that serve for all the c u d's is they actually all right i asked to present at every vc bb board meeting and and the kuda's been very active at reviewing the bead planning documents which are huge i mean the phase one plan and the phase two plan are like 300 page documents the digital equity plan is another 200 pages i believe and so board members and committees have been publicly you know working on editing word documents and giving those comments back to the board so that the board at least knows where we we're coming from and what our needs are thank you all right so chuck i saw you took your hand down which means you don't need to have your issue in the middle of this right perfect got it um so we have a nomination uh david heli uh to be our delegate is it the primary or secondary there is no such thing it's just one of our two delegates right the alternate it's the alternate i'm the primary alternate okay so the motion is for david heli to be our alternate delegate to uh v kuda and that was seconded by remind me that was me seconded by chuck thank you chuck no more discussion here okay are there any opposed to the motion any abstentions david you're not going to abstain you're going to vote for yourself good man i would too all right the motion passes thank you very much david thank you that's that's wonderful thank you chuck ahead now you've been quite patient all right um so we have a member of our body who would like to be officially named to the communications committee if you recall all appointments to committees are board ratified and so i'm just gonna make quick motion before i do that the person in question could not join us this evening but his name is bruce stevensson he's the alternate delegate from middle sex and he has already been very deeply involved in helping outreach strategy helping with writing communications and really helping you know the overall communications endeavors of cv fiber in the past so he certainly will get my vote of approval uh and he will make a very strong addition to the communications committee so with all that said uh whoop did someone want to jump in before i with all that said okay with with with all that said uh i hear by move that bruce stevensson be named to the communications committee second second oh my god tell me i think you still got it in there even even even though everybody knew it was coming it's gonna be a revolt if you keep giving it to me jerry well i don't know what to tell you um if uh let's see so we have a motion we have a second are there any opposed to the motion hearing none any abstentions all right the motion passes congratulations bruce congratulations chuck um i'm sure bruce is a good addition to any committee so that's excellent excellent um all right it is 715 and it just happens to say adjourn on this agenda one thing yes didn't we didn't we have a vote at the finance and audit committee for david mannix and linda grovel and don't we need to make that official here yes oh we can yeah yeah bring it oh i make a motion never mind you go ahead uh david mannix be the chair of the finance committee and linda grovel as vice chair i don't yeah i don't think we need to do vice chairs but sure oh okay well i think we do no okay we have a motion so david mannix as chair of the finance and audit committee is that correct yes is there any discussion on this one is there a second second yes i already seconded it like twice um i don't know i didn't i didn't hear that for the record i think this one goes back to record all right well we'll let play uh referees go over that one we have a motion we have a second are there any opposed to the motion any abstentions hearing none the motion passes david congratulations and thank you for all the work that you've done thank you and the work to come excellent thank you for your leadership thanks david all right tom go ahead tom i am also stepping off of the finance committee so just a second uh voiced so that we need more people um comment before that the finance committee i don't know how many we're down to now but it's it's getting slow so so any of any anyone that thinks that they have the time and could be helpful to the finance committee finance and audit committee it would be very welcome and appreciated very important committee a lot goes on there and we're learning a lot and refining the way we go about our business it's an important place to be if if anyone thinks they can do it um all right good meeting folks i think we are adjourned