 Great. Thank you, Rowan. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Tim Brighlin, the chair of the House Energy and Technology Committee. It is Friday afternoon at one o'clock on March 25th, and we have kind of an oddly named hearings this afternoon, which on our agenda says orphaned neighborhoods and non-CUD towns. And one of the things that I want to have a discussion and committee on this afternoon, and in particular there's a couple of members of our committee, but also a number of members of the legislature who have talked formally and informally with members of this committee about towns that they represent that are, you know, by Vermont standards, fairly well connected and looking across the town, but have pockets that are really not well-served at all, and maybe even altogether unserved. And, you know, challenges of trying to get those pockets, those neighborhoods connected, you know, quite possibly those towns either are not CUD towns or are unlikely to become CUD towns. Many of those towns are either in or around Chittenden County. And, you know, again, as I think I've said to some of the witnesses today, and I don't want to just leave it to kind of brainstorming, but, you know, the folks that we've invited in to speak with the committee today, I know have been thinking about this issue, and we would like to kind of compare notes about, you know, how we can possibly help out towns that do have these neighborhoods that are really lacking decent connectivity. So on our agenda today, we've got Rob Fish with us, who's the director of the BCBB, Clay Purvis, who's the director of telecom at the Department of Public Service, Meredith Dolan, who is working in a consulting role with the town of Colchester. And again, I think Colchester is a good example of a town that, you know, generally is pretty reasonably covered, but does have some pockets that lacked decent connectivity. Sean Keough, who's the chair of the Northwest UD, and, you know, I know there's some discussions going on in Northern Chittenden County as to how they are or may work with the Northwest UD. And then here in our committee room, we have Maria Royal, our Legislative Council on broadband issues. So, Rob, I'd first like to turn to you just to kind of start the conversation and appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for making time. Sure. Thank you very much, Chair. And just to clarify, I'm the deputy director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board. I beg your pardon. I beg Christine's forgiveness as well on that, but thanks for being here, Rob. Oh, Rob. Yeah, for the record, I'm Rob Fish. I'm the deputy director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board. Thank you for the opportunity to present today. And the focus of my presentation is a lot of table setting of going over where these areas are and the various challenges. So I'm going to share my screen right now, hopefully. I believe you all should be seeing something at this point. Yep, we can. Perfect. So first I'm going to start, I'm going to start statewide and talk about the number of eligible addresses. The addresses that are eligible for our construction programs. So, so, actually there's a big typo there, no wireline connections of at least 25 three are what defines eligible addresses. There's 64,000 or so total addresses eligible for the program. 25,598 of these addresses are nine seed non CUD towns. This is 8.7% of the addresses. We have an expectation to over time provide the CUDs with up to 60% of their funding via grants, and the CUDs will revenue bond or find money elsewhere for the rest. So we expected construction funding what we're looking at right now it's still not enough, but we have $116 million in the construction program at this point. We are expecting and thank you to the house for passing today a budget that has $95 million in additional ARPA funds, and then we are expecting at least $100 million from the federal infrastructure bill. So what this comes out to for non CUD towns is about 26 some odd million dollars in grants. We would expect about 17.7 million to come from elsewhere so we're talking about 44 million. So this is all CUD towns, not just what we're going to talk about is orphan towns. We should also note that the CUDs are receiving additional pre construction support so this is for capacity this is for study this is for research and planning. So zooming in a little bit of identifying areas that are not members of the CUD. Yeah. Okay, can you hold on Rob. Rob last line there the 44.27 million total. What is that referring to is that grants that you've already given out or what it's referring we've established an allocation. Based on underserved road miles so these are road miles that don't currently have access to at least 25 three and have addresses based on that allocation 8.5% of all the funding goes to the non CUD towns. So we have the grant money from that that has not that's been. What's available. And then what we're figuring on is that an additional 17.7 million will come from elsewhere in order to solve the problem. This is all based on the current available funding so that's where the total comes from. Okay, thank you. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, zoom in out a little bit again of looking at areas not in CUDs. I'll start in the south. We have an area in southern Windsor it's a weathers field Cavendish. Baltimore scenario that's not a CUD it's bordered by VITEL on the south, EC fiber on the north. It's primarily TTS. So this is a Perkinsville telephone of TDS is planning on a fiber build. you see fiber may come in from the north to do fiber over looking at going a little further west so the southern part of Rutland County there's a few towns that are not members of the CUD they were well well served by cable the very well served by VTEL most areas but do have some areas that are in consolidated wire service where there are some underserved addresses the CUD is looking to potentially have those towns become a part of their effort and working with southern Vermont to potentially work with consolidated to find a solution for all those areas then we have the weights field weights field telecom towns they are actively building out fiber and we're expecting a funding request from them then we're in Chittenden County these are areas that are so these are areas they're not a member of the CUD and there's no current plan by a provider to provide service to expand there's things happening here in there MC fiber is building out some areas Burlington telecom is building out some areas but in general there's extensive cable service in some areas in the southern part the telephone service is split between two different providers most cases with is in all cases weights field and consolidated there's a lot of suburban development so this leads to an increased amount of underground there's pockets of underserved serve by cable that the telephone services primarily provided by consolidated which so with act 71 is not an eligible provider they can only work in partnership with with CUDs and these towns didn't apply or receive anything from the broadband innovation grant program which did feasibility studies and business planning they also were not eligible for the pre-construction program so they're they're not benefiting from an initial level of of planning and discussion to to move things forward so it's a it's not the coordination isn't necessarily there as it is elsewhere in the state so you take a question yeah well it's actually just a clarification on the your previous talking points your last bullet these towns and that was a choice that these towns made not to become CUDs not to work together with their neighbors and so they made a choice to not do that and then not be eligible for those grants or the feasibility study or the pre-construction grant yeah that is correct they could have applied to the broadband innovation grant program I don't believe any even applied if they did they they did not go through the process for these towns but I guess my point is they would have been eligible there's nothing about these towns that would have made them ineligible if they had been working with their neighbors which correct okay that's right that is 100% correct and I need help catching up on that thought Rob could you go back to your first slide that by the numbers non-cud slide sure and what I was a little bit confused on this slide is does any of the money here referenced on this slide apply to some of these orphaned neighborhoods or towns that we're talking about or does it not as the train station no that's these towns are certainly eligible for funding that's what I attempted to break it down here a statewide 8.5% of the funding that we're dedicating to construction right now is going to these towns of so they are eligible for funding that's 26.56 million in grants and if you count what we hope that will leverage for especially for infrastructure that's not publicly owned we're expecting to be at least 44 million so they do have access to funding it may just be a challenge for deploying the funding because of the the unique circumstances it's not an insurmountable challenge as I'll go through a few examples but it is a challenge great just wanted to be clear on that Mike and then Laura speaking to Laura's point about the towns that did not choose to apply for those things and I just wanted to point out that there are some towns that aren't bordered by an existing CUD for instance Shelburne which is north of Charlotte Charlotte is being served by Watesfield Champlain Valley Telecom so is Heinsberg and so is not unreal hunting hunting yeah there we go and those towns kind of cut Shelburne off from the southern CUD the the Maple Broadband and so they they can't really become part of that CUD because they're kind of an island they certainly could form their own CUD they could form their own CUD but then they have to get they'd have to form I guess it could be a one-town CUD no you can't the CUDs that it doesn't have to be contiguous either they could technically join a CUD but it's there's there's certainly logistical concerns with that and I'll be using I'll be using Charlotte as an example later in the presentation for some of these issues so just Rob I'm sorry one second sorry I can't see hands I apologize this question for you and this is more we have our Ledge Council in here and as we're talking about this I mean I would love it if we would ask her if we say something that is off whether she knows is incorrect on the legislation if we would ask her to just kind of chime in for do you want to ask have that happen more formally afterwards it certainly doesn't have to be formal so if you want to if you want to wave a flag or take the chair or whatever yeah absolutely welcome that yeah Rob why don't you come on to continue sure sure so it's a they're a difficult business case as there's a the mix of served and un-served we mentioned that there's pockets there's underground there's also a lack of public oversight and coordination these towns did not join a CUD they may have at the town level done some coordination and the Regional Planning Commission is doing some coordination on this issue they're they're holding workshops that I know MC5 are presented to towns Northwest CUD will present and potentially others so I kind of further defined it down into the the towns of the Colchester, Westford, Jericho, Underhill, Williston goes on and on but it's it's a total of 975 addresses so it's 1.52 percent of all under-served addresses in the entire state it's also should be noted that since these towns are well served by cable now there's likely a business case for a fiber provider to come in over the next year not the next few years we know that that consolidated is building out fiber across the state primarily in cabled areas their day of no plans for this year for that area but they do expect to eventually do some work up in Chittenden County so there may not happen immediately but there there is a longer term vision of these areas at least the areas that are currently cabled it doesn't account for the pockets to be converted to fiber I also I did include South Burlington and Essex Junction on here but there are active Burlington Telecom fiber builds underway so I wanted to just dig in more by the numbers in terms of the number of addresses I'm not going to say everything on the slide here but in terms of the amount of money that is currently quote-unquote with the assumptions of what's going to happen in the budget and the infrastructure bill available for these towns but I want to go into the challenges so coordination is a big challenge they didn't join a CUD previously admittedly didn't make as much sense to join a CUD because there wasn't even with aggregating all these addresses it would be hard for them to create a new provider to serve these areas but there's a whole other part of this which is that oversight and planning that could be used to develop coordination to coordinate and develop plans with providers scattered addresses additional planning there's also a lot of existing infrastructure so the underground gaps in infrastructure and exclusive conduit I'll get to all of these in more detail in a second so here we are so universal service plan challenge so to access the Act 71 plan the Act 71 construction funds there needs to be a plan for the entire town to serve every address this is challenging when there's not a coordinate there's not a single entity coordinating it the way it works right now is so the green on here is is weightsfield and then there's a tiny area up top here that is that is consolidated I hope I'm not reversing this right now but so the two companies would have to negotiate to be able to serve and present an application to serve the entire town this can get awkward it's not impossible but it can certainly get awkward and it creates a situation where one provider could technically block another from getting access to funding we have very little discretion in Act 71 around that so that's one example but it has worked we've talked a lot about Bolton during the first few months of the of the VCBB you once again you have weightsfield the green that serves everything but a handful of addresses that topography geography the roads make it where that is part of the consolidated wire center in this case it's part of an Ardolf block and consolidated it has committed to building out fiber there so there is a universal service plan and we're expecting any day now a full application to build out the remainder of the addresses with 100 by 100 service in Bolton going further south it gets even crazier as you see all these colors on the map for this is for Weathersfield and Cavendish so TDS has a plan to build out their wire center with fiber it's what they're what they're telling us right now ec fiber may be serving the areas in red that's what they're exploring and yet there still is a stray address which may be a mistake I have to contact VTEL down here in the blue this tiny portion that they serve that's underserved so we have the everybody on the same page can be a challenge we talked about scattered addresses so these are the eligible addresses across Colchester you see that there are various pockets of addresses there addresses that could be served from the Milton side it could be served based off a substation I'll get there in a second but there's also addresses that are the exact opposite part of the town it does make it difficult for one plan or one provider to solve it all and there's nothing in place to coordinate between those providers to develop a universal service plan Rob just and maybe we'll hear more about this but how many providers in Colchester how many providers currently offering fiber in Colchester zero how many phone companies there is just one it is entirely consolidated is there there's no Comcast there oh there is Comcast I'm only talking about providers of a fiber at this point there is Comcast and it's a Comcast has the majority of the town built out with fiber except really everything except for the addresses that you see here that are the dots are served by cable at this point but they're scattered everything right so this is so I mean this map is ridiculous the the provider has left these addresses like this I mean it's a real testament to the problem that we saw and and you know distressing that you see it even in these heavily populated areas to leave these you know and continuing sorry and it happens elsewhere too like even across the border in Burlington you see there's a few scattered addresses but it makes it it makes it challenging so it's a conflict between the goal of wanting to get everybody up to 100 by 100 and wanting to get service immediate we'll get into some of the other things in a moment but I guess my point was it's a little bit hard to believe that these are too expensive to build to when you're in this densely populated area no anyway yeah it's it's it's a difference between a new build that would bring fiber versus Comcast deciding to extend their lines into into these areas there there's other challenges as well of course and it's really just a matter of the business case so well rom actually sorry not to not to labor the point but that was my point about the business case uh you know this is what I would have expected to have heard from the providers prior to this that you know we would see these unserved addresses because there was no business case for but when you're in these large you know our largest cities states our towns in the state it's pretty hard to buy that the business case does not work in these one-off locations in these neighborhoods so be that as it may all right settle down civilian here we are so we appreciate your passion around this topic representative no it's it's true no it's it's I want to go it is frustrating but I mean we know where we are so we're trying to find so it just as one looking deeper in Nicole Chester again uh examples so there's there's fiber at the substations so that's the red the red dots here that are somewhat near addresses but there's a lot of expenses with hopping around in terms of equipment we also have Milton up here which is a member of a CUD that is going to be built out over time uh Sean will speak to the to that later and there's these handful of addresses here but the way it's structured now any provider is going to have to serve the other part of the town there's no entity that's doing the that's doing that coordination it's would have to be provider to provider potentially maybe it could be the RPC it could be an option and there's also an outstanding question of whether a town could contract for service in order to to make up the difference in gap we did some very back of the napkin high level analysis of the the model that's underway in up in northwest now and how that would apply to Cole Chester with the mix with the geography in the mix of underserved and it was going to cost 13 million dollars uh at the with plus or minus a million at least to serve the entire town based on the underground based on just the structure of the town and the need to to get everywhere uh that the amount of grant funding that's available dwarfs that the amount of funding that would be available from the provider northwest is working with also dwarfs that is there a way for the town to be able to participate in funding these situations by contracting for service with the CUD that's something we're unclear about in legislation because it says the town can contract with a private provider but when that was written I don't think anyone was thinking that a CUD would be in a position the best position to offer that service so that's getting a little bit off topic there but that's one outstanding question so challenge of underground so this is everything from new residential developments there's like a homeowners association where it's underground it could be manufactured housing parks uh condos like anywhere where a lot of the stuff has become has moved underground and the cost it's quite a bit more expensive uh there's also an issue in some of these developments especially if they're built by a single developer where there's often various deals where conduit is put in but only a certain company has exclusive rights to that conduit making it really expensive logistically and economically to get access to all those customers which is discouraging for a provider like Berlin can telecom for instance for going into different areas if there's also affordability issues here and and choice issues here so it's another thing I wanted to point out there's also at times gaps in infrastructure and I just used an example here of so we have the blue here is is a gmp electric territory and we have the red or the pink here is Berlin is in burlington electric territory this is route 127 through here there's a gap between the two there's no conduit which if there were it could allow fiber to get into all of those denser neighborhoods in colchester given that many of those neighborhoods are underground uh it's more this is more just showing an example of other issues around the state that that could be looked at so I'm gonna I'm gonna leave it there because I more just wanted to set the table and give time to the other speakers to go into even more detail and uh I'll leave it there thanks for having me representative yeah uh because I'm most familiar with the charlotte situation I'm gonna ask the question about this but can you slide show us charlotte I think that's number eight in your deck um one little section up there that's served by consolidated does that by virtue of the uh law that we passed uh does that eliminate woodsfield champaign valley telecom from getting the broadband money to serve the rest of charlotte so the way the way the law is structured right now is you need a plan for the entire town so they would need some level of commitment from consolidated to serve those addresses in most cases uh an incumbent telephone company is not going to build outside of their service area right so to answer your question yes yeah they would need something from consolidated or they would need to find they would need to go beyond their their current borders which is possible uh or they would need to find a third provider to to serve those addresses okay so that concerns me even more thank you any other questions for rob for the moment thank you rob thank you um clay just wanted to turn to you now um you know if you have any thoughts on this topic or things to share with us great uh well thank you for having me uh chair briglin appreciate the opportunity um that was a great presentation by rob uh so i'm gonna keep my comments very brief here um we have at the department of public service um uh come through the crf period as the vcbb was getting established as you're writing the legislation you know many of these communities um department staff dealt with um uh on a on a uh individual basis uh to to expand broadband so um i just want to talk a little bit about um you know the the the program that i think um provided some relief for these towns which is leak after the line extension consumer assistance program uh this is a program that you all um um uh passed uh in the uh the beginning of the pandemic uh provided line extensions for um people who wanted them uh unlike our other broadband programs this is really um i would say surgical and its and its approach it relied on individuals applying to the program is really a benefit to um uh to to individual consumers uh to provide them with the funding they needed for small scale line extensions so um i think rob gave a very helpful presentation on on colchester colchester is an example of where um we were able to uh assist 35 homes uh in the the eastern part of the of the town um it was not a cheap build um 35 homes it was well over uh 300 thousand dollars um it was uh a cost that was almost equally borne by the carrier the state and the community um so you know uh while these towns in chitenden county uh and you know also in central south central vermont um you know may be well served uh in most of their town the cost of getting to these um these areas is still significant and as i think uh the previous presentation points out that the funding isn't always enough by itself to um to to provide a a comprehensive solution so you know when we're looking at these towns um being able to um take care of these areas and steps really get in and address the issue that is preventing broadband from getting deployed um and really looking at on a case by case basis i think is going to be very important to uh finding a solution um that neighborhood around mallet's bay um certainly could be a factor of multiple different uh multiple different factors contributing to that problem it could be a conduit issue it could be the fact that many of them might be seasonal addresses and generally people who live in seasonal dresses don't want to pay for the service year-round making the business case um difficult or maybe it's not necessary for those addresses so there are lots of issues um that um contribute uh to an individual neighborhood not being um being served and that's certainly somewhere where the the VCBV and it's planning especially the infrastructure money uh may want to think about um kind of addressing those issues on on a surgical basis like something you mentioned that um i just want to be clear on i mean i i know that the line extension program um has lapsed at this point and you know the money that was uh that was put forth there has been expended and whatever didn't get expended um it were obviously beyond that time frame now but that can you remind me was that all um public money uh or to what extent was that supplemented by um money that came from either the individual homeowners who were supported with that um line extension program and or the private carriers who may have also contributed money or was that all if money under the the um the line extension program the public money that's a that's a good question and it really depends on the case in most cases the the build was um uh borne by both the carrier and the um the state so we provided a credit up to three thousand dollars um we used uh the line extension rule from from in most instances the cable line extension rule was applied here so uh the cable companies to the extent they were expanding uh their service um uh adhered to the cable line extension formula which divides the cost between uh the cable company and uh the consumers and we were paying simply the consumer portion of that cost there were some instances where the consumer portion of the cost exceeded the state benefit and in some cases in Colchester is a good example of that there was a consumer contribution above and beyond um the uh resources that the carrier and the state provided yeah the reason I ask um and again I'm I'll be in this this question will indicate how rusty I am on this stuff but at the time something that I that I found well that I was taken aback by was some of the costs that were put out for you know some of these line extension projects and I think my frame of reference was um you know somewhere in the realm of conversations that we've had with CUDs in the last uh three or four years about what it costs them per mile to you know to roll out um you know an extension of their existing network and again that might be the absolute wrong frame of reference but um I was taken aback by some of the dollar amounts that were thrown around by the incoming carriers to extend lines for you know whatever it was a mile or two um which seemed way out of line with some of the um you know some of the network building um figures that we were kind of throwing around as we were talking about fiber builds and again maybe they are not comparable but that that couldn't help use that frame of reference yeah I mean that that's um that's a good point I mean I think the frame of reference we've been using is about 40 000 a mile um there have been instances though where a make ready situation or the the need for building back into the network beyond the neighborhoods it's not simply a a matter of starting from the end of the line and going to the last house on the street but actually having to build back into the network and in there you know there is a question as to um how the um line extension rules should be applied in those circumstances uh but given the fact that this was a grant program you know we um we really tried to push forward with these line extensions in good faith and for the vast majority of them you know the the state benefit covered the line extension I have to go back and look at the numbers but I believe our average um consumer payout was about $2,300 a person so um we um we were able in in most instances to cover the the full cost the consumer portion of the cost of the line extension there were some very expensive builds um that went well beyond um you had low customer counts which the way the line extension rule works does place a greater burden on the consumer uh for the cost they're gonna assume a greater share of a cost when um when the density is lower um in the mileage you know some of these builds you know you're still talking about two or three miles of of of builds to get to the neighborhood um I can't think of an instance where we thought a carrier was misrepresenting the cost um again Colchester uh you know was an example where actually the the carrier assumed a greater amount of the cost than they were required to um under under the line extension formula so um you know I don't think uh that uh carriers uh were necessarily um uh I think they were all happy and and willing to participate in the program but um I don't think it was without some pain for them as well um some some carriers um saw it as a good opportunity we had good projects both in Bolton and uh Franklin as well um and Bolton was an example where um again with with um with some oversight and coordination from um a respected member of the community in the town um was able to marshal together a good project that um again served I believe 35 addresses it was it was another uh really strong project um you know but that said um you know these these were administratively intense uh projects to manage um they were small scale uh so they they weren't whole town solutions uh the kind of solutions that act 71 is contemplating where there's a there's a universal plan these were um projects that were largely community driven uh and were designed to um surgically address um an acute uh connectivity shortage in a neighborhood well I mean that's helpful context and I appreciate you sharing that I mean I it's of no surprise to you that maybe some of the more expensive um uh proposals you know somehow made their way to my doorstep and that probably discounts the other 40 that I didn't see um but so I it's it's helpful as a reminder that you know some of the um projects that were quite successful so I appreciate that um I want to turn to Meredith now uh Meredith thanks for being here um my understanding and and there's a two-page document that you've posted or that we've posted on your behalf to our website um and my understanding is that you are working on a consultative basis with um with a town of Colchester and thanks for being with us today I'd love to hear about some of the things you're working on with Colchester sure thanks so much for having me um I before I sort of delve into the contents of the memo that I sent I just wanted to share some thoughts that I didn't put in that um sort of specific to the coordination that's been happening um in Chittenden County I definitely want to assure the committee that the towns of Chittenden County have been working together having lots of conversations um I've probably participated in no less than 10 group discussions with other towns um with Northwest CUD with other providers um so I definitely want to assure you that we're trying to figure out the best path forward um and on behalf of our residents uh speaking for Colchester you know we haven't determined at this point that joining a CUD is really the best way to advance the expansion of Col um Broadband and Colchester we've not closed the door on that idea but just at this point not has not seemed like yeah that's definitely the path forward that makes the most sense for us um and I you know we want to get into some of those sort of behind the scenes discussions about CUDs I can do that um but maybe I'll first jump into the memo content so we can go through that and then if you had other questions about CUDs I can get back to that um so in Colchester you know in terms of the background and I think Rob gave a really good sort of summary of what's going on in Colchester um we have extensive coverage by consolidating Comcast and that's resulted in sort of dispersed pockets of unserved uh residents and addresses in the town um we don't get the sense that a single sort of large town-wide scale project would be the most efficient way to bring service to them we see it most likely as sort of one-offs here and there and trying to make the best use of the existing resources that are already on the ground um you know that's our perspective we certainly can be convinced otherwise by other entities but that's how we've seen it up to this point um so that certainly um there's a challenge given the um Act 71 and sort of funding framework that exists now um you know in three main challenges the funding allocations the universal service plan that we've talked quite a bit about and then the grant eligibility in terms of the funding allocation um the current allocation based on the initial 116 million uh unconstruction funds of that um I think Colchester was eligible for about 160,000 it seems like that may sort of get tripled uh through the the new um legislation of funding that's been allocated so we may be in the range of about 450,000 um when it's all said and done and that's you know maybe and generously five percent of the total cost um that we've seen to do sort of a whole overbuild of the town um so we know that there's a large funding gap there um and that's just the result of the fact that we do have a lot of roads that already have service on them so the way the formula works is you know the the piece of the pie that comes to Colchester is quite small compared to the realities of what the actual construction costs are going to be um so I think that's the first sort of issue that we wanted to highlight in terms of the universal service plan as Rob explained having to have a a plan for the entire town that commits how each residence and each address is going to be served given the patchwork that we have now um I think would be very difficult to obtain um I had a lot of conversations with the folks in Bolton and they you know had a great situation where um I think consolidated we had a requirement to serve this small number of I think 13 houses and could get a letter I don't see Colchester being able to get letters from various service providers committing to provide service so we feel like the universal service plan as it stands now is a pretty significant hurdle and being able to access the grant funds that are going to be allocated to the town um and then lastly the grant eligibility piece um so currently towns are not eligible nor are um consolidated or um Comcast and so sort of the three options that may make the most sense for us are not on the table currently um and that's just you know we're looking maybe for a little bit more flexibility in terms of eligibility uh eligible recipients for grant funds in order to give us maybe the ability to work um more flexibly with folks um I included in my memo sort of trying to make a flow chart um to summarize this so the universal service plan requirement um makes partnering with eligible service providers a challenge because I don't think any one of them is going to be able to commit at this time to serve every unserved address in Colchester um the small location of funding I think could make us sort of not attractive as a CUD member at this point um we I think we and I don't want to put any words in anybody's mouth but I think we actually may make the business case for some of the existing CUDs worse because we're going to bring all sorts of costs to the table but not a lot of grant funding um and then the fact that the town is an eligible nor is uh um consolidated or Comcast sort of eliminates sort of what's left uh in my opinion so the result is there's potentially a pot of money that's now allocated to Colchester while it's smaller than what we think we need it could be left on the table and go unused as things stand now um and it's just making it very difficult for us to to find a partner that makes sense and to figure out the best path forward um more on the solution side and I suspect this is what most of the rest of the hearing will talk about um on the funding allocation piece you know is there a way to rework the funding allocation to make it um more based in the actual reality of the costs for each community um and we understand the methodology and the idea behind it that there's unserved portions of road that have addresses on them and breaking it down that way um just the reality of the build in jenny county communities is much higher than in more wide open rural area um and the universal service plan similarly could that be modified to somehow allow for a phased approach or in recognition that in certain areas it's just not feasible to be able to have a plan that absolutely says how every resident's an address is going to be served we absolutely understand the I think the motivation for the universal service plan and not wanting to see you know the one house way at the end of the road be left out um but the reality is that it's impeding progress I think and so is there a way we can modify it that would be acceptable to to the um to the legislature and to vcbb and then in terms of eligible applicants I think it would be wonderful if there was the opportunity for municipalities to be a direct recipient I'm not sure that colchester would actually want to be the direct recipient but having that option may give us the ability to say you know oh putting a hundred thousand dollars towards this line extension if we could you know allocate those funds um that may be able to help a project move forward that couldn't get over the hurdle on its own um and speaking with clay about the line extension project in colchester I think at one point there was a you know a ten thousand dollar funding gap and maybe you know in similar situations elsewhere in the town if there was a pot of money that could be used to just get over that hurdle that may actually be able to to get projects built that wouldn't have otherwise been able to um and then allow communities with extensive um consolidator comcast build out to partner directly with those isps um and again I know I think there's history with frustration about these pockets existing in their service territories currently but the reality is they may be the most efficient source to get uh service to the unserved pocket so could we um and as a non-cud town partner with them directly and use some of those grant funds um those are the ideas that have things that have come up with us thinking oh if we had that flexibility it may actually help us move the needle a little bit um ma'am we've got a question in the room uh representative sabilia thanks ma'am so can you tell me uh is uh is the town having conversations with consolidating comcast how are those going what's their response what are they saying so I've had a few um dark conversations with consolidated um and they've been very helpful uh you know I think I primarily the most recent discussions were trying to understand their schedule for bringing fiber to colchester um I think it's in the 2024 to 2025 maybe 2026 time frame assuming no changes to their schedule so there is quite a few years before they're planning to do that bigger project in colchester um I don't think I've had any direct conversations at this point with comcast um so that has not um I know the leak app um project that clay spoke about was with comcast and they worked I think very favorably uh through that project to get the service to those 35 customers but my I myself have not recently had any conversations with comcast okay and so uh you know I heard the discussion about you know being cost prohibitive to overbuild the entire town certainly seems like that would be the case uh you know what is the sense of how uh I mean is there a sense or are you kind of working through that of how to get to these uh these addresses yeah that we're trying to come up with a scheme I think if okay there were um some sense that we may be able to bring dollars to the table to work with consolidated cci then maybe we would have a more pointed conversation about that but right now that's not an option for us um and so the way the legislation is currently written it's sort of pushing us to work with somebody else um and that at this point hasn't there are plenty of people who are willing to talk to us in brainstorm but nobody has said yeah we can do it okay and uh have any of the uh Chidney County towns that you're working with discussed using any of the federal Harper dollars for broadband investments um I have not had that specific conversation with any other towns I know for Colchester all of their ARPA funds have been earmarked for the sewer project that was just passed approved on town meeting day um in Mallet Spethers um a long planned sewer project and all of the ARPA funds for the town have been voter approved to go to that project okay and then uh Mr. Chair if I might I have a question so I just want to double check something for our ledge council is that okay yeah that's a question so so it seems to me you know that it seems like it makes the most sense to be trying to work with Consolidated and Tom Cast as the major providers there um I think that's also what we're hearing it seems to me that the only prevention to utilizing the funding that's available uh in terms of working with Consolidated and Comcast is if you are a single town so if you were multiple towns you would be able to tap into the dollars and work on a case-by-case basis I think it you know putting together a universal service plan with both of those providers right uh just to clarify would you say work with multiple towns you mean if they formed a CUD yes if they formed a CUD they would be able to negotiate with Consolidated and Comcast right I mean that's we've only part of it yeah that's right so in terms of eligible providers for construction grants your CUD yeah or your small communications provider yeah so not Comcast or Consolidated right or your any ISP right that's partnering with the CUD so that's the it's that CUD requirement that I think is the so uh Colchester could partner with a neighboring town for instance they could form a CUD by partnering with a neighboring town have two you know representatives from both towns they could working with uh the two providers there Comcast and Consolidated identify the underserved addresses and you know working with the two existing providers there not even overbuilding them you know what's going to take to get to the end with these existing providers tap into these dollars and and I mean is that something that would be possible to me that seems like the easiest solution right I mean working with the existing providers that are in the town uh and tapping into dollars that you know we've allocated for this I think there's that there's potential there for sure um I think the question of would those providers given the dollars that are available willing to say yes absolutely we're going to serve every you know but I I think that's a good place to start a discussion is that would they be willing you know if we form the CUD to um agree to that serve every single unserved address given the dollars that are currently available um what can they make that that work that business case work um I think that's worth come having conversation with them about it certainly would be the cheapest way to do this uh it certainly would you know do the least compete the least with the existing providers that are there would offset the you know uh remarkable amount of you know one-off little builds that they haven't gone to I mean it seems like a pretty big uh bonus for actually those two providers who chose not to build to the end of the road uh to work in that manner it seems like the easiest way to tap the dollars and get that done the ISPs who are currently incumbent in um Colchester provide a level of service that would qualify um under um that's a very good question I I don't think so currently that's the 100 by 100 100 right a lot of copper and a lot of copper and a lot of cable right right okay and like I said I have had conversations with um consolidated about their plans for fiber that's several years out um I don't know you know if there's dollars that can come to the table can that be advanced to then allow 100 100 um to be offered throughout the town um but I certainly understand the concept and like I've been saying I think freeing up the way some manner to to work with existing infrastructure makes sense so it's it's worth thinking about thank you marita um appreciate you sharing this and also appreciate the document you shared with us um online sorry one more question marita has there been any engineering or kind of like high level cost cost estimates done for Colchester or any of the other towns um what we're looking at or is there a discussion about doing that yep um so I think Sean I don't want to put words in his mouth I think he did a very high level cost estimate um I believe um some other private smaller eligible providers have also done some level of cost analysis um so we have some sense of the cost I don't want to share them because I haven't sort of been given the okay to do that but it's I think safe to say that it's you know many millions of dollars um compared to the potential funding that we have available so probably in line with what the other CUDs are looking at like 60 40 or is it more more than the 60 40 I think well significantly more I think like I said I think the the grant funds that are currently allocated are more like in the five to ten percent range of cost recovery the very small piece of the total cost just just to add on that if consolidated is already planning a build for all the cabled areas the costs to reach the areas that they're not planning to build already that percentage could work yeah yeah I'm happy to have that conversation with them if we think that we could potentially bring funds to the table we expect any private provider especially if they're going to own the infrastructure to commit to quite the contribution thank you Meredith I want to turn to Shawn now Shawn thanks for being with us today and I know that um well actually I don't know but I understand that that yeah there's been some conversations kind of coming from north to south in terms of some of the work that you're doing in northern Chittenden County and I want to understand how that might kind of connect with some of the conversation we're having today and actually also how you know would potentially serve as a model for you know for other CUDs around the state that border towns that you know maybe could could could benefit from joining a CUD or partnering in some way so thanks for being with us yeah absolutely thanks for having me um I do have a maybe somewhat redundant at this point after the folks went ahead of me but I did kind of prepare some some notes that might be helpful and then certainly you know ask ask away at questions thank you for having me you know upon request from um Rob to come today and speak regarding the non CUD communities and how they relate to the northwest model you know for those who are unaware um you know from the beginning northwest heavily committed to trying to find a solution that provided the best option for our communities with an open access multi-tenant network prioritizing affordability and universal service to every premise in our district that does not currently have a fiber connection um we believe we've crafted that model we believe we we've crafted a successful model that leverages grant opportunities and revenue potential from retail ISPs to achieve that goal with the completion of our business plan now and financial model we have a much deeper insight into the levers that drive those assumptions the two most important variables of that is a blend of our premise density across the entirety of the district and the availability of grant dollars or grant capital um for our district we're looking at somewhere around 35 percent of the homes and businesses are considered underserved so it is fairly significant um we reached a point now during our planning process where it's not really advantageous for us to continue to add premises that don't have adequate grant dollars or adequate grant capital to offset the potential debt incurred to the CUD um doing so very likely would upend the financial model and put the entire project and the 21 communities that we represent at risk of not having um a successful project hence why we are now uh proceeding with great caution to uh increasing our scope and really taking it kind of case by case um with that said um you know in terms of the non-cud communities um you know we I think just by the nature of the CUDs and who we are we're really passionate about broadband equity for everyone so you know we want to try to assist in ways that we can and find a creative solution if there's if there's one there um we certainly don't want to leave our neighbors behind in any way so um you know if there's avenues where Northwest can assist um or or we come to you know some plan in the future that makes sense we're all for it and we're here to help um so I don't know if that pause was for questions because I have one challenge and this might also be for Rob or Maria to chime in on this but to what extent is a CUD precluded from um supporting um increased connectivity in a neighboring town um where you know maybe you're running your fiber across the town border into a non-partner town um that you can support you know I guess what we're calling for the purposes of this discussion an orphan neighborhood um where are you precluded in some way from doing that in that you know crossing that border and going in to support that neighboring town who's not a partner somehow obligates you to provide universal service in that town or precludes you from um accessing grants to you know I guess we'll call a light extension into that neighboring town what are the challenges in doing that um whether it's accessing grant funding or you know coming up with a universal service plan which maybe isn't practical for that neighboring town but you are supporting um connectivity in that neighborhood what are some of the challenges there if any I don't believe there's limitations um you know in terms of a universal service I'm going to have to rely on Rob to um he's going to be more in the know on the specifics of the necessity for universal service plan if you were to go there um my understanding this is not necessarily a limitation um to build out into non-cud communities um but I'm sure Rob has much deeper insight into some of the more specifics there sure sure communication union districts by their their original legislation that created them are allowed to serve neighboring areas uh there's two different challenges one in order to access the grant funding via act 71 there needs to be a plan for the entire town uh the second challenge is if the town was going to come use other funds and say contract for service like a town could do with a private provider it's unclear whether they could do that with a cud as I mentioned earlier there's some language that says the towns can contract with a private provider I don't know if they're meaning that like it's not as their own municipality or as it can't be another provider that is a municipality it's something that's unclear that we've been going around and around and haven't come to a solution but that is that is one option if a town can bring different resources to the table to help the cud to be able to serve those neighboring areas and addresses it makes sense to the way wire centers work the way geography to topography at all it makes sense and it could help the cud business case too. Do you have a question? I'm not sure I understood that. Okay. Did you want to come in? Well no I was just actually looking at the language I think it's consistent with what you've heard at least so in terms of the cud's statutory authority to provide services to a non-member towns so just for clarity now I'm sure I'm understanding it myself so the cud can provide communication services to its district members and also provide communication services for such other residential and business locations as its facilities and the obligations may allow providing such other locations are in a municipality that is contiguous with the town limits of the district member and further provides that other locations do not have access to internet service that meet the current speed requirements of the connectivity initiative which I think now are 100. So I think that's the authority of the cud's to go beyond their borders I think in terms of the issue that I'm just looking at the issue that Rob just raised the towns themselves so non-cud's just talking about municipal authority to own or operate communications plant they were given that authority in 2007 I believe and to finance those projects with revenue bonds and then in 2019 the legislature allowed the towns to enter into public private partnerships I think that's what Rob's talking about maybe that that new that ability to come to work with private providers but I believe that's still also with revenue bonds and you can actually ask for study about whether towns to be allowed to use general obligation bonds to finance communications plant you got that report back Clay can probably talk about it but from the Department of Public Service the transfer and Secretary of Administration and pretty much it was a wait and see it wasn't a priority or a recommendation that they were allowed to use their channel passing so yep and Rob if I have misunderstanding what you said at least correct me oh I might need some clarification clarification too I was under the impression if a town was contracting for service i.e. not owning and operating the infrastructure they could use whatever funds they want in order to do that it was more of a prohibition of a town using general funds to own and operate the communications plant is how I understood it and what was that under what statute was that just so I'm looking at the same thing you're looking at was that I'm going to have to pull it up myself Clay Clay may know it off hand too we developed a whole FAQ about this before COVID taxing with COVID memory mutation I'm trying to find it I do think that revenue bonding has been problematic for towns and I mean certainly New Hampshire has done a lot of it and has funded those projects through an assessment a special assessment on the bills that they've worked with consolidated to do the bills and there's there's an assessment on the customer's bill to pay for those bonds their revenue bonds and they're they're funded through the that special assessment on the on the service what I'm seeing it's 30 VSA 30 56 is what I was looking at and what we had previously looked at is that a town entering a contract contracting for service relationship would not be creating its own network and is therefore not subject to the restrictions in 30 VSA 30 56 tax revenues bond proceeds commercial bank loans and grants from the national government can be used when a public entity contracts with a private party to construct discrete portions of a project for instance funds dedicated to economic development could be used to support such an arrangement trying to see I think 24 VSA 1913 had something to do with it as well I'm sorry title 24 chapter 54 okay yes that's a revenue bond but what were you reading from I'm sorry for that your sketch we're reading from I was reading from a frequently asked questions we developed over at the public service department I'm trying to uh it's 30 yeah from 30 uh VSA 30 56 which uh deals with limitations on taxes and indebtedness for CEDs it's in the it's in the communications union district chapter and that's pretty much saying just revenue bonds that's the limitation on the CEDs yeah I'm looking at chapter chapter 50 well yes it's 24 VSA 1913 section F is what I'm looking at but it's so a communications plan that is subject the subject of a public-private partnership authorized by the subsection may be financed in whole or in part so it's where it starts so this is I'm not a lawyer I have to stop trying to pretend to be yeah so maybe we can explore some of these parts of statute over the weekend or what not I would like to bring this back to you know kind of a higher level question of and don't want to move too far away from some of the things that Sean was sharing with us but again the purpose of this discussion again hopefully one level above brainstorming was is there a way to support these discrete neighborhoods in towns that generally speaking have coverage from a Comcast or consolidated or an incumbent but also have areas that are wholly unserved by incumbent carriers and is there a way to expand either from the current incumbent network or bringing in the caliber rate in the form of CUDs to you know to rescue those orphan neighborhoods so and representatives really so just at a high level I think one of the things that the VCBB has wrestled with is that that authority that CUDs have and then the limitation on the funding at the VCBB and so that's I think that that is what Rob is pointing to so right yeah the discussion about CUDs building outside their territory let me think is there anything preventing a an eligible ILEC provider like WCBT from building outside of its territorial boundary telephone territorial boundary? Yeah Chair Briegel I can try to address that question if you'd like please um I would say yes and no um there's technically nothing that um and I should say I think three points to make here there's technically nothing in the law that would prevent a rural LEC from building outside of its its territory I think generally it becomes more problematic for them in terms of the federal subsidies that they receive so you know keep in mind that these areas that are served by I mean completely served by Waitsfield Champlain Valley that their exchanges Franklin's exchanges any rural LEC any independent phone company and a majority of consolidated telephone exchanges have always been subsidized by the FCC these areas are um are their high cost exchanges and the the federal government is determined that the cost of provisioning telephone service in these areas the the cost of operating a telephone network in these areas exceeds the the revenue expectations for them so they've always been subsidized through the universal service fund um actually um I'm not sure that I like the the term orphaned neighborhoods because um you know I think that they're not they're not forgotten about they're not abandoned um you know the carriers are trying to get out of these areas and you know Waitsfield as an example has built um a great portion of their telephone network with the help of federal subsidies and with their own private investment in these areas so you know they're they're working on these areas it's not that they're um abandoned like um they've they've been portrayed so um you know I think that Waitsfield as an example could go into that consolidated telephone exchange but you know they're they wouldn't be getting the subsidy for that the FCC is actually providing subsidy to another carrier for that area which means you kind of have a clash of federal funding um and you know that's an area where I think telephone companies have traditionally worked together um in a way that the industry as a whole is not allowed to work together I don't think um that someone mentioned the awkwardness of carriers having to work together or could prevent one another from uh from from uh being a having a town have a universal service plan do keep in mind that the telecommunications market is a competitive one and carriers aren't supposed to be working together they're supposed to be fighting each other for uh for market share um we're supposed to be realizing the benefits of competition so I think when you're asking you know two selects to to get together and divide up a town um if nothing else that raises antitrust issues and issues of competitiveness in in these areas so I mean that's just another area where um where there's an awkward tension I think um coming up with a complete solution for a town so that applies to uh broadband fiber as well or if they're wrong they're building fiber into that territory that's correct the high the high costs uh the universe the the FCC's high cost programs the uh the art off is one of them the uh rate of return carriers um uh are subsidizing our different program those programs are designed to expand broadband now and that's been the case since the transformation order uh in 2011 where they took high cost money they were supporting telephone networks and they reverted it to um to to broadband so we we're uh taxing telephone service and then we are supporting broadband build out with those those revenues and they have they have build out requirements to meet um to to continue uh receiving that funding the only thing that that is a little dissonant for me clay is the is the concept of competitiveness with these areas being rural and being federally subsidized I don't know if there's any state subsidy um there's a reason they're being subsidized because you know without that subsidy without that um protection if you will from a monopolistic standpoint nobody's going to serve those areas and so you know it's it's one of the challenges we're dealing with here is the lack of competition um to to kind of get to these uh in the case of the discussion this afternoon those neighborhoods that um that currently don't have service I I totally get how we don't want collusion in the market um and um we do want to support competitiveness I just don't think we have it I don't think we have that competitiveness right yeah I would agree there's not competitive competitive competition in fact um in the unserved neighborhoods that we're talking about in the rural areas of our rural exchanges uh uh you know the 1996 act had provided an environment where competitive lex can come in and cherry pick and that's what they do and as much as we can fault them for that they're completely allowed to do that and and you know they're they are encouraged to do that um under federal law so even even the independent telephone companies put up with competition in in their most lucrative areas you know in the village centers um in the downtown areas um just unlike the um uh the C-LAC the the R-Lex have an obligation to serve everyone and they so they do but um you're losing uh with competition you're losing the uh inherent subsidy that you have between the rural part of your community and the um the urban part or the suburban part as in you know people in um the the village of weights fields aren't necessarily subsidizing um the people at the end of the dirt road if in fact Comcast or another cable company is in the village center uh competing with the telephone company and you have um you know you have the problem of churn and you have the problem of um of a losing market share um then your costs have increased in the rural area which then slows down um your your progress in deploying broadband so um as a concluding comment from one member of this committee um who also happens to be the chair um this was helpful for me in in terms of framing the problem um and I think I understand it better than I did 90 minutes ago so I appreciate that um I'm less clear on the solution and um we have two members of this committee who are representatives of towns that have this challenge and there's other members of the legislature I mean it's it's a weekly occurrence well I will talk to somebody in the cafeteria who is a Chittenden County or nearby town that is you know being challenged by this um and you know I have the question of in the last two years we have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to support um you know broadband build out in the state what about this neighborhood in fill in the blank Williston and you know again towns in Chittenden County I don't have an answer for that and um again I think I better understand the problem now we're going to be in session for another six weeks um I'll be standing by uh if there's a legislative solution here I'm all ears but I think there we've identified some of the challenges of you know some of those rifle shot approaches in um in you know maybe being in odds with some of the work that we're trying to do more broadly around the state in supporting the universal coverage CUD work so you know as these solutions are developed for some of these discrete areas I also want to think really hard and deeply about how those fit together with what we're trying to do more broadly in rural parts of the state that have been challenged for I guess decades now um so at any rate I just as a concluding comment welcome additional comment from folks who have testified today as well as um you know of course members of this committee um and thank you for your time on a Friday afternoon and in educating this member and again we're all ears as you continue to kind of toggle on some of these challenges in some of these towns as to if there are you know legislative um you know if there's tinkering that we can do that you know may support some of this work that you're trying to do so thank you all for your time appreciate it thank you