 My name is Sandy Baird, I'm an attorney and a teacher. I was a long time, and the reason that I tried to get this together is that I was a long time teacher at Burlington College and at Johnson where I taught history and politics and law. And when Burlington College collapsed, Burlington College was a terrific idea at the time. It collapsed because I think it just, the market in a lot of ways destroyed Burlington College. And so I've tried to reincorporate Burlington College as much as I can with no money and I'm not asking for money, because I think essentially this project should be essentially for free. That's why we've started small and we are going to continue to try to stay small but offer interesting programs, free programs for the benefit of the citizens of the world, okay? Vicki is the original name of Burlington College and at the time it was called Vermont Institute of Community Involvement. I've added another I, which is Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement, because I would like to be also involved in international and foreign policy issues. We started a little while ago and we gave a workshop or a discussion on Venezuela and Latin America in general and I think we're gonna do that again later. But the first thing that we're gonna do is try to discuss this issue of the privatization, as I see it, of our city. The mayor, since he's been elected, has sought to privatize many of our resources, including, it started really, I believe, with Burlington Telecom, didn't it? And little by little, the mayor has attempted to reduce public ownership of the utilities. He's tried to reduce public space at City Hall Park. He has tried to turn that over, I believe, to the developers as well as a big hole in the ground that we don't now face. So we're centering this semester, as I call it, on local issues and local politics and how to educate ourselves primarily, I believe, for now but also for the next election, frankly. So we're gonna concentrate on issues throughout this semester with the goal of really, I hope, transforming our city. And with me is Robin Lloyd, who has been very active in this as well. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, okay, well, thanks. I wanna welcome everyone to the first meeting of the first series on municipalism, the new democracy. And I think if you read the back of the flyer, it's really quite interesting. Sandy has put it together very well. Corporate models have taken the place of institutions of learning. And politics means nowadays the acceptance of the biggest bullies on the block who struggle to maintain power at all costs. I mean, we're in a very serious situation in the world right now. And when you look at it, we have a seeming democracy in the grassroots and yet all our representatives support the most horrible militarism that exists in the world, namely the supporting the F-35, which is coming tomorrow, I think. So I think this series is going to be very interesting, but we're working on thinking about the series for next semester and lots of different thoughts that we wanna welcome, dreaming together, coming together and talking about how to change education more significantly. And this is the start. We're here, we're talking and this is beautiful and we're being videotaped, thank you. So I guess the issue as I see it, this is the first issue and that's around Burlington Telecom. And briefly, I became involved in Burlington Telecom. The longtime supporters of Burlington Telecom are also here in the room. That's Dean Korn and Kit too, right? And Sove also, right? I came late to the situation with Burlington Telecom and I'll just tell you a brief story about why I got involved in Burlington Telecom in the first place. As we all know, it was a public utility, as I saw it, owned by the city. And at one point, the city decided, I think with a great deal of wisdom, to carry Al Jazeera English. Do we all know what Al Jazeera English was? It was a network, I guess, from the Middle East that covered the Arab world. And it was, I thought, really, the third world, the world of the South. And it was balanced, it covered international news and it covered fairly, I think, those issues that are at the heart of the Middle East struggle, especially around Israel and Palestine. So I was very addicted to it. And I also saw the movie that was produced about Al Jazeera English, which is a movie called Control Room. Anyway, so at one point though, I learned that the city, well, not the city, Burlington Telecom or somebody was taking Al Jazeera English off the air. Did you all know that? And at that time, this is Lou Anders and I worked to keep it on the air. And we discovered that because it was a public utility, there were constitutional protections. In other words, because it was public, they had to obey kind of the rules of the Constitution and allow things like free speech, which is not allowed when it is a private corporation. And so we fought like hell to keep Burlington Telecom public and alive and covering Al Jazeera English. At the time, there were only two cities in this country that had Al Jazeera English. Us, Burlington, and Buckeye, Ohio. Why Buckeye? Because it had a huge Arab community. It was next to Detroit, next to Dearborn, and that's why. Okay, so we fought and we actually won that fight because it was a public utility. It was decided that they could not censor. There could be no censorship of Al Jazeera English and a state on the air until it went off the air again because Al Jazeera English made the fatal mistake of going to something called Al Jazeera America which failed and that was the end of that. However, I really think that it was a big mistake in this age of controlled media to sell Burlington Telecom to essentially a private company. Now that private company can do whatever pleases with the content that appears on their network. Now, it was sold to Shures. I believe, I don't know if this is correct, but I believe it's a company that is heavily like a family company and that they can now censor and carry anything they want. I don't know about public access either. It is to be decided whether they even have to carry public access. So I believe it was one of the biggest mistakes this administration has made, one of the biggest. There have been many, as you'll see in the topics that we're gonna discuss this semester, but that was really big. He sold off a public utility which had to provide free speech and he sold it to a private company which can do whatever it wishes. That was my interest. There was no lawsuit about that, but ultimately we have people here who can talk about some of the details of the lawsuit that is still pending. We have the lawyer Solve, Steve Goodkine has been involved in that and we also have Dean Korn. So I want, I would like to have a community discussion and not particularly any lectures really, because this is a community issue and we should all be discussing it. But anyway, Solve has to go, so maybe you could begin, right? Do you need a microphone here? Yeah. And by the way, this is for channel 17, which is, I'm gonna record this, which is a huge community asset also. We have to keep public access. I'm going to just be brief because I did not think I was gonna be able to participate because I do have this Public Works Commission meeting, which also has another privatization item on the agenda about the Burlington Harbor, the Burlington Harbor Marina Parking privatization. But the reason I got involved in this and I wanna follow up on what Sandy said, I have been following the Burlington Telecom situation and particularly looking at what's been going on with the FCC continuously, the Federal Communications Commission rulings that relate to loosening any of the rights of any of the public as far as internet service provider restrictions. So people have heard the buzzard net neutrality, that's small parts of it. But one of the things that's just recently also happened relates to that public access channels might get reduced funding. So I've been monitoring that for years and I know a few of us in this room that became the interveners in this case, the Burlington Telecom sale interveners and be basically intervened in the Public Utility Commission proceedings that were applying for a certificate of public good for the Shure's Communications doing business as Champlain broadband to be able to operate this Burlington Telecom. So I know Dean Coren's gonna be able to give you some details about some of it and I know Steve probably is going to as well. But we got started with this very early, I think in March of 2000, what was that, last year, 2017. Anyway, it's ongoing. It is now before the Vermont Supreme Court, the Public Utility Commission granted their certificate of public good but before there was even the appeal period ran, they, the city rushed around and did a bunch of paperwork and said, oh, the deal is done. However, that's not true. The Vermont Supreme Court is now has that case to consider whether or not the Public Utility Commission aired in making their ruling. So just as far as the status on that, we are still, there's another document, we have a reply that has to be filed at the end of this week. And then there will be a period of time going on from there that the Vermont Supreme Court will be actually making their decision. There will probably be an oral argument. We were asked if we wanted oral argument and that probably will happen. I don't know the dates on that. So it is proceeding. At the Vermont Supreme Court. So I don't know if anybody has specific questions that I could answer right now. I just said, I think it again is very important that we had a publicly owned internet because we can actually go to the board meetings and say, well, what are you making? How are you making decisions? What channels are we gonna have? Finances, where's the money going? A lot of the money is gonna be just going out of town. We really had an asset that could have been helping us financially. And right now cities are very stressed financially. We get that because the federal government has cut back. So they have really limited options. Property tax and bonding. So which is what makes the mayor crazy about Moody's rating, which is what reflects what we pay for borrowing. But as far as I'm concerned, it's not just borrowing and taxes that should support our municipal functions. We should be actually having the opportunity to do things like what we had with Burlington Telecom. So to me, that was a big reason as well. But like Burlington Electric, you can actually look at what their five-year plan is for why they're gonna go this way or that way doing what they wanna do for the electric things. Are we gonna have an opportunity if it was a private organization that you can say, why are you making decisions about how you're gonna do things? You need to have that public. And across the country, more of that is happening. We were early to the game and we have been actually been gamed about this. It's gone back to the late 90s that a lot of things that were put in place by cable companies. So there's a lot of history to this that I've been studying, reviewing. I wish I had time for a book. And that's probably what should happen really. But I don't know if anybody has more questions. I feel like I've just given you a reason why I have been working very hard to try to make this such that we do not lose. We invested a lot of money. We invested a lot of time. People went to city council and spoke. We've done everything we can to communicate and we don't feel like the Public Utility Commission has properly ruled on that certificate of public good. It's not in the public good, what's happened. The Vermont Supreme Court is now gonna have a chance to make their ruling based on the material that we're providing. The Supreme Court reversed the sale. The mayor argues that it's moot because the sale has been made, right? The mayor is arguing that it's moot because the sale has been made. I think that the Supreme Court could basically rule that the certificate of public good is no good. What that means to the actual functioning for Champlain is an interesting question. But in fact, if their certificate of public good to operate has been denied to them, then it would go back probably to the Public Utility Commission again for a review of whether or not they are actually in the public good. And in fact, the plan should be that whoever is running it has to pay back the citizens of Burlington that paid for it. So I think it's an open question. There will be other questions that we'll ask. And as things are proceeding, the FCC rulings, it's getting worse and worse that it's very clear that it's not in the public good to have us having invested all that money and have nothing and losing all of this public access as well. And I think you all should pay attention to the fact that they did, the FCC just said that the calculation of what the percentage, the public access channels, the public and educational government channels get their money as a percentage off of the cable TV revenue. But they were just now entitled to ignore parts of their, they get credit for some of their other investments that are in kind. So in fact, the whole pot of money that's gonna be available to public access, educational government channels is going to go down. For everyone, not even private, public, whatever, because they've now arranged to have that happen. The FCC has rolled out very, very recent decision. So all of these things are very bad. So the environment will be very different in front of the PUC if they say the one that they did with this report says it was not properly done. It does not, it violates the city charter. It does not, the city charter says we are not to lose money. The investors lose money. So it will either be blue water holdings who had the property temporarily and took subject to the debt of the 16.9 million. It wasn't wiped off the books for them before they got their property. That's how it's sort of gone through a few little odd transitions would make it complicated. But in fact, the Supreme Court's the one that has to decide, does this transaction violate the city charter, does it violate Vermont state law? And we really think it does and I think that they're gonna decide that. It'd be interesting because the oral arguments would be public, right? Absolutely, we get 30 minutes, they get 15 minutes, we get 15 minutes. 15 minutes is what they gave you? They gave us 30 minutes for the, we haven't got the details, but we were told 30 minutes, 15 of it we get, 15 of it they have to figure out how they wanna split between themselves. I don't have a date on it yet. Okay, does anybody have any questions from me while I'm here? If the case were so obviously moved, would the Supreme Court even take it for just on the case of the move? They did, right? It's not, any decision by the PUC is reviewable by the Supreme Court. It doesn't matter, anything right now. And if the Supreme Court rejects it, it's as if it was never made. So they can sign all the papers they want. They can have as many, apparently, they can have as many press releases as they want, saying we signed the deal, we signed the deal. But none of that means anything as to if the Supreme Court rejects the PUCs. Is there any outside of the PUC? Yeah, so I actually didn't know that the sale had gone through. I guess I don't really fully understand this process. So is Broadcom currently operating as a private entity or is it still part of the city at this moment? Part of it? Do you know? Part of it? I don't know. The name of the telecom may still be around, and they see that as a doctor, because it's a wholly owned subsidiary of Shere's Communication. And that's what they call itself. See, when you use the word move, the opposition's gonna argue that it's moved. But the Supreme Court has to decide between the two. We argue that it's still a viable decision that the Supreme Court could reverse in a sense, right? What happened is the PUC made their order on February 19th that the granting, they said that the certificate of public good were granted. And there's a 30 day appeal period for us to appeal that decision. We were working on our appeal and working on that paperwork of that. And what was interesting is there was a very rushed job apparently of documents, so before that even happened, even the 30 days, they knew there was a 30 day appeal period. They had complete knowledge of that. They have lots of attorneys working for them. They knew that. They have tons of attorneys, hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent, all of which we are paying for, by the way. But they knew that there's a 30 day appeal period on a PUC opinion, an order. But they rushed around and they basically, and literally on the afternoon that they were gonna try to have it on the city council agenda, I got a contact by a newspaper reporter. I didn't know what was, that this happened. It wasn't, the 30 days wasn't even up. And they sold it. They, absolutely. So they really, they cannot create, as far as I'm concerned, they can't create the circumstances to basically get out of their obligations. And that's what I feel like they're fraudulently just rushed to judgment. And frankly, that's sort of what's happening in this public works commission, meaning the item I have to deal with. Same thing. If you just put the facts on the ground, you think, oh, well, too bad. You're too late. It's already done. Well, that's not, there was 30 days to appeal. We were, we filed our Supreme Court appeal within the 30 days. But within, you know, like, it was very, very strange. And none of us knew about it. We have a lawyer. They are supposed to, you know, they would have obviously notified us that they were going to, so it's very, very weird. That's part of what is the problem here. And it's, so the Vermont Supreme Court will actually have that information. And they'll see. So how can they say that it's a moot thing if they created the circumstances to try to make it moot? You know, that's the problem. When did that occur? What book was it? February. Well, no, they did their, they had a city council meeting March 8th, 11th. March 11th, okay, so they, the PUC had their order February 19th this year. March 11th, at three o'clock in the afternoon I heard about this was on the city council agenda, March 11th. So apparently it happened on March 11th that they sold it up. So it signed off and did it. And the appeal period was another week later and we filed our appeal. Well, actually, I take that back. We filed, we had, we wanted to make sure that the PUC got a second opportunity to review their order and their decision, which is a fair thing. You can't complain to the Supreme Court that they didn't do their job without giving them a chance to reconsider. So that was the first thing we did. We asked them to reconsider their order, exactly. And then, and then they said, no, everything's fine. We're good. And so we filed our appeal. Yeah. Yes. So if we were to check the calendar and the history, would we find that that March 11th meeting was the last meeting before the changeover? I forget what it's called after the election because that's, that's what I recall. So the election, I don't think it was the last one. Okay. One week after that, I believe. I, I remember a conversation with, with a counselor and I thought, I thought it was the last one before. The last one was a meeting where they authorized the changes to the city hall and the heart contra and that is at the very end of the month. Okay. Okay. So I guess point being that the election happened and the city council election happened and the makeup of the city council changed so that it wouldn't have been as easy to get it. That's right. All right. So the sale was done before the change in the council. And I believe when we talk about the sale happening, I believe what we're saying is that at that city council meeting, the city councilor signed off on the sale and that's what made it. They signed pieces of paper. Right. Right. Whether or not a sale actually occurs up to the sale. That's our point, right? Oh, right. Okay. Steve, I guess, could you, or any other questions for Soledad? Call me or send me an email if you need to. I'll answer any questions and send you any documents I have. So we do have an attorney that will do the oral argument. And he's trying to work very diligently on behalf. But this is also very interesting to me because I'm a lawyer also. It's very interesting to me that we've had to pay on it and we haven't paid the whole bill for our attorney, but that whatever funds have been raised for that attorney have come from the citizens of Burlington. We believe we're representing the interests of the city of Burlington. We're doing the best to scrape together money to do that. On the other hand, how many lawyers does the mayor have that have fought on the other side for the sale? How many? And they're very, and consultants, right? Well, the money that comes out of the sale, which I call a giveaway, is, includes money for the lawyers and the accountants of almost all of the parties involved. Except us. Except the public, including the city, including the blue water financial, all the entities that are making big money on this are also getting their legal and accounting. The public is helpful. We're asking for money for this very expert attorney that was Supreme Court and before the public took it. Can I just say one last thing? I just want to thank James Dumont, our attorney, who's done so many other good things in this city for various legal cases. Attorney Jim Dumont is just amazing. He's the one who's gonna be helping. He's been helping us all along. He's gonna be doing the appeal. So, and he's working on everything like that. So he really is the expertise at the Public Utility Commission and the Vermont Supreme Court. So I wanna, I'm sorry I didn't say that earlier because he's just fantastic. And anybody who wants to contribute to our legal fund definitely could use some help. So, thank you very much. Thank you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna head off. Now you're going out and fighting with the city about something else. What really watched the Public Works Commission meeting as long as we have public out there? Channel finish. If you did. Now watch that one and then we'll review it. Instant review point. And Steve. How good is this mic? How far away can I keep it? Still be here. That's okay. That's not too far. Okay. And I think I'll stick with what you thought we would do, Sandy. I'm gonna try and give some history. Not so much the reasons, but more how the demise of Bernalton Telecom actually took place. I'll take it up to, I won't go into the lawsuit. I think people are covering that. But one thing I think it's already been noted to remember is we're not a city, oh yeah. Steve Goodkind, I was the city engineer public works director for the city for a period of about 32 years. I retired about, started with Bernie and ended with Moreau. And now I'm happily retired. But I've made this issue something I've been very interested in even when I was working for the city. And I think I probably know as much about as anyone. I was sort of an insider for a lot of what happened earlier on with Bernalton Telecom. One thing to remember, we're not a city that dreamed of having a public cable system at the time or a public internet system. We had one. So we're really, I'll be different than almost anybody else and that we've now lost it. And I'll try to explain how it came about that the current mayor was able to orchestrate the divestiture of Bernalton Telecom and now as we've all noted into private hands. The dream of a public system really began with Bernie. And in those days there wasn't the internet but there was cable TV. And his administration tried to undergo an effort where we could either take over or have great influence over the current cable provider for city of Bernalton. And eventually they didn't succeed in that but there was a settlement. The city was paid some money to lay off. But what transpired out of that several years later was the telecommunication people in Vermont, not just the cable company, and the friends in the legislature put a provision in the city charter that basically said that in the future no taxpayer money could be placed at risk for any venture that involved establishing a cable television system or something like it. So that poison pill was put into our charter. I think it's actually state law now for everybody but it was specifically put into our charter. And that was meant really to discourage the activist city of Bernalton from trying to establish their own system. Anyway, when Peter Clavel was mayor around 2000, they began looking at what could be done. And at this point in time, the internet and that type of system was sort of coming over the horizon. They realized the potential of it and the idea that maybe this should be a public system seemed like a good idea. Seemed like a good idea in fact that our electric department would be the logical place for such a system to be operated out on behalf of the citizens of Bernalton. Anyway, they explored that, they explored the BED option. That option was eventually rejected but Mayor Clavel did establish through the school department or with the school department, they established what they called the backbone of a five-rouththic system. It was a small system but it served parts of city government, part of the high school and he arranged for a $22 million loan from a private entity and that's where the capital came from because again the capital could not come from taxpayer dollars. So they set up this public, private kind of an operation. Then they hired a fellow named Tim Nolte and if you heard the name, Tim Nolte is the person almost entirely responsible for the financial demise of Bernalton Telecom. He ran the system, he was in charge of not only operating the system as a deliver of cable services but also of building the system. He only had the backbone when he came on board. His job was to finish it out throughout the whole city and he turned out to be woefully unqualified to do that but he was a music man. He said what he thought people wanted to hear and nobody was really watching what he was doing and just the sideline, when he would report at various department head meetings that the mayor would hold, a cabinet meeting, I was part of that group. He'd report on what he was doing and my bullshit meter went way over. No one else's did it seem that I would question him and try and get some interest even from the mayor that this wasn't going well, something wasn't right, nobody would listen. So Tim is out there doing what he wants to, most of the time no one's even asking the hard questions about how he's doing it, how the money's being spent, what his plans are and his plans were quite grandiose. He had plans not just for establishing a system in Bernalton but he was building a network that could have served all of Chittenden County which was way big of an overreach compared to the resources that were available and what his real charge was. So anyway, eventually Clavelle doesn't run, kisses elected mayor, a new CAO comes in, Jonathan Leopold and I know Jonathan for quite a while and I talked to him a little bit about BT and he was concerned about it but at that time he had, at least we thought he had bigger fish to fry. When he became the CAO, best way you can describe it is the financial cupboards of Bernalton were pretty bare. Most people don't realize that. Financial cupboards were bare. He had to spend a lot of time just getting the financial situation back on a decent track and problems with specifics like Bernalton telecom that could wait. Turned out to be an unfortunately fatal mistake but he didn't pay much attention to it for the first year or so. Then when he thought things were somewhat under control with the city finances, he began to focus on Bernalton telecom and he looked at the books and remember I said there was $22 million for the capital that was available. He began looking at the books and realizing they had spent $29 million. You think, well, how does that happen? Well, it happens because we have something called the cash pool in the city of Bernalton and departments basically would borrow money short term from the cash pool to pay their bills and then pay it back but no one was watching it that carefully so Bernalton telecom was literally just writing checks. Once the 22 million was gone, they just kept writing checks and the cash pool kept honoring those checks. So Jonathan went to Tim Dulty and said, Tim, how was this possible? How could you have overspent? And by the way, the system wasn't even close to being built out at this point. Maybe it was half built, maybe not even. Tim says, no, that's not possible. I'm sure there's gotta be a mistake here. He goes back to his office and over the weekend studies it, comes back to Jonathan next week and says, you're right, we spent about 29 million and we've essentially without realizing I had borrowed this money from the city's cash pool. One side note, by the way, is you can always question how well Jonathan did with the city finances but the fact that this money was in the cash pool to be borrowed showed what a turnaround he had made in the city finances. Had this happened a year or two earlier, there wouldn't have been any money in the cash pool to borrow against. So he'd gotten back on a healthy standing but unfortunately that money was now there to get misappropriated toward Bernalton telecom. Well, Tim Dulty went through the system but it wasn't appropriated properly. I don't know how, I don't get into the details how you're supposed to get a bill paid. I don't think he was doing it correctly. He was submitting them but he wasn't getting authorization. They were honoring that and then the authorization would come later. It's almost not even worth worrying about. It wasn't good. Anyway, the solution was Jonathan went out and secured an additional $11 million so now they had $33 million. By the time that money arrived Tim Dulty had spent about $39 million so he just kept spending and spending. He really was out of control. His control over contractors, his control over staff, his control over all expenses was just wildly out of control. So very quickly they exceeded again what funding they had available and again the cash pool had come into play and make a long story short before it was over with and Tim Dulty was sent out the door the city had about $17 million of cash pool money in addition to the $33 million that the private equity people had put into the program for a total of about 50, I always say $52 million in the end. That's what was spent. The system had about 4,000 customers. So this was over $10,000 per customer something that no entity in the communication field would ever even conceive of doing spending that much per customer but that's where they were at and of course eventually this became a little more widely known what had happened. The city council became alarmed at it. It was probably, I'm not saying probably it wasn't the demise of Bob Kiss. Mayor Weinberger ran on, in fact he was gonna clean this up at how incompetent the mayor was and Mayor Weinberger was elected. Even though before Kiss left office they began to negotiate with the main lender which was city financial, CITI financial. They were the main lender and by the way we're no longer in the business of lending money for these kind of projects by the time this happened. When Jonathan went to see about getting more money they said we don't do this anymore. So a lot of doors were closed as far as money being unavailable for anything to do with our telecom system. Anyway, so they began to negotiate with city financial and it kind of reached a stalemate. New mayor came in, he picked up where they left off basically with the same kind of an idea. Maybe a settlement could be made where they would get a half or a third of their $33 million and just call it a day. Take the loss, they're a big company. And in the end, something like that actually did happen. It just took three or four years for everyone to be so worn down that city financial agreed to a deal. The deal was that of the 33 million they were owed they would get 10.5 million and keep this word if in big letters, if the system were ever sold that city financial would get half of the net proceeds from the sale once all expenses were paid, all the bills were paid, whatever so-called profit or remaining funds that were city financial would get half of that. But they also said that if it wasn't sold that they would not unreasonably withhold their approval of a non-sale agreement. In other words, whatever the city did they sort of had to approve it but they did not require. And this was something not understood by most people at the time. They did not require this thing to be sold. And it's very clear. And in fact the mayor used to say for a long time that it was city financial that forced the sale he doesn't say that anymore because it wasn't true. It wasn't even close to being true. So the city has to come up now with 10.5 million dollars to come up with their part of the- So D, could you just repeat that last part sort of speaking slowly? Because the part where city, I know, but I was wondering. City financial agrees to a deal. And they're gonna get paid 10.5 million dollars and they're going to get half of any sale of the city. Ever decides to sell the system, half of the so-called profits of that would go to city financial. But they did not require that that actually happened. They did not require there to be a sale. Okay. And it's right in the document. It does not require it. Even though the mayor used to say that it did, it did not. Yeah, he did. I always can't get it. Yes. That's not what we wanted. But also, now, again, there's 10.5 million dollars for the settlement. The city has to come up with this money. The city comes up with four and a half million. Three million comes from, probably it was illegal, I think it is. But it's illegal somehow. Taxpayers, money, taxpayers, assets raised three million. There was a legal settlement with the city attorneys and malpractice settlement that came up with a million and a half. And then there was six million more to come up with of the 10 and a half million. The city, instead of going out, just going to a bank and borrowing it, that's what we do. This is where the mayor begins to play his game and orchestrate the forced sale of Burlington Telecom. He goes out and looks for something different. And the people that are now managing the system, a company called Dormit and Fawcett, they come back with an option. I think the company was called Rosemount. Rosemount is a liquidation company. They buy, I don't think they ever buy municipal stuff, but they buy properties and they basically run it for a while, liquidate them and get their money out. They don't care that millions are lost by others. That's during the business of liquidation. And they come up with a plan. The mayor looks at the plan and thinks, well, there's nothing really so complicated about this. Maybe there's someone locally that would want to do this. And he finds Trey Peacore. And they basically, they give Trey Peacore the confidential proposal from Rosemount and say, can you do this? And Trey looks at it and says, well, yeah, I can do this. He changed it a little bit, but he comes up with a proposal, which it's almost the same. The only difference is now Dormit and Fawcett, our trusted managers, are also going to get a cut of the profits. In addition to Trey Peacore getting half of it in city, financial in the city of Burlington, splitting their half. And if you think, again, that what the mayor did was appropriate, the city paid Rosemount $75,000 in damages because they basically stole their proposal and it wasn't supposed to be released. So this is, everything is underhanded about this. They fed them a confidential proposal and then they had to pay a penalty for having done so. So anyway, now Trey Peacore enters the picture. What Trey Peacore does is he goes to the Merchant's Bank and says, I'll co-sign on a $6 million loan if you will lend the city of Burlington $6 million. Now we could have gotten that. We definitely could have gotten that. There's no question about it. And even if the interest rate was a little bit higher, when you see how much Trey Peacore's profit was on this thing, you realize that the interest rate had been 100%, it would have been a bargain compared to what we paid him. So anyway, so now there's a deal, but now the deal is even more complicated though because as I mentioned, Rosemont was a liquid dating firm. They had no interest in really running the system. So what their deal was is they were gonna buy, they would buy Burlington Telecom, then they would allow the city to direct a sale. In other words, the city could try and find another buyer to take it over, pay them back. But the longer the city took to do that, the less of the profits the city could keep. In other words, if they sold it within three years, the city could keep half the profits. If they sold it within four years, it was 35%, then 25%, then finally like 5%, finally zero. So that's where this forced sale, or the idea that it had to be sold because it wasn't sold, eventually if you did sell it, you weren't gonna get anything for it. So that's where they came in with this idea that it had to be sold. It came from Rosemont, but then Peacore, when he was fed the deal, he just picked up on that. He used the same numbers, he used everything just about the same, a few little tweaks here and there. Because now, as I said, dormant or faucet was also included. And how that could happen, how your trusted advisor all of a sudden could have their fingers in the pie, just one more crooked deal in the whole thing. So anyway, we're getting close to how this all sort of ends, I think, as we know. So now there is something which is really pushing the sale. Again, if we don't do it, if we don't sell it, eventually, I forgot to mention this, if we decide not to sell it after so many years, then Peacore could do whatever he wants with it also. We would even lose the right to kinda direct the sale. Now there was one other piece to it also, just to get the show how sneaky they are. I just pointed out something there. You were talking about how the mayor often said it was a city who drove the sale. Yes. And it was really this agreement that they signed with Peacore. After the city deal. After the city deal that forced the sale eventually. Why don't you say who you are? Yeah, I'm Alan Mattson. I was quite involved in trying to find a local solution for purchasing Burlington Telecom through the whole transaction. And I kinda wanted to point that difference out because I thought it was, it is an important point. If it was just city. I was involved with the co-op who was trying to create a local purchase for this. Probably if it was just. Any other ship within that community. If it was just city financial involved, we'd probably still own Burlington Telecom today. They did not force the sale. The Peacore deal, which was a deal basically fed to Peacore by the city to take, that's what did everything to force the sale. And up until then, probably we're gonna be all right. So, but there's one more piece also to the sale agreement. There was a side note, a condition where Peacore set a minimum sale price that he would accept. Even if the city found a buyer, Peacore had the right to say, there was a certain reserve clause that they could not sell for a less than a certain amount. So in the words guaranteeing that they ever sold it, he would make a certain amount of money. That was meant to be a confidential document, but in one of the PUC hearings to approve the sale to Peacore, one of the commissioners actually read the Peacore letter with the request of it. The amount was $11 million. And then as soon as he did that, they realized it and they asked that to be struck from the record and the city has never divulged it. I've mentioned it a few times, but that's how they operated. We could never know, the public was never to know what the real sale to Peacore meant and what he had into it. In the end, they went through this process and they did it as quick as they could so that they would get the maximum of the proceeds from the sale. And again, the way it's divided up is the city of Burlton gets half the proceeds, but we have to split our half with city financial as per the previous agreement. Peacore gets 40% and Burlton Fawcett gets 10%. In the end, when it was sold for about $33 million, Peacore got about 10 or so. The city got five and a half, city of financial got about five and a half. Burlton Fawcett got, I think it was 1.6 million, something like that. But again, I wonder how outrageous this thing could be. There's two more things that happened. It was a 4.7. It was a 4.7? What's 4.7? 4.7 million to Dorman. Dorman in the end. But there's one more piece of it. And again, to show how crooked these guys are. Not in the city financial deal, but in the Peacore deal, there's a provision that called for the dividing up of any remaining cash assets that Burlton Telecom might have. And you're thinking, well, wait a minute, this was a poor company. It was doing so poorly. There couldn't be much cash laying around. When the sale was made, and after assures had put in their money and clear the debts and money to divide it up, there was this pot of money, cash assets of $6.6 million in Burlton Telecom. Strangely enough, that 6.6 million was more than the 6 million that the city would have had to borrow. But anyway, there was 6.6 million. And this again, nothing to do with assures. Peacore, Dorman Fawcett, city bank, and the city of Burlton divided that up. That was just rate payers' money, maybe tax payers' money. Nothing to do with the sale, just looted it. And if you remember, at the time when the city agreed to sell the shares, within a week of that, they announced a rate increase. Rate increase. A rate increase. And I think it covers an extra cost of buying cable shows or something. Anyway, that money included this rate increase. So here they were sitting on a pot of money and asked for a rate increase. What they really were doing was just getting that pot of money up as big as they could before the sale so the thieves could divide it up. And that's exactly what they did. And 6.6 million was looted from the rate payers and maybe the tax payers at Burlton when that thing was done. Nothing to do with assures, it was just hands in the piggy bank. And each of them got many, many millions more from that sale, from that looting and not a sale. What did they rate increase? Right, it was like within a week of agreeing to sell the shares. They went back and announced the rate increase. And they said, the city did. They needed to sell to shores. Right after the sale of shares was announced, the city went back, before the sale was consummated, they said, we're gonna sell to shores. And then the city went back and said, we're gonna get a rate increase now, we need one. They didn't need one. And they had 6.6 million dollars in the kitty a year later, they definitely didn't need one. But that's how they operated. Just robbers. So if, yes, brogerton telecom was in such trouble, what was the 6,000, $6 million, how did they have that? They ran the system, dormant faucet ran it on behalf of PCOR. And I think they ran it to maximize the cash value and the cash assets at the time of the sale so they could get their mitts on it. Shares wasn't gonna get that money. Basically they did an okay job when they ran it. I mean, they did all right, but they certainly had a lot more money than they needed. I think they did an okay job. It's okay. It's meant it could have recovered, right? Well, it had recovered. It had recovered and in this period of incredible turmoil and constant bad-mouthing by people running for office, how 16.9 million dollars was taken from taxpayers illegally. And the promise was to pay it back. While during all that was happening over a three-year period, they went from 4,000 subscribers to 7,000 subscribers. And they'd accumulated quite a bit of cash, which eventually they divided amongst themselves. What they could have done is they could have even, if they got the rate increase, then they realized they didn't need it. They could have even given it back. They could have given it back as the customers have just sometimes done, but they kept it for themselves and it was just, far as I'm concerned, it was just thievery. No way that should have happened. So in terms of how well they did, Dormin and Fawcett did not run the company. They hired a really good manager. They ran it. They got his name. No, he was one of their employees. What? He was Dormin and Fawcett employee. Who was it? Steve Barrichol. I mean, I'm just saying that my understanding is that it was his skill as a manager Well, I will knock his skills and manage them one way or the other, but when he arrived here and he was hired during the KISS administration, he didn't know anything about telecom. He learned they're all here. He had managerial skills of some sort, but he did not come here as some kind of a cable or internet system operator. He learned it here. Well, I remember him admitting that. Yeah. But the fact is he was a good manager. I'm just throwing it out because the way it was worded before it was as if Dormin and Fawcett, somehow did the work for BT to do well over those years. So well that they got, that they accumulate all this cash and then took it. Yeah, so well. Tony? Tony? Oh, sorry about that. Go ahead, Tony. Okay, Steve. Tony, ready? When I heard you just explain there was only one person who has 100% responsibility for the loss of going to telecom and led to the PCOR agreement, which then basically, it was a slippery slope down from that point. And that happens to be, we're all right with that, right? Pretty much. It was Jim Nolte who led to its financial problems, but then Weinberger made the decision he was gonna get rid of it and he did. Okay. I'm not worried about this. Okay, that's all I'm worried about. But yeah. Yeah. But then he used it, Robin. I'm sorry, go ahead. Okay, so about this Tim Nolte, you say he was responsible for the demise and he was out of control. Now what does out of control really mean? I mean. No one was watching what he was doing and he was spending money like a drunken slave. Okay, but wasn't. There was no commission. The BT had to expand right to be viable and I mean, in other words, were we, did we have a sort of hubris to think that we could do, that we could publicly run Burlington Telecom? Well, if they had some people that had given the impression that they could build the system for the money that they had and they thought they would build it and as it grew, customers would be paying into the system and they would keep using that money and kind of roll it over. So it was like a, not perpetual motion machine but the idea that it would sort of grow itself. That was wrong. But it couldn't do it. That couldn't be done. See with three people. Not if not, it was needed. We had no system at all. You're basically saying that the customers, a small customer base is going to build a system for a bigger customer base, not possible. And Tim Nolte was the wrong person to do it even if it could be done. He wasn't the guy to do it. We had to borrow. Well, we borrowed $22 million which he spent $29 million of. Then we borrowed another $11 million which he spent $39 million of. Then we spent another $17 million for total about $52 million and still didn't finish the job. It was a financial disaster. But in the end, years down the road when it was finally sold, it was doing pretty well and it actually had enough money in the bank to have paid off all its debts and have six and a half for $6.6 million left. And that could have been ours. Should have been ours. Tony or Jack? I think Jack was next. The bottom line is that we had a public utility. You know, Burnt's Electric Department started in 1905, struggled for many, many, many years. And now we got to the point where it was so successful meeting the actual needs of Burlingtonians, not anyone else's but our needs for reasonable rates, good service, environmental awareness and operated in a democratic way. When it struggled for many, many years, here we had a utility that started out and in some ways did well, in some ways did horrendously bad, wasted a lot of money, had no financial controls and that did it damage from which it could fully recover. And so it wasn't Citibank that did it, it was really the, as you say, Tony, the political decision on the part of the mayor to destroy the utility. That's right. And it never had to happen. There was a financing that could have happened early on in the process. And so really you used the word looting, which, you know. That's what I thought. For that last 6.6 million, that was looting. I've been working on this for years and every time I hear Steve, I learned something new. And looting is really the right word. And the other word that I think of with regard to this is sabotage. This could have been saved. Correct. At many stages along the way. And its demise was intentional. But I would remind people that it is not over. Hopefully not. And fortunately on our side, we have very clear a law as Solvee said, both in statute and in our charter. And the PUC completely ignored the law, the Department of Public Service that's supposed to work representing us completely ignored the law and ignored many other things. And we are hoping, and we're hoping that it's a good sign that they're having a reward because they don't always do that. We are hoping that the Supreme Court will simply follow the plain letter of the law. And I'll point out that they just issued a decision, a landmark decision a few days ago requiring state public records to be provided free of charge for inspection, which is what the law says. But every department has been charging people. I'm personally aware of this myself. And they said there are all these things we don't even have to deal with. We're looking at the plain language in the law. The law says this is what you're gonna do. This is how we're gonna behave. It was really a remarkable decision. Very brief, I suggest everyone read it. So to me that's a good sign. Yeah. Sandy, do you mind if I? Yeah. I just wanted to say a few things and I'll make sure you're covered here. This other mic's getting everything. It's just, it's not as good a quality. Okay, so again, I'm Alan Matteson and I was involved in the group that put together a cooperative to try to be a local purchaser for the transaction. And going back basically to the point at which it first became clear to the community that we had significantly overspent and we're using the funds from the cash pool. A few of us started talking about what was gonna happen and we pretty much said, well, you know, if we don't do anything what's gonna happen is gonna get sold to some outside party as has happened. So going back as far as 2010, people within the city knew that our group existed and that we were trying to do something along these lines. And Steve talked a lot about the transaction that was done by Merchants Bank and PCOR and one of the big frustrations I have and continue to have to this day is that that transaction, which was extremely lucrative was not shown to anyone else. I have asked a lot of people if anyone saw it. I've had many people say, how come I didn't get that transaction? And I asked them, well, did anybody talk to you? You should have been no, you know. And so it was a transaction that facilitated, in effect, getting Citibank off to the side for a bit. But it was also, again, they, you know, I think the way Steve framed it with Rosemont deal being copied, you know, is a fairly accurate representation but the other one piece I just wanna say again is that that deal was, it wasn't like they didn't, there was nothing competitive about it. It was ever, it was just done. And, you know, there's a couple of the things in all this, I'm just gonna say some facts. I'm not gonna weigh in on these, but I, these are kind of facts that when I was part of a group that was really trying to succeed, I didn't highlight very much, but they're quite true. At the time the transaction was done with Merchants Bank, I'm fairly certain that there were three people who were on the board of Merchants Bank at the time. One was Pat Robbins, who was on the Burlington Telecom Advisory Board at the time that the transaction was put forward. Another was Merchants Bank. And the Burlington Telecom Advisory Board. So the next thing that, the next point I wanna make also on the board was Ray Peacore, who was Trey's father. And if I remember right, Trey was also on the board of Merchants Bank at the time. I know Dorman and Foss at the time also had had relationships on other transactions with Merchants Bank. And it was often presented that Merchants Bank was in the transaction in sort of doing, helping out, you know, helping out the transaction. Also in the guarantee of the loan, it was a $6 million loan that supposedly Trey had put a personal guarantee on, but the first million and a half loss was actually guaranteed by the value of the building on Church Street that Burlington Telecom was in at the time. So in effect, Trey's guarantee was only second to the guarantee provided by a piece of city property at that time, the Church Street building. As I said, I'm not gonna editorialize it all, I just wanted to say some facts. Well thank you, this too. And you're right about that. So in reality, the city put up four and a half million plus another half, they put up six million. They put up the majority of the 10 million, got zero equity, Trey got the whole system. For that, what do you put it, or? You put anything in, he got the whole system, we put in $6 million and got nothing for that, nothing. As I said, I'm just putting out some facts as straightforward as I can. I will say that in the sale process, there was a reserve price and when the PCOR transaction was announced, because I knew there was a reserve price, I didn't know what the reserve price was, but my view on that transaction was because there was a reserve price, that was actually the full strength and control that the city held. They had the ability to sell it to whoever they wanted to above a certain price. My view was, and I said this to city officials and city officials, all I can say is I said this to city officials, the reason I think that you've done this right is you maintain the control on this transaction because of that guarantee, that you can sell it for any price above a guarantee. I honestly feel as if the city, here's where all I guess I will editorialize, they totally gave up that control in the deal process. They did not, in my frame of, in my mind, take what was the transaction that had the best value to the citizens of Burlington, but rather took, I guess what I would call the highest headline number, a decision that the decision makers could make, but it was where I felt that was, as I'm editorializing here is where I felt particularly the decision making was wrong on this transaction. The success of Burlington Telecom while was being managed, while this whole process was going on, I think we need to remember that the citizens group was being extremely positive in what we were saying about the organization. We were telling people this is a great asset for the community. We need to keep it in the community. Don't sell out on it. We were in a position of actually being really good marketing, we thought, for the organization. We wanted the value, and we wanted the value of the company to be strong as we came through the process. Also, one of the reasons that they were able to have such strong operating success during that time is that they did no capital spending. That's why there was just minimal maintenance capital spending to keep the process going until very late in the game and they did some small builds, but for the most part, that was a big driver in what created the excess cash that Steve referenced. So those are the four points I wanted to make. I just kind of quickly go through them again, which was the... It would be great if people had questions. Yeah, the deal silence, the sale process and what the city gave up, there was no capital spending and the fact that we were really trying to bring in confidence with our group at that time. So those are just some comments I wanted to add in on what Steve had said all the way through. He helped all this. Steve, let people, if you would, anybody have any questions for us? Frownling right now? Yeah. Yeah, Tony. You talked about the reserve price. Was that in the PCOR agreement? Yeah, that was in the PCOR agreement, but it had been redacted, so it was not public. The PCOR agreement, if you went back and look at it, had everything, that was just blacked out. How was that a letter? Yeah, but that letter was public, Tony, but with a redacted number. From what you said, the city could have said, okay, we'll pay that reserve price. My understanding, yes, and they did make arguments as to why they could. Or I was going to say that. Yeah. Okay, we'll need the reserve price and get the funding for it, and then the city could have handed over to the group of people. They absolutely could have, and we know, I think that people did find out what the reserve price is, but we also know that our offer, and especially our ending offers, were more than the reserve price. Evening on what they know, the reserve price, the city didn't have to do that even though they could have just said, if we get you your $6 million back with interest, we're going to, that's what it could have been, instead of having to meet another reserve above that. So I don't know if that protected the city much. I think that's where the city began really to sell out when they allowed there to be a reserve price above and beyond the $6 million. They basically doubled the debt. Can I ask a question? What you said kind of interests me, and that is that it was sabotage from the start. So what do you mean? Was there some ideological component to this that there couldn't, on the part of the new administration and Miro to not have anything that smacked of a public utility? And rather, and they deliberately sabotaged it because it was kind of a form, well, it was a form of socialism in effect, public ownership is, right? I've pondered that, it's a very good question. I don't know the answer to that. I don't know what was in their minds, but I do know. But you thought it, you really think it was sabotage. Oh, well, they could have made decisions all along the way to say that they decided not to say that, they decided to throw it away. And the early financing, the sale process, we went through a three-year public process of the public being encouraged to come up with these criteria at the top criteria. Number one, local ownership. Number two, continued affordability of services. Number three, commitment to net neutrality. Under this scheme, all are gone because there is no meaningful requirement that they do anything with regard to rates. There's no meaningful requirement, there's no local control to stop them from selling it in the future to Comcast. You know, Comcast, we fought this in the legislature in 96. We fought it in 2000 just to get the legislation in our charter to be able to do this. Comcast fought us all the way and then the lobbyists there fighting us all the way. They were just waiting to pick this off. So do you really think that this company in Indiana is gonna keep wanting to operate this utility? Well, maybe if it's super profitable, but if it's not super profitable, then it's Comcast. So right now it's basically Comcast by another name because there's no way to enforce any of this. And from a policy level, what's happened since we started it, you know, we started trying to get a cable, you know, a municipal cable utility in the 80s. And really struggled for a very long time. I started in 88, but there are people who started before me. I came in after the first decision not to do it. I kept going, but the stakes meanwhile have grown so tremendously. Back then it was cable TV and a little bit of cable internet. Now it's your entire gateway to the world and commerce and politics and information and the fundamentals of a democracy. So the stuff that you talk about as far as free speech, these are the fundamental issues. And those stakes have increased a thousand fold since we first started this. And right now when you've got the FCC saying that you can't, municipalities can't say anything about rates anymore. They can't say anything about- Wait, wait, wait, wait. Would you go for that again? That municipalities can't say anything about rates? They can't say anything about rates. Can't say anything about requiring operators to provide money for pay for public, educational, and government. And a Supreme Court ready to support them on all of this, the stakes are much, much higher. So to come in in 2013 and run on a campaign of how horrible it is that the $16.9 million was diverted from the cash pool, which is taxpayer money, and then to sabotage it so that the taxpayers get between five and a half million or zero back under their plan where they wanna take the five and a half million that we do get and then invest that in insurance. As if there's some connection. I mean, this is just another private, out-of-state Indiana-based company, no ownership in Vermont, no control in Vermont. Yes, they put up a little board that has no control whatsoever. And even they move the administrative facilities to Indiana to consolidate them. And no constraints. It's really the policy questions that you started out with that have gotten so fundamentally out of whack and put the people where we should never have been. Now, your question as to why that was done by this mayor who ran on getting the $16.9 million back, I don't know, but when you hear Steve talk about the self-dealing that was involved in these deals, then you can imagine why they might be very happy to close them all out, close the books on it, be done with it completely. Mission accomplished. And they take their money. That assumes that there was a mission. That's my question. Was there a mission from day one of the Weinberger administration to privatize Burlington Telecom? Definitely there was. You believe that. That's this plan all along, never keep it. Never keep it. But one other part, if you're not concerned enough about it, you've heard there's one other part to the deal. Tray Peacore is the owner-operator of the Lake Champlain Transportation Company, the run of ferries. He runs the ferries. And it's been another thing for a long time. He has plans for the Burlington ferry docks. He'd like to turn and do what I would call a waterfront resort, hotel, restaurant, shops. Not be a ferry dock anymore. The ferries would move probably further up the shoreline of the Burlington. Those plans are on file at the Plain Department. I've seen them, I saw them when I worked for the city. I believe that when, as a sweetener, when the mayor went to Peacore, see if he would take this deal, the mayor offered one more thing. At the time, at the time, this was going on in time, we were trying to put this deal together, there was a proposal, what do they call those proposals? Eric Pee? Yeah, request for a proposal. No, but there was a, there was a PEDA, what's the program called that the city had? PIPA or PIPA? It was proposals that people could come up with for doing certain, well, whatever the process was called. There was a proposal from the parks department to expand Perkins Pier, and expand it with about 95 additional morals and a floating breakwater. And PEAC was the process that it was called. There was also a proposal from a group that was going to put a marina by the waterfront. And Ray Trey Peacore's plans to deal with his property, which is right next to Perkins Pier. Well, Perkins Pier expanded a lot of his property and a lot of his dreams were gonna be very hard to do because Perkins Pier was gonna take out a lot of the room where the marina was gonna go, it wouldn't be any room for his marina. So I believe the mayor said to Peacore, well, if you go along with this, we will not do the Perkins Pier upgrade. And within the same period, within a one week period, when they went to the public service board to ask for the Peacore approval, they also had received the grant, a grant from the federal government for the Perkins Pier with a million and a half dollars. They ditched six that grant and never brought it up again. And they gave the group they wanted to build for the North to do that. So I think it was all tied together. They gave the words, the sweetener for Peacore was, we're not gonna do anything with Perkins Pier in the future and you'll be free when you come up with your proposal, that'll be available for you to do something with it. So there was one more sellout there of the public. We had a grant from the federal government to expand Perkins Pier. And I've never heard this happening to see before where a grant would be turned down. So I can impossible that would happen. And then they'll let another group do something further up the lake and we could have had something, could have had both. They could have done their thing, could have done Perkins Pier. So you're saying that grant was approved but the money had to accept it? City had to accept it. The federal government had a big press release and they announced it. And the city never accepted it. In fact, it turns out the city never bothered to mention the parks commission. And I believe that Jesse Bridges, who was the park director, everything he left is because he was so disgusted of what happened. Yeah, is that right? Yeah. That was the end for him. I have that on pretty good reliable sources told me about that one. So this thing, the corruption of this, whatever goes deeper than you can imagine. Pickard got some real sweet deals right up front but there's also the back door deal which would say, well, what harm has done by any of this? Well, this is the Burlington Park did get fixed up because of it also. Now we lost our cable system and we also lost our ability to have our municipal marina fixed up. Okay. So there's a lot of chemicals in this thing. Right. Yeah, well. Can I ask a question a little bit different from where we've gone? I mean, I know that I have a real interest in the history of this and everything but I also have a real strong interest in potential future because there's potential features to talk about. I think either success with a community group, what happens if there's no success or what happens if there isn't success because I have a strong interest in telecom. I believe a lot of what's slowly set up at the start of where we've come and what we control and what you just talked about the functioning of democracy. And I think that there is a changing model out there and if the citizen group succeeds, I think there's one approach and I think if the citizens group doesn't succeed, I would hope that people are looking to do something as well because I'm still sitting here trying to do that but I'm kind of, I don't feel like the transaction is completely done unlike on the party's who signed paper and that's why I'm kind of waiting to see what happens before thinking about the future but I'm definitely thinking about the future. And never mind Supreme Court. Yeah, so I don't know if that's something we'll get to a little bit. No, I mean, we don't know what's gonna happen. Exactly. Period. I don't anyway. I'll just quickly say that I think if the citizens group succeeds, I think that, and we've tried to keep our, the cooperative is very much just barely alive but if it does succeed, we would wanna come back forward and say, wait a minute, there needs to be something like this. If what they've said is you can't do a private transaction, it probably might not even be able to be a cooperative. It might have to be something even more deeply. No, I think, I think Steve and I, sort of, I've heard Steve mention. I frankly think it should be owned by the city. I, I think that was actually the best solution to that. Yeah, I do too but I'm a lawyer. I'm not terrifically hopeful for the Vermont Supreme Court. I'm glad others are though. I'm glad they're doing it. I mean, I see the court, frankly, as a capitalist court that is interested in making deals happen, you know? Honoring contracts and all that stuff. I hope I'm wrong. I really hope I'm wrong but who knows. And I think if it doesn't succeed. If it doesn't succeed, I think we should come back with, well, I think we should force the mayor to own it, to have the city own it again. The only way you can do that is, I guess, get rid of him, right? I don't know. And, or, I mean, I think more, there could be an alternative. But I need it anyway. Excuse me, Lou. I just said it's a good idea anyway. Well, I don't want to be that partisan at this point. But I think that I would look at it, I would be looking for another community-based alternative that we might be able to bring forward. And I think that it could be, I mean, I'll just quickly say it, you know, I think Newport, Vermont, for example, right now, is doing, you know, they've got a public mesh that they're trying to put in their lowest socioeconomic areas of town. And I think there's some ideas there that we have talked about a bit. There's a lot of similarities between Burlington and Newport right now. Yeah, yeah. All right? So, anyway, I think that we want to keep thinking through this even no matter what happens, because this telecom point, the dean gets to, of it being this window into the world, of course, these days. An important one, since the media seems so absolutely screwed up. Are there any final thoughts or questions? Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so this is the first time I've heard this, sort of misplaced this question, so, and I forgive if I missed a little bit of detail, but, Steve. Yeah, go ahead. Would quickly explain again who Trey P. Carr is and how he became involved and then what's a relationship to Dormin Fawcett and Merchant's Bank? Trey's a local businessman. His father, Ray Peacore, amongst other things, runs a lake, ran the Lake Champlain transportation company, and now Trey runs that. And he also owned a cable system way back in the, the mountain cable, I forget the name of it. Greener. Ray owned at some point, but this is his son now. And his, Ray is, I don't think he's retired yet, but he probably is in semi-retirement. So, Trey is the business side of that operation. The mayor went to him to see if he would do what this company, Rosemont, said they were gonna do, basically. Here's the deal. Here's what it looks like. Would you do this? So, Trey- Which was, basically, the best six million dollars to keep- Come up with six million dollars. And then there was a deal in place to- Rosemont was gonna come up with a six million. What Trey did was he went to the Merchant's Bank, which he was on the board of, and he basically arranged us to get a loan. He cosigned on it, but it was a loan to the city of Burlington, a 30-year mortgage for six million dollars. That's what he arranged. But he also arranged to get a huge percentage of the sale proceeds when it was sold. And he also said a minimum sale price so that he would get at least a certain amount and he ended up exceeded that amount. And is that how Dormit and Fawcett came to be involved? No, Dormit and Fawcett was actually brought in by the KISS administration when this, Tim Nolte had mentioned earlier, when they finally got rid of him. They brought in Dormit and Fawcett and they ran the system. I'm not sure what the allure of them was because they were not a cable management company of any sort. I can speak a little bit to them. They were known as a turnaround company and had done a number of other transactions within the state. And that's also how they had a connection with Merchant's Bank. I think that some of the other turnaround transactions they had done, they had used Merchant's Bank for some of their financing so had relationships with Merchant's Bank already. When Dormit and Fawcett was brought in, they brought in the folks from Winona who were telecom operators who really were the folks who brought the expertise in at the time from Winona, Minnesota. Hiawatha Broadband. The management from Hiawatha Broadband really is where the expertise came and they're the folks who trained Steven Bericow, who was at Dormit and Fawcett Hire to do this particular turnaround. And so Dormit and Fawcett got a slice of the eventual sale by the fact that they're initially they didn't. Initially they came in, they worked for the Kiss administration and then when Meryl Weinberg came along, they stayed, they became a trusted manager of the system. But during the negotiations of the deal with PCOR, they somehow ended up getting a share of the profits or whatever. Up until that point, they weren't getting that, they were just getting paid and getting well paid in fact for what their work was. Okay, yeah, sorry, Ron. Yeah, it seems to me that out of this fascinating conversation, I could see some sort of a future session or class or something that would write a power chart of our community. Okay, you have Hamaway, you have PCOR, you have PCOR's son, you have Pat Robbins, you have the bank, you have the chart, like whose loan they do want. This is just, we've been talking about one of these nuggets of wealth in this community that has been basically manipulated by the ruling class here. And let's have analysis of the whole system somehow. I don't know how we could do that. Robbins actually hit on something that has really intrigued me as well and I would second that it would be a great idea to work through. Didn't the cynic once do that back in the- It might have weighed back, but yeah. And it was just like- The players are doing it different now, but say like, did the rich get rich or what? It is. Yeah. Anyway, Robin, did you want to say anything, Phil? No. Anything else? It's approaching 730, so anybody have anything in conclusion to say? Well, think about the next one, the big hole, how I think we could do more publicity than, I mean, I think this is a good turnout, but can we bring some people who, other people who might not know all the details? I mean, these guys from the big hole have been around to all the NPAs, right? So in a way, we- No, we haven't. We're a wrap. No? No, we haven't. I mean, but they basically- Wait a minute. What was that? You were thinking that this presentation by these folks has gone around to all the NPAs? Some of them, they have to, some of them. Some of them, yeah. They haven't, they haven't. The mayor has though. The mayor has, but we haven't. Yeah, well, the mayor has, okay, so. No, wait a minute. Anyways, so the next meeting is about- I think you're talking about different groups. Issues and different groups. First people making presentations. She's talking about the big hole. Yes, so she- Oh, but she's talking about- We're talking about tonight's presentation. No. Well, we'll be in a clad. Tonight's presentation went to all the NPAs. We have spoken to word one and eight and word six and two and three over time. We've spoken to those NPAs, obviously. That's not in the detail talk. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. I think that we should do that if we could, if they'd let us on the agenda in the first place. Would they? I guess, I guess they'd put us on. However, I think that we should probably think through maybe closer to the election. Well, and as a practical matter, this Friday is the deadline for us to file reply briefs at the Supreme Court. At some point, when we're on the schedule again, there's gonna be the oral argument. At some point the Supreme Court's going to make a decision. If they throw it out, then the city has to do something to start over again, more or less. And I think that it might even raise the question of whether the 2014 agreement, which is what Steve's been describing, is even legal. And it might be the impetus for going around and talking to people about this issue anew and trying to reconstruct our Burlington telecom. And or if we fail at the Supreme Court going around, as Alan said, and put together the people and the technology to create a different local system that we can democratically control. Okay, so what you're suggesting is perhaps that we should meet again, those people who are interested after the decision. Right, and maybe before then too, because we don't know what it's gonna be. I mean, I wanna say a word about getting the word out. Having tonight's presentation go to every NPA is one way to get the word out. And what I wanna say is I think that the sooner the better we're getting the word out because if we wanna get the word out as broadly as we can prior to, we want as many citizens to have some of the essence of what we've all learned tonight about this history, we'd like as many citizens as possible to have that information before the Supreme Court comes up with its rule. What do you mean? What kind of effect does the Supreme Court? Well, it won't effect the Supreme Court, but. No, I'm not saying it'll effect the Supreme Court. I'm saying that whenever the Supreme Court comes out with its thing, we would like as many Burlington people as possible to already know this, to have this information as a context for hearing, Brian said, I mean, there, people don't know much. But guess what? He recorded it. Well, I know. But the context of this issue, which I think people are surprised at, the sheer level of crookedness that went on. And then when you hear about the big hole and the level of crookedness that went on there. And the F-35s. When you hear about City Hall Park. And the F-35s. They start to get a very powerful picture that could really motivate Burlingtonians to solve a lot of these problems, if not all of them. Well, that's sort of the purpose, isn't it? That's what we're trying to do. Thank you. No, and me and Robin. Did this get into us some days? Yes, it did, okay. Did the whole brochure do it? Well, no, tonight's presentation was in there in the calendar. Manny Leone just published an issue of O5401, which is a compendium of the crimes and sins of Mirabel Feinberg. I don't know about five articles in there. So I haven't seen this one yet. Well, it must have just come out. Is it out now? Yeah, it's all copy of it. So, at the Y. And one should be sold at. One of the articles should be sold at. Yes, right. So, get that out. So, I know Robin wants to talk about the next event, which is important, but I just want to say a little bit more about getting the word out. So this is being recorded. And I had a thought while I was listening to this presentation about watch parties. Like, when something gets on channel 17, then it gets run and rerun and rerun a number of times. Am I right? Yep. Mark and I know, right, Mark? We do a program together. So what if watch parties were organized? In fact, what if there were a big watch party organized in contests? If you want to do it, that would be great. If you want to get it together, that would be terrific. I'm throwing it out for everyone to hear because I am not in a position to get anything together single-handedly. Right. But this recording will have a URL. And that URL can be sent out to everybody, to everybody's unique list, right? Yes, right. And so everything that went on tonight can be available. For people to watch on their own time. Yeah. I mean, that I think is the first step, right? Is to use, I mean, that's one of the reasons that we're devoted, I'm devoted to this issue, is because of public access. So the more we use it, the more it would become so important that people wouldn't want to lose it. Yeah, the other people who should be publicizing this is rights and democracy. I've given it to them. You did? Yeah, I did. I met with them this week. Okay. So there's one last way to get the, I mean, there's many ways. But there's one other way that I'm thinking of to get the word out broadly, and that's the thing I've brought up a number of times, a city-wide lead plant that goes to every door in the city, including every business door, because when we did door knocking for the KDTL effort, we learned that businesses, small businesses throughout Burlington loved BT and were really upset about being sold. So anyway, that's something we've talked about before it's come up before. And I don't know if there's a big enough group that could pull it off, but I just wanted to say it one more time, because I know that when you get a leaflet into every single door, residential and business, a lot of them don't get read, a lot of them get read out before. Before what? Before it's put out to ask some serious type of senate, including the spelling and the name of the groups. Okay. So that might, yeah, that might not be, if that's correct, Diane, tell me about it. I'm talking about a leaflet that gives the basics of the BT story. So I know that a lot of them just go into recycling, but I also know that certain individuals read the thing and get educated and get some of them activated who we never could reach if we didn't do that. I have a suggestion, because that has, you've suggested, it's a great suggestion, no one has taken it up, no one has written a pamphlet, and I don't know if we have the hordes of people to deliver it. However, we should be thinking about elections. You know, we really should be, and we should do something like that during the electoral period, I think. Educating on all of these issues. Well, and also, as this series continues, the number of people potentially involved in that effort for a serial issue-by-issue leaflet approach will grow. Yeah, I think so. I hope so. I hope people will be larger. I mean, that's the point, yeah. Yeah, so what I'm wondering is, do people know other people that it would be good to come to the big whole discussion? I mean, John Triangle is wonderful and eloquent, but are there other big players that would be interesting, just if you know, to be personally inviting to come so that we can have a broad discussion of Barbara? Who? By the way, I don't know the other people who've been involved. Well, Steve and I are plaintiffs. Who are outside the plaintiff, Steve? For the big whole? Yeah, no, against it. Lynn Martin. Who? Michael Long, Lynn Martin, Barbara. Well, we could get Michael Long, for sure. I'm just thinking, too. Michael Long, who's the teacher? Michael Long, who was the teacher at Colchester High School? No, no, it was himself. Different Michael Long. Yeah, yeah, anyway, just be, you know, talk to your friends, invite them to come, because I think it'd be good if we could have like, you know, a lot of us discussions. And there'll be that discussion in two weeks, not next week, but two weeks. Any other? Okay, I started to sign up. Yeah, it's right here. Did it go all the way around? No, because I didn't have a pen. Okay, especially so that the social media, which we haven't done that well, why don't you grab it under Sandy and, okay. Any final thoughts? You think it's an important issue? What, what do we think? Yeah, yeah. What? Go ahead, I'm sorry. I guess what I was just gonna say is, you know, I had not looked at the full slate of issues. Robin had encouraged me to come tonight, and what I'm gonna say is, I don't check the box on all these issues that I get worked up about them. And I think that that's important too, but there's a lot of them that I do, and I don't wanna come out and get more actively talking about it. I mean, I've been joking with people that we need to come up with a group, you know, keep the big whole local. You know, it's just like, it took a little while to say again, but I kind of did, but that's certainly the idea too. And some of these things really do resonate, not everything's gonna resonate with everybody, and so we do wanna find the people who, you know, who else can we get to come up to every one of these particular issues, and who are the folks? I think that's good, because I think this next one with related to the downtown project, we could really find some big hole. Oh yeah, yeah. I really find some connection to a lot of people, and I think that the more we do this, like I said, everybody's not gonna hear on all of them, but the more people we motivate, they're gonna start realizing all the other connections that exist too. Can I just say one final word about what was in my mind at least? There's a huge movement huge. There's a movement internationally for cities to have control over their resources and over their democracy. Cities sort of try to create an ultimate power somewhere outside the power of the nation state or the federal government. That's what I have in mind, is having this city be in control of itself and not be selling off its resources, but not also ignoring the fact that every citizen has to have input into what happens, and that is, you know, and that's why I labeled this first thing municipalism, because it's happening in Barcelona, it's happening in Spain, it's happening in a lot of places that, that's the only place that we can have power. We can't have power against Donald Trump, really, in the end, probably not, but we could have power over our city, couldn't we? Yeah, I like that. Seems to me. Okay, good. All right, well thank you. Thank you. No, thank you, Robert. Yes.