 on them so if one of them vibrates you know they want to talk is that how that works no I guess no they raise their hand they raise their hand I can see it hey it's laughing so any additions or changes to the agenda I have an item of it needs that should be added and that's the talk about the clerk's position oh yes okay anything else here no I think that's probably it okay hmm oh well we have a orcas here so we have a video okay public comment can I make a public comment sure is it now yes okay my name is Steve Knowlton I serve on the board of Washington Electric Cooperative and we have interacted I should just say kind of the point we have submitted a proposal for a broadband innovation grant from the Department of Public Service this is the round of grants followed the ones that you are eligible for this is one that's eligible for electric utilities only so we have submitted a grant for a feasibility study and business plan I think the to my reading the requirements of the grant and what comes out of it are the same as what the CUDs were applying for so we've submitted the proposal and I should say at the outset that Washington Electric has considered at great length the report that was issued by the Department of Public Service on the role that electric utilities can play in assisting broadband frankly you know the what they presented for WECC was not a pretty picture I don't know if you've if any of you have read that that report but it's of it's worth reading the costs to and the risk that brings to WECC or any rural utility are gonna be significant so we realize that it's you know in proceeding further we're not the innovative and creative and I believe collaborative so as I stated when I wrote the proposal I stated quite clearly that we believe that Washington Electric is gonna be if it's gonna be able to participate beyond what they're legally required to do they're gonna be seeking collaborative efforts with CUDs easy fiber CV fiber and whatever whatever emerges from the Northeast Kingdom so essentially I'm just providing a status report of where Washington Electric is and where it's gonna be proceeding thank you very much any questions or other comments I had a question where is that report available or where can I find it I can send you I can send CV5 or a copy is it on the department side already I haven't since I haven't looked on their site okay it's essentially what you know if you Google walk Washington Electric I'm sure you can do this right now I mean the deadline the deadline was close of business yesterday so I'm actually a little bit surprised that it's on the website already but I'm happy the reports been on the websites in January but oh the I'm sorry I'm sorry I he's talking about the Magellan report the Magellan reports on the website my apologies I miss understood your question feasibility study of electric companies offering broadband in Vermont thank you one comment yeah Magellan report as with all reports made assumptions and a lot of the assumptions were quite expensive I think at some point we need to talk with WECC about less expensive ways of doing what they're talking about which makes it less stutter that's it I accept that point when you read the report you have to read the assumptions in with it I mean if it was a slam dunk against doing it at all we might not have pursued it but we we think they're opportunities I just so the last time I remember talking to somebody from your organization here in a meeting there was some disagreement on the board as to whether to pursue this or not is going for this grant kind of a tacit approval of pursuing a partnership or doing fiber on your lines has that dissension been mitigated I would say rather than dissension I would say there's there's not clarity what the board approved was they proved a couple a couple members of the board were approved to go investigate broadband and seek funds for doing feasibility studies so I think we can I guess the best I can do is say we're gonna do the feasibility study and see where we're looking for avenues forward we just I doubt there's no board approved or disapproval at this point thank you just a piece of housekeeping before we get into the bulk of the agenda because we have two people on speakerphone it would be great if you could say your name before you speak so that it's a little bit easier for them to know who's who's having the conversation so okay thanks the next item is Treasurer's report I thought I saw anything here but no I guess not well I can take that one you can take that okay another sort of practical matter who is going to be taking responsibility for the minute I mean I know we have a recording there so you have to go back but I'm taking this is Chuck I'm taking notes check did not get to process it and it's not currently anywhere where we know where it is so I've reached out to ACPD to make up that check so that we can give this another try let's see what else I'm still waiting for checks to be to be shipped and arrive at my house if I don't see them by the time I get back back home I will be going visiting them visiting BSEU myself the last item is I would like to make a motion to approve paying our military bill in the amount of four hundred and twenty dollars I don't remember those question about whether we had already done that I think we had sort of approved that this to go ahead with that I think we had a I'm not sure we had a motion I think yeah I think you're right that there was a there was a motion to approve the spending but not a specific motion to actually pay the bills okay okay and it's so you're making the motion to pay the attorneys bill in the amount of four hundred and twenty dollars four hundred twenty twenty four twenty second the mood and second discussion all those in favor say aye those opposed motion passes okay okay well thank you Jeremy I know it's it's this is yeah and you heard the part about the what was the thing for my grant check got is gone somewhere yeah it's going to be re-caught and really Jeremy say something yeah is that easier to hear a little better wow what this is this is incredibly high-tech I don't know if internet edits but isn't it yeah I didn't bring any twine but next time I'll know better you know they're probably wondering why I don't want to look at it but why do we have to approve writing checks for things that we've already approved it seems like technically public bodies ten thousand I get it technically public bodies and usually like with a town or a school district they have a series of warrants as they're called which with a whole series of checks some places hand them around and look at them we don't have much so I think it's probably the first thing that we've paid so I think that's why we're just doing it as an individual I don't know going forward all of our expenditures I would assume so yeah okay there is a worker on that individual expenses I'm speaking from the experience of town government and being chairman of the select board if there is a budgeted item for it it can be treated in aggregate as a budget in other words we'll have a capital expenditure well forget capital expenditures that's a separate account but if you have a law maintenance that's a little budget light line item that's voted for law maintenance and you can write all the checks you want up to and including the amount approved at the town meeting if it's an individual request regrettably it has to be approved in amount and designate individually okay we have a budgeted item we do and this is not something we've talked about before and I think a good discussion to have with the treasurer I know being on the select board in middle sex I think our treasurer would not want to do that she'd want to have the bookkeeper cut the warrant and her review it and present it to the select board which I did and all of them really every time you got a fuel bill absolutely sex would want to do that absolutely my condolences to her I know but yeah we did we review we review the whole list we budgeted fuel yeah up to and including the budgeted amount right to check and keep the okay you do okay this is the finance committee and just met and discussed this and brought a policy forward to the board and board voted to adopt the policy the policy was that up to a set amount the executive committee could just authorize payment I can't remember what that exact amount was but I think it was on the order of $200 so would have exceeded that amount anyway but the finance committee did consider that okay and bring a policy forward but I can't remember where it lives okay yeah okay anything else on finance issues as we move forward but again I think this is something we probably need to have some more discussion about just to determine how this board wants to wants to function so the next item is Rob Fish from DPS Rob that's my welcome everybody where would be a good place to go for a right in the middle right in the middle right over there by the lions over there by the lions yes we'll wait to questions for a little bit later hi everybody my name is Rob Fish last November so it's only been a few months I started with the Department of Public Service to be the rural broadband technical assistance specialists quite the mouthful I've been spending the last few months getting up to speed and learning an awful lot about the various policies in the state the various policies lacking in the state understanding the data and meeting with groups all around the state that were in the first the earlier phase of creating a cut that's been a lot of time down in Wyndham County a little bit up in the kingdom Memorial County there's a lot happening out there but you all took care of that last year and the year before so I'm here tonight to learn more about what you are doing where you are at what's happening with the feasibility study and how I can help ideally I want to keep it mostly just back and forth with questions and answers and I'll do what I can well you're gonna hear a lot more I think with some of the reports that are being presented tonight so sorry I've seen a preview of my questions but anyway I guess I want to know more about what the role your role is and the department's role in supporting CUDs grant applications with finding sources of money giving us you know templates from someplace else it's something similar or communication plans anything like that I don't know what your the scale of what you're offering I'm not being able to offer I'm still trying to figure that out actually but the line seems to be as I'm here for I can do a lot of hand-holding I can point groups in the correct direction I can help with some research questions but I'm not gonna sit there and write the grant for you if that's a good way to demarcate it part of the part of it is gonna be the there's data the department has what of that data is available to CUDs and is there mechanisms for CUDs to get in get access to data the public doesn't have access to I will let you know when I have an answer to that question it's an ongoing discussion a lot of much of the data that we have is covered by non-disclosure statements where we're not allowed to reveal the provider's name or was provided under a condition that we don't just hand it over I am in the early stages of conversations to see what we can do to strip away any information that would be protected from that to provide CUDs and really just the public more information on what's available like currently on the website there are other PDF versions of the coverage maps well why can't that be interactive we really zoom in and see what the coverage is in an area we are gonna be publishing new cable maps for the cable layer and the fiber layer that should be happening relatively soon we just finished our the 2019 update of the broadband availability it's up on the it's up on the website now if you haven't checked it out we read it that page and that's with better data from the providers we're happy to say the five the version of the 401 map was finally put in PDF format and is up there today so if you want feel free to take a look but in terms of the other larger data questions and making it available like personally I'm a firm believer in that she gives much data out there as possible but we are the state government and sometimes to acquire that data have to make agreements to to limit it do you have in place any checks to confirm that the data that's being provided to you is in fact accurate the reason behind my question is when I look at some of the maps at the town of Elmore I know there's nothing where the little red dots appear so I mean I as was said by a very famous politician years before you were born trust so nothing in terms of structures or nothing in terms of coverage both both well the database of premises comes from the E 9 1 1 database in terms of the data it does come from the providers and we do know that the data that was provided from that's after consolidated this year is quite a bit better so I encourage you to check the new map and see if that's still the problem if not do send me an email and I'll forward it to who made the map and I'll use whatever data is provided I've always found that in the interest of science and running a business you want to get a tie point or two to prove that what you're receiving from the various feeder organizations is in fact correct we are more confident about your check issue they'll make sure to make the data going on a much higher integrity I think that's why the data integrity increased this year there's still there's still certainly there's always going to be problems and that's for that reason point trust but verify and it works so and that's and that's one of the reasons why we don't have wireless we aren't showing wireless data on the map because we can't have the various providers can't tell us what the actual coverage is at a certain location at a certain speed I don't believe we do know I don't believe it is on there feel free to check and prove me wrong right now these broad band of maps you go to the public service department website and the left hand column you'll see it as one of the one of the menu options and I'll show the new maps we also included it this year in the interest of making the data more available rather than just having a PDF of the spreadsheet the actual spreadsheets are there so you can you can do what you want with the data as opposed to having to type it all over again baby steps so if something you're just going to hang out listen to certainly I'm willing to take additional questions I also have I know there's been a request for the drive test data for mobile wireless Corey is working on that ideally that'll be available within the next few weeks that's one message I've been told to tend that that the request was made to the Regional Planning Commission for for that data isn't it already available it's available not in the form there's some updates that need to be added to it for the drive test data so communications committee I'm assuming okay okay this is Chuck and we didn't have a meeting two weeks ago unfortunately because we did not hit forum and as a result of that I have some things that are not yet sort of approved at the committee level that I want to talk about tonight anyway because we need to get moving on and so we did have Jeremy David myself we did a little working session they provided some feedback on the plans I put together I was kind of hoping to get the plans up on on a wall for you but that tech didn't work out so I'm just going to talk through it and you can inundate questions as I talked about it as part of this I have assembled an overall vision for the communication strategy for board and how we operate through various mediums and channels that we are going to be communicating through I'm not going to go into that into a ton of detail right now because more important is a campaign for a loan and gift outreach plan that we need to start moving on implementing as quickly as we possibly can to that ends I'm going to be passing around a sign-up sheet I'm looking for volunteers to help with certain aspects of it you know the more we spread out some of this work hopefully we can get it done I'm hoping everybody will sign up for at least one thing if you can't you can't but it would be very very helpful if you could and besides doing a number of them I will also be coordinating all of them and and helping make sure there is integration between the people who are working on separate elements in order to execute a loan and gift outreach campaign what we are envisioning we will need to do is reach out to the public through numerous channels the first channel is by emails this is this will be to the survey opt-ins to provide details on how to invest I would envision that we hit the public somewhere in the ballpark of three four five times over the course the next few months the truth of inboxes is that whatever is in top gets priority so it's really important to do that repeat messaging the next channel will be owned socials that is our Twitter accounts are Facebook account and there will be advertising the loans are available and requested and will provide some great interest rates to drive to the website for more detail which brings me to the website the website needs to have a little bit of content explaining the loans and gifts the terms of them how to go about to do them and of course a call to action to get started and enter some kind of flow to actually get the process going that process needs to be designed what actually happens if someone raises their hand and says yes I'm interested so we need to figure out that set of communication aspects offline so I'm envisioning would have some flyers for bulletin boards libraries town offices schools etc one kind of standard format that you know you can re-op and print anytime you think it needs to go back out to the communities front porch forum plugs from the delegates so again we'll have a single template that you can modify as you see fit to personalize it but will minimize the burden of everyone having to write their own similar to front porch forum if there are other community specific channels that are not as broad as front porch forum I know certain towns have their own little newsletters and and online forums and things of that nature so those sorts of things will require very similar content and then I'm actually proposing that we do a little bit of advertising by page channels likely page social and paid search but perhaps also display advertising and targeting depending on how well the early indicators around paid social and paid search occur and to that ends I am going to be making a motion around budget but we'll get to that in a moment the messaging pillars what we're actually going to try to communicate to the community are that loans will be relatively high interest in the grand scheme of things because there is a decent amount of risk here gifts are always welcome and are tax deductible and obviously the underlying message of supporting your local economy by helping bring Vermont up to speed so the next steps the things we actually have to accomplish we have to finalize the legal details and process for loans I believe Jeremy is already working on that we need to set up the ability to actually measure advertising if we do go out with paid advertising we need to author the supporting website materials we need to create the actual flow for where somebody when they are interested figures out what they do to get interested and get more information and actually begin the process bonus if they can be done through little green light but anyway we actually have to write these emails we have to send the emails we have to put together the social blurbs which just requires kind of writing some of the social blurbs but bonus if there's anybody here who knows how to do design work and kind of make it look nice because social is a very visual platform the plugs for front porch forum and other communities visit channels a flyer the paid campaigns if we prove paid tonight and then if again we approve paid tonight paid requires ongoing monitoring and optimization to ensure that you're getting the best cost for lead as possible so this is going to go around feel free to put your name anywhere that you think you could provide value and provide help the community communications committee would be very grateful for the assistance obviously we'll be doing a lot of this work as well which leads me to my next topic we need at least one new member on the communications committee we had someone stepped down already and I would like to point out that we do need attendance when when you know people have signed up for the committee because it's important work and we have a lot of work to do in the coming months to try to get these loans and gifts off the ground and there is a dialing so don't think you necessarily have to come in person I know that can be a barrier sometimes there's a Google meet on the agenda every time you can just join the Google meet if you want to join the committee meeting so before we get to the budget side of things I would like to see if there's anybody who would be interested in volunteering to join as an official member of the committee crickets crickets okay when are you meeting we are meeting immediately following business development committee meetings fourth Tuesday fourth Tuesdays that's right and we are that's it the hunger mountain community hunger mountain co-op community okay so you give dinner you can it's approximately what time the meeting starting there's usually wraps around 6 45 so we're starting right around there and they're generally going about 45 minutes okay well I am going to move on since there aren't loads of people raising their hands so in thinking about our advertising budget we did put together a $5,000 advertising budget for this calendar year and in terms of advertising I see two important activities that we will be conducting for community outreach do you want me to just under the last day in trying to find somebody you may want to send something out to the larger group a lot of typically alternates yeah show up to every meeting can alternate sort of that capacity yeah yeah people can say okay so yeah we have a $5,000 budget for the calendar year and there are two activities that I think we'll be doing the vast majority of our outreach one being in loan and gift outreach the other being as we have geographic region prioritized as a place we will potentially implement first we need to start drumming up more community excitement about that at that point in time as well as starting a pre-subscription campaign yes this is a great if you could give me like the one paragraph plea for help I think more than happy to push it hard I think it's a great I really really care about this this is instead of writing letters the PSP about I was actually not aware that you could not be a board member and serve on a committee like that so that that's you know I can't take anything on right yep I can do that okay so again the two campaigns that I think will support having spend the loan and gift outreach which we want to start immediately for that that sign-up sheet and then the later after the feasibility study and where we've identified a rollout strategy service launch advanced notice and pre-subscription campaign to try to start the pre-subscription ball bowl at this point time it seems to me like it would make sense to spread the money out probably about $3,000 for the loan and gift outreach campaign and $2,000 for the service launch advance notice and pre-subscription campaign where we further spread it loan and gift outreach probably about $1,500 over the course of the next quarter further $1,500 over the following quarter with $2,000 around about the Q3 Q4 timeline we're ready to start drawing up that advance notice and presubscriptions we of course adjust those time horizons as as possible so to that end I would like to make a motion that the board approve the communications committee to spend up to $1,500 for advertising loan and gift outreach campaign materials which will include copy and imagery talking about the campaign pointing back to the website and trying to drive people to raise their hand and say hey I'm interested in that and hopefully we can do it in a way that doesn't require approving each spend because the way these advertising platforms work you end up spending like 50 cents a day and that would be that would be troublesome so if we could sort of pre-approved that spending to actually occur as well that would be beneficial is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Questions? Jeremy do you know the answer to that? Jeremy? The question is how much money do we actually have cash yeah okay we're solving thank you other questions so how did you come up with the $1,500 what are we buying actually pamphlets and also buying design? The vast majority of it would be online ads. The pamphlets I'm proposing that we try to design them ourselves so there'll be some printing costs associated with that if people want to get reimbursed for printing them for their communities but I am proposing that we try to keep this as scrappy as possible and really just spend for the actual advertising placements themselves and where is that? I'm thinking social media search and some amount of display advertising online we could explore some offline channels but online is a lot easier to hold the levers on in terms of your spend. So does it matter that I haven't a clue as to what you're talking about? Yes yes so do you think that might be a considerable portion of the population out there that's not aware of what you're talking about? That is certainly possible. So how do you get them to go there or is there an alternate? Well let me ask you this do you search on Google? I do not. Okay do you use a search engine? No. Use DuckDuckGo. Good for you. Me too. I've never actually tried advertising on DuckDuckGo so I don't know how effective it is but we are the minority most people use Google and so I would I would go to Google. Have you ever heard of DuckDuckGo? It's awesome. You can also just go to ddg.gg. DuckDuckGo.com. It's awesome. You can make it be your search engine. I'm doing that right now. So so you pay Google every time an ad comes up when people search for what? So what would people be searching for that they would find us? Google is based there's two different ways you can do Google advertising well there's more than that there's two predominant ways that we would focus on doing Google advertising one is an auction model on keywords where you bid on something someone searches in our case it would be key phrases like central Vermont internet providers or central you know fiber in Vermont or how do I make my internet faster but where their location when they make the search is in central Vermont so there there are levers like that that you can pull to then have a search ad show up next to the regular results in the other way you can advertise using Google is what what's referred to as their display network which is the banner type images you see on various other websites as you're browsing around and what they do is they use data such as your location and your search history and what the content of the page is talking about to try to figure out if you're a good target for that and this is all you know their big engine that makes them a ridiculous amount of money and so it's a very effective mechanism generally speaking on the search side of things you can expect to you don't pay based on how many people view it you pay based on how many people actually click it a cost per click model and generally speaking cost per clicks can be anywhere from $2 to $10 per click depending on how competitive it is that the particular keyword space you're working on some some biomedical ones are upwards of $40 a click but they're they're a little more rare so are we paying $2 or $10 it's an auction you don't you don't know until you get in there and do that and that that when I mentioned you came up with $1,500 so you must have some the $1,500 is the the upfront budget we wouldn't spend that right off of that what we would do is we go in and design the campaigns that say hey let's target you know these keywords you know maybe spend a $15-$20 budget for a particular keyword so see how many people see it how many people search for it how many people click on it and then most importantly of the people click on it how many of them actually raise their hand and say yeah I'm interested in doing this because if nobody does that then it's a useless keyword to continue spending money on and and so it's impossible to know exactly how that $1,500 would be spent in advance of getting in there and starting to pull the levers which takes some ongoing management which is the last item mentioned on the sign-up sheet jumping here to we have $5,000 in the budget for that I know that I know the budget that we didn't really know what that $5,000 of score but we were really thinking about the necessity of that other questions comments it could be that would definitely be a channel worth investigating a little bit especially for certain communities Shavanna we were talking about earlier comparing orange versus more town in terms of their front porch involvement apparently orange is not so much and more town is hugely on front porch so you know we'll probably have to figure out what communities are going to be potentially good fit for and do a little bit of experimentation. So you're talking about the management I'm assuming then I mean you've got to be looking at the analytics frequently and adjusting depending upon what they're telling you so as we get towards the end if in fact the $1,500 spend is approved as we get toward the end you're gonna have a lot of data and before we move on to the next piece come back and talk to us about how successful or how we ought to change and in fact I think it would be warranted to do a checkpoint halfway through and and make sure everybody is comfortable with what early indicators we have with the first half of that money we could certainly even split the budget and approve it in steps if further steps if we wanted to but you know that's more to do later right and we do have a motion on the on the table with a second so we'll call the question a minute but I just had one idea and one question the first idea is sincere you are a cb-fiber is a non-profit well you've scored a google ad work rights you have a plan they're pretty easy to get okay you have to have a plan that's with google for non-profits the second thing is messaging during this time that we're in at the moment telehealth and distance learning might be good keywords to try to yeah yeah we've thought about that already as well so as well as some nice letters to the local health care industry I think we've been channeled a little bit with our qualifications of non-profit okay yeah because we are not a non-profit we're governmental so so I looked into this already in the context of trying to get us on google sorry g-suite now yeah and there you have to actually be a 501 3c and in order to qualify municipalities don't qualify but whether the ad word grants fall into that as well I haven't looked into that I'm not sure you mentioned that you collect tax deductible donations though yeah is that just by being a municipal organization thank you because I said I'm here to learn from you too okay you're ready for the question yeah yeah one little more discussion and that is this is in the budget for five thousand dollars yeah what is our motion it's a motion is to start with 1500 to use over the course of the next couple of months to start the experimentation process and because in in online marketing in particular you don't know what you are going to discover drives people to act until you do a little bit of experimentation started dialing in the the performing items because everything just say it's the first 1500 targeted for online marketing purposes or is it well I did I did want to use some of that to reimburse printing costs on flyers and things of that nature for people but uh if we want to be more specific we I could break it down more but to me this gets to it's not clear from my understanding of the budget that this isn't necessary okay then I appreciate the information and then doing this that's great now I would just okay okay but and I'm you know we don't hope that's fine but I'm just not clear that you didn't have the authority to use a portion of your five thousand dollars especially after reporting what you're going to do with it but I'm still following through I mean I was sort of fated motion yeah Bob yeah I uh I'm initially comfortable with the amount of 1500 dollars I am however uncomfortable with the lack of specific specificity of the areas that you might explore I'm not necessarily suggesting that you have to come up with accurate ratios for how much money you're going to spend but a blank check for 1500 without some expectation of what we're going to get is very uncomfortable so I did uh if motion could be amended to some extent to say that the 1500 dollars is approved in principle pending a statement of the areas that you intend to explore without specifically citing how much we would then be able to measure progress of your efforts against each of those areas in subsequent meetings and I'm a I'm a great believer in progress measurement so it's not a motion to amend yes yes and I would maybe I'm in my contrary mode I would ask you not do that because just for the reason we're not going to micromanage ever we have a committee that I would very much hope they report to us this is their this is where they are now and as they move forward we always ask so how was your progress towards the sorts of targets you made but rather than dictate every committee's actions I didn't excuse me but I didn't dictate anything I said areas of investigation I didn't say how much to spend for any specificity but so the amendment said pending them reporting back to us and I would rather not have them have to report back to us in order to spend money how do we measure progress for our investment they will do that I mean well again that's the committee's role is to determine what their specific goals are as they take specific strategies what do we think we're going to accomplish and they're just getting started and so I really want to share that with us that meets that fulfills the concerns that I have now just a point of order so we have a motion to amend we haven't had a second yet right so let's see if we have a second and then we'll open it up for discussion and see where that goes anyone willing to second to move this to discussion so it looks like the motion fails for a lack of a second so we're back to the original motion um and you're of course challenging the idea that a motion isn't but I I'm still suggesting we move forward with the motion okay participate just as we as we progress through committee work and in the future that every action of a committee doesn't necessarily need a motion for that committee just one thing to address your concern what the communications committee will absolutely bring back is performance data on that spend so for the dollars spent what channels were they spent in and how many impressions did they have how many leads did they drive and that closes the loop that's great that closes the loop yeah I was planning on doing that anyway but just want to call out that is but then you you would have prevented my opportunity to be a moose that's no fun Michael being a no-sense I just want I want to reinforce what Ken said I think each committee is charged to do work so the board doesn't have to do that work it's responsible each committee is responsible to the board needs to report on what work it's doing but those who want to track closely the details of committee work are always welcome to attend committee meetings or read the committee minutes and ask questions and the board of the committee chairs when they make reports and just another call out that we do have a call in for the communications committee so if you don't feel you can make it in purpose you're in person you're more than welcome to that listen and participate I think again before I call the question just make one comment that you know I agree with the idea that when when we have a budget and we're a lot more familiar with that budget and how we're actually going to operate and what tasks I mean we'll well we know what tasks are falling to committees but I think this is still very new to us so I think the idea of a committee coming at least at this point and asking for permission to spend some money is at least civil and we're going to we're going to be able to determine more about how to function so I think that and that you're right that's where we want to be eventually is being able to say you're empowered to take care of these functions you have a certain amount of money in your budget but for right now I think it gives all of us more of a sense of what that committee is doing what they intend to do and then as you said the report back closing the loop we spent some money this is what we got for it or didn't get we've got some recommendations to do something else so to shivan's point it's more than just civil at a certain price point it's required yes you're right okay are you ready for the question now all those in favor please say aye those opposed motion passes thank you so other than one more plea to consider joining the communications committee because we have a lot of work ahead of us I will pass it on again chair I go ahead I was sorry yeah let me just make again another comment in terms of committee members I had asked about the dates because if I've got a look at my schedule Tuesdays they're not great dates for me but if it looks like it might be possible I would be interested in joining the committee also I'll just be in touch one on one that's great about that thank you okay so we're now to business development committee I'm assuming this is your item David yeah I sent out an email yesterday with a sort of a brief summary of what we've been up to trying to do some of our accomplishments but I can summarize how many people saw my email and read it so I'd prefer to get take questions on it rather than summarizing it but it's been really quite a busy time for the committee especially those that have been doing field work with a consultant and if I did not go on out in the field with the consultant that several members did and then they met with the committee just one just you okay Michael went out with them but that evening they came to the business development committee meeting and we had good attendance and they gave sort of an update and a summary of what they found in the field and what kind of progress they think they were making and then we had a phone a project team phone call with them last Friday so we're still trying to keep in contact with them every two weeks and I can report that they're making I think decent progress although I mean it is March the first week of March we're getting towards one of the feasibility studies going to have to be done and they're they are working through the areas based on the criteria that we sort of sent out I sent out the Jeremy there's sort of a consensus criteria that Jerry Bamedi's sort of put together and we wanted to make sure that if there's something on this list of criteria that you think should be the more emphasized or less emphasized or there's something missing that you think that it go into how interisal is you know assessing the service areas that they're coming up with we should know Michael I don't want to think to add to that I don't know how many people read that little file of the criteria that's important because it's going to lead to selection of a particular set of towns or a town or a piece of it and so that was one of the questions I had we assume this is town-based or just well how do we get the most subscribers for the best it's not it's going to be amorphous areas that include portions of possible towns but I can't predict what it'll be but those are the criteria so anyhow it's really important for everyone to understand that now that of course we all want our own towns and we all have our own ideas but we've hired these people to choose for us which is proposed for us to approve the one thing I think that's missing is the key assumption that goes at the top of the list and that is because of the department of public services requirement and it's a big program that we have to be cash flow positive within three years that's a very important and very limiting criteria very long and so that's important to understand the context of the other things on the list I would have a dialogue in that I mean that's what the grant says should we ask into our help to give us a three year and a five year return I got that's the next step so I think the feasibility I think we all need to know that that's where this has to go for us ever to move forward in instruction but the identification of areas to do further work on that's what we're going to be charging them to do when they bring the feasibility work to us we'll say okay go forth here here and here and then bring us back to financials that allow us to meet that target of being cash flow positive so yeah we're aiming towards that but we're not going to ask them to prove it on the first pass that's the second pass right okay I think we should kind of ask them but we can we can let them off well but no I guess the business plan part really attach some of the revenue numbers yeah I think it's this I I think that's the second part well I know that every time we talk to them sorry well we just have another question Jeremy no it's fine I mean it seems to me that we might not be able to get you know part of the fast numbers and we can like give to a bank and here's our business plan give us money but we should be able to get you know and I think that we need to get some idea of which areas are going to be the most financially viable areas and we need to do that before we write the business plan because if we spend all our money going after some area that maybe isn't most financially secure then maybe that puts us at a disadvantage later on and I mean yes I want Lanefield and my house in particular be built first that said I was over that I would prefer to have this whole thing work out in the long term and I don't want to prioritize an area that's you know the initial go around they're going to do a pretty significant job and cost and revenue forecasting right the business plan to get a little more detail is my understanding but so far you know I the thing I question I raise I don't know how rigid that three-year thing is going to be anyway we think that we're pretty pleased so far with what they've been doing with them and telling us and the technology they got into lots of different things that you know hopefully in the feasibility study you'll see a lot of this coming out um if there's any other suggestions for the criteria I'd certainly welcome them before because they're getting down to the nub right now I mean they're they've gone through a couple iterations and they're probably finalizing it this week one of the most critical tools that we would use in evaluating a new business opportunity is the use of what we call cumulative cash flow curves and you build those from day one which basically shows a bathtub you go net negative because you're using other people's money you start to drive derive revenue and your revenue positive but you haven't paid back your lenders or your shareholders I would highly recommend built into the rollout selection process would be the discipline of cumulative cash flow curves because this this has been one of the most successful ways of predicting well in advance whether a new business development is going to succeed or fail anything else uh that's on the um the criteria the other thing that I bring into your attention in my note yesterday was um you know Mike as Steve has gone I believe right um but Greg and and um Michael and Intra I was going to meet with work hopefully this week I don't know next week probably going to be a teleconference so yeah teleconference is fine maybe next week because we need to I've had conversations with parties from work and parties from Interile and they're not ready to meet together yet okay so we have to clarify some things so that the meeting so I would hope if not at the end of this week it'll be next week the uh the other I mean in my note talks about progress with Delco and where but the next thing that the committee spent some time with and Ken has been leading us to the most part by next meeting we should have a serious or an action plan and timeframe for all the different things we need to do once we get into our house plan in terms of action items and stuff so hopefully we'll get that out to everybody before our next board meeting but I think we're as much as we're on a roll with communications we're on a roll with with what we're going to have to do to carry out what Interile comes up with that sort of and I didn't hear back from anybody on the offer they made for producing these little updates based on the survey but I'm going to do the the data part of it if you want to write the the the town name the percentages that we reflect on that what's your intention on getting those distributed to the town I'm going to put well that's a good question whether these go on individually onto the web page is that what we talked about we had talked about publishing them out on the web page maybe doing a post per town or something like that so each town has their own individual standing and then whether you want to print copies to have sitting at your town clerk's office or something like that uh up to you I think and in the full survey as well we do on the web uh you and Ray we're going to make a proposal about which data items we wanted to keep confidential and put that together yeah you have yeah cool um I can run that by everybody again um but anyway that was um I guess lastly since it affected me I I put out something at town meeting I don't know how many else put stuff out at town meeting um I didn't get any responses to what I put on the table at town meeting but I didn't get a comment on the report in the town report that it's not enough people want to know more and so including how much is the interest rate on the loans but it's not half anyway uh um it's sort of my report I don't know if anybody else I just I got 20 surveys from the town clerk that she's been sitting on and Jeremy did so how do you put them in no is the site still up that's my question okay I would you check with Jeremy because he thinks he entered a bunch in from the town clerk Jeremy did you did you what orange town clerk survey forms did you enter them they only say mail them to me I don't okay yeah I got 20 from the clerk in the mail yesterday okay I just wanted to we have 18 towns I just wanted to tell you what the field trip comprised we visited 10 of the 18 towns drove lots of roads yeah visited six sub-state velcro substations rec rec slash velcro substations um and um and saw tower sites as well so that in addition to um I was over a two-day period and in addition to attending the um just development committee meeting so um I think we got a lot of mileage out of those guys for those two days good great okay I'm just gonna work kind of done the report out of the survey results should this run through the communications committee to have some sort of we're gonna be saying something to the public yes yes should be saying something in there about like and here's something you can do to help and that's that's okay um opportunity with cv edc and what northern borders is that yours or who's uh um past he approached me and said um that they would be willing to be the non-profit fiscal agent for this for our grant request to do that now I don't um for that is a cv edc maybe willing to help us with the student I have not responded to him I wanted to get the pulse of the uh the board before we move forward with with anything in that direction okay could you repeat what I um which which grant is he talking about northern borders northern border and that was with cv edc is that correct Jeremy yeah it was the northern northern border grant yeah okay this put contact craftsman received a quarter million dollars from northern border to do there yeah sorry about that it's our uh low tech approach to uh a conference call um something maybe we need to figure out a little bit better but um shaman this is shaman I just was the only woman in the room this is uh I just wanted to say that if they are willing to help write grants I'm like yeah there's no strings on that like you know we have to sell things for them I don't know kind of strange that it happens big so yeah big sales yeah we'll do a big sale um then yeah I I would like to know more information about that for sure because if they're willing to help with that okay yeah everybody's kind of nodding their head so it looks like okay so pursue it yeah so I should just go ahead and talk to Jamie and see what the parameters of this are yeah okay okay we so this this may require us to um um put in a letter authorization from the board to the March 31st and moved and seconded been moved and seconded any other discussion all those in favor hi hi any opposed no you've got board approval super thanks everybody cool looks like Jonathan I think so it's it's tough Jeremy while we have you on the line why don't we move on to that the clerk position discussion that you wanted to yes please um as a delegate we're reorienting herself in the amount of time she's volunteering and she found that I will be picking that up we're on back in town probably if we're talking about thank you we add my dad in the paper again add in the paper on um Michael I want to be forward um hit start I'll do it okay we're at the track yeah possibly separating the clerk and the recording secretary functions might make that a little easier and again idea that maybe we could one of the things in our timeline is that at some point I don't know what the name of the position is but we're going to need a manager yeah and we're getting pretty close um so yeah we've got to get through these couple months but we've got to really think about what specific um responsibilities we want to have someone that dedicates a significant amount of their time to so we can get to these multi-billion dollar projects it's a little undervolunteer action great yeah I think it's good well I think that was what Susan was trying to say actually last last time we were meeting that we should be spending money getting good people rather than not spending money and having volunteers I think that's your point yeah I mean we've met a couple of managers that have come and spoken to us and they're getting paid you know yeah so they perform volunteers some of us don't even come to the meeting so you know I think if you pay people they'll be here don't we already have a line item for uh stipend didn't we make that decision at some point we did but remember last last time we were here we got it all all upset about whether we were going to give Susan what was it $2,500 yeah it didn't really go anywhere as I recall right yeah just ended up being well looked at the table isn't that right Jeremy can you hear me it's John Russell yeah yeah we we did we did put it money into the budget for a first um and we did and we were going to talk about um a stipend for the for the Charter I'm sorry for the clerk um and that ended up not not happening I mean I didn't end up talking to Susan about that but you know what does it look like a couple hundred dollars a month just you know cover costs and gas and whatever um but yeah I mean we'll see why we couldn't I think we should do more than Jeremy I John Russell again I think we should put some effort into it again we we put in ads we got some people to respond to them we we weren't really happy with them we offered the job to one person who turned it down um so I think we should try again and make it be a more explicit ad that this is what we're looking for long term not short term people that did respond and they'll be you know we managed to turn up with our advertising one um one of them said no responded messages after I contacted them yeah um and then Susan you know in the that she would do it but that you did yeah you know is this is this something that makes sense um and to piggyback with uh your efforts Chuck or do you think this needs to be handled separately in terms of advertising to reach someone to try to find yeah yeah I mean I mean if you know for if we're going out and contacting people and if they want to help and maybe they you know maybe they don't have the ability to put um you know put their money into it or pre-subscriber all doing here you know whether we've you're doing valuable and necessary and even when we're not be back this on asking people who want to contribute money in some form let let let's let the communications committee have a chance to uh come back with a proposal on that uh but I do think that makes a ton of sense to align those because they're both messages we need to get out to the public uh and they're asking for different things we just need to figure out how we balance them um and and prioritize where we talk about which and why um so Jeremy uh I think it does make sense I think your proposal is sound uh we'll get back to you on that if that's okay okay yeah that would be fine Mike Michael um there there are quite a few of us volunteer board members who are putting in two three hours a week as it is I'm not suggesting any of us should be paid a stipend with our volunteer members um if we can't find the secretary we need to pay them support that um but speaking to uh the idea of a general manager or an executive director we definitely are going to need one um but we don't we don't hire one first and then find out how to pay for them afterwards we we have some money in the bank but we can't afford to spend it on a salary at this point yeah so I think we should be working towards that by the time we have a project we want somebody to oversee whoever's what contractors are doing it or what operator or consultants are running it we do need somebody um so that should come from either revenue or from grants we might be able to apply for a grant that would create a position sir obviously one question I put out there is a few months ago there was a question about whether cubs wanted to host an americorps volunteer I didn't know if anything happened with that yeah we discussed it right and I think wasn't no there was a problem yeah and we needed to have a very specific project for that person to work on and I think the feeling at that time was that we we didn't we didn't have something that we could identify right now maybe down the road we'd have to supervise them and we have to supervise them is that what you were going to say no and the third thing is it couldn't replace something we were already going to do and possibly pay for it right to be an extra an extra thing yeah so it was kind of tricky yeah right someone else oh tom yeah um what's the urgency on this I think last time we did this we had to have board approval to start advertising for positions there's urgency we'd like to have somebody in the next month or two if you want to go ahead and give that permission here tonight yes yeah we I wrote up the I wrote up descriptions for this the treasurer some of everybody did come up unfortunately so yeah so I remember you wrote that and maybe we want to look at it again and see yeah there's a little tweaking because we didn't really get great people we did get one person we wanted to do it and they said no but we got like three responses to the clerk and we got right and so that was great did did we get any feedback about why interests tailed off on the position of the clerk after we received the applications or offered someone the position was was the money not right was something about the position that was still volunteer it was volunteer oh yeah got it yeah and um let me yeah I'm totally at the email from um yeah I'm not sure how to word it though giving the communications committee the ability to go ahead and start doing something or except these things like oh here is the document that we would like to have is it just good enough to say yeah we give you permission to go find someone let's just do it quick and I make a motion that Andy review the copy that you previously did and and just send the players that it's just fine and that enhance that to the communication he's on the communications oh and I'll be in the communications committee follows up on what it said it was going to do well as a member of the community and by next meeting has a plan to advertise for these vacancies I'll just go ahead and advertise yeah friendly amendments to move forward to the advertisement with the hoped outcome on next meeting without their candidates for us to select beautiful my search for clerk second okay I'm a motion in a second I found it call it he's found that so he's half done already any other discussion comments I don't really take the motion restate the motion uh Michael yes will you restate your motion we're going to do everything I can't hear Michael yes just anybody so yeah what Michael basically says we're going to do everything we did last time and we're proving it now and we're proving it yes right now so the motion is that the communications committee is tasked with coming up with the advertising and advertising and getting us applicants by the next meeting I'd like to actually read you the proposed message we're going to put on front porch for them you just copy that into the minutes and we can pretend he said it our town town name here is a member of cb fiber cb fiber currently includes 18 communities we will have to update that organized together to bring high speaking or height we can send it around again so let chuck and I review it we'll send it around everybody don't even bother to send it as we sent it to everybody you have to put it all right chuck and I will get this out by tomorrow okay so a friendly amendment can we put it in the world and can we put it into bt digger and can we put it into the times argus those are the three maybe there's something that's Randolph as a paper yeah I haven't looked at pricing on those so I guess that comes back to a budgetary question I'll pay for the one in the times argus and in the world how's that okay generous donation yeah thank you there's an amendment and a second discussion about the amendment okay all those in favor all right posed okay the motion for the amendment passes shall we hear that you go back and and uh vote on the original question okay all those in favor opposed motion passage so there the marching orders and we'll see what happens okay moving on gary osby so that'll be free ongoing discussion about the 2020 timeline was was there something specific you were thinking about here jeremy or just following up from discussions we've had over the past couple yeah it was really about the continuing the previous discussion to make sure that there weren't any we said to me there was the there was the list the list if I just wanted to make sure that there's if there's anything still that we need to look at already being tasked with somebody that we make sure that we we do this in the discussion right now I think for the next meeting we'll have a much more explicit list of the tasks that will need to be accomplished to move forward but we wanted to wait for the feasibility study to help tee up a lot of that because it doesn't it was lacking context absent that but I do think that's our the business committee's goal is to have a pretty concrete set of responsibilities actions and put it on some kind of timeline so we can see where this is going okay anybody want to add any more to that when is the expected time period for the feasibility study to be delivered three weeks three weeks from now so at the next meeting we need to be making decisions based on that or is it more just some some decisions that's what I'm saying we need to pass out the email or something like there's what's going to be decided kind of ready to make it okay well you know David did a pretty good job yeah this previous email that's a good job any any more on 2020 timeline it's sounding like we're kind of in a holding pattern right now until we see the feasibility study and then other things will be determined once we get a clear picture what's possible or what's feasible okay are you raising so that brings us pretty much down to the end for tonight and we'll do a quick round table and um be out of here early join us start off I'm starting I'm Jonathan right now this was a note from Jonathan hey folks sorry I hopped off the conversation was unintelligible for some reason the quality degraded significantly over the course of the call maybe we can invest in some teleconferencing technology for future meetings especially with the adventure of the coronavirus advent thank you so I told him I passed that around on the round table and for myself I just wanted to say I liked the inter-io people I felt very comfortable with how they were talking about things and the information they were giving us and so I was really happy about meeting them and that they went off the road in orange just tickled me for some reason I'm good I'm really glad that the department sent somebody today and I think the biggest message to take back is that the three-year obligation yeah it's a it's a technique I I've sent something to David that he can do with it I basically taught of course it's slowed on cumulative cash flows as a management technique so you know how when they do when they when they propose slashing social security they talk about finding new color for those we want to find different so that it's achievable well cumulative cash flow varies to a great extent based upon the difficulty of the technology you're trying to develop and the rate of customer access acceptance and deployment and so the curve is different for every project and that's the way you want to present it to your major investors so that you can begin to set the expectation for return on investment because at the end of the day if they don't have a reasonable expectation you're not going to get in their wallet good point I haven't touched a video game since college because it gets so much of my time yeah but I just got gifted a new online video gaming system so if we can speed this up Alan a modern man I just was really struck today by the number of news items I was reading about businesses but especially schools who are going to be closing fit their physical campus and they're going to have kids do virtual learning I mean for some kid who goes to pick your college and returns home to wherever in one of our towns you don't have high-speed internet you could be you would really be a disadvantaged person in the next several weeks if not months so I think it's a it's an interesting case for why this stuff is important I encourage you to make that case to the media and to your legislators and anybody who'll listen and I will second that my to the call from my son his college just was closed fortunately I'm in Montpelier he'll have high-speed internet but I did the same thing what about the kids that are living out in the country you know we bail out for tuition and they're not be able to access it one other topic though the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint and they promise to spend 15 billion dollars in rural America to strengthen 4g and ultimately 5g connectivity and in my work for the state one of the things I'm also recognized maybe we all know this the proportion of money that people are spending on fixed internet service compared to what fixed internet service plus mobile communication is is shifting to mobile and with the expansion of 4g and 5g that shift is going to even continue further and to me that has two implications one is understanding our business model and where we might have some challenges in terms of getting long-term customers but also and I've raised this before I know it's challenging but also the extent that we install fiber fiber is going to be necessary to hook up every one of these 4g and 5g transmitter stations so is there an overlap between the work that we do in terms of installing fiber and the expansion of the mobile wireless communications I think we're really going to keep need to keep our eyes and ears tuned to that topic over the next couple of years to that point we should begin to think seriously about deploying both technologies particularly in Vermont where line of sight transmission gets interference I mean I see an LRIC a look at in a number of other communities where you might have the best way of delivering the service to bring a pipeline in to a bunch of towers and then distribute it using RF we might want to consider whether our model is hardware fiber only or whether also includes radio frequency broadband we'll find out soon yeah either for you John I envision that model myself so we're going along with your point there's also Starlink so yeah right yeah that's shut down by the astronomers not going to happen he's got more money than they do that's for sure double ready projects American Recovery Act let's go now maybe this year okay thank you