 It is six o'clock, I'm Jeremy Hansen, the self-appointed acting chair for just a second longer, calling this meeting to order. First order of business is a reorganization and the election of the chair, vice chair, and the clerk, clerk and statute secretary and most other bodies for 2018 and 2019. Have any nominations for chair? I'd like to nominate Jeremy to our chair. Just a quick point now for a second. You're going to pass out, but you have no business, probably in people who know each other well, they're together, a lot of us have been position papers on different issues. And it was more than one dumb luck for one meeting to do this now, shut up. Kate, there is a nomination for chair. Are there any other nominations for chair? In order to conduct this, what I should yield the floor to someone else is somebody else wants to conduct. Can I raise a point of order? We haven't even done an introduction. So for many of us, we don't have any idea who has got what qualifications to be chair. And following Robert's rules of order is required by statute. Nominations come first, discussions come second. And Dan, you are to be seated there. Thank you. So that is, it is a good point. I, again, I am trying as well as possible to follow the rules as required by statute. Anybody who objects to me calling for the yeas and nays for chair, even though I am nominated, it's not to- I would call for the yeas and nays, so we don't have to worry about that. Thank you, Alan. All those in favor of Jeremy being chair, please say aye. What about the discussion? There could be discussion. Oh, yeah, there should be discussion. Absolutely, the discussion. I'd like to say that I believe that Jeremy is probably best suited as the chair since he's organized this whole thing. But I take the point that was raised earlier to have some validity. It would be good for us all to get to know each other and our qualifications. And perhaps we could amend, I don't know if this proper to amend a nomination, but for the term period of maybe acting chair for two months while we get acquainted with each other and determine who might be the permanent chair. That makes a lot of sense to me. So, Mr. Whitaker, technically, you're not a member of the board at present. So I'm amenable to any change if anybody's interested in that. It's out of order according to Robert's rules according to statute, but I think Mr. Verbaugh has a point. Anybody object to make a motion to amend a nomination? I don't know if you can make a motion to amend the nomination. Do you have the statute in front of you? Can you tell us what exactly it says about the first meeting? I don't know, I look at the statute, it's very prescriptive as to how things get done. That would be helpful. Kind of weird if the state government tried to tell us what to do. Because we do want to make sure we do the right thing. And I don't want to see it super often on the wrong foot. Sure, annually on the second Tuesday in May, following the appointments contemplated in section 3059 of this chapter, the board shall hold its organizational meeting. At such meeting, the board shall elect from among its appointed representatives a chair and a vice chair, each of whom should hold office for one year and until his or her successor is duly elected. Yeah, so I think we're in that really strange problem zone that will never happen again because we've never organized. So we're not reorganizing. Most times these meetings when you elect officers and when you choose the day of the month and you're gonna need or all that stuff, this comes during your reorganization meeting and everything seems familiar and we all know what to do. And this is a completely new group of people. And I agree, I mean I don't know everybody here either. On the other hand, there's something weird about not being organized and still having a meeting even if the only business we're taking up is introducing each other. So that's why I think it's proper to go ahead and elect a chair. And I'm certainly happy voting for Jeremy just because of the amount of work he's done so far. And I think he's further ahead of all of this than any of the rest of us are either individually or probably collectively. Yeah. Maybe it'd be a good idea to go over what the responsibilities of the chair are. I think that may leave some of the concern. The chair runs the meetings. The chair is a member of the, what do they call it? The, is an officer of the district along with the vice chair and the clerk and the treasurer. The chair shall preside at meetings, dang it. The chair shall preside at all meetings of the board and shall make and sign all contracts on behalf of the district upon approval by the board. The chair shall perform all duties incident to the position and office as required by the general laws of the state. It would be like the chair of a select board. And I think there's no compensation involved, is that correct? It can be voted on later, but there's no compensation. There's no bank account, there's no money. And there's not even a treasurer who gets appointed. There is a treasurer. The treasurer may not be a member of the board, but that doesn't come into play until we have actual. Until we actually have business, okay. So there's just the chair, vice chair, and a clerk. Correct. And there's no secretary. The clerk is the secretary. The clerk is responsible for maintaining all of the documents, warning the meetings, much like a town clerk, that's why he's a clerk. Does the clerk have to be a member of the board? No. But can be? Can be. The clerk is not required to be a member of the governing board. The treasurer may not be a member of the board. Well, I think one of the things that's gonna have to get decided tonight is who's gonna be the legal counsel and who's gonna, well, there's obviously a need for legal counsel because we don't know whether we have the right under statute to have a provisional chair for a couple of months while we get to know each other and figure out who would lead a conflict of interest, policy, et cetera. It would be unfortunate to elect a chair for a 19-month period, 20-month period. No, it's one year. One year. A municipal attorney in residence who might be able to not give us quite legal advice. Mr. Barlow, any thoughts about this one way or the other? I mean, the statute does state that we're supposed to follow Robert's rules and such, but I suspect that given this is the first meeting, we have a bit of flexibility. I think we have some flexibility. I personally would like to perhaps have the opportunity to know who other folks are on the board. I don't think that we would have to worry that we're going to be violating some rule, some provision of Robert's rules that would invalidate what we're doing this evening. So I would welcome the opportunity for a little bit of introduction so I could get to know you all. Should we just go around the room and introduce ourselves? I think that would be perfect. I might also suggest that perhaps in the spirit of getting to know ourselves a little bit that we have this discussion about who we are and what we're interested in, just a little bit so that we can then say that a decision about the chair may feel a little more comfortable rather than saying that's the first order of business. We start with Chris and just go around. I'm Chris Riddell. I am a very city representative. I'm also a technology director for a small digital marketing firm called Stagecoach Digital in Burlington. We primarily handle strategy and execution on email marketing for large nonprofits, helping them raise money online. Prior to that, I was an IT administrator and chief information officer at Goddard College for eight years and I'm interested in a municipally run and owned internet provider, fiber provider. That's why I'm here. I think Barry City could really benefit. I think the whole county and region could and I'm excited. That said, I'm very recent to I'm on the board of civil authority in Barry City for a couple of years. I've just kind of appointed this board. I am not the resident parliamentarian and will defer to those who know or appear to know. Until I know better. Thanks. Thanks. I'm Jeremy Hansen from Berlin. I'm vice chair of the Berlin Select Board. I'm a computer science professor at Norwich University. I also did work in IT, IT security before I came to Norwich to work in academia. I'm interested in this because internet throughout Central Vermont, where it's not well wired. So outside of Barry City in Montpelier, Barry Town, it's pretty awful. I'd like to see that improve. I am Andrew Gilbert. I've about a 30 year veteran in working in the computer science software as a service cloud infrastructure world. Probably one of the more relevant highlights including a stint for eight years where I built a very large cloud based voice application platform that required fair amount of connectivity to function. I'm probably working for a small startup that actually does infrastructure support for tier two and tier three telecom companies. And I'm here just out of an economic development perspective for the town of Cabot. And your sign doesn't show. Yeah, because I'm not officially here yet. Oh, which county from? Cabot. Thank you. And I'm Bob Klein from East Montpelier. I'm currently retired, but for 30 years before this, I ran the Nature Conservancies, which is a non-profit, conservation non-profit program in Vermont. And as part of that, I was the representative from the field on the technology and information systems cabinet. So I have a lot to do with sort of TIS policy and computer systems for a large organization. And I'm interested in this because I had probably getting internet connection in East Montpelier and ever since that struggle, I've thought there must be a better way to do it. I'm Bob Burley from Elmore, Vermont native, US Air Force combat pilot. I had a corporate career that touched a number of aspects of corporate America, including manufacturing and finance, perhaps most relevant to this particular group of people is that I was the senior engineering manager in large systems development, research and engineering for digital equipment corporation, which actually invented cloud computing and a number of other things. So I had, I'm no stranger to big boxes and lots of wires. We're also involved in the internet development and it's nacing informative times, both from an architecture standpoint, as well as from a negotiation standpoint with the international countries that were interested in it. I date myself from the original ARPANET and the DARPANET for those of you who are internet geeks. And I retired some years ago as the chief operating executive of $40 billion a year division of Hewlett-Packard. I apologize, in my state of retirement, I had a promotion immediately following that. Six months later, I was promoted from retired to retarded. I'm an active commercial pilot and the former chair of the Elmore Solid Board. So I'm Jim Barlow. I am an attorney. I specialize in municipal law. My clients are primarily small and mid-sized municipalities around the state of Vermont. I work from my own home office, so I am a consumer of internet services. My wife also works from her home office as well and has done so for the last nearly 20 years. So I share the perspective of the end user of what we might be potentially providing to others someday. I'm representative from the town of Marshfield and is well from an economic development perspective from my town, so. Sorry, my name's Bill Hayek. I'm a middle-sex representative for the select board. I'm a former superintendent of schools, first in Bennington and then here in Washington Central. Full disclosure, I've worked with Alan Gilbert down at the end of the table who was my board chair for a few years. Following that work, I became the state of Vermont Educational Technology Director and served in that position for I think four or five years and then moved on to non-profit work where I became the director of technology initiatives for the Vermont Institutes, which probably was the Vermont Institute from Science, Math and Technology. I was involved with a lot of federal grant administration that I was the technology representative to Jim Jeffords office, did a lot of work with them. Probably the most technical thing I was involved with was that I developed, had built and managed a full motion video network that connected every high school in the state of Vermont and this was pre-internet days and we were trying to develop a distance learning platform. We were able to do that for a length of time until the internet became more or less robust enough and in some places they probably still wish they had the old system that we had. I'm now retired, but never really retired. Retired but I'm also a private practice consultant and I work with school districts around the state on E-Rate, which is a federal program funded by the FCC to provide subsidies for schools for telecommunication so internet being one of those things. I guess what brings me to this is first of all in middle sex where I live my own internet connectivity is terrible and since being on the select ward we've heard a lot from other people in town who feel that we really need something especially to drive economic growth within the town. The other piece has more to do with the work that I do having been very familiar with schools and their needs around internet for instruction. It's really very lacking and once you get outside of any kind of, well I hate to say urban environment it's just not there, so we're really not able to provide the kind of connectivity our schools need I think for our kids to really get first class education so I see the benefit of this kind of thing and helping support obviously all of our citizens but for me the schools is a big driving factor. So, thanks. Hi, I'm Dan Jones. I'm from Montpelier, they're representative. I'm, my work addresses the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition which is set up to try and build a model of environmental and economic sustainability within the city. My history and technology actually goes back to the time where I worked with the city of Boston on the cable franchising period and was their new technology expert so we got to put in, in essence, the first broadband packet switch network in a city on coax at the time and then worked with cable companies and cities for a number of years on that area. I then went off to do other things and found myself more in the area of social change, et cetera, I believe that having a local internet that has a certain amount of robustness and capacity for serving our local needs is probably crucial in the long term because the more we give way to the large corporations, the more we're going to be marginalized in terms of if things go wrong so I volunteered to be part of this as they basically seeing the political aspect of the future of heavy-or-own internet. I'm Steve Whitaker, I'm the Montpelier alternate. My, I built MATV systems before cable existed and was building cable TV systems and phone systems out on the West Coast. In Vermont, my primary focus has been advocacy. Back in the SIS days and GovNet days, I was informing legislators and commissioners on what opportunities for efficiencies and whatnot. Got involved in the 10-year telecommunications plan in the early 90s, which was deficient then as it's deficient now. For modern interactive television and its subsequent sunsetting and need for replacement, Charlie and I, gentlemen with the cap, was the, Charlie's the telecom engineer for 30-plus years at the Department of Public Service and he and I have worked together for that long at least on the E901 system. So public safety being a big part of what I'm looking to see whether the potential of this accomplishment. I was involved in the earliest creation of the GIS system, the geographic information system, computer mapping where we got everything but the fiber into the system 10-year plan. Most recently, the last year or two has been focused on the opportunities and pitfalls of FirstNet being a 25-year contract with AT&T for which we have given forfeited $25 million that we could have spent for what they will spend it on. And most recently, the microcells. The gaps in the cellular coverage required these microcells which are the size of this and hang on a pole and provide a half mile coverage. So I'm looking at not just internet here, I'm looking at the opportunity to fill the dead zones in the public safety radio with repeaters and closed rings for network resiliency, et cetera. I'm a thorn in this guy's side. He's not joking. So I'm John Quinn. I'm representing Northfield. I've been in IT for about 18 years, holding a number of positions from network and systems administrator, project management, director of application, enterprise applications. Did a small stint as the chief innovation officer for State of Vermont and I'm currently the secretary of digital services serving at Governor Scott's pleasure. So I'm a recovering select board chair as well I've been four years in that position and I'm really here for an economic development standpoint in Northfield and the region and trying to make sure we have as many options as possible to try to boost economic development. I'm Michael Bernbaum. I'm from Plainfield and even though we haven't heard from Alan yet, I just wanna say how impressed I am with this little board. We have a highly qualified group of people. I run an ISP, Central Vermont's only Wisp, fixed wireless broadband provider, Cloud Alliance. Did I say the name? And I also am the founder of Kingdom Fiber which is a 22 town fiber to the home enterprise in the Northeast Kingdom hasn't launched. It's almost ready in another few weeks. We just completed a municipal build in the town of Craftsbury. The town owns the network and it will become part of the Kingdom Fiber Network through an agreement. And both of my ISPs are products of public private partnerships. I think it's really important that the state and the feds and private enterprise get together and make these things happen. Having both a fixed wireless and a fiber ISP, I think I have an interesting perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of both. There's a rosy future for fixed wireless. It's going to get a lot faster pretty soon. And there's undenied benefits to fiber to the home except for the cost. And so I hope that our board will look at all of those things and find the right solution, the Vermont solution for our area. I'm Alan Gilbert. I'm the representative from Worcester and I echo what Michael just said. This is an amazing collection of people. I had no idea. I don't have half the tech experience of one half of most of you. I sort of stopped with American Flyer trains in our basement when I was, I don't know, 15, 16 years old. But I've been involved on the softer side of a lot of tech issues. I was a newspaper reporter. I was a teacher with a bunch of ex-journalists. I was involved in a public policy research and writing organization. And then in 2003, before I started working for the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, I was executive director there until 2016. And I know some of you from that work, especially Stephen. Stephen didn't mention he's helped to, I shouldn't say prosecute, to litigate some terrific legal cases largely by himself and has really accomplished some amazing things. He didn't mention he knows a lot about electronic medical records, which is something I became very involved in. My interest in telecommunications actually goes back to when I started working in the Rutland Herald in 1976. And in 1977, the newspaper went from the coal type system they had. They actually had line of type machines there which were 1973. They went coal type. And in 1978, they added a computer front end. They were the first newspaper in the state. And I think they were the first independent daily in New England that computerized. And of course it was a God-awful mess. Within a year, they had a computer connection with their sister paper, the Times Argus here in Barry, which was also a first for newspapers in New England. So at times, I felt like I was really watching this amazing development that I had no idea where it was really going to go and how far it was going to go and how much is still changing. I'm very interested in the privacy aspects of digital communications. When I was at the ACLU, I did a lot of work around net neutrality, around surveillance. I did a lot of work around electronic privacy and electronic medical records. I also live in a particular place in Worcester that has no cable connection, and probably never will, doesn't have wireless. And we are slowly losing all broadcast TV reception that we can get. We live up against the Worcester range of mountains and we can't get any TV signal from Mount Mansfield. So the only TV signals I get are right now from Mount Escutney. And I think PBS is about to drop that one channel. It's gonna drive me absolutely crazy. So I feel myself a poster child for somebody who lives 12 miles from the state capital and is in this communications dead zone. I mean, it's kind of impossible to believe, but that's how it is. So I feel people's pain when they talk about the need for a robust broadband. When this, I also know Irv Chomey, who was one of the leaders in getting EC5 going. Irv and I know each other from school finance stuff. He was very involved in education finance reform from the Tavik Norwich. And I've admired what they've done down there and I'm hoping we can have some of their success up there. And this is an amazing bunch of people. I mean, I'm gonna be in the sport just because of you guys. We have no women, which I was just gonna say. Which kind of worries me a little bit. In fact, yeah, we just sit up there. But I think that just reflects what how tech has developed over the years and so. I have a brother who's an engineer, so I have some insights into the engineering world. But thanks for coming tonight. This'll be an interesting journey, I'm sure. So I think we hear from the alternates that are here too. Since we have already. Steven, you're the only alternate. Okay, so who else is an alternate? I'm Jerry DM and TDs, alternate from Berlin. Can you spell your last name? Sure, D-I-A-M-A-N-T-I-D-E-S. I do that a lot. I'm also on the Berlin Fire Department Board. I have a PhD in environmental and natural resource economics. I am currently working and have been working for the past almost 30 years as a project planner, mostly water resources related projects, ports and harbors, flood protection, storm damage protection, a lot of work with the Army Corps of Engineers as a consultant. And prior to that, I was, I had a prior life in New York City, as you may tell. And I was the senior, I was the administrative superintendent for highway operations of the Bronx. I had worked my way up through, and I was the senior bureau of highways person in the Bronx before I gave that up and changed careers, midlife career change, a little expensive. Did you work with Bob Moses? Robert Moses? Robert Moses, I know Robert, of Robert Moses. I mean, he predates me a little bit, really. Just wanted to check. You work with what he created? To some degree, yes, that's very true. What else do you need to know? Oh, I am a, you know, I'm an end user. And in Berlin, I just squeak by. I've been working from a home office since AOL dial-up days in Providence, Rhode Island. I'm two years now here in Berlin, which I love being here. But I just squeak by with my internet. I mean, I didn't know it was gonna be, anyhow. I just squeak by, thank goodness. So I'm very much interested in the end user aspect of this as someone that works from home, very much interested in the economic development aspect of this for rural areas, such as we are. And I also very much like the idea of this being a municipal organization as opposed to being part of the larger corporate entity that we have limited choice. That's me. Thank you. My name's Elliot Bent. I'm the alternate for Berry City. I actually just moved to Berry in this past June before that I lived in Montpelier, before that I lived in Burlington, where they have the good fiber. I spent about three years as a legislative and regulatory analyst for trade industry groups in DC, specifically focused on telecommunications, so cellular telephone and cable providers for 50 state plus federal. After that, I worked under contract with Google in the state to promote their business offerings, get businesses online, that type of thing. Planned maybe 20 or 25 events throughout the state promoting the concept of the internet as a helpful tool for business. And you would be amazed at how many people like their eyes were opened. I also did education and connected a lot of Google's services and departments to Vermont needs or Vermont applications. So for example, I arranged to do a Google street view of the state house, stuff like that. I currently work for the Institute for Sustainable Communities, as their communications director, where I coordinate communications and branding between China, India, Bangladesh and the United States. And we're primarily focused on helping communities throughout the world tackle whatever challenges that they have, be they social, environmental or economic. So we do a lot of work in primarily urban communities throughout the world focused on helping them do whatever they need to do, basically. Mark Farley, alternate from Northfield, background in the military and education, lived there about 17 years and been struggling with a variety of internet providers and during that time, live off the dirt road up in the hills. And I'm just a consumer and am interested in helping in any way I can to see that this initiative is fruitful. Tom Fisher, alternate for East Montpelier. And I work for Vermont Energy Investment Corporation under the Efficiency Vermont contract, which you're probably more familiar with. I am mostly involved with metering, sub-metering, getting into internet of things, wiring up anything from residential to industrial to cow farms, trying to look at, you know, monitoring processes and monitoring buildings and providing live feeds to dashboards, alerts, that sort of internet of things sort of stuff. Very interested to see this enterprise get off the ground. And because I do find myself in a wide variety of locales talking to a wide variety of people, I'm interested in making sure that we are able to service that wide variety of living in the states. Thanks. I'm Becca Strader. I'm the other alternate from East Montpelier. We wanted to be really thorough. I'm also a woman, which I didn't realize until I got here, was gonna make me unique in this group, so. And I'm a business resource manager at the Vermont Community Loan Fund. So I spend my days helping small businesses survive and thrive in Vermont, which often includes access to internet. And I also work closely with the Small Business Administration, USDA Rural Development, and that sort of thing. So I have a lot of experience with kind of the financing end of working on things like this. So that was my primary interest, was economic and community development. And then also as an end user, who I've lived in six states and on three continents and used internet and all of them, and it's pretty bad here where we are. So when I first came here, I was working as a freelance writer and consultant and found that very difficult to work with clients out of state and trying to use Skype and conference calls and that kind of stuff. So I think that the Vermont lifestyle is kind of, it would be really well suited for people to be able to work from home. And I definitely am interested in seeing that be more feasible. Hi everyone, my name is Jonathan Williams. I am the alternate for Marshfield. I am the chair of the Marshfield Planning Commission and my current line of work, I am the grants manager for the Vermont Food Bank. Prior to that, I was an administrator for a number of small municipalities. Prior to that, I worked for the League of Cities and Towns with Mr. Jim Barlow over there. And prior to that, I was a US Peace Corps volunteer. And the internet is faster in Morocco, in rural Morocco, than it is here today, which is unfortunate. But I look forward to working with you all. However, I can be of assistance. I'm a millennial and was raised by the internet. So yeah, here to help. Well, I'm actually just here to be a fly on the, my name's Ram Schneider. I'm here to be a fly on the wall for Williamstown. We haven't appointed somebody yet, so I honestly, I'm not gonna say my expectations that I'll be appointed and not just say that with all the brilliance flashing around this room, I'm a high school dropout. And I wrote websites that aid up all the bandwidth you guys created. But hopefully I'll be sitting here at the next meeting to participate or so. That's all you really wanna say? You really usually have a lot to say. You know, over nine years on the Williamstown School Board and now on the Paine Mountain, the merger of Northfield, Williamstown, and New Paine Mountain School District. I've been on SU boards. I've been on teacher and staff and contract negotiation committees. I work as a treasurer, well, I work, I'm the treasurer and general volunteer or with others over at the Williamstown food shelf. And I was actually, when EC-Fiber first started up, I was sitting working with them up until Williamstown decided to bail, which isn't gonna happen this time. But that was a whole separate story that when somebody has a lot of hours, I'd be happy to. But so this is a big interest in mine. And it's about business and personal communications. And to me, it's, in respect to Williamstown, it's a lot of economic development stuff, so. Thanks. Yes. So I ask Charlie be allowed to introduce himself, as the key, he and I have been going to EC-Fiber meetings for quite a, quite a long time. My name is Charles Loughlin. I'm sorry, Leslie? Charles Loughlin, L.A. R.K., L.A. Okay. I'm Charlie Communications Engineer, but I've been proper to public service for approximately 20 or 30 years. Before that, I was a consumer affairs officer and an electrical engineer at the department, interesting mix. Steve and I had been just confused with the money that's being spent by Comcast and Verizon, all these folks, to put marvelous fiber down the same road, like up on East Hill and Middlesex. It's just three or four fibers up there. But then there's no money left over because they're competing, so no money left over to build the country. Even though the public service grant, by the state of mind, is it expects to have these utilities share their facilities. But no sharing has ever come up. I know, obviously. If they had shared them, the one who was primarily ridden made their money by being a wholesaler. Otherwise, it'd be retailers. We hoped that fiber, not internet, but fiber, out to all these people, business and residents, municipalities, schools, and we've got nowhere to see it like the 20 years. North East Kingdom outfitted the good start and EC5 was a good start. Now, you guys are number three in what should be about 25 or 30 groupings of towns. Bonneville, Bainton, Windsor, right where the junction, they all should have their own central Vermont fiber. I'm strongly suggested to use the name fiber because you tell people that you have a highway and all kinds of traffic can go down at different varieties, like a highway, trucks, buses, all kind of things go down. So, as a point of order, that is an item on the agenda that we'd have to discuss later if we could definitely come back to that. Central Vermont fiber highway, is that what you're suggesting? It's a proper period of time. It's a highway. Okay, I'll remember that. Okay, is that anybody else? You got everybody. Wow. Are there any communities who voted to participate but have not sent a representative this evening? Roxbury, Williams-Thompson. Callis? Callis. Oh, and Callis, I'm sorry. David Healy is the representative from Callis. He is traveling today. He expects to be at the next meeting. So, do people feel comfortable going ahead and voting for officers at this point? Is it possible that I think we are gonna need to potentially- Point of order. Sure, this is where you're not a member of the board. Let's have the board make the decision. If you don't mind. You're saying alternates can't take part in discussion? Can take part in discussion if recognized by the chair and the acting chair right now is Alan. Right, and we have to, we have some alternates sitting out there and one sitting here. Do we have a protocol for that? Is there anything- I'll note that EC-Fiber, oh, may I, Mr. Chair, at the EC-Fiber meetings at the law school, it's one big kind of classroom and all the alternates and the participants participate and introduce their guests, et cetera. But it's not really a discriminatory. It's not a prerequisite that I'll yield the floor to- Well, I'm just trying to make sure that all towns feel equally represented. Some don't feel more represented than others. That's my only concern. I have absolutely nothing against you or your municipality, believe me. Do you have an idea for this? I think this board's gonna grow because there're gonna be a few more towns and I think it's a little cumbersome to have a really big board. It's hard, obviously for voting purposes, only the representatives will vote, but I think we're probably better off in not having alternates at the main table but being very recognizable by the chair if they have valid comments. Presumably the alternates can sit behind the representatives and tap them on their shoulder if they have something they want to be said by. You're right. Yeah, I think the last thing we want is to not get good information from good people. We don't want a structure to prevent that from happening, so I take your point forward. So just the way what Michael said, just in the interest of time, I'm the sort of person who likes to get things done and just so that everybody can have a chance to discuss. It's, but we should have the ability to weigh in with the chair or weigh in with committee committees outside of the regular meetings. And Michael, you're right. There's going to be 15 or 16 board members, municipalities before long. And again, I think just in the spirit of getting things done and you were at quarter to seven now. And we should be at six, 10. That was ambitious. It was time, was it? Okay, so why don't we provisionally have only delicate speak unless, and if an alternate wants to speak, tap your delicate and ask, bring the information forward that way. Does that work? No. No, provisionally, come on, give me a break. Provisionally at least we can see how that worked. Okay, it seems to be some consensus that we can at least try that in the beginning. So the question before us is whether we want to move forward with choosing officers. The first officer who we did have a motion on the floor a while ago was to choose chair and Jeremy had been nominated. Do we want to move forward with that question? Yes, I would like to add in on that one that Jeremy is basically the reason we're all here at this point through his organization and stuff. I would like to be able to skip this idea of provisional chairmanship and move directly to a vote on either up or down for Jeremy. I'd like to withdraw my suggestion of the provisional. Okay. And at 12 months from now we can revisit. Right, he's provisional for 12 months because we've had it that way. Yeah. Okay. So hearing no other nominations, can I declare the nominations closed? We have one nominee for board chair, that's Jeremy. Can we have the clerk cast one vote for him? You don't have a clerk? I'm the acting clerk, so that's troublesome. Yeah. All those in favor of Jeremy as chair, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Your chair. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thanks, Alan. So next order of business, nominations for vice chair. I actually would like to nominate Phil Payette because I've seen him in all sorts of roles as somebody who I was the board chair for him and I've seen him on boards. And he's just really good at working with people and he's a smart guy. So. Can Phil raise his hand? He's the smart guy? Phil's the one who pointed out that. Thank you. Any other nominations for vice chair? Any further discussion? Okay. Again, we don't have a clerk. So all in favor of electing Phil Hayek as vice chair, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Phil, congratulations. Thank you. And we also need someone to serve as a clerk. We have any nominations for clerk. So just a question. You said that the clerk doesn't have to be a member of the board. That's correct. So all of us probably don't want to do this job because it might require taking minutes. That's what we're going to do. That's what we're going to take minutes of. So can we assure whoever's chosen clerk that he or she won't have to take minutes? Or can we not do that? Somebody has to take minutes. It is required by law. As a public body, we have to provide minutes. Rama? Just as a suggestion from the peanut gallery here is one thing we've done recently at the school board meetings is we've really cut back on the note taking for the minutes to pretty much what's legally required. And if people need a verbatim transcript they either can make it themselves or they can watch video on it. And we found that all of a sudden people were willing to do the clerk job on our school boards. And that's all it took was to promise that you weren't. There was one other that we did make a promise. All motions had to be reduced to writing. So the clerk didn't have to figure out what was trying to be said. But that's just from the peanut gallery. So correct me if I'm wrong Jim, but all that's required to be in minutes is essentially who is there and the votes. Motions made, seconds if they were made, which we, they aren't required for this board actually because we're a small board. So attendance, motions, outcome of motions, take general description of the action taken and it reflects the discussion at the board in a nutshell. So with that in mind, would anyone like to self nominate or are there any alternates in the audience who would like to serve in that capacity that we could have a board member nominate them for? Becca, is that? Are you? Are you volunteering yourself as a clerk? I am. Okay, so that in that you become, you then become an officer and an alternate which is exciting. Is there a board member that would like to nominate Becca Schrader? I will nominate Becca. Okay, are you writing all this down? Yeah. Do we have any further nominations for clerk? Okay, I'll close nominations. Again, we still don't have a clerk quite yet. So all in favor of Becca Schrader being clerk, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Congratulations and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Does she get to move to the table now or should I give up? Yeah. You moving to the table might be a good idea. I mean, if you feel like it, otherwise you're... Or at least some sort of... Some sort of service. So you're not technically a voting member at the moment but you are indispensable. Okay. While you're, who's your chair now? Yes. Tonight, make a point about related to the minutes. I think it would be good for the board to maybe not act tonight but consider whether audio and or video. I know that Orca's covered it tonight but they might not necessarily cover every night. But as there's gonna likely to be subcommittees and there's a lot of technical information, I believe the board should consider or at least discuss the policy of recording these meetings because I run into where I make a full presentation before the Green Mountain Care Board complete with handouts and it's all missing from the minutes and that's not a position we wanna get into. Okay. I think that seems fair. Once we get to committees, I think that's a reasonable thing to talk about. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda as presented? Okay. Any public comment on items that are not on the agenda? Or is there an agenda? Does it discuss the name? Yes. Yes, there's an item that discussing the name of the and you've got the mission. It's listed 655 discussion of name and finally certificate of organization with the secretary of the state. I think that's good to hear. Okay. One issue that I might think of even though it's only a gender is I think one minute is a little bit too small. If you've got even one person who wants to speak just to introduce themselves for a minute. So I was completely spitballing with the times. So no, I was not expecting anybody other than the board members really to be here. And Orca, thank you. So I was hoping that we could get right to it but in the future we can designate five minutes, 10 minutes. The only issue I have to start on the minutes of the agenda is the interfacing between this organization, EC5 and North Northern Concham River that name was. The one in the Northeast Kingdom. Northeast Kingdom. To a degree, you've got two wheels there and we shouldn't just spend all your time reinventing the third wheel. It usually meant a lot of interfacing with those people. So that committee's really trying to figure out what you're doing before you just jump in and that's just waste time. The rest of the comments I'll have when you come to them on the agenda. I have a public comment I guess because I'm not sure which other I'm wearing when. Montpelier is unique in that we are the only member of both EC5 and CV5 for lack of a better name. That prevents, that presents an opportunity I believe and Velco's. Or a conflict of interest. Or a conflict of interest. Speaking of which, I am actually not the delegate, Montpelier delegate to EC5 or John Block who's suffering health concerns and Rob Chapman who is director of Orca has not asked to be reappointed. But I believe that this board should discuss and consider whether it welcomes the opportunity presented or conflict presented by being a member of both. If for example, high def state house proceedings can be available across the EC5 or network within a period of weeks or months that would be a huge advantage towards building support for these types of things. The Velco fiber does directly run between those two networks and a lot of efficient resources could be. So this is in my opinion one of those tasks to explore that we can put on a committee to look at how we can better interface with Kingdom fiber and how we can better interface with EC fiber. I've had a lot of meetings with EC fiber. I have an EC fiber presentation actually in New York in the Google Drive that I share with everybody. And if we have time later, I'd actually like to walk through it for everybody so that I can share what I learned from them with you. And I know Irv Tomei, Carol Monroe are very happy to show up to one of these meetings and just bring them to us. What I'm hoping for because this is a large board, I'm hoping that we can have working committees and those working committees can actually work, bring their findings and bring their consensus back to the larger board to act on and move forward and be a little bit more nimble than 15 folks or however many it ends up being in and out together. Okay, so I'll skip over the things that I think you're referring to delegate committees. Transparency, I think head on how we deal with transparency, I believe that much has gone in kudos to you for having pulled this together. As far, I do wanna note that I put this proposal out back in 2015, but you acted on it and got it on the ballots. So again, I commend your efforts. But the transparency issue, I know it's an area where EC5 are stumbled, many of the issues that they weren't so comfortable with disappeared from the minutes. Someone there under council took the position that their maps of where they built fiber are trade secrets. I think we need to head that off at the pass, that we're basically clarifying whether we're doing business, community business in a public transparent manner. And the item at 710, the review of Vermont Open Meetings and Public Record Requirements, I'm hoping that we can come back and spend more time. I'm more thinking philosophically, that more so than let the law. So I think we ought to have a philosophical conversation outside of this meeting, you and I can have coffee and philosophy. I think you're gonna need to deal with the conflicts issue. I will just lay it on the table with all due respect, that the administration made a $25 million, 25 year decision to invite AT&T in to have her much lunch they can gobble. And they do have designs to put in video services, et cetera. And they're gonna have the benefit of that $25 million to build fiber and towers. And that's under the supervision of the member from Northfield. So that is not correct. So gentlemen, in the interest of this not devolving into a much larger discussion. How do you define conflict of interest is a wonderful, wonderful job for the bylaws committee. And there are a model conflict of interest standards that come out of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Jim, you probably wrote part of that. Those model bylaws will be made available to whoever serves on that committee. And again, these committees don't have to be just board members. So I suspect Mr. Whitaker that this would be a great place for you to put your energy and make sure that we clearly delineate what is a conflict and what's not. Okay, I'll accept that. I did not have the... But I also wanna just caution. I would suggest that I've said this to you in our phone call that we back up a little bit and not assert that this is the plan for these prices at these speeds by these dates. And that we treat this as a real infant. And all things are possible because the press latched onto some of those prices and speeds and dates erroneously. And I think we could have Microsoft's working in Woodbury in 2018. We don't need to say you won't see anything with it till 2020. So that's a good point. And I'm gonna actually cut you off at this point. I'm sure you've still got more to say. There are some practical issues about reviewing the statute that will make it so we will not do anything in 2018. It is 100% impossible. I will explain that in a bit. So is there any other public comments on items that are not on the agenda? Okay, we have before us a petition for admission to Central Vermont Internet. The Cabot Select Board voted to ask to join the Central Vermont Internet Board to join the district. And they have kind of preemptively appointed Mr. Gilbert here as their representative. So he's been quiet sitting next to me here. But I'm hoping that somebody will make a motion to admit Cabot into the Communications Union District known as Central Vermont Internet. Don't move it. Okay, we have a motion for a second. Motion by Michael Bernbaum. Second by Dan Jones. Any discussion? I actually do have a question. Can anybody anywhere apply for membership? I mean, if they're a Vermont municipality, yes. Yeah, we don't have to accept it. Is that Central Vermont or is it any? No, it's the statute says. Well, do we have them the same problem of AC Fiber with members too far away from the? Sure, so if Franklin Town said, hey, we wanna join you, we would probably say it doesn't make sense. We're not gonna back all their traffic to, no, to Franklin County. But Cabot is contiguous to Calisthen. Right. What's there in our step? And more town is gonna be putting in front of their voters in November. Orange is interested, the orange select board is on. This is just Cabot select board and not the Cabot the voters. So because they missed the deadline of putting in front of the voters at a town meeting to be voted on from the floor or by ballot, they can't technically join in the same way. Very town is voting today. So they will hopefully join at the next meeting with their delegate. But Cabot got their ducks in a row slightly late, are petitioning to join and have preemptively appointed Mr. Gilbert. Elmore did the same thing? Elmore actually called a special town meeting and held a vote in front of the voters and then held a select board meeting immediately thereafter to appoint the delegate and the alternate. But they don't need to be accepted the way. No, because they were part of the original group of municipalities that voted before the deadline. So regarding Cabot, will the voters have to affirm the select board's decision or how did the select board has the authority to? Yep. And there's the same period of time that applies to any municipalities as long as we're not in the contract of those things that they can change their mind or we're not, there's nothing different than the voters voting in at this point. No, no, they're equal members otherwise. In the future, if there was a town that wanted to join once there's infrastructure in place, statue provides for that this board can decide do we want to have them buy in essentially, which we're not really in the position to. Sure. Thanks. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor of admitting Cabot into the Central Monteney Communications Union District, please signify by saying aye. Opposed? Abstentions? unanimously the ayes have it. Welcome, Mr. Gilbert, if you want to- Can I have my- Let's break around. No, no, no. I just got changed. Just got changed. And now you can vote. Thank you. Okay, so review of statute and adoption of meeting conduct. Statute says we adopt Robert's rules of order, which is awfully prescriptive because I know everybody's memorized this. I have a reasonably good understanding of this, but I would imagine even the lawyers in the room are not fully cognizant of every twist and turn. One of the things that we do on the Berlin Select Board that I would like to put out there is to allow for a little bit of discussion before motions. We've sort of been informally doing this already, but otherwise following Robert's rules of order, does that seem like a reasonable- The fore-motion? The fore-motion, as a matter of fact, we're doing it right now. Okay. I'd like to offer that the statute provides that, except as otherwise provided by law, or as may be agreed upon by the board, Robert's rules of order shall govern all meetings. So we have the authority to adopt rules of procedure that address things such as the participation of alternates, voting requirements, motions, speaking to motions, discussions, and things along those lines. And I would offer to the board to draft a set of rules of procedure for the board's consideration for adoption to run our own meetings. I would love for you to do that in the actual, and the league has those, I think the league has a draft template for that too that you could probably borrow quite a lot from. Yeah. Wonderful. So it turns out, the reason that we're not gonna do anything in 2018 is that technically there is a six-month window that can allow for members of the public to challenge the creation of the district. If someone thinks that it was not properly done somehow, they could challenge that. And that essentially prevents us from holding on to any money, or spending money, or taking out bonds, or doing much of anything of note until those six months have passed. So once six months have passed, that's it, we're here. It's done. Is that dated from the vote from the town meeting day, or is it voted dated from today? Six months from the date of the recording in the office of the Secretary of State of the certificate required by whatever subsection. So we're not even there yet. We're not even there yet. So our intrepid clerk will be filing a certificate of organization with the Secretary of State, and we'll talk about that in a later item because there was a discussion of the name and whether we're called central from the internet or something else, it's gotta go on the actual formal record as the formal name. So that's something that we have to keep in mind. So unfortunately, I had people walk up to me at town meeting and say, here, take my money, literally. And I had to say, bank account first, please. It's like, we got to get a bank account. We have to get a tax ID, nonprofit status of the IRS to accept. And we have to get an IRS then. Well, if we're going to accept any money as a tax deductible entity, it'll just put me in nine months, that's why. So until then, we won't be able to say that we're technically nonprofit. So these are things that will need to be assigned to appropriate committees and such. We are a, technically, a municipality. Donations made to a municipality for a public purpose are tax deductibles. So we can operate under a general EIN number, employer identification number issued by the IRS without having to register as a charity. Okay, so the IRS just says, your municipality, you're good. Yes, and they will, if we were to provide them with the evidence of our creation, they will provide us back a letter saying that you are a charitable organization to which donations can be made. Is that something that we need to do? We might need to do it if someone wants to make a donation to us. And they request that letter from us. Is there anybody interested in going and creating that EIN and putting the paperwork together for that, owning that? Or is that something that we should give to a executive or other committee? I would propose that you or the vice chair do that. The filing with the secretary of state is for form of, make sure that your bylaws, any bylaws are done at the same time or it's an extra at the secretary of states. I don't think that we have to file bylaws at the time that we filed the certificate of organization as this. But even so, it's what, another $25? I'll pay the $25, so don't worry about it. I think it's more important for us to get that six month clock ticking rather than waiting for another meeting to get bylaws done. I also think that the six month prescription is useful for us. With Charlie and Steve and others have said, let's figure it all out before we jump in the water. So that's great. We can have a lot of stuff figured out by the time we're able to do it. And for six months, I could file an objection and get rid of you. That's true. You totally got it. Okay, so taxes, towns cannot give us tax money under any form. They're insulated from our lending once we get that far. Thank you, Burlington Telecom. Yeah, so we don't want to become Burlington Telecom. I'm not interested in talking to reporters and having to be in that sort of situation. Let's see if there's anything else. A quorum is 50% of district members and action by the majority of the quorum. It shouldn't be surprising anything there. Unless replaced in the manner provided by whatever representative on the governing board shall hold office until his or her successor is duly appointed. Any representative or alternate may be reappointed successive terms without limit. Vacancies should be filled within 30 days by the select board of city councils. Rules of procedure, Jim, read that part already. Compensation of representatives. We'll put it this way. Don't make me plans. Once there's financials, we're required to go through an audit. The board may establish one more committees. Officer may be removed by a two thirds vote of the board whenever in its judgment the best interest of the district shall be served. So if I totally go off the rails, you know, pull the plug. Fiscal year is defined by statute as January 1st to December 31st. We have to submit a budget on or before October 21st. And we have to distribute that to the legislative body of each district member for review and comment. There's some specific details about what goes in there, but because we're not going to be handling money this year. It's going to be a pretty boring report. Here, look, zero in, zero out. Pledge of revenues. We are allowed to take out revenue bonds, which are different than a lot of municipal bonds that were spent, for example, on the renovation of the school that bought these wonderful tables that we're sitting at right now. It's a bond. It's a loan and anticipation bond. It's a bond. It's a loan and anticipation of revenues. Special meetings are conducted with the draw of a member municipality and mission of district members. We've actually gone through this process once before how to dissolve the communications union district. I just sort of wanted to meander through that. Jerry. Is there something there easily accessible about the role of the alternate? As I understand it, the alternate serves when the main delegate is unavailable. And the vote of an alternate is the equivalent of a vote of a main delegate if the main delegate is not there? He needs to. But you wouldn't, so if I were to be gone at the next meeting, you would not, for example, get the chairmanship. No, I understand. It's making me feel like I'm going to be a part of this. I'm going to be a part of this. I'm going to be a part of this. I'm going to be a part of this. I'm going to be a part of this. I'm going to be a part of this. I'm going to be a part of this. It's making sure. Can you tell me? Yeah. Okay. Any other questions or thoughts about statute or adoption of meeting conduct? Is everybody generally amenable to Jim and bylaws committee, which we'll talk about in a bit, taking that as their maybe. Next item is meeting scheduling and location. Do you want to know why I said I'm totally open with timing, location. This costs $25 and we'll continue to cost $25 if we use it again. The Grange, the capital city Grange would have hosted us for free, but Tuesday nights they have a standing appointment and that's just not available. And we have to be Tuesday nights? It doesn't have to be Tuesday nights. It shouldn't be Monday nights though. Monday nights we'll conflict with my board meetings. Tonight overlapped with EC Fiber, so if my appeal year is going to, it'll need different delegates or staggered with their meetings. Yeah, it would be strange for a representative to be an EC Fiber representative at the same time as a CBI representative. I mean, I think we're pretty friendly with them, but I don't know that that makes sense to have one person going to communications union district meeting every Tuesday of their life. This doesn't sound like fun to me. So we're thinking about doing one meeting a month? I was thinking initially two meetings a month probably makes more sense, more discussion probably makes sense. Committee meetings could happen more often than that as the committee's C-Fit thoughts. Like Tuesdays? Does this time work generally? Michael? I'll find the time and day of the week and I find with two meetings this month, this meeting isn't about any nuts and bolts, it's about organization. It'd be good to get into some meat or something. You might want to go from once a month, especially if there's going to be a lot of committee meetings, but we should feel it out, I think. So I'm hearing once a month? Do you want me to make a motion? If you'd like to make a motion, let's go. No, I just wanted to make a plea maybe in that I would prefer personally not to be on the first and third because that conflicts with middle sex select board meetings. So we're on the second Tuesday, second and fourth Tuesday, or just once a month every second Tuesday? I'd like to offer a suggestion. Most of the municipal boards that I work with either meet on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, and I'd like to propose perhaps considering Thursday evening as the meeting night. That would be a problem for me personally of the conflict with Thursdays. Every Thursday? Saturday morning you meet the waste item. Am I correct in thinking that the communications status as we have to meet on the second Tuesday of May every year? In a sense for our annual meeting it's going to be required to be that every year and then however we have our meetings after that. I think it's flexible. That's my only limitation it's Thursday night. So any other time is okay. So let me put it this way. Does the second Tuesday of the month conflict for anybody? You're here. That's good. Does the fourth Tuesday of the month conflict for anybody? Does for you Bob? Yeah. But I mean if I if I try to rub my crystal ball and come up with the deployment etc etc to Elmore I gotta believe that lack of urban development in Elmore means we'll be quite late. So if I miss a meeting or two unless there's something pressing I don't think Elmore cares. Well and you have an alternate too. Who's already texted me saying that he's no good at this stuff. He's a tech kitty. I'm certainly willing to assert him into the chair so that he may suffer. Yeah he should. So I'm yeah I would just want to add on that I don't I mean I would prefer that we not commit to two meetings a month at this point particularly we don't have the committees for and we don't know what kind of work we're going to need to vote on on a regular basis I mean if obviously I think we need to meet as often as we need to to keep things moving forward but if we're going to do a lot of work and committee in between board meetings it feels I'd rather have more committee time than board time just because I feel like that's where we're going to get things done initially but that's that's what I was trying to say you said it better. So it so it appears that we're meandering towards a consensus here at least initially um second Tuesday a month that would make our next meeting June 12th does anybody have any anything to leap out at anybody that June 12th would be a conflict though. We just have some site reviews scheduled for that night we're throwing up five roads and that's the night that we're holding hearings and site visits. Okay so law review available? I don't know that probably. Okay that might be Mr. Chair I think with the board this big I think that we're always going to find a date that doesn't work for someone and that's why we have alternates fortunately so I think we have to do our best to get majority to be able to make it but. Okay so can I have somebody make a motion that's at present we hold a meeting monthly on the second Tuesday of the month? Okay motion by Mr. Gilbert from Worcester so second from Mr. Jones from up here any further discussion all in favor. Post abstaining okay one abstention from Mr. Birnbaum. Okay I have a conflict next on the 12th. Okay so you're uh you have a playing field has a we have an alternate Mr. Matt that's right if you want to communicate to him. I'll see if I can reschedule but I will let him know. Okay so one one thing down we have the meeting scheduling tentatively also realize that um realize that committees still have to be bound by open meetings and minutes and such so if we establish a formal committee that committee still has to follow procedures and document what they did in motions and such in the spirit of transparency. Just a thought this is our regular meeting time correct according to the open meetings law. Correct okay this yeah we would be this would be our regular meeting okay so that's part one part two location. You said Tuesday nights are not available in the range. The range is not not available Tuesday nights ever not unless we go much later and I'm not going to do that um anybody want to volunteer there yes. Oh I was just going to suggest uh Mr. Chair that um with the regional planning commissions transportation advisory committees committees etc that the location is rotated amongst the member municipalities I don't know if that's a viable option for this body or not typically a town will volunteer at the end of one meeting to host the next so that's a that's a good thought any thoughts on where the other vote that I like the stability but I realize that which which is the most central town of the current towns Berlin, Dairy City, Montpelier, Middlesex I mean it's we're pretty wide-ranging I mean it's gonna it's gonna be a real hike for Roxbury or Elmore or Williamstown pretty much any way you look at it sometime. I mean actually Berlin to some degree is the most central location. Yeah okay so um I can. Do you have a town hall? Have you been to our town office? So um we could it would be it would be awful which is why we're here if everybody's willing to pitch in I'm happy to keep scheduling it here it is going to be generally open on Tuesday nights from what I understand I paid for it this time I can continue to contribute but I don't want to be I don't want to be paying every month. Mr. Chair do we so payment for a meeting location does that require that we get the bank account and have all for outflowing money or can it happen outside for you a member of the board donate and money out to or do something outside of the district or that's an amazing question probably would be best if we didn't that's a that's a good point so could we could we ask the Berlin school board to waive the fee we could we could so um I'd like to have a contingency plan if they say no so we don't have to have that would you like to make a motion Mr. Heineck? Well wait a minute I'm not really sure what I'm making for the motion and I'm willing to contact the school to say about the waiver I know I know this I know the school board chair personally okay given given that I live here at all um I'll make a motion that um Berlin elementary school at least be the primary meeting location and that we petition the board for a waiver of uh the fee do I hear a second second discussion one practical the risk on the six month withdrawal financial you're really just concerned about you don't want anybody donating money to have it ripped out if we get challenged yeah but if we're only taking the risk because everybody throws it in 25 bucks is that that big of a deal because there might be other practical little areas where a little bit of administrative flow would be helpful and I don't know if that's you know it's just you don't want to be going asking the general public obviously but if people are willing to put a little bit of risk when you know pot just so that we for the six months of planning and preparation is that yeah I mean I'm I generally feel okay with it Mr. Bench is that yeah I was gonna say you know the stuff you printed is in kind contribution like yada yada yada yada right it's it's unending so just want to make that point who was the second sorry I think I was okay I think my town could probably provide a place if in the alternate if the chair of the school board turns you down okay would you um explore that make sure that they're available on gene call okay even though I might not be there that's that that's okay it's not not so far up what town is that thank you okay so we have a motion on the floor um to let me for me to reach out to the Berlin elementary school board and ask them to waive the twenty five dollars to continue hosting here okay ready to vote on please signify by saying aye aye opposed abstaining excellent unanimous um and I think just for completeness we can have a motion to hold the meeting here at Berlin elementary if the Berlin elementary school board waives the fee otherwise hold it at the Plainfield town offices or is there the town hall which is not the town office or at Plainfield town hall if that falls through with Dylan so we like to make that motion I can also see it I mean we have a fairly sizable conference room with high speed internet and you know big TVs and stuff like that I can see if we can use it as well where is that at the institute for single communities where is that in Montpelier on on stone cutters way I could see what will it accommodate what will accommodate 15 16 board members plus an audience of thousands not yeah certain thousands uh I mean it'll accommodate you know the amount of people that are here right now if we added five more 10 more yeah and you're pushing it so I can well like you love for the next meeting does it make more sense for us just to go there go to Montpelier and bypass all of these it would be an alternate if you're if the school board says no and we have it or do you want to just uh where are we saying about there the institute for sustainable communities right down from the co-op near the co-op near the co-op oh oh oh oh I see your conference from there yeah yeah I have to double check the capacity but okay so somebody you want to make a motion something like that so that we know where we're having that meeting we already have a motion we have a motion right here do you have a motion on the floor what was the motion Berlin Berlin to go to go to the superintendent well it's not about me I thought we already voted oh I'm sorry we voted for that that was so I will be going to the Berlin school board to seek that $25 waiver and now I was I was seeking a motion to actually schedule the meeting here if that works out or or if not posting it at ISC's conference room I would move the we have the ISC conference room as the alternate location as the Berlin elementary school cannot be fee cannot be waived and second second by Mr. Hayek from Insects any further discussion all in favor I opposed I'm stating wonderful okay we will not be asking playing fields because we have a place yeah we're good okay thank you okay discussion of name and filing certificate of organization with the secretary of state so um I can work with um work with Becca um and go over the statue what's actually required of that it turns out that the um actually assistant secretary of state is actually the Berlin elementary school board chair so I can talk to him and find out what's that Chris Wynch Chris Wynch so I can I can talk to him and kill two birds with one stone about how they how they want to see that and then we can put that together but it would be signed by by our clerk um so that has to that requires a name thoughts I I have a question point of information I think it's of Steve because you were talking about a fiber operation and I didn't know existed I think you said cv fiber keep us naming this you were naming that that was a proposed name for those got it so we're really talking about ec fiber kingdom fiber fiber is the official name of the kingdom group is that right okay that's why I should explain that it's not a communications union district it's different it's different but it's doing the same thing it's doing the same thing okay because I I think there's something to be said for having a consistent piece of the name that other similar organization to happen if that's fiber I think it is a good idea I was leaning the same way but the more I've thought about the ideal solution for Vermont the more I've thought that wireless still belongs and even kingdom fiber is going to have a wireless component and it's going to be a little confusing to our customers when we say we're we're going to give you wireless from kingdom fiber um so maybe central Vermont broadband it is inconsistent with the other two um and I don't think there's a problem with being central Vermont fiber and offering some other technology as well and I don't think there's a problem with central Vermont internet I just don't it's not quite as catchy I think if you want central Vermont in the name I think the center of Vermont fiber probably it's either that or broadband to me that's my thought I like the central Vermont broadband myself just because I I don't think that we should necessarily lock ourselves in now to a fiber or a wireless it may be a little bit about I like the central Vermont broadband oh yeah I think broadband is one of those terms that does give you a little more leeway in what you are providing and you know but for a lot of people they don't know what it means so that's where fiber fiber is kind of uh universal in the lexicon right now well actually people ask me are you sewing weavings you're in Vermont after yeah yeah I have a real problem with using the word broadband because I already have broadband on here okay because broadband has a definition already so we would be presenting an alternative definition to broadband and I don't think that works at all because like I said we probably most of us have some broadband and we're here because the broadband that we can get is not sufficient so I understand that it may some may be fiber some may be may not be fiber maybe maybe wireless we don't know what it's going to be in the future but I don't like hooking myself to a term that's already defined and it stinks yeah I just you know it's thinking about what it's going to be offered through this is it's a communication service and like it's been mentioned it doesn't matter if it's you know through a hard wire or it's wireless however you want to put it but you know when you tell go out and talk to the community and you say something like central Vermont broadband central Vermont fiber something like that you're describing the hardware that you're expecting to put out and then you have to take a description from the hardware you're going to put out in the service that's going to go over that so why not and then put the name put the service in the name you know and I'm thinking just off hand something like central Vermont that just keep the central Vermont in there temporarily at least central Vermont communications something along that line I'm not so sure that that wouldn't have already been taken by somebody but central Vermont connect I have connected Vermont to .net by the way is a URL on behalf of I'm going to start with a question and I'll move to point my question is you know in the interest of incorporating quickly you know you have to pick a name do you have the ability to do a dba or you know like an operation later as determined by a marketing committee or something like that um I think that's my question like does it really matter you know other than saying as you said what what what you're providing if it's marketing or if people understand it and so and so yeah ec fiber is technically the east central Vermont communications union district that's their formal name but they do business as ec fiber and they're operated by a completely different organization that's in the valley net so uh mr fischer just a question of what normally we're going to be competing against other broadband services to some level I mean we would not compete like we're trying to make profit but you know at the same time we are trying to keep ourselves running and so what are the other names that we would be competing against and is that important when we consider our name I'm not sure we're yet at the point where we know whether we're going to be competing or we're going to be an open access network and allow multiple competitors to ride over this fiber so I think it's this is a discussion probably more complex than we're going to resolve tonight but I I do like that I believe that the national press and the Vermont press attention uh to ec fiber bears brings with it some good will and some success story that we should not disregard so that it was with that thinking that suggested that cv fiber drew a close parallel and it's replicable it's it doesn't preclude also serving you know trunk lines to antenna repeaters or offering wireless service by that name or another name but cv fiber built it built upon and demonstrating the sisterhood whatever with ec fiber I believe that's strong merit your point about uh ec fiber basically uh having the that's the Vermont east essential Vermont communications union districts right so we were actually passed as the at the town meetings as the communications union you know so I because our operating name can be anything we decide to choose it from with some marketing whereas calling it what it was on the ballot does seem to have a certain amount of you know continuity in other words there's no question about what we became right and the and the media coverage to date national and and local has been about central Vermont internet I'm not married to the name it's literally I I chose it so that I could go in front of select wards just to get to get things done I like the idea of putting putting this on a committee and having a committee chew on this and talk about it for the next couple months while we go and file the paperwork as central my internet and just get it done with right come back around do dba and once we start offering services then we can talk about you know who it is that we're competing with how it is that we're competing and how we're going to position ourselves is that emotion for that I would love emotion for that I move that we file has our official name which is Secretary of State sent Vermont internet second second so a little discussion yeah so Gilbert and Gilbert Gilbert for Worcester so it's true that that would be continuity there's also the opportunity to say at the first meeting at press release at the first meeting the central Vermont internet community unit communications union district decided to name itself this because this and then that gets the word out it could be used it doesn't have to be but I'm just mentioning that to the point of broadband already being defined broadband is continually defined it's defined faster and faster and faster and that's a good thing I don't think that everybody thinks that their dial-up is broadband or their satellite is broadband there is different levels and I still like the name I'm okay with voting whatever tonight but I think if we're going to be having press releases the sooner we unify on a good marketing name the better I don't think it should take us six months I think we should get to a name that people are going to remember for a long time that's my thought yeah the thoughts we have the motion on the table to move forward with our paperwork at central Vermont internet I think in full full disclosure can I can I move to I can't move to amend you can tap your thorn and ask him to amend I'm actually with the original all right okay so I'm not hearing any more I'm all in favor of filing as central Vermont internet please signify by saying aye opposed abstaining okay motion passes unanimously thank you very much review of Vermont open meetings and public records requirements so this was something that I sent you many of you here have worked as I've worked in municipalities before on boards and I guess I can give a short a short overview for this or Jim if you want to give a short overview if you've done this before sure okay would you like me too I would love you too yes okay we this board would be a public body under the Vermont open meeting law so the in a nutshell all of our regular meetings the second Tuesday of the month would require 24 hours excuse me 48 hours notice for posting our agendas and the notice of the meeting if we were to call a special meeting that would require 24 hours notice for the agenda and notice I'm not sure of what the specific posting requirements are given that we have multiple communities I assume it's one in each community I think that's what we're going with right now is a general matter our meetings would have to be open to the public and there must be opportunity for the public to be able to comment on matters that are on our agenda we can only use utilize executive sessions for one of those categories or opportunities specified in one bsa 313 which lays out the opportunities that the legislature provides for public bodies like us to hold an executive session in most cases or in many cases that requires a motion and a vote of the majority of the members present in some cases it actually requires two motions now a motion of a specific finding that premature general public knowledge would clearly place the public body at a substantial disadvantage right alan yep that's right do you remember that language yeah they're like six of them I think that's right I think you actually drafted that for the committee there are about six categories for which that isn't there a two-thirds vote required for executive no not for a municipal board okay majority of the members present at the meeting okay there are other you know more general requirements or more general obligations for things deliberations in conjunction with the quasi judicial proceeding that I don't think we would anticipate doing we are obligated under the open meeting law to produce minutes which must be available to the public for inspection within five days we don't yet have an internet a website but when we did they would have to be posted on the on the website as well we have a facebook page it could be posted there why not wouldn't hurt can you clarify if that's business days or calendar days because I forget frankly I think it's not calendar days I think that one's calendar days yeah I think there was actually bill this year to change it to business to business days yes so let's go to calendar days calendar days for now okay yeah any other require any other questions public records public records we are a public body therefore any written or recorded information regardless of physical form or characteristics produced in the in the course of our business is a public record it would be able we must have it available for public inspection and copying within three business days unless we are afforded an opportunity to extend that deadline or we have to produce the record unless there is material within that record that is exempt under one of the 269 possible exemptions under the current Vermont statutes if there is no revenue source to support this activity is that that doesn't free us from anything does not free us from a single thing under what you did one of those we should keep in mind under the open meeting law that a meeting is a gathering of the quorum of the members of the public body so a quorum of the members of this board for the purpose of discussing the business of the public body or for the purpose of taking any action that significantly limits our ability to communicate electronically where there might be a quorum of the members of the board discussing the business of the board through email facebook other electronic communications so basically email and other electronic communications should be used to disseminate information to board members but the board members should withhold their discussion of that information discussion for business until they come to the meetings but smaller groupings you know smaller than a quorum to a members this board can interesting wrinkle because not only a public body is not only this body but any committee formed by this body as well so the committee of this board is also subject to the open meeting law and subject to all of the requirements that I just talked about several random members who aren't necessarily for uh and it's not a committee we need to look at whether it is a gathering of the quorum of the members of the public body so how many total so a quorum would be seven it would be a quorum would be seven okay well so the quorum rule is I'm not a liar but we've always practiced that the quorum rule applies to committees based on the membership of the committee so if you treat this body and the quorum requirements of this body and there were committees appointed by this body yes which were constituted by fewer members yes quorum there is less than per quorum here that's right it is a it is a majority of the members of the appoint of the appointed committee and just to be clear Jim I there is a there is now in the law a provision for electronic meetings meetings of the board right but it's a separate warnings I forget the rules are but it has to be warned in a different way there has to be a place a physical place where somebody can go and be connected to the meeting we can we can communicate telephonically or by other electronic means so long as there is that that is um announced in this meeting agenda that there is a physical place where a member the public can come and listen and participate and what did there's another specific requirement more than a quorum of us are participating by speakerphone I think it requires that we do it by roll call roll call and anything it's not unanimous right that's right and affirmative identification of members as they join that's correct yeah uh there was this is an area that reflects on the transparency and I don't want to try to solve it tonight but I I just want to caution that recently there was a case where somebody was doing a sequential quorum in effect and I would just say that practices and policies should be developed that had that off before it ever could bite us in the tail because even I mean I made a request to you on the 20th of April for the stuff leading up to this meeting it got overlooked but you're forgiven but but it's a point that it affects the thing didn't exist until tonight's meeting so I'm not going to come after you for all those records but I guess the point is I do not want to see a self-appointed executive committee or super executive committee round robin and making decisions that are then different default when they get here I'm sorry I have to leave the room for a minute but I'm not sure if you guys discussed alternates under this car under the scenario or not because when you start when you start having alternates that can sit in for a board member that's not present all of a sudden you you start really expanding the definition of what a quorum is so the easy way around that would be a simple bylaw that very specifically defines when an alternate can sit in for an actual member of the board so you don't accidentally you know have to end up with a quorum just because of alternates getting together because who knows when they're sitting as a board member or is an alternate that's true um so this statue says one more alternates to serve in the absence of the designated representative so if there were a bunch if there were a quorum alternates in a room together I would suspect they would be bound by the same requirements as as the main representatives so what you're saying though they could also vote to bind the book bind this organization not without a properly worn meeting right but again some of this will be alleviated if you decide to record all the meetings so that anybody can catch up on whatever they missed absolutely absolutely and so this is this should hopefully go to the bylaws committee to nail this down and talk about how alternates are handled so if there are two alternates from East Montpelier show up do you but thumb wrestle for it or something who goes who goes first who gets the voting rights I think that's something that should be clarified either by East Montpelier select board or by this by this body as well um so um if somebody asks you for a copy of an email that you sent that was in that was related to the business of this board you're obliged to provide it so keep that in mind can I just I'm sorry this isn't totally related but since I started late I didn't um write down everybody's name at the beginning um so I'm just passing around a paper that named town and what your role is if you wouldn't mind so I can I said it so I'm earlier in our discussion um I heard something about public private partnerships that I know that easy fiber delivers its services through valley net which is a different kind it's not a public it's not a profit yeah um and maybe we would do that something like that um in which case what happens to transparency they're still bound by it they are as a as an arm of a governmental organization they are required to also abide by those as well and speaking of medical records I believe you found that Mr. Whitaker that through um vital VITL who was a subcontractor for handling medical stuff and software for the state of Vermont it was found by the it was the Supreme Court right Superior Superior Court found that they did indeed have to follow all the transparency requirements as well that doesn't mean that they can't redact home cell phone numbers or dates of birth or medical record that's one of those many the redactions things needs to this is an area where the body will lead counsel on helping people respond transparently into a property with records I was just going to offer that it may be whoop this body at some point in addition to getting a website for this organization to also issue email addresses for the members of the board and for the alternates where else is participating uh simply because of public records requirements right now I'm sure we're all most of us are using our private emails and those would be subject to public records even if we did get the email addresses then that we're at whatever it is dot word or dot net or whatever our our personal emails our personal Facebook pages or whatever anything any communication related to the behave the activity on the sport would still be discoverable as a public record I was just wondering about this morning when you put up your sort of additions to the agenda I sent it to the woman in the city manager's office who does the posting to the city website etc I was wondering if we made a collective email addressable those people would posting to that be sufficient for the public records as the warning language either the warning language or the actual records of the meeting if they said if we said to the the separate cities separate towns to have just a slot in their website for the this that we could request the person who does that uh it's a great idea and posting the agenda posting the event and uh and uh posting the records so that rather than us have trying to have a website and maintain those records at this point so which municipality wants to uh wants to take that I think it's just to clarify Jim if you can help me in this I think you're kind of mixing two things here you're mixing meeting warnings and access to public records and you want to be careful because the access to public records I remember correctly usually a keeper a custodian of the records at least in a government agency department or whatever will be appointed as the point person who has who who is the person you go to to request to make a public records request and I don't think we want to make every town occur in the area of a custodian of records who has to respond to records request I think we could ask them to post post warnings of our meetings yeah and yeah and that's that's public meeting stuff but I think the access to public records is a is a different ball of wax and we don't want to get them involved in that and I'm sure they don't want to get involved in that you think my pillar would be willing to host this I can ask that probably you know not now that you've clarified it uh we'll see right so I mean so I posted it to the facebook page it's public it doesn't require a login for anybody to see those there you don't have to have a facebook account um so at at present okay fine then we'll leave it with that well and I then I will just suggest that we have a for you know for the meetings a list of all of those uh city clerks who uh you know so the one email would basically do the warnings yep so I think if you um we can send that in those emails email addresses to our clerk when we send out a meeting warning then um we can make sure that those are out there and I also sent them to like uh um orca cvtv and in berry the other community access who else I sent it to like times times argus the world's more field news um and what they do with them I mean that's that's up to them but in terms of uh of being um as widely distributed as possible so if anybody is interested in one of the one of the items on the agenda and I think then we can do do the right thing might I suggest uh the board consider using a google group or google drive as a library common library similar to what you did but I particularly don't go to facebook because I don't want them tracking and scraping every every my every move so yeah so I can I can post instead I'll post it there and I will put a copy of the the pdf in the google drive which I did it's it's in there and I can just send you a link to um to the google drive then as well that's and then subfolders I the legislature has a very good model where things are sorted by weak handouts and I'm sure our clerk will do a terrific job organizing all of these these documents in a really clear and easy to understand way uh I'm unsure if we would technically be eligible for the google grants for nonprofits uh setup um but we I'm happy to look into that once once we're incorporated um it sets you up with you know essentially domain management and email addresses and all of that stuff right so talking about a domain we get back to the name so maybe we don't want to get the web address quite yet until we get through that yes that was on my list of things to talk about and I crossed that out given that we're going to talk about the committees hopefully in just a moment um anything else about open meetings public records anybody wants to comment on to discuss I think it's worth noting that the administration or public safety agency has taken a position that email addresses are a threat to the personal safety of the individuals so all the firemen and folks that are participating in first step their email addresses are exempt well we're as a municipal body we are not exempt we're in a different bucket okay anything else okay moving on to the next thing task for an appointment of bylaws executives citing and other committees marketing committee we talked about two um do we want to um since we had a previous discussion on this do we want to stand up a marketing committee that will spend some time and bring its recommendation on a name and marketing approaches not not citing not much of anything else except for a name right now or are there other items that we want need to put in front of other other committees we've talked about a lot of stuff that the bylaws committee would take over the executive committee which would be the chair vice chair and the clerk would be for the most part responsible for organizing uh meeting meetings with the feedback of the other board members citing I was imagining talking about where we're putting things and what those things are I don't maybe we're not there yet and any other committees that the board is interested in pursuing I thought at some point we might want a technical committee that would look into the technology side of what we're planning to do okay but I don't think we're ready for that okay so maybe maybe not yet on that one one of the things that we still need to do so I get the to-do list name what else we need to do by laws okay okay so fundraising and such it's a fundraising development we haven't agreed you know we'll call it business structure you mentioned the term co-op and one of your pieces is that of what I do and are we discussing uh actually how this gets organized as an actual operating entity we don't have any sort of pieces nor do we have any sort of revenues or anything so I don't know I mean we should talk about it will we imagine it looking like start you know beginning the next fiscal year in January um I think eventually eventually we are going to want a financial committee so organizational structure finances which will be related to fundraising development probably business development I really don't know if there's any need for right now but perhaps an advocacy committee of some form advocacy in what form I don't really know I don't foresee any need to approach the legislature at any point okay and then your it's like a sort of lobbying I don't know okay I'll put it down as a as something that we may want to get to is your dm and tds there other I've noticed from what you've distributed there are other similar situations where entities have done feasibility studies feasibility analysis it's really to get the lay of the land to see what's out there what we're exactly specifically where the need is where does the cable you know where does where does the coaxial end you know what the level of uh of accessibility and really get it get a handle around that so we know what the condition is that we're trying to serve it's marketing business development depending on how you view it that's one that these are broad terms but yeah that is that's kind of market development or assessment well so I I'd really like to have like some concrete like two things we can hand to a committee and say come back at the next monthly meeting with something so that we're not saying what do we do now mapping if as soon as we could all learn how to identify what's on the pole is it coaxial fiber how many fiber vendors are there and that's the advantage of moving the meeting around as everyone learns to know what they're looking at you can start really getting familiar and once you start understanding what infrastructure is available we could start prioritizing what's where's the well-hanging fruit okay mapping so there's I think our missing member from callus is a GIS expert yeah yes which is awesome amazing to have on hand so we're going to get to the real basics we're going to figure out are we doing a whole town or a partial town are we going to use this this technology that technology how are we going to aggregate the demand are we going to see which towns can raise the money the past us or you know or which ones organize well the demand aggregations what that's called there's a lot of moving parts and I in terms of in terms of handing it to a committee to come back with an answer next next meeting none of none of those but but maybe you want to start on those but have them chew on a little bit and bring back some recommendations about next steps we ran into this issue you know we need to have better information about what's on the poles the the data that we get from the state is maybe deficient and maybe there's something else that we can find that will help us answer those questions yeah I think that what you just brought up and what mr. Gilbert also brought up are can be broken down into several elements that can be individual tasks that a committee can run with perhaps a mapping task of mapping out what's out there another committee can come up with a pricing task to find out what what the pricing options are in the different areas and another committee could come out with some kind of outreach task to actually talk to folks and find out who would be willing to have who's even interested in this service some of them could be residential a separate committee could be looking at or separate members of a committee could be looking at the commercial side so they're all these separable tasks that that that can be done by either different committees certainly different folks and then they can get brought together when the information's in hand I'm and I'm in general agreement there and so it's this this body's responsibility now to figure out what those things are and how we want to divvy up that work so any sort of concrete suggestions about next steps or questions to hand to committees this is this is the time to to bring I think I think we should start with the basic committees that we need and evaluate after you know a meeting or two or three and decide you know we'll be a little bit more familiar with you know the group and who has what interests we can go out and do a little research on what the other EC fiber types are doing already and bring some of that back rather than try to build committees now that we may be unsure of you know how they fit in the bigger picture or sure so do you have some concrete suggestions for committees and things that we that we need to go forward with I think you know in my opinion the the bylaws committee is important and business development I think starting to figure out what we have and where we have it are the two that come to mind right away okay so if we can if we can keep keep on track with just the committees that we need to create right now and then once we've decided on those committees then we can offer them one or two you know tidbits to take and come back next month with we could spend an amazing amount of time right now trying to fake trying to solve all of the problems and chasing our tail around but I think you're right John it's let's start from the beginning can make a suggestion to me bylaws logically fit within the executive committee the executive committee is not going to have a whole lot to do right off the bat similarly marketing in business marketing I'm imagining is going to handle a press release of what this first meeting happened maybe get the web up and organized the file system so business development and marketing might be one committee right now they could split off later but I think there's an opportunity and an urgency to the public safety because of the amount of attention of the microcells going down that a public's and similarly capital west is being asked to join CVPSA and there's a million and a half dollar liability so let's let's kick those specifics to the business development group so so do I hear that a specific task for business development might be how much you frame what you just said as something to hand to business development I think the public safety is is a different thing because it's going to mean interfacing with the CVPSA and capital west and the fire departments and see how well their needs might be met by what we're proposing to build so public safety current issues is a concrete bit to hand to business development fits right in with that one okay I wanted to add to the idea of having a bylaws committee I think it should be called a bylaws and policy committee okay because I think we're going to be faced a lot of times with coming up with policies maybe somebody wants us to have a net neutrality policy definitely and that's a great idea but actually stating a policy and developing a task that has been done in the committee that's and brings it's worth the board and our mission needs to clarify whether we're interested in furthering mobile wireless for example for public safety or other reasons or whether that's outside of our curve right there because we could get spread pretty darn thin and we should focus on accomplishing something within a few years so I'm I'm wondering I you do have I did email you and ask you where the mission was pointed out that I'd missed it so maybe we want to look at it again amplify it or or or make sure it's restrictive so that we stay focused on our goal right and that's and that's literally the next item on the agenda and my my vision I understand your vision and some other folks have ideas for wireless and some other things or open access for that matter but my vision is being a fiber to the premises provider period and not really getting involved in too much else beyond that might we need to sure but and is it expensive yes of course but in the in the interest of keeping it simple and keeping our mission focused laser like that was my my intent as I was as I was building this mr. dm and tbs did you have something yeah I just kind of followed up where you were going and seeing that the mission is the next item on the agenda is I'm wondering out loud if that's something that gets resolved in a one-shot meeting such as this or is that something where there might actually be a committee that comes back next meeting with suggest a suggestion or a short list of suggestions for what is what what a mission statement will be okay so do we want a mission statement committee or does that live with the by laws and policy I would say it looks like that okay so let me just there's one other piece here I guess in a complex system okay you're somewhat assuming that the formation of these committees that everybody has some level of knowledge of the entire complex system that we're facing which I somehow fear isn't probably the case and that you know some kind of self-education functions before we go down too many rabbit holes would seem to be in order so that we have a way of knowing what does our neighborhood look like in terms of the resources that exist what the problems that we may be facing etc so that we're not spending a lot of time spinning our wheels on stuff that either is there or is a is a rabbit hole and I you know so I feel like I would like before going into all of these what are the committees going to be I would like to have a larger sense of what the environment looked like so we technically still have 15 minutes left of of the meeting given that you're all sitting here at captive audience right I think that's a great suggestion I think that's how the VTA got off the ground seven years ago or whenever it was they oh Vermont telecommunications authority sorry which no longer exists but was anyhow what the board did the board was was a a team of remarkable people who all had different skills and they did need to get educated on all the aspects of telecommunications and they either brought people in or they made their own presentations to each other in the first several board meetings and I think that's a good thing for us had you thought about having somebody like earth though may come in and just say tell us about cc fiber and how it happened yes I didn't invite him tonight because I knew that we would be having these sorts of the more basic conversations urban carol both came to my very first meeting um see phil was there um Sasha from playing field was there who will there was only a handful of people people that were there um and they came and presented and I actually have their presentation in the google drive it's called wash county something something and it actually explains a bit about ec fibers background and the hurdles that they went through some of their financials um and it's pretty interesting so but it would be good to have somebody in the room so we can ask questions directly about person okay tell us what you really did when it came to committees or raising money or so so I'm I'm hearing that um I should get irv and or carol to show up at our next meeting and give a presentation for portion maybe stand in the following meeting to get into the tech we can we can always go into more detail later but in terms of just giving everybody a flavor oh yeah so that would be perfect for understanding the ec fiber model which which is quite possibly our model but might not be one step before that is understanding all the technologies so that that mission can be determined is it going to be narrowly fiber only or not um it's a presentation that you could give on the 12th yes um I have I have a four-hour presentation which you do not want to say is it somewhere that you can give to us and we can watch it with some popcorn or it's it's it's it's a slide deck with a lot of commentary that's not recorded but um I could I could slim it down um so what I mean I presented every imaginable kind of internet to the town of crassbury because they didn't know what they wanted to do and I made it very neutral and they chose fiber so that'll make you feel good but they didn't have to and it really showed all the possibilities and I think it educated them pretty well on a lot of aspects of what what it takes to do it okay so so I would be willing to share it yeah so so if you share that with us and we could read it offline in advance of the next meeting and and then have urban carol perhaps why is it either war could or you know couldn't we have both in the interest of time I think you don't want you don't want to spend many weeks before you have urban carol he is probably not going to be here at the next meeting I'm going to do my best to change my schedule so I can't okay but I can offer if if you want to follow that model I could offer to help people record a half hour an hour or a four hour in his case you know you know something to share with the others in an offline mode through the google drive the the high dev video is very very presentable on google drive so hard to reach though it's it's been hard to download it it took me about three or four hours to upload all the materials that you saw in the google drive there on my 768k upload connection from there from there so is there any so while we're talking about this is there anybody else that has another model or other information that they'd like to present to the rest of the board for digestion granola this really just goes back to the earlier issue about ec fiber and having urban carol come I had thought at some point we should do that and but I thought also we should have a list of issues or questions for them so that it's not just a generic presentation it addresses the things that we care about the most and yet I think it's too early to know what those questions yes I think the presentation will generate questions for you I mean my only other concern I shared like you know there's a lot of technology options but I think there's also a fair amount of funding regulatory rural broadband development trend blah blah blah stuff that we might all benefit from understanding better that's it I don't I don't know what I know it's I can see lots of information bits floating around and I you know how we're not you know having a little bit of an overview or education on that would be helpful I don't know given that we have six months before we can actually do anything at some level you know the first few months of it of actually providing this self-education so that we know what the right questions to ask would not be a bad use of our time rather than trying to have a bunch of committee meetings to discuss things that might not be discussable yet right but I think that there still are committee things that can be discussed and that we have to start somewhere so does anybody have a concrete proposal for if we park the committees for just a minute I would love to see Michael's presentation so if you could put together your slide deck maybe in advance of the next meeting and provide that to us in advance and if you can make it to the next meeting if you can give you know give us when we're setting the agenda four or five days notice you can make sure that you're on the agenda or not should we invite Irving Carroll to show whether communications union district in Vermont looks like sure okay please okay so potentially the next meeting is going to be very presentation heavy where we would start with Michael for about 45 minutes or so so if everyone watches the thing first then it could be a lot less I don't know but it's going to take a bit of work because it was really customized for the town of Craftsbury okay so I'm going to you know try to work it over okay in all my spare time yeah I'm very very very happy to have whatever information you can provide myself but I could present it that way and you can just interpret it you know you say well this is what was Craftsbury was caring about it's an event we all just want to see that the whole kid caboodle or the shrunken down version executive version executive version with the detail underneath it all right I'll do my best okay great and I will then go and talk to Irving Carroll I've like I said I met with them before I visited ec fibers operations and looked at what they did so that was pretty enlightening is there anything else that's going to help that's going to help inform us going forward anybody's dying to hear you know the only other thing we might consider doing is just maybe before the next meeting we could generate a list of people who we think it would be good to talk with because there's a lot of expertise out there that's not gathered in one place and if we could if we could learn as much as we can from people who are a little bit ahead of us or a lot ahead of us I think it'd be really helpful can we task that to the business development committee does that seem like a reasonable thing to do to seek out more people who are experts or otherwise can be resources I don't think of it as business development I think of it as is board development actually board education development so so what what I'm saying is whose responsibility should it be should it be all of our responsibilities to to try to yeah I think for the next meeting we should have a list of people maybe all of us in the next month can just think of people or imagine the kinds of people we would like we can think of who might be able to explain stuff to us that we're going to encounter for free or oh there's no money definitely this is a municipality they want to think of it as an in kind contribution great we're not we're not going to have I mean anything tax or whatever but we'll say you did one for the public this just seems to me we could very easily spend six months reinventing a wheel that's already been invented five times and improved on 20 times we don't have to go through all which is why hearing from Michael which is why hearing from ec fiber I think is key and also the funding people said usda rural development northern war original commission all those different agencies that can funnel money have represented they come for free have them come in I spoke to accd also and they seem interested in sure any of these feasibility studies there's a may 11th deadline oh that's only northern borders we're not qualified for that okay is there anybody in craftsbury who sort of got into this project and and and lived through it as you were working on it they were working on it who would want to come and present well just be here and it'd be able to answer questions I mean just you know as soon as we're a board member whatever kind of structure they have I think that would be very useful actually so um you said you were having contacts with usda rural development would you be willing to reach out and see if there's somebody there that can help out I can reach back out to accd and see if there's they want to come and address the board rather than just giving me the kind of overview of what they're funding mechanism anything else on this of can I count everybody to like brainstorm think of people who might be resources excellent okay so let's get back to committees here for a moment um tasks for bylaws and policy committee to talk about alternates how we're going to handle alternates that's one conflict of interest policy and mission statement I have those as three things three tasks for a bylaws and policy committee is there anything else that by laws and policy committee needs to do that's like burning top three that needs to move one of those out of the way again this is a one month maybe a handful of meetings okay rules of procedure for our board means rules of procedure that was the other one thank you did you say conflict of interest policy yeah yeah and there is a league of cities and towns conflict of interest model policy there as well um and I spoke to Heather law at the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and I just I'll put this out there they have a lot of model policies for municipalities we may or may not be able to become a member of theirs with all of the the benefits that that can come from that but I think they're looking at possibly amending their bylaws to allow districts like us to tap their resources which are those who've been on select boards and city councils are pretty amazing there's a pretty substantial fee for that though isn't there from the towns to be a part of Vermont League of Cities and Towns per capita fee we probably wouldn't be charged in that as a regular ordinary municipality would probably be made a member an associate member okay I think it probably would be substantially less than the ordinary fee charged to municipalities probably fiber into city center okay could say the membership fee just on the insurance that we're going to name yep there's that uh business development committee um I I heard that we should task them with public safety current issues what else needs to go to business development market marketing market so that's that would be the name right the name and dba so that the name should be the dba yeah should be the public safety or should then wait until we kind of decide the broader mission it seems a scope creep to me I think so too okay can I can I crawl up for a counter argument that because the cvpsa is is at a critical state in its planning and our planning really might overlap with that and there's a vote scheduled for next week on capital west fire mutual aid a weather to join and there's a lot of hesitancy this might be something that we want to explore with them sooner than later because it has the potential my my view of it is that if we're a communications union district most of public safety is communications and a public a public safety work group and a fiber of the home work group fit logically under a communications union district but we are not in any position to do anything anything at all six months so um for six months and so we can come and say hey we might be out there in a while but I don't think that that's going to convince them personally um I think they need the same planning that we're going to be doing in the next six months so why don't you reach out to them and say there's this thing okay so I think that's all we can do for now I mean that's my my opinion unless anybody in the board members wants to wants to put a motion together to change this I'm good I think they may want to come and present what they're doing and what their needs are yeah let's I mean if and if one of them reaches out to someone and they want to do that then let's let's have absolutely because I think their needs and maybe they you know maybe they're the anchor institution that you've been looking for that says where we're going to start and they say here's what we need build this for us in 18 months and here's a big bucket of money they're going to do that and I suspect we can probably move faster than do we need a legal committee because I can see the need because of the the need we're going to need an open access petition regulatory action by the puc in order to get on fair point and sovereign that's fiber if we're if we're going to have any controls and if we're going to use sovereign out of fair points fiber which I'm not convinced that we want to do but that's I think that's that's far enough beyond um where we need to go is that the sort of so what else is business development we need to go let's keep this on can I just make a recommendation I actually think probably people need a technology for less than they might need a finance okay so um so how would you frame that as a it's like a marching order like a research financial vehicle options and I don't know if that's immediate now but that's up to you guys so research research finances and work structures yeah that is something that that did somebody mentioned before yeah one of my first ones from business development is that sheet you had in the drive which was served and underserved by community and kind of what that means just making sure we're kind of all on the same page where are we really I think that'll fit in with the mapping yeah but I mean it doesn't have to be completely mapped to be useful it is it's already mapped yeah well it's great yes so um there's an updated version of that that's not in the spreadsheet it's unfortunately in a PDF right now okay that's what uh clay purpose uh testifying to some legislative committee it's it's in there too it's it's reasonably large but that has an updated spreadsheet that has more information like that I think it's as of january this year okay uh so anything else for business development or is that the name of the dba discussion and the research finances and work structures that's sufficient you think not hearing anything let's move forward with that then okay so next um I don't I don't want to slow us down no no we have the time for the bylaws I think it's really important that we uh or that the committee discusses how how we represent ourselves when we're outside of this meeting meaning you know who's authorized to speak and how they're authorized to speak and to whom and to and to what we say so I so I get a little concerned with someone representing themselves as um central Vermont internet that may be a little off the reservation that's not in line with the rest of the committee so I think the bylaws ought to address how we deal with that and how um we take that up going forward to make sure that um we're united as a as a board here and not going off in our own directions that's a that's a good point I think um statute has it pretty well about that individual board members select board members village trustees city counselors they can speak they can always speak for themselves and only time where they can speak for the board is when they've been explicitly authorized to do so so you know I could say hi I'm the chair and the reporter calls me I can tell them what I think I can tell them what the board did um but I can't say CVI is doing this if it's not something that the rest of you said go tell them right that this is what we're doing so that if we have passed a resolution or passed a motion that said we're doing this then you can say we're doing this because it's a statement of what we've already agreed and I guess that's that's something that I probably took for granted is being on being on the select board you know you've been on the select board but I think for folks who have not been on there just keep keep that in mind if you can so you know you're part of this larger family and we're happy to have you here but not a single one of us speaks for the organization I wonder if talking points might help sure is that talking points sound like a good thing to assign to a committee I mean is it as something that needs to be needs to be developed or is that something that that we can absorb naturally when we see michael's presentation we see erb's presentation I have on I think it's on orca the berlin town meeting presentation the recording has me presenting to the people of Berlin answering their questions with my vision because I mean do we need to have a separate like to-do item for a committee to do this that's it I think that's a marketing task really that's what that's what we're talking about so like establishing a handful of talking points does that make sense to go to that business development committee yeah I think so okay or that committee comes back with four handfuls of the board boils it down of course of course that makes sense okay so I'm going to say that we're we're going to be we're good with what we're asking the committees to do but by laws and policy committee I'm going to go back over this more time something about alternates conflict of interest the mission statement rules of procedure who can speak for such a remote internet a little bit more on that the business development committee the name that the dba research finances and organization organizational structures and talking points so now here's where the magic happens it's going to be on these committees how exciting is this so Jim I know is dying to be on that by laws and policy committee because he's done a lot of by laws and policies so I'm going to write his name down and I think rather than kind of onesy two zing these things I think what I'd like to do is have one motion that says we're going to establish these committees with these current list of things to do with these with these people in these positions and I think it also makes sense to for this board to establish the chair of the individual committees so that they can just get right down to it and not have any sort of organizational question about who's running the meetings we're sketching them and this is me should we limit the membership to each each committee knowing that we're going to have more committees coming out the next couple months probably and we also don't have to it doesn't have to be just board members in these committees too and we can I mean nothing saying that we can't add or remove people as we need to but I think just for now for the current committee general public as well absolutely okay so I think it is important that there is at least one board member being a part of that free yeah as the almost certainly is the chair yeah I think that makes sense so I think Jim I'm just going to put it out there I think you can be the chair okay volunteer that's what we call it in norwich thank you well so can you maybe add to that list make up of committees because somebody who's had to deal with committees about for non-profits and this can get really dicey if you open it up to members beyond the board you just want to just want to make clear who can be on a committee how many people who are non-board can be on a committee and so forth so okay and so that makes a makes a perfect sense for a policy or a bylaw to be adopted there I've added that to my list and we'll go back over that once we've chosen the other victims committee members so who else wants to serve on the bylaws and policy committee I'll do that if Jim will have me I'd love to have you out okay Jeremy I'll do the film great I have three members I think unless anybody's dying to join there with a quorum of two I think that makes sense okay all right and so um let's put a nail on the bylaws and policy committee so we're going to I'm going to ask somebody to make a motion to create the bylaws and policy committee with the following six charges to establish a evaluate conflict of interests to discuss the mission statement rules of procedure who can speak for CVI the makeup of committees and some evaluation of how alternates are handled that committee is made up of Jim Barlow to be the chair Alan Gilbert and Phil Hyde so moved thank you Mr Gilbert from Worcester second yeah Mr Quinn from Northfield any further discussion terrific so um so excellent um any if there's any other discussion I I'd like to say any sort of suggestions that you have you can direct it to um all three of those gentlemen or um one of them probably probably be best just to be completely careful just to send it to one of them pick your favorite whoever lives geographically closest to you or or the chair whatever you like just send your feedback directly to them so that we don't have any sort of back and forth discussions that would suggest a meeting okay so bylaws and policy committee done we have the business development committee who is on business development committee this is talking about the name the DBA research finances and organizational structures and establishing talking points we'll be chair but I'll work on it okay I will work on it but I don't want to chair wow taking one for the team Montpelier folks I see how it works you take our water from Berlin and I'll work on it but I can't be chair right it needs to be somebody from the board it doesn't why does it need to be somewhere from the board I thought that's what I heard that's what we were for chair I mean we talked about it we didn't establish that as a rule you are an alternate so in some in some way you're going to be serving on the board at some point I would I would like to to be on this because I've done a fair bit of research in this but I'm going to be out of the country for about three weeks of the four weeks where committees would be meeting pencil yourself in just show up the next week I'll be there in spirit how about that any objection to Jerry DMTD's chairing that okay congratulations till the policies say otherwise right no policy yeah well and we I mean we can vote to override policies too as as necessary bravo take me back in the Coast Guard again all right great so I'd like to have somebody make a motion to create a business development committee to evaluate the the name doing business as to research the finances and the organizational structures and to establish some talking points to bring back to the board that board will be a committee will be made up of Jerry DMTD's the chair Dan Jones and Stephen Whitaker so moved second okay so motion by Hayek from Little Sex seconded by Klein of East Montpelier any further discussion all in favor signify by saying aye opposed abstaining very much everybody so we have tasks and adoption of the committees done adoption of mission statement I suspect that we've just won't buy that one because we have assigned it to a meeting and this is can I ask a question did member development or technology you had spoken about member development basically how do we get ourselves educated did that fall into and I had spoke of mapping mapping technical public safety member development technology primary those are so as as a first set of things to do for those committees that did not that did not have made the cut enter that list yet and I'm sure we will I'm sure we'll be coming back to them okay so because we don't have to adopt the mission statement we technically have a few more minutes I would like to just typically what we do on on the Berlin select board is we have a quick round table so just super brief one or two sentence if there's anything you want to say we'll just go around the board members and give everybody a chance to to say something and if you don't have anything to say you can say pass so let's do it in reverse order of the introductions Alan you want to start something this is we have a huge project in front of us this small organizational stuff we're doing now is really important although it doesn't seem to be that way but it's a terrific bunch of people this was the least painful meeting on meetings I think I'm encouraged by the by the people that we have on the board and I'm looking forward to working with you all I have sort of been fixed same feeling it's amazing out of our little enclave out here in the mountains to have this level of expertise and commitment and I'm encouraged and overwhelmed I'd like to ask what can I go read in the next month that you know if does anyone have any suggestions I'm just you know quickly in the right direction where to go and how to learn as quickly as I can I have I should be able to answer questions and poor resources your way I think when Michael's presentation comes out and if you look at ec5 verse presentation that can also clarify that okay in the interim if I take a something I'll send it your way I'd appreciate it Bob I'm practicing to be a sponge I intend to become much smarter if we can't do much in 2018 I look forward to connecting up the first user in 2019 I just echo the sentiments of the the broad diversity of people and skill set and interest is pretty awesome I just like to say I've done enough talking thank you all I appreciate it thank you and really encouraged this is so exciting to see not only the level of talent and diverse backgrounds but the level of commitment and the attention to detail that we're already putting into this I think it goes well for what's going to come next anybody like to adjourn I move to adjourn second okay it's a motion by Gilbert of Whistler second by Jones and Montalier um any further discussion all in favor everybody's time that she