 That was an extremely detailed view for the further statutes of that and that's it's kind of why I asked the question, you know, I understand we're a public entity and I'm kind of pulled both ways. I really want to, you know, hold our page as close to the chest as possible. At the same time, I'm looking at this from a PR perspective. You know, depending on who's requesting this data, you know, and if they do decide to, you know, to say that, you know, they don't believe that the redacted data is something that we can redact and they do decide to go against us on that. How does that, how does that make us look in our communities eyes. So it's just something that I think we've got to really be careful about how we do this. And that's that's that's the point that I wanted to make. Okay, it's it, you know, it's one of the burdens that a public agency carries. Believe me, public agencies struggle with that very question all the time, and it's difficult. But I think if you really do believe that by giving out the information, you're putting a public agency at a disadvantage that could harm the people that you're representing and could endanger the project. You've more or less been charged to carry out. I think you have the responsibility actually to do what you think is the right thing. Okay, so on my list of people interested in talking I have Michael, then Jeremy, then Jerry, then Greg. So Michael, and Siobhan. I understand what David saying, and, and, and I appreciate that quite a bit. I think that it's a difficult situation to be withholding any information from the people we represent. We do to the greatest extent possible want to share our information with the citizens. Having said that, and you know what that means. I do strongly believe that sharing the information in this report. It's not just at not even theoretical or subtle risk, great risk. It's, there are a number of unknown competitors and likely competitors tremendously be take advantage of knowing our strategy, our tactics, or choice of locations. What we think of them we, I mean, all lots of different entities are described in our report. And on top of that, the costs. That's one of the most important things. If we enter into auctions with with competitors, and they know what we project our cost to be. They know when, when they've gotten us to a point where we can't go any farther. There are so many different subtle ways that the information in this report can lead to our detriment that we could end up having companies defensively shoving us to decide just to protect their turf, let alone steal our potential customers. That, that I feel really strongly that despite our need to report to the public, we have to protect our competitive information. Now, what do we do about it. We could say the whole reports off limits, and that would be probably simpler. Because there are so many aspects in here. If we do choose, let's say we pick a committee or let's say the project committee does the redactions. It could look like something coming out of the Department of Defense, it could have so many reductions in it that it would be offensive to see. And, and it may be more appropriate to just say, you know, there's only this hardly anything in here we could share publicly, and we're going to withhold the whole document. I've never been involved in a public agency before. That's why I always make all these mistakes about public records and, fortunately, we have people like Alan who can straight and we have, but we've had a little behind the scenes discussion of this in advance of today's board meeting. And I think the idea of getting an opinion, even though Alan's not an attorney, but he really knows this stuff he's been dealing with for decades, but I think we should get a legal opinion. And I don't think it would take long to get a legal opinion, particularly if our previous delegate from Marshfield Jim Barlow is available. So I would like to make a motion that we ask Jim Barlow, whether we should withhold it. And what does he believe the prospects of our losing in court if it was challenged? And that would help guide us whether we're concerned about the penalty phase and so forth. Jeremy, can I just make a point of information so that you understand this? Michael, you can't do what you suggested. You can't say, well, so much of this information is confidential, we're just going to withhold the whole thing. There's actually a specific part of the public records law that says you have to make an effort that if any part of a document does not contain public information that you think can be withheld, you have to release that. Police are famous for doing this, you know, they search for any of this. Yeah, there's a certain interrupt. There's someone who really is harmless. So there actually is a provision now in the state public records law that says you can't do what you just suggested. So, I don't want to disappoint you, but the only thing that you've taken away from my request is the choice between redacting it or withholding the whole thing. I still think that we should get the legal opinion. And, and perhaps the legal opinion would say you should withhold the whole document, not because they're the subtleties that you just write, but just the whole document really is proprietary. So I would appreciate having a legal opinion on that. Can I just say to put on the record Jeremy, I'm not an attorney, I'm not offering legal advice. I don't want to get, I don't want to get the AG come after me for practicing law. I'm just offering what I know about the public records law. I'm not an attorney. Okay. Thank you very much for that Alan. So I'm adding. All right, so next is Jeremy. Yeah, I mean, Michael kind of covered a lot of it. It just seems like just just with the maps alone and the first route that we go after someone could say. All right, I'm going to build right in the middle of that. And, you know, screw up that whole route for us then suddenly our whole business plan isn't feasible anymore. You know, because we've wasted all this money planning and they've, you know, built a little patch of cable right where we want to run through. So the question that I have is in terms of talking to select boards and stuff like that. Is it possible that we could say well it's all sensitive now. And then when we need to have discussions with public entities about specific pieces say well, we need to talk about this now we think that at this point we're far enough along in the process that it no puts us at a at a disadvantage. This is now no longer considered sensitive so I guess that that was my question that is. Excuse me, I meant to say that I'm so glad you did Jeremy because that I do believe that at some point, we won't have a problem saying. Hey, we're coming. Sign up, but it doesn't have to be now. So that would be this board's decision about at what point we would be willing to release it or not. I mean it's in fact, you know, the board's decision tonight could be that we're going to make it all public tonight, or we could decide, you know, once the fibers on the polls that will then be talking about it or somewhere in between. So that's that's what I'm hoping for us to get to tonight. So, I'd like to second Michael's motion to have the board consult an attorney on some of the specifics of this I think a lot of the questions we're delving into require somebody who can practice and knows this material. Does that does that work with the timeline that we have two more days. Maybe if I can get him on the phone quickly. The question that I have for all of you is, are you willing to spend some money because you know attorneys don't necessarily do this for free. Can we complete discussion on this first. Well, so, so, so there's a there's a motion on on the table right now. There's a motion on the table that we should reach out to Jim Barlow to get a legal opinion on this. And this this is the discussion about that. So I can go to Jim Barlow and say hey Jim can you do us a favor and let me know. Let me know what you think, or he might say, you know, this is these are billable hours. I think given Alan's feedback, the point I would make on that second of the motion is that I would personally be in favor of going down the path of redacting. However, I would want the legal guidance to the committee around what exactly could constitute something that is redactable or not. And, and Michael correct me if that was not in the spirit of what you were motioning. I would like to ask him both questions. Would he find it acceptable to deny the entire request or redacted and I'm open to hearing the answer to either one. Okay. All right, so still talking with the motion fill and then Andy and then can Jeremy you forgot me. So, well, okay, so I didn't know if you still wanted to talk about this or if you wanted to get in the queue for after the motion. Well, either way, I just I have a problem with the fundamental premise whenever you think is a good time just queue me in. So this is yeah so if you have something to add about the question about asking Jim Barlow, then I mean so that's the item on the floor right now I'm happy to come back to you. I'm happy to have you talk now or when we're done, whichever you prefer. Well, let me do it now then have the opportunity. Sure. I'm with the fundamental premise here, and I'm actually concerned about exactly what we're doing because this is a distraction from a road that we've been on and working very hard to move forward. And I see this whole thing as a distraction. There really aren't trade secrets that we have in this feasibility study. One of the things that I've that I've learned in being a part of all of this analysis is anybody that knows this industry would probably have come up with something almost exactly. As we have laid out, there are only so many logical and reasonable paths to move forward in providing 100 100 service, or as close as you can get to it. So, anybody that would spend the time and effort and if you know the industry, if you are the industry considering if you're consolidated or Comcast, none of this is new to you. They would have been surprised had we come up with another alternative. They know where a CUD they know what our purposes they know what our towns are, and they know we're going for money that everybody else is going for. So there's, there's nothing here that's a surprise. There's really nothing here that's a secret. There is some NDA nondisclosure information I believe about some of the technology we looked at, but that's a sidebar. And I really think this is distracting us from our main purpose. And I don't. I don't think we would be any worse if we put all of this information that we have on the internet on our, on our website tonight. I don't think we would be any of the worst for it. It's no surprise to anybody what we're planning on doing and how we're planning on going about it. So that's my piece I'm done. Thanks, Jerry. I've got Phil, then Andy, then Ken. Thanks, Jerry. My, my comment goes to the Jim Barlow issue. I think it would be unfair of us to ask Jim to do this. We retain him as counsel. I think there's a liability issue for him. I think if I were in his shoes, I would, I wouldn't want to just do this. Unless I was hired as counsel or retained as counsel, often opinion. That being said, you know, that's would be a fine way to go. The other is, is this a question we could put before Paul Julian. Paul's had a lot of experience working with EC fiber and has undoubtedly addressed some of these issues with them and may have a really quick answer to this. Okay. Andy. So speaking directly to the motion, I would, I would vote no against it for some of the reasons fill outlined and also because I think it's premature and that it's really up to the board to make the decision first about whether we want to publicly disclose or not. And then I can either come back if we go to the more general discussion or I could just say, Dave and Jerry are winning me over in a big way. I just don't see that realistically this is a competitive threat to us and it's better for us to communicate. Okay, I've got Ken Michael David. So with regards to the motion I too would not suggest we go to a lawyer at this point. I'll say it. And in that is the, I would also not suggest we pursue if indeed our decision is challenged to a point of taking it to a court, then I would come back before the board and release the document be quite honest, because I don't want to go down that path. But, but, and in part by this is on my overall sentiment about about this decision I don't. It isn't that big a deal to me I do think there is some competitive disadvantage and I'll use the specific example is I can't remember who was that by knowing this is where we may go first, they particular cable company could screw us up. And it would not be a path they would normally take because they may not make money at it, but they screw us up. And, and then that we, I think we have the belief that there is this is a competitive world, and the extent to which we are successful will be chopping into the, the business activity of the large competitors. But I also know this only gives us the time between now, and when we actually make the decision to move forward is only a few months that's why I'm not that worried about it, but it isn't public information that does not it puts us at a competitive disadvantage I think that is clear, and whether we can avoid it or not in the long term I don't know because we are going to have to make it public. But anyway, for that reason, I don't want to go to a lawyer, I don't want to spend the money and take the time. The group here says, Oh, just released the whole thing that won't bother me because it means just buying a few months. Okay, so I previously had Greg and Siobhan in the queue for the previous discussion, but do you want to. So Greg, why don't you weigh in. If you because everybody's sort of we're kind of going back to the bigger question, as we're, as we're dealing with the, the motion on the floor but yeah it's yours. Okay, so there is a variety of information that was sourced from other parties, and if to whether we're going to release it in whole or redacted, we need to have approval of all the other sources of that information. And it may be maps and even if it's not under NDA, we should still get approval to disclose. And then second, there is a competitive issue and it's something that I have been on both sides of. I have knowledge of a competitor may be going in a certain route, you try to go ahead of them and license the polls. Even if you have no intention of providing service in that area, but it drives up their costs. So I'm not saying that would happen to see you these and these territories to see you these have aren't that valuable. I mean, nobody's built, but, but it is a very real thing and I've been on both sides I've done it and I've been victim of it. So, people will just license the polls and never built just to drive up your costs. So, for that reason I would want to redact maps routes costs. And I don't know who's going to use it in which way, what way. Okay, so I've got Siobhan, Michael and David. One of the points I wanted to make that I haven't heard made yet is, so I agree that it's premature to ask for a lawyer right now. I think that we're capable of making this decision and if somebody pushes back on it, then maybe we talk to a lawyer to confirm we're on solid ground but I really don't think we're going to have a big problem with that. But the point that I wanted to make is the world we're in right now is different than the world we were in when we commissioned this feasibility study and when we started this work. There's federal money, there's state money, and there's going to be a flood of people trying to get that money. And we're going to be competing with them in this. And I think that that few months of edge is going to make a difference to us because we're a teeny little organization trying to make our way here. And so the difference of $100,000 is huge to us is not going to be a big deal to some other company that's just trying to edge us out because they're philosophically opposed to the idea of CUDs. And so they're just going to try and make it as hard for us as they can. And every piece of information they can get to use against us for that purpose is to our detriment. And I think it's worth protecting our information for a period of time. Now I too also would rather just release it to everybody, but I don't trust everybody anymore. And eventually in time. Yeah, but right now because of all of the money that's coming in with the CARES Act and the federal money and the rural development money, and all of the competitive stuff that's going on surrounding this and everybody's trying to get a piece of that pie. And I don't think we should risk laying our cards out too soon. And I'm done. Okay, Michael and David and then I think we should probably get to a vote on this and then we can go back to the bigger question so Michael. I think that Siobhan hit it pretty well there. The issue isn't, the only thing I don't agree with that Siobhan said was they may philosophically not like the idea of CUDs and they might want to just muck things up for us. I don't think that's the point. I think the point is that because there is so much money floating out there. These poor business case locations that no one would build to have suddenly with the subsidies become wonderful business case locations. And they're attractive to these big companies because someone's going to pay them to do something that they might have been made to do by the regulators. Now they get paid to do it. And it's very attractive to them. And I want to reiterate. Most of this, the biggest money is going to come through in an auction. And if I'm in an auction and I know who I'm bidding against, and I know how much money they have in their wallet. I know how hard to go in the auction to win if I can afford it. I don't want them to know what we think it's going to cost us. It's just a real advantage to them in the bidding process. And as RDOF did reverse auction, I don't know how the state's reverse auction, if it ever comes to pass, how that will be run. But I've been through a few webinars now about how RDOF and CAP2 were run. It's really sophisticated. It's not a simple thing like, oh, you did this, then someone bits a little lower. There's all kinds of calculations going on all the time. And I can't, I don't want to take me through it now, but this kind of intelligence is extremely valuable to someone bidding. Now regarding the lawyer, I'm willing to back down on the need for the lawyer. I trust the non-legal advice we've heard tonight. And I think that we probably are safe with it and we will not sue whoever imparted it to us as having misled us. So I would be comfortable with the redaction process and not withholding the whole thing and go through a redaction process. And I think that's sort of a middle ground. I'm just not ready to release this information to the public. Later, sure maybe, but not now. Okay. All right, so David and then Jeremy, I'm going to give you the last word and then we'll get on with this. I have comments on the lawyer. And one of the things if I'm not ready to hire a lawyer, but if we do start to think about a lawyer, I think we ought to seriously think about Mr. Giuliani because he's representing any K-CUD and he's representing EC fiber. We might as well all team together. Anyway, that's my point. All right, Jeremy. See if I can unmute. Yeah, so I mean, I'm just trying to like put myself in like a public shoes. Like, would I think it was strange if we said, you know, if I was curious, like where's CB fiber going and they said, well, we're not going to tell you the exact routes. Here's the stuff redacted. And I just, I don't see myself or my neighbors getting upset if I said, well, I can't tell you exactly where the routes are. You know, they're in our member towns. I just, I don't see that that's going to be a public relations nightmare for us. And that's all that I had to say. Okay, can I throw one tiny thing in. There's a real difference between these, I'm sorry to trump in there like that, but there's a real difference between AC fiber and all the other CUDs in that they have valley net as their shield. And none of the rest of the CUDs have an entity as a shield like they do. AC fiber owns the plant valley net makes all the plans and decisions, and they're private and nobody can request their records. Okay, so we have a motion to ask Jim Barlow to give a legal opinion on whether it's acceptable to deny the public records request or to redact the material before it's submitted or for its turnover. That was moved and seconded. Because we are going to have it's because it sounds like we will not have consensus. Let's do. Let's do a roll call so Alan. Yes or no on the motion. I think John Russell is there and I'm sorry, you're, you're right. Well, let me go alphabetically and see if I can remember who's. Yeah, back to me if John's left but otherwise I think it's John. John's still here but my unfortunately my interface is my interface to go to meeting is being strange. Okay, so Andy. No. Okay, Chuck. David. No. Greg. No. Let's see. John, I'm having a difficulty with with my go to meeting. If you can post your. Hey. Oh, okay, great. It worked. I was able to unmute you. No, I didn't. All right, Josh. No. Ken. No. Michael. I'm sorry. I didn't withdraw the motion to save us all the time. It's okay. No. Okay, Phil. No. Ray. No. Tom. Trev. No. Well, so I will join the crowd and I will say no and the, the motion is defeated. So where would you like to go from here? Did you get Jerry? Jerry's an alternate. Right. Yeah, I'll move that we instruct Jeremy to convene the appropriate individuals to go through a process to redact the document so that it can be delivered in a redacted form to the person making the information request. Okay. I second. Okay, so that's instructing. Who's second is the second. I second Greg. Okay. So that's to instruct me to convene a redaction committee for the purpose of reviewing the feasibility study and redacting those parts that we deem trade secrets under Vermont law in advance of releasing it. Does that sound like a reasonable. Thank you for phrasing it. Okay. Okay. Any, any further discussion. On this. Okay, here. Shabon Shabon's recommend their comments. I think they're pretty appropriate for our consideration for what, what to reveal. Okay. Do we want to change the, the motion to, I mean, are you looking to amend? Okay. Well, we'll try to keep that in mind. Did you have something to add. For me. I saw your hand up. And if the emotion did, yeah, if it just, if the motion did include very, if the intent was to include what is being redacted or if that is going to be up to the redaction. Are we leaving that up to the redaction committee as I'm saying it off-handedly. That was my understanding. Okay. David, you have something. Yeah, I have a concern. I think this is probably going to pass, but I have in my later agenda item. People who are interested in the air doff and the ISP. I need to follow up with them and one of the documents they go on to talk to us about is the feasibility study. So, did they get an NDA they have to sign to get the document. That is a really good question. Can we ask those folks that are interested in this and that are going to be potentially providing services to us to send an NDA? Does that seem like a reasonable. Move forward. Yes. And because they're in the, they're in the business. Yes. Okay. Okay. Do we already have a template for mutual NDA or are we going to need a subsequent motion for some lawyer and on that. Yeah, I don't, I don't know that we need a motion for that. I think that's, that's enough of the kind of process that unless somebody has objections, I'm going to, I think we can just leave it up to David to, to drive that. Jeremy, what do you got? I guess this is maybe a question for Alan. Does the board need to find that things are trade secrets before they can be redacted, or can that be offloaded to a committee? Yeah, I think you can offload that to a committee. And remember, Jeremy supposedly is going to respond to the person who requested the record. And then that person has five days to, to file an appeal. And then whoever the head of our agency is has five days to respond to the appeal. So there's still some time running here where you could have second thoughts and fine tune things and whatnot. But I, I think that's where the idea of working with somebody like Peter Giuliani is a good idea to give you the parameters of what makes sense and what doesn't and when you have to get it done by. Thanks. Okay, Andy. Yeah, I just want to, since we're back to the general question, reiterate some of my concern and just echoing what Jerry, do you might jam a TV said that we're getting way off the rails with this our mission isn't to be a company. Our mission isn't to be competitive. Our mission is to solve this broadband problem. And if we incent somebody to go out there and build because they're afraid of us because there's all this federal money there. I don't know that that's the end of the world. And it's just our existence which is already driven a lot of both the legislative interests and everything else. So I think we're a little captive to being too much probably industry experts. I don't want that to sound wrong, but we're not we're a public body. We're here really to ensure that we serve our constituents with, you know, a proper service we're not here to win a competition. Okay, I have Michael and Jeremy and let's, let's if we can. Hopefully, if you have something new to add. I mean, we can obviously hear the same arguments. I mean, not, you know, pointing fingers or anything but I think in the interest of time. And now that we have Fred and Dan here, it'd be good to actually get to that feasibility study. Michael. So one comment I have is that the final draft isn't quite final. We have some things we'd like to see changed in it. And we may be able to change them within our three day window. And it would be preferable to the extent that it's not the parts that aren't redacted or as close to the final as possible. Because it is that stuff will get into the public sphere so why not. I think that's a total order in a short period of time but I think it's achievable so I recommend that we try to define the draft as much as we can before we submit it in a redacted form. Okay, so I have Jeremy then Tom. I don't agree with with you Andy sorry. It seems to me that yes we're not we're not out there to make a profit but we do need to be competitive in that there are other entities that would be going after the money that Siobhan talked about. We could very well find ourselves in a position where you know some entity comes in, builds a little bit of an area that is more profitable for them again like has been happening, all along with all the cable companies. And then we find that it isn't feasible to reach these last few people I mean, I don't I mean, it just seems like it could make it harder for us to achieve our mission if we are if we give up competitive advantage, even though we're a public company, we still need to compete with private entities in that we're going after the same money as them, we're going after the same customers as them. So that's all that I wanted to say. Okay, and Tom. Just a question on that, you know, draft versus final form what is the specific request that came in. I can read it to you, if you give me a moment. Let's move on. Request the interisal deliverables, which the deliverable would seem to be the final draft right. Well, I mean, they're they're delivering. I don't think it's worthwhile mincing words or arguing about whether they mean the final draft or whatever I mean the intent was to review the materials that we are talking about tonight here. That was, I mean, there is more in the email than just that. That's simple part. And I'm, I don't know where that is coming from. Is that your side, Tom? Oh, sorry. Yeah. So yeah, there is more to the email than that, but I mean, the punchline is requesting the interisal deliverables, which my reading was the materials that we're reviewing the interisal deliver to us that we are reviewing for tonight. That doesn't have make me feel watched at all. Well, we're public. We are necessarily in the public eye. Okay. So, so unless somebody else has any more comments, I think I will use kind of executive privilege to not call the question because that requires another vote. And I don't want to do another vote. Okay, so let me remind you of the motion on the floor was to instruct instruct me Jeremy Hansen to convene a redaction committee for the purposes of deciding what parts of the draft interisal feasibility study should be redacted before being released as a public record to their requester. Okay, so let's go down our list again. We will go with. We'll start with Andy. So I vote no. Okay, Chuck. Yes. David. No. Greg. Yes. See, john, john Russell. No. Okay, Josh. No. Ken. Yes, Michael. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Tom. No. Okay. And I don't, I don't need to vote the yeses have it at seven to six. The motion passes. I will, I will take the, this is maybe the first motion that we have had in the history of this body that has been anything other than unanimous, maybe minus one or two. So That's the closest vote we've had. Yep. So I, All right. So I hope everybody's still able to get together and when we are not, you know, physically distancing, we can still have beers and talk to each other after this. I will, I will take the instructions of the board and we can hopefully proceed from here. If you are all amenable, I think let's move up the conditional approval of the feasibility study that we've been talking about a bit, because we have Fred and Dan here. I think, I think we've got something really awesome. It would be, it would be great to try to get this out the door so we can move on to the next step. Jeremy, what do you got? Sorry, I just real quick, if we're going to be discussing the feasibility study, does the board want to consider going to executive session? Only if we are going to be discussing parts of the feasibility study that require us to talk or read portions that would otherwise be subject to redaction, which I think what we came to what I was taking in my notes here was find my notes. Any specific discussion of maps, specific descriptions of routes, geographic elements, any of the walkthroughs or the specific financials, I'm not sure that our discussion will get there. I think this is more about things that we can improve in the final draft, things that are maybe being added. So I provided a draft set of things to perhaps correct or update in the study. If you have other things that need to be added or modified, I think we can talk about that. If you feel like there is something that we need to discuss and we need to go into executive session, we should talk about that first. There is obviously that process of going into that executive session. Thank you again, Alan, for that refresher and those links to the statute on that as well. But let's see if we can tiptoe a bit and not get to that material if we can manage it. David, I would like to hand the reins over to you to sort of proceed from here. If that's okay. Sure. I mean, Jeremy and Jerry provided this. We all provided comments on the draft on Friday, and I don't have them in front of me, so that's where I had to go through them. But it's a list of the minor things. Okay, I muted you caller so that because you had yourself on speakerphone, it was creating some echo. So if anybody is listening to this and they would like to ask a question, you can feel free to text me 802-279-6054. I will unmute you and you can ask your question. So sorry about that. David, go ahead. So we came up with a list of changes that we thought needed to be referenced in the report or updated in the report, including there was a missing assessment part of the requirement in the RFP. We, you know, from our standpoint, the document was beyond what I was expecting in terms of quality content and methodology. You can probably quibble with some of the information in terms of routes. But as far as I was concerned, I thought they put together a pretty credible document that we can take to the next level in terms of doing a business document, a business plan, as well as use for some of our grant application work. I'd ask Jerry if he has any additional things that he wants to bring to the board's attention that everybody in the board got a copy. I don't know if you got a copy of our comments. I think you did. And if there are any questions about the comments or the report that you think you'd like to improve upon, this is your opportunity, I think, because the committee, the project team would like is to get a conditional approval tonight based on the fact that interis will make the changes and we'll move on. So that's sort of where the project team is. So I'll ask Jerry that I may use if he's got anything he wants to add to that. The only thing I would add is that personally, I'm very pleased with the report and the project team has gone through it very closely, and you can tell from the comments. Folks at Interisle, you can tell from the comments that they are marginal comments, improvements that we can see a few additions, a more firm conclusion section. We're providing an executive summary. I'm very pleased with the work and that's all I'll add now. And if I can just point out the material that I sent to you, it's a CVF addendum to May 6 draft. That's the commentary that the project team put together for suggestions for what the final draft will look like. So reiterating what David's saying, what we'd like to see at some point is if there's anything else that needs to be added to this, then let's get this out of the way now. But otherwise, I'm hoping that we can make a motion to approve the feasibility study subject to the updates and changes suggested by the project team. And you haven't sent me your suggested total changes, right? Wow, that's horrible if I didn't do that. I'm so, so sorry Fred. Hold on. Oh my God, Jeremy. So is that a motion, Jeremy, or are you hoping someone else can make the motion? I wanted to talk about it a little bit first. Okay. Just to see if everybody was on board. I mean, if that seems unreasonable. Go for it. I think I remember you saying that you wanted to take some of the questions to Dan or someone else at UC Fiber. Were you able to do that? I was reflected in the document is not reflected in the document because we had that we were going to have the discussion about to whom could we release our feasibility, the feasibility study to so once I get an NDA sign, then we can then we can talk together. So there may be some things that that are left slightly more open than we would like, but yes, I will. I will work with easy fiber to get an NDA in place so that I can send them that material as well. Thank you. Okay. Any other any other thoughts. Yeah, right. So I had a question. Question had to do with. I saw six groups. But I didn't see in those groups. I didn't see Barry city. I didn't see Berlin. I didn't see Elmore. Either in the groups or in the maps. And are they missing or did I just not read it correctly? So I'm going to just remind everybody as much as possible again, because these are portions that may be maybe redacted that we should not talk too too much about it. But so Dan or Fred, your choice of the areas that we talked about. Kind of don't include certain certain towns. And I think there's some insight into your process that would be. Should I address that now? If you could. Yeah. Sure. What we were doing, we weren't actually plotting out the final complete project. What we were doing was plotting out early phases of the project in order to. We needed to plot out the first stage of the project that could be used when dealing with a limited funding. Remember, we started this without any of the emergency funding that might become available. So given limited funding and the need to get to break even relatively quickly. We addressed the areas that seem most promising because a they were reaching people who are totally unserved or only had very limited DSL. And be so we didn't want to over build cable more than incidentally in the first round. And also places that we could get to it a relatively easy cost with using the available Velco backbone fiber to get to or WEC facilities. So in the case of a Barry city, that's entirely served by cable. So it wasn't just a Barry town to serve by cable. So it wasn't a priority to over build cable. It was to, you know, prove first that we're serving the unserved. So we had to, you know, put aside areas like Montpelier city and Barry city, because those were cable they weren't the priority. In the case of Elmore, there literally was no easy way to get there, because it's electric routing of the poles didn't connect to the rest of the area. So we're looking at it as something we want to get to, but we first have to figure out how we're going to get there. It might involve coming down from the north. They're coming in from the east coming in from outside. But we we it's most of its electricity comes from was it hardwick municipal. And so it's a different it's not on WEC or GMP it's immunity network for the polls. So it just was a little harder to make the case with the early funding that we could get there. Some of the others we just didn't get to filling in there isn't but we can get to pretty easily. And there's some areas that we want to get to earlier with the wireless. We can build a wireless pretty quickly and reach some of the areas west Elmore, which is the area that's really Morris Morrisville, but Elmore. That's already, you know, for what it's worth that's already covered by VTEL VTEL network VTEL has a silo. They're on there. So they're not as unserved as some of the other areas, which actually is good that that silos there as a tower, because it's on Morrisville electric which again is totally separate from all the rest of the district. So that's why we weren't trying to reach every last thing every last phase. We were trying to basically plot out the first couple of phases that would really do the most on fiber while filling in other areas with wireless. Okay, so I think I understand that particular point. Where is financial sustainability as part of the evaluation. The, of course, in the business plan part we're going to go into more detail I've been starting on the numbers, but those aren't finished yet. There's a fiber density that it's very expensive, you know, to reach people when they're not anybody per mile. So we were looking for an average of 10 per mile for these what I call routes are really build clusters. They're logical build clusters that were there because they are something that would be built as a project for financial reasons but they're not set in stone at all. They're basically for financial modeling purposes they can be changed adjusted added subtracted. We wanted to say if we built these we have a enough people in enough density to reach 10 per mile 10 homes per mile. That some of the miles are higher some of the miles are lower but with the connectivity within the group and there's some funny connectivity just because of where the polls are we looked like these were feasible builds. Yeah, that density. When I, when I looked at this, and I looked at the potential customers and the numbers. It appeared to me that those who were less than 25 megabits per second were motivated customers, people who would be underserved there were four they were 10 they were not 25 people who were 25 were potential customers, people who are already 100 were unlikely customers. And it seems like if you just took the numbers of those less than 25, you come up with a different density model per mile. When I did the when I did the review of the different groups. And so this is why the sustainability. That's why he's asked the question about sustainability. Well, again, the we actually, you know, try to put together these builds that reflected as a group potential amounts of density. There's nothing final there. But trying to make what looked to be approximately a workable number was that sort of around that 10 number. We could certainly add and subtract place that was a 10 number in the primarily underserved and unserved areas. If it was a cable area, we expect a lower take rate. But in the numbers, the business plan numbers I actually when I'm working on likely take rate and therefore the cash flow areas with cable or something better. Get a lower initial take rate than the areas that only slow DSL or nothing. So when I looked at when I looked at those and I did the I crunch those numbers. Blue came in at the motivated customers those that less than 25 at eight density per mile. And the purple came in at 10 density per mile. And the next highest one was yellow at nine density per mile. And just looking at potential customers where it includes all 25 and 100 is not an appropriate denominator for this particular analysis. Well, that said, the, the, the blue route has a section in the middle that in order to get from middle sex to Worcester we have to go through that section. So we expect a lower take rate while crossing through that section. But frankly, it'll be interesting to see what rate we get. So can I interrupt you for a second. Again, if we can avoid talking about specifics of roots and such. So I understand Ray's motivation here for drilling down about why you made certain choices or the other. And I think to a certain extent I'm going to trust Fred and his team to make the decisions that they're making about how they chose to do feasibility. I think if you want to share with them your, your thoughts about, you know, specific metrics and methods offline when it comes or separate from this meeting, when it comes to how we get to the business plan and the specific cash flows and stuff and such. I think we still have a lot of time to decide those final routes, but I think if we use this, you know, use these as the thumbnails for the various approaches that we could have. I think we're still looking at this from a maybe not a 30,000 foot view but maybe a 10,000 foot view and that we're getting closer and closer to the ground and we're getting there soon. So we could spend, I think we could spend a lot of time picking knits, as it were, and I certainly don't want to say that your criticisms or your suggestions are not significant or not valuable Ray. I just, I want to make sure that we're making the best use of our time altogether here. So I would certainly hand the floor back over to Fred if there's anything else that you wanted to add about this. No, I'm just saying if we try to go for a harder, you know, higher number by excluding some of the served areas, we quite frankly wouldn't find a lot of places we could serve. We think by keeping the cost of the construction down that we can make the numbers work. The numbers are looking feasible. They're not looking high profit that you know, there's a reason that when Verizon was here they didn't fulfill Fios, but we can build at a lower cost than they could quite honestly, we know technologies advance a little bit since then. So by selectively building, I think, you know, even though it's not ideal that now and then to get from a to be you have to go around just because of the terrain, the mile where the poles are. What we're doing really with these routes is illustrating ways we can make it work. These are not the order that it has to be of construction blue was chosen for various reasons as the first route, but beyond that the there's no specific order intended. How much it gets built at any given time depends on how the funding comes at any given time and what the results are of the blue route and what that teaches us the blue really is there in an effect as a pilot to determine. How real life conditions compared to our predictions. All right. Thank you very much any any other thoughts about the either the feasibility study itself or the list of suggestions that the project team has put together. Is everybody ready to move forward and get on to the next step Andy. Put your put your mic down. Don't cheap on the core router somebody put that in there and I was like, that's the worst mistake you could ever make because that's my only two cents. Quite frankly that comes also down to the ISP but we are our view is once you do as little routing as possible in an access network and just hand it off to a router but do everything in the vlan layer in case, you know, that's the design parameter. Thanks for that Andy any other any other thoughts are you guys all ready to move forward with this. Okay, wow, so I was expecting a lot more discussion that's maybe that's a good sign, certainly a testament to the thoroughness of the report so I'm going to make a motion that we conditionally, conditionally approve the feasibility subject to the, the addenda that the project team has identified, and that the project team will work with with interisle to produce the final report and deliver that to the Department of Public Service. Second. Yeah, I think Siobhan was first on on the second. I win. Please send me any edits, you know, things you want tweaked in the ticket from draft to release stage. Definitely. Yeah, so I did send those those comments I for some reason I thought I'd CCD you right added that I added that to the email that I had last sent. Okay, I see. I see they just just arrived. Yep. Okay. So, okay, any, any further discussion about the feasibility study before we can sign off and then move on to the business plan Michael. In the context of our previous issue of the public records request. And my suggestion that the appropriate is to make these suggested changes or edits into the copy before it's sent off. I kind of want to know from Fred and Dan whether that's realistic. And, and from Jeremy and Allen, whether there's any wiggle room on the three days how it's when you start coming in. If it gets turned in on the fourth day is that results in a lawsuit. It would, it would not be good so so what what I'm going to work with is I'm going to work with the current draft, not updated. The current draft was requested and I'm going to put that current draft together or we're going to look at doing the redactions on that and then on a separate copy. We'll look at doing some of the other updates and corrections and adding the executive summary and such because those aren't I mean that was all this is all hypothetical changes at this point. Yeah, they don't exist yet we don't have those but we do have the draft. Right. So does that does that make sense Michael. Okay. Any other thoughts about the feasibility study. Okay, so we're going to try to do what we did the last time. I'm going to assume that we have consensus if we don't have consensus then then you let me know but so moving forward as if we have consensus and then everybody's giving a positive vote for this. If you have objections and are expecting that you would vote against this motion, please let me know right now. Give you a moment or two. Okay. Hearing no objections, I will assume that we have consensus and that we have unanimous consent for that motion to pass so the feasibility study is conditionally approved subject to the changes of the project team. Thanks. Thanks everybody. So, got to get back to it. I attended the any case CUD first meeting. And they had, it was their first meeting the organizational meeting I had a lot of things to vote on every single vote was a roll call unanimous votes. Ouch. I am so pleased that you're doing it the way you're doing. I'm going to be here for another hour I think. All right. Every time you ask if there's any objections I want to shout that the groom slept with the bride's sister or something like that. Okay. And my hand would get a cramp writing down all the roll calls. So, so, so Siobhan I want to invite you next time we have a vote please please do it at least just for the record okay. And Jeremy I want you to make sure that that goes into the minutes just saying. Okay, I'm looking at. So let's let's postpone the approval of the previous meeting minutes unless everybody thinks that that's something that we need to do. Let's do a quick quick discussion of the update about the schedule is there something you wanted to talk about David with that. I can roll the schedule into the topic discussion on the odd off invitation I sent out for interest to either be a participant in a, which is on the schedule. And I want you to do that. I think it's very close to keeping it on schedule. But we sent out letters or emails to I think nine different potential ISP contenders or utilities for the odd off. One, two, three, one back from VTEL Waitfield Champlain, telecom cloud alliance Tillson technologies, Washington Electric Valley net with a contingency that they're not interested in doing any Wi Fi. And then our be technologies, which basically after I talked to them that they're sort of going to drop out. But so I thought I was pretty good to get that many different people, and my plan next steps are to respond to the group with criteria for partnering partnering, which I'll use the business development group to come up with, and we'll send it out to them. So the time to this one we do have to stay on task pretty quickly to stay competitive with the funding and all that. Not clear what we're going to do with Washington Electric. I mean they are interested but they are sort of still hemming and hiring about how to do it. But we can talk about that later. And then the other thing is to just continue to follow the FCC's refinement of the numbers that go with each of the blocks. I don't know when they're going to come out with their final numbers and see whether that how that impacts the the district. The end of May. Thank you. And it's the middle of May right now so it's not far away. The next one is on the NBN Northern Commission, Northern Board of Regional Commission grant application. We got positive feedback from the Vermont MBRC representative on our letter of interest and was encouraged to apply. I'd say the application right now is at 65% complete. We got support letters already from the town of Orange and the group in Cabot. Support letters in progress from the town of Calis, town of Moortown and Washington Central Unified Union School District. Contacted unknown status because I was CC'd on the request for the City of Montpelier, town of Middlesex and town of Berlin. If the other people have noticed of them happening, I don't have that information yet, but it really does help to have as many letters of support. I need to get the Regional Planning Commission and Jeremy if you can get Central to be great. We'll take letters of support from anybody. I'm going to contact my legislator. They just have to get them to me by May 29th. Other large institutions, like the hospital in Berlin, I could reach out to them. State legislators would probably be good, but if somebody works at National Life, I'm just thinking of other... So, Trev, if VSECU is willing to say, hey, we think this is a valuable sort of thing and you're willing to chase down the CEO or whoever would write that letter, you know, these are all things. There is a value in volume in this case, I believe. I'll try to get capstone. I just thought about getting capstone. I know it's been pretty well. And David sent out a while ago, he sent out a draft sort of a template letter that you can use. They certainly don't have to follow that, but the idea is that they're going to explain their institutional or their personal support for what we're trying to do, and it demonstrates that we're connected to our community. The other connection with your select board, by the way, if I'm not mistaken, we're all supposed to be reappointed this month. Right. Yeah, so you should be... So it's an opportunity. Select boards and city councils. I met with Calis select board last night, and they really appreciate being kept in the loop. They let me know how much they hated the VTEL tower that got knocked down in Calis. So in terms of tall towers, be careful. Anyway, so they're really supportive, so I feel good about it. How tall was that tower? 150 feet. Pretty big. Okay. Anything else on this, David? No. Okay. Any questions for David? Those are my notes. Okay. So you all have some marching orders. If you have organizations that you know of or your select boards, if you did not hear your town mentioned in that list, it would be great to do that bit of outreach if you could. All right. So let's move on to commentary about the Vermont Emergency Broadband Action Plan. What we'd like to be able to do is respond to the Department of Public Service and put together this pretty ambitious broadband action plan looking to do a lot of things right now. And if you watch the legislature discuss it today, there's a lot of different directions that it went, and I think fairly a bit of confusion about what was trying to be accomplished. And so that discussion got off to a bit of a slow start, as people were not clear what they were actually trying to achieve. But what I think I would like for us to do, because there is a commentary window open for us to say, here are the good things, here are the bad things about this. We have an opportunity to shape this. And it's like, I think, like I said earlier on, this is being taken very seriously at the state level now. Everybody has their eyes on broadband. So if I could, let me just get us started, I'm going to see if I can find my commentary that I sent sort of informally to Rob Fish. And where did that go? That was this morning, because I remember, David, you also had a commentary. So one of the things that this plan considers is giving funding to CUDs directly to support administrative tasks. So what I said is I said, you know, it would be great if we had funding to have an executive director. We've had this conversation before. Ray, I remember you mentioned this over and over. That has landed there. It is at DPS, the legislature has heard it. They are supportive. And it sounds like they will be willing to fund it in some form. So I said, you know, administrative tasks like, you know, bookkeeping, grant management, fundraising, grant writing, minute taking, you know, dealing with some of the mapping stuff. So it's great that we have David on board here, but there's not a David in every communications union district. And David's not going to do that work for every communications union district, I suspect. Maybe you will. But at some point you may actually want to retire. Just saying. So what I said is I said it's having someone whose full-time job it is to manage these kind of day-to-day things would make us much more efficient and less likely for things to fall through the cracks. Like I didn't send the thing to Fred before tonight. And I should have. You know, I didn't have meetings with a treasurer and I should have. And I totally own that. So moving on. The question about how grant. So this is more of a federal level thing. So I don't know if that actually makes sense for, as a commentary about this plan. The plan proposes to take a whole big pot of money and essentially get any address, which is not 25, three or more right now, get any address that's not 25, three or more to 100, 100 minimum. And using a reverse auction process. Like art off. So it's explicitly carving around the places that have cable or fiber. And that our doff is not covering. So the idea is that we would go into this, this auction process alongside going into the art of process. And what I said is that this is still, it's a really awkward process for us to get involved in. It'd be better if there was some sort of, if there was a town by town block grant and you wanted to contract with us to just build it. So let's just do that rather than having this much more complicated situation. And there that was, that was proposed that Rob mentioned that to the legislature today. And again, they didn't run screaming. It seemed like a, like a reasonable, reasonable thing. The example that, that I used was the way that education primary and secondary education is delivered in the state of Vermont. So we have the education fund in the state of Vermont. And then the state writes checks out of that fund to the individual school districts to deliver education subject to certain criteria. And I could see there being a broadband fund. Hey, we have one where that those checks would be written to providers to deliver the service in the same sort of way. So we have a structure that already does this sort of delivery of a public good. And I think this is something that would be a cleaner way of getting the fiber off the ground here. I mentioned a asking for some clarification, not necessarily a new law, but maybe some better, better explicit language in the public records law to ensure that we don't have any confusion about whether or not we can mark things not public when they are competitive materials. So I think the current statute supports what we're trying to do. I just think it would be good to have something maybe something more explicit so that it's not likely to be challenged in court. And then I said, obviously, you know, this all boils down to us getting access to capital and fulfilling our mission of getting everybody in our, you know, 18 towns, getting them actual real, you know, 21st century access. And then David, I don't know if you want to read your suggestions or if you want me to do them. I can happily if you have them right there. Sure, I do. So David asked about developing a generic website specifically for specifically for CUDs. And it turns out that that website actually exists. There's some challenge to getting things onto a state website. So it's slow and especially now things are slightly, slightly slower. But there is a sort of a CUD page kind of nestled within the DPS's website. Yeah. With a billing system and a community and all of that. I doubt that. I didn't see a billing system mentioned in your comments. No, but I mean, to me, a website is to manage the whole site. Oh, okay. So like a template website that each CUD could use. Oh, okay. Okay. It's been more explanatory. Yeah. Yeah, that was, yeah, because Rob's like, well, we have that. And I guess, no, we don't. So let's, yeah, let's make sure that that gets added to the list as well. Ready access to the locations of all fiber networks in the state. There's a start of that, but there's some of that information that's sensitive. That's not likely to, to get out there either. Create a decent GIS mapping of cell Wi-Fi coverage. So Corey could go around and maybe get more granular data. Is that what you're hoping for, David? Yeah. And basically know where it all is. I mean, we're, we're, we're in the dark. Okay. And then good inventory of poles and towers and the things that are on the poles. Rob had a question about this and he said, but wouldn't the engineers that go and do any particular project then need to go and do another pole audit and actually physically sign off on it themselves though? Well, who's done right to begin with, you wouldn't have to. Okay. And that's, and that was, that was kind of my response to him too. I mean, if we got it done by an engineer, then they signed off on it. Presumably another engineer would be able to come and say, Oh yeah. Okay. He did this. I'm going to incorporate this. Okay. So. You know, would that count for them for the survey? Pardon? For the make, because there is in our plan, there's a, there is a per pole. Charge per pole cost, right? For the, for the, for the survey would. Who has to pick person. Yeah. So this is. Oh, go ahead. That's the open question. I think that would be somebody you would use or would this have to be someone. Well, in the context of this emergency plan, I was suggesting, why don't they spend some money and do this work that we do and have to pay for. So have the state. I was trying to find ways that we would. That would be, that would be nice. Could I answer that? So. That's all about make ready. And your children. Are the ones who control what happens to their poles. Are they overloaded? What if there's. Cables that are getting too close to power lines. And it. There is this one touch. Version that's going into the. Three. Seven, which controls. All attachments in Vermont. But it's not something for the department or for us to do, because the poll owners. Are ultimately liable for how things are done on their own polls. They've got to fall down. Whether someone will get electrocuted. And that's the reason that they're the ones who charge the survey. For a poll. Okay. Okay. So if we get back to. The commentary about the Vermont emergency broadband action plan, are there any other things that you think that we need to include in a message from, from us, from CV fiber. In that plan. Or if there are any of those things that I mentioned, or that David mentioned. That should not be in our response. So. I haven't written too many comments on this thing other than what I suggested to Rob today. But the one is reverse auction. I'm totally opposed to, but the fact that they think it's a great idea to tie it with the FCC's. I think it's a great idea to tie it with the FCC's. Reverse auction makes no sense because they are not going to have this money until 2021. And the reverse auction is happening now. So it didn't make it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know, Michael, what do you think? No, I think it does make sense. Okay. But I think that this. My recommendation is that the, that the CUDs get the block grants. Okay. The CUDs. The CUDs. The CUDs. The CUD department. Are clearly favoring CUDs right now. Yeah. But it is now. And we take advantage of that and urge them to give block grants to CUDs. That eliminates this weird issue of having a reverse auction. Someone having the lowest bid and then the CUDs having veto power over it. I don't understand how they. Thought that would block. So if we have a block grant and we can choose our provider, then we'll have a better system. And then the rest of the state. Could be reverse auctioned because it's going to be hard to get someone to cover those times. And if they're grouped in not just towns, but as counties or regional planning commission units, which is what they proposed in their plan. They will force whoever wants to do Dover. To do three other towns next to Dover. And that way it happens. So that makes sense. And then on top of that, the question about our doc and this and timing. The art off money will not be distributed for at least a year after the auction. The art off auction is going to take place this October, but the whole legal process with the FCC takes about a year. And so the state plan and then reps, and you have six years from the day you get money to get, to complete your build out. The state is proposing a build out within three years. Of getting money or getting the award, which I think is overly optimistic, but appropriate in this political time. That's grant money, not loan money. Right. Well, that's the big difference. And CAF is the problem with our doc and CAF is that those are 10 year operating grants intended to pay off loans, which is different from a grant. So they are based around the model that a rural telephone company will get cheap loans from the department of agriculture and pay it back with the CAF or art off money. That's not, you know, the model here. So it's very tricky to try and coordinate the two things. Our office only 17,000 estimated locations in the state. So it doesn't pick up. Oh, it's up to 24. But still it's, you know, it's a significant part of some of these towns and it also excludes some of these towns in the district too, including some of the most needy towns. Roxbury is excluded because it's TDS and TDS is areas are not covered by our doc, for instance. So the Roxbury. Sorry, what is treating us? They're a cable company. TDS is Norfield telephone company. Okay. I just want to say this plan, if you haven't had a chance to read it was sort of advertised is to take care of the current emergency in the next six, eight months. And there's almost nothing in it in far as I was concerned that takes care of the next six, eight months. They, you know, there's not a lot of information about how to deal with three Wi-Fi or how they get it around. And I'm just saying a week is the department using this as an excuse not to do a full blown plan about how they are to deal with telecom in the state. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I want to put this in context of the money. I do think it's inappropriately labeled the emergency broadband action plan. Because the money that they're focusing on is speculative money that Peter Welch is talking about in terms of an infrastructure investment that has not been passed by Congress. There are two other pots of money. There are two other pots of money that are, that exist today. And June brought up a little bit of it. And when she talks about cares money, there's some small pots that are directed towards education and telehealth. That money exists or it was passed by Congress. But if those are relatively small pots, the much bigger pot of money that exists today is the state of Vermont was provided $1.25 billion. The COVID response program, the COVID response something. And it is up to the agencies to determine how to spend that $1.25 billion. And so there is reasonable proposal that is just a number of millions of dollars that is to be used during calendar 2020. And so I think we will be seeing another emergency plan because as David said, this plan is really for the future. It's appropriate to think about how to get fiber to everybody, but it's not going to be using money in 2020. It's going to be using money in the future. To the extent we can think about it now and set ourselves up and set the CUDs up to be able to move forward on that over the 2021 to 2024 period makes sense. But the emergency situation, getting broadband to our students, getting broadband to patients that need telehealth and getting a broadband to remote workers who are not able to go to work this year is another emergency plan. And I think we'll be seeing something in the next couple of weeks because that money has to be spent in 2020 and is not characterized by what E-BAP represents. And I've spoken to a couple of people in the department. They recognize that and they will be looking for that next emergency plan. And this next emergency plan though has great questions for us. How would CUDs act in a very short time frame to identify how best to use that money to get service. It may not be 100-100 service this year because we can't string fiber that fast. But is there a role for CUDs to help move that truly emergency action forward? That's going to be a question that we're going to need to think about because I say in the next couple of weeks, four weeks, I think we're going to see another emergency plan. Thanks for that, Ken. I have a couple of other things that came to mind both from the presentation to the legislature today. Yeah, mainly from that. The idea of a coalition of CUDs. So that, you know, we and EC Fiber and the Northeast Kingdom, the two in the south, and there's one nascent one in Lemoyle County and so on and so on. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all get together and sort of kind of go after some of these pots of money all together as a coalition? And that's something else that I think would probably be valuable to call out in our commentary to this emergency plan is, you know, maybe CUDs need funding. But is there funding for a super CUD, a statewide entity that would contain all of the CUDs in it as well? Could there be some administrative overhead that's managed by that as well? I know we sort of mentioned this. This is what four months ago that somebody, maybe it was me, somebody sarcastically mentioned, you know, do we need a district of districts? And I think that's kind of on the table now, frankly. And specifically with the one that's up in Lemoyle County, there's an effort, apparently it's in GovOps right now, to fast track new CUDs because, right, so to get a CUD, you have to have a vote at town meeting. What do we not want to have people doing right now, going to town meeting? So there are some towns in Lemoyle County that want to start their own CUD, but they don't want to have to go through the town meeting process. So it looks like there may be a fast track process for new CUDs. So we may see before long a CUD covering basically every town in the state. I don't know how much we will have a role in that process, but I think it would be important for us to be advocating for or against it, or otherwise, you know, mentioning it in our commentary about the plan. So, Michael. So in the RDOF process, there is something called consortia, where we could form a consortium with the other CUDs that wanted to participate and bid en masse through one eligible bidder as part of that consortium. And we don't have to only think about RDOF. It's just the biggest problem that we're going to see probably in 10 years, unless the wealthy still gets bigger. So it's certainly worth continuing to think about. And our bidding powers improved as we ally with other energies, I would say. It could have introduced some problems, too, to how to divvy it up and who's lead and who's responsible and whose letter of credit and all that. Of course, then there's the aspect of the emergency plan where they propose that the bidder cover the letters of credit for CUDs. That would be a really wonderful thing, too. Okay. So what I'm hoping to do is have this letter go out to DPS about the emergency broadband action plan. They have the commentary period is over on the 29th, I think. 26th. Okay. It's going to be a public meeting prior to that. Right. And that's what, next a week from Thursday, I think? Did I write that down? The 21st, there'll be a public meeting about this. So what I'd like to get authorization from the board to do is to draft that letter with the commentary that you heard tonight on behalf of CB fiber and get that to the department. Any thoughts or objections or anything about that? I can probably add to it, but I've got a marked up copy here. There's lots of little things that I don't think the board needs to be dragged through, but I could add that stuff for you. Sure. So we, so we, I think we went through this process before, what was the commentary that we put up, Michael, where CB fiber had some commentary and then you as kingdom fibers. It was during the department RFP process. There was a question period at the beginning of how this, how the program would work and how the application process worked. And we did collaborate on the questions. Okay. So I guess I'll, I'll just make a motion. I move that the, the board authorizes me to write a letter on behalf of CV fiber to comment on the Vermont emergency, emergency broadband action plan with the previously noted items. That we've, that we brought up in this meeting. Second. Okay. Who was that second? Phil. Okay. Thanks Phil. Any further discussion. Okay. Hearing none, I'm going to assume that we have a unanimous consent unless I hear any objections. Minute or so. While we're waiting, Jeremy. So who was that going to be sent to? Was that the legislature or. I'm sorry, I'm too slow to the department of public service. It was, it was their plan. So they're, they're soliciting comments on it right now. And I thought us as a board, we would have a bit of influence there anyways. Okay. Not hearing any objections. I will assume that we have unanimous consent and the motion passes. Thank you everybody. Let's do a, let's do a round table if we can, and then we'll, then we'll be done. Alan. Approval of minutes. That's on the agenda. Or are we leaving that until later? Let's, let's leave that till until the next meeting. Although, although, do we need to have another meeting this month? Do we need to have our meeting in two weeks? David. In terms of submitting the application to the Northern. Order regional commission. You need to be authorized to submit the application, I think. Okay. So. So, so let's, so what, when does that have to be in? That's to be in June 1st. June 1st. Yeah. Okay. So, so let's, you know what, I think it's worthwhile. And there's going to be enough stuff coming down the pike. I think it's worthwhile looking at May 26th as a, a meeting basically to talk about the Northern borders grant. Is there, are there any objections to that? Okay. I'm going to put that on our schedule then for the 26th. Okay. Anything else? I don't know if we should talk about the grant or. We already agreed that we want to apply and. And we could authorize David and the community to submit the application. Make motion and do it. Well, because we don't have a warned agenda item. And that seems like an important enough thing to have as a warrant agenda item. I mean. The meat, the meeting wouldn't have to be terribly long. It could be this, it could be five or 10 minutes. It could be a little bit of a discussion. I just think it makes sense to have that as a clear warned agenda item. Yeah. Okay. So let's go. So anything else. About this before we move on to. Okay. Yeah, these are, these have become sort of amazing meetings. I think, you know, first for the, for the format of doing it online, but it's, it's really. Interesting to see a huge challenge that has been in front of people for a long time, building out broadband into rural areas. And to see what could be a resolution coming together so quickly is, it doesn't happen very often. So it's a, it's really, it's really amazing to be part of it. Thanks. Thanks, Ellen. Andy. I'm pretty good. Just thank you to everybody and let's keep going. All right. Chuck. I would just like to say a big thank you to Fred and Dan for the work they put into that report. I was thoroughly impressed with how detailed it was and, and the thought process and the approach. And, and I want to thank you for, for what you've done because this is going to open up a lot of doors for us, I think. Yeah, definitely echo that. And at least alphabetically, I know you're not on the board, but Dan and Fred, do you have anything that you, you guys would like to add at this moment? Nothing in particular, I appreciate the chance to work with you guys and hope we can continue to be helpful and hope that, you know, the business plan part works out well. All right. Thank you very much. I'll just back on that. Okay. David. I just, I want to, the great work from Dan and Fred. The other thing I just want to put in everybody's mind is, you know, this pandemic is going to result in a lot of other things happening in the next couple of years. Barnaband is a big one of it. But I also think universal access is going to be, you know, where, oh, we got to take greater 50%. Well, I can see a day when the take rates 100%. Because everybody needs it. So how it gets funded is another story. All right. Greg. Well, a big thanks to the inner aisle folks and especially David for guiding this and thanks for all your work on it. Thanks, Greg. Jeremy. Yeah, not a whole lot, but again, was really impressed with the report. Thank you very much, Dan and Fred. And to everyone else just put tons and tons of work into this. Jerry. Nothing dad. Thank you all. Thanks Jerry. John. I agree with what Alan said that there, there seems to be a lot more momentum than it was a year ago. I think it's all due to the people on the board here and and events. And I also want to thank Dan and Fred for what I think is even in its form now an excellent report that gives us a great deal of hope that we can actually succeed. I don't know if a year ago we all would have imagined that we would have this really good report from Dan and Fred that. So I think that a lot of work has gone into this and still a lot of work to do. And, and one more thing I do do Jeremy Hansen sending me a note. I did watch the other two committees sort of struggling with with, but they were struggling with doing with what we're doing. But we were doing a much better job than those two committees did. So I think it's a great opportunity for me that you had a lot of discussion with with Mr. Fish and David, I guess also. But there's still an incredible amount of work to do here. And, and I think that we, we put our foot down on the path and we're going in the right direction. So thanks for putting up with my speech and I know I'm done. Thanks John, Josh. Thank you so much. I'm going to put mine in the form of a question. I had to duck out for a couple of minutes. So by approving the feasibility study with some changes, does that mean it goes to the public service department? Yes. Okay, that because that's what I want to make sure we get done as quickly as possible part by wearing my state hat. And then we'll see what it is their expectations are and we'll get that feedback and that'll be really helpful. Okay, Michael. Well, I just want to say that despite the fact that they work for this enormous basis, National Corporation, Fred and Dan have been so personal and so detail oriented and so helpful to us. It's a great pleasure to work with them. Thank you. All right. So, can you got a hat? I didn't get a hat. When did you get a state hat? That's not fair. I'm ready to grab a shovel and a ladder. So let's do this. Oh yeah, the other thing I wanted to say is what would it take to get internet finally declared a utility for the public good? What's that going to take? How does the state do it for Vermont? Or does that have to be? Well, quite honestly, let's talk about, I want to address one minute because that's an interesting question. The internet itself is not a thing. It's a phenomenon and you shouldn't treat it as a thing. People misunderstand it. And so it's not a utility, it's information and information is not a utility. The physical network, the fiber should be a utility. That's the thing. The idea of vertical integration, which was done in the early 2000s, the FCC flouted the letter of the law, if you actually read title two, they flouted the letter of the law and created vertical integration of broadband providers when the law was intended to have a utility provide the wire and basic transport service that would enable competitive internet to run on top of it. So really what you want, the best way to fund fiber is as a utility that's open to everyone to use as long as they pay the price because that way the externalities are captured by the users but the utility still makes us money. And you have one and you don't have 18 different people extending the phone poles to string fiber. It's a crazy model that the U.S. adopted and it was basically done in order to kill the competition because the FCC knew nobody could afford to over build Verizon and AT&T. Right, so how do we change that? That's my question. I want to fix that. There's two things. One is we have to change the regime in Washington at the FCC and then... So it is a federal thing. It's federal because it's all federal policy. And also we have to convince the people who were, who should have been on our side to stop fighting for network neutrality, which they defined as regulating the internet and fight for open networks and to just have utility fiber structural separation is the term, which completely, all the people arguing that the entire Obama administration wasting their time on a dead end and not making the progress they should have made. So we've got to redirect the polity to think about the problem as a utility at the bottom layer and then free and open competition for the use of the fiber. And that was totally ignored by people who thought that the internet itself was the utility and that you should regulate it. But if you actually know how the internet works, it's an abomination technically. And we need to fix it technically, which you can't do if that's the utility. I'm sorry, I won't do up. I appreciate the answer. But I didn't want to upset you. I don't mean to upset you. Telecom policy is the heart of my business. And so that's why, you know. Yeah, but no, I appreciate the detail. I will be more precise in the future when I. That's a good question. But you know, actually the state Vermont probably would agree with me on this. And if they could, they would. Maybe we should convince them to try and push to push it. I think you're probably right. I think you would all, you would also find a friend in Peter Welch. I think he could also agree with that. But let's move on to Phil. Follow that. It's all been said for tonight. I'm good. All right. Right. Yeah. So I think this coronavirus has created a moment. Has accelerated some trends that were ongoing. We reached some tipping points and some things. And it's also underscored some. Social infrastructure issues that we've had. For a long time. But it's provided a moment for us. I think it's going to result in a lot of grant money. We use this country through rural electrification initiatives. And now we need a rural electrification initiative. With all kinds of grant money. I think we're going to start seeing that come together. That's it. All right. Thanks, Ray. Steve. Anything you want to add? Steve Harris on the phone. Okay. Nope. No, I. The only thing I would add. Do you hear me now? Yep. Yep. Oh, okay. The only, the only thing I would add is that, you know, I noticed in the emergency broadband action plan. They were considering the exception to the 100 100. And I think that's significant. And hopefully they'll carry that. Over into the next phase of the plan. That you're talking about. Okay. That's, that's a, that's a really good point. Cool. Thank you very much. Tom. Yeah. Again, thankful for the feasibility study. And good to finally see it after a couple of years of slogging through here and. Talking about it for a while. So. I'm looking forward to the business. Plan and all of the latest, you know, talk at the state level is. Is pretty interesting as far as we've been talking about. Well, what would the. The rate speed or our customers based on the idea of needing to get enough money in so we can continue to build the network out. And if, if that starts to drop off as the metric of how we build, then it becomes, you know, some more interesting blue sky territory of. What do we start charging people? And then what does that look like? And how low can we get the prices to be? So, yeah, I'm really excited to see what's coming down the pike. Thanks, Tom. And just Phil just said he had to drop out. And then Trev said in the chat, thank you for the meeting this evening, the report. And of course the conversations and decisions around the draft and associated request for information. For me, work calls at the moment, I'm a simply drop off the meeting. Thank you all. And so I'm going to move that we adjourn. Okay. So. All right. Great. And so we are, we are adjourned. Bye everybody. Thank you everyone. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye everyone.