 So now we're recording. So let me call the CVFiber governing board, regular governing board meeting to order at 6.02. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Ray, I see a hand up. Yeah, I'd just like to move the, what's called officer's compensation at seven o'clock to prior to the 2023 budget. So move it up one. We'll do. Understood. Can I add? David, you have something? Yeah, I would like, I don't know if we can, it's not on the agenda, so I'm not sure if we had it. Right now I am the designated CVFiber delegate to Vecuda and I'd like to have a motion to have it move to Janiel, an action item. We keep on missing this every month. Yeah. Okay, let's, we can add that. Let's add that after the minutes and have that get that done and out of the way. I think that's it. Okay, is there any public comment? Hearing none, do we have meeting minutes to approve? I think when I went to the website earlier, there were no minutes there for the previous meeting. Was I mistaken? Yeah, no, you're not. I failed to follow up with CVRPC. I sent them the notes and never heard back from them. I don't know if they didn't get the recording or whatnot, but I'll follow up with you, Jerry, and maybe see, actually, Sybil, would you have time to do these minutes as well for the last meeting? Oh, I think Sybil's on mute and I think Sybil's on mute and we would need, I think, why don't we take this offline so that Sybil doesn't have to make the decision now? I don't know. Yeah, let's take this offline and work that out. Okay, so then we can move into the treasurer's report and bills to pay. And Ray, you're aware of, yeah, you are. Okay, thank you. So there's no bills to pay for us to pay. I would like to go through the January through November profit and loss statement and invite your attention to several things. So first of all, our total grant income is $6.6 million and I'm gonna ask Jerry to talk about, now this is through 30 November, I'll ask Jerry to talk about any changes since 30 November. Actually, I wanna make one comment. I think that we have, don't we have to approve the NEC broadband invoice? Wasn't that bills to pay? The NEC, that's one that I didn't approve, or? The executive committee would be the place for doing that if you don't have the authority to do it, but I think you have the authority to do it. Okay, I think Jerry approved it, so maybe we're good on it. I just, I didn't want to miss the opportunity. I think we can take it off this here. Then we have expenses. Administration is its first category and total administration through 30 November is $215,000. That includes accounting, insurance, salary and wages, et cetera. Poll inventory services through this point is $330,000. I think we have some bills that we'll see a change in that coming up. Pre-construction work, design, $1.3 million, make-ready services, $600,000. This is replacing poles, tree trimming, et cetera. Materials, $2.8 million that we've expended to date. Total pre-construction of $4.7 million. Total expenses of $5.4 million. We have at this point in time revenues and excessive expenses of $1.2 million. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, thank you. All right, thank you. And we have funding requests that let's see, we just, I'm gonna get my numbers wrong. We have put in a request to get the remainder of our pre-construction grant funding. We have to basically invoice the VCBB. So we've done that to get the remainder of our pre-construction grant funding. And we have also invoiced the VCBB and received $5.8 million, I believe, in construction funding. So we just got it. So the money is in the bank to pay for construction. It's a good thing. Which is a good segue into the construction update. And I probably should have started the meeting with this, but there's an immense thank you and congratulations to folks because we have started construction. And if you wanna know where it is, it's in Calis and we've got 9,000 feet of strand that has been strung in CL01, I believe. Is that correct, Janiel? So congratulations, folks, this is really monumental. We're all extremely pleased. It's taken a lot of work, as you all know. So we are very, very, very, very happy about that. So, Janiel, would you give us a bit of an update where we are in construction and just five minutes of what's going on? There's so much going on, but things are happening. Yeah, I met with Tony, who is the construction manager from NRCC today, and he confirmed that, as Jerry you stated, we've used this as strung 9,000 feet so far and are continuing with strand and lash. It'll take about two weeks to get through the scope of work for CL01 that they have in their hands. And then they will be following that up with fiber. So strand and lash first, then fiber. In addition, they're starting the undergrounding for the permits that we have in Calis as well. So the next step would be to look at the cabinet site for Calis, and that's a scope of work that is most likely gonna go to time and materials rather than a flat fee. This is a conversation that we had today. So this is still work in progress, but we did receive our templates for the cabinet site and signed the lease for it. So we're ready to go as soon as we finalize that scope of work for time and materials. I mean, that's one of your construction. Fantastic. Any additional questions for Janiel? Let me see if I can pull up the photograph that Levitt sent me, the construction manager of Eustis sent me a picture of one of our trucks hanging fiber right outside the substation. I don't know if you can see that. Can you see that? Yeah, one of those muddy days. Yeah, right, exactly. So there's a picture that's worth 1,000 words. They're out there, they're on North Calis Road today. Fantastic. Fantastic, that's really good news. And also, I'll add just as an aside, Janiel is continuing moving forward on all the other things that need to be done so that construction can continue, right? So we're still doing make ready. We're still moving our design through NRTC, through the approval process at the state level, so that we have, the intention is to build a big enough bank that when the springtime comes, we can get two contractors working and that there'll be enough work for them to be engaged fully and get a large chunk of our construction done next season. So that's what we're having. Yeah, we have 12 licenses so far from WACC. And at about 400, 300 poles of license, they're about to give it to you. Yeah, like 200 poles of licenses is generally what they try for, that's the max, but they try to get up to 200 per license. Jeremy, Matt, I see your hand is up, sir. Yeah, I had something to bring up after this item is done with. How about if you bring it up now then? Okay, so I just wanted to introduce John Hosford, who is the new Plaint Field Alternate Delegate. So welcome to the meeting, John, and thanks for being here. Okay, and also now we were going to address what David Healy had brought up concerning our Vicuda representative. I'm sorry, David, it fell off my desk immediately. It's okay, I mean, I don't mind doing it, but I think Janille is the more appropriate person. And I guess I'd like to make a motion to have our executive director represent CV Fiber on the Vicuda board. And that's my opinion. Seconded by Jeremy Matt, I see Allen has his hand up. Go ahead, Allen. You're on mute. You're muted. Much as I think this is a terrific idea, I think to take action, we have to have had it warned on the agenda. We can talk about this and we can essentially urge Janille to show up at the next meeting that David might have gone to. But I think the actual act of appointing her is a new representative we can't technically do. I mean, it's such a small matter because I can't imagine who would have any questions about this. But according to Robert's rules, you can't take action when something that wasn't on the agenda. You can discuss it, but you can't take action. Okay, actually, thank you for that, Allen. Keeping us on the street. I'm sorry, I'm talking about news. No, no, keeping us on the straight and narrow is important. Yeah, thanks, Allen. So we won't make sure. You don't smell like you, Allen, it's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If the minutes could please reflect that we will put this on the agenda for the next meeting and we will start all over again on this item. In the meantime, we will strongly urge Shaniel to please attend the next Vecuda meeting. She does. And she does. Thank you. Okay, if we're good with construction, then let's move to the construction contract. Oh, wait, Chuck has his hands up. Go ahead, Chuck. Yeah, sorry, just a quick question and we can take this up next time, but something to look up between now and then is whether Vecuda allows alternates and whether we should be designating an alternate as well. They do. Good point. Well done, Chuck, thank you. Very good. Okay, so this is a, this construction contract, action expected. This is something that I had put on the agenda because I was somewhat confused. And this is something that came out of our executive committee meeting that we just had half an hour ago, which is that the contract that was already approved for first light, it was approved at the governing board level recommended up to the, recommended up to the governing board from the executive committee. And I see now in the minutes that I hadn't seen before for the governing board that it was approved by the governing board. So the first light construction contract, which is our second construction contractor is already approved. We have no problems with them. I am expecting to sign, docu-sign the agreement any day. Been saying that for a while. Haven't seen it yet, but it's on its way. So it's already been approved. It's been reviewed. It's been to third party council. There really is no action here. I apologize for having it on the agenda and the confusion it might have put forward. But we already had this discussion at the executive committee because I also had it on that agenda. So there's no action to be taken here. We have two construction contractors. We will as soon as we are able to sign the contract that we've successfully negotiated, we will have two that will be ready to go in the spring. And Eustace, of course, is already in the field. Any question on that? Again, my apologies. Okay, so what we're gonna do now is we're gonna flip the officer's compensation and the 2023 budget because the officer's compensation, if approved or not, is part of the 2023 budget. So that the logic is I had that also mistaken. And what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna totally abstain from this discussion. I'm gonna ask Siobhan to carry the rest of this discussion here. But the only point I wanna make is please, this is about the position. This isn't about the person, right? This goes with the position, not the person. So that's what this is about. And I'm going to just sit back and hand it over to Siobhan. So Ray, do you have a motion already written for this? Yeah, I do. I'd like to do some background first. Yep, go for it, there you go. And so I wanted to switch this because as Jerry just says, it has an impact on the budget. And we've actually gone through the budget several times once when we approved it, once we did the public hearing. And now we're in a position that in our next item, we're going to hopefully adopt our 2023 budget. But you may recall that in the proposed budget, we had a section called officer stipends stipend and I had listed these stipends for the clerk, the treasurer and the board chair. And so I wanted to take those out and vote on them separately to make a, you have a positive affirmative action with regard to doing that, okay? And so the point here is that under section 3072 of the CUD statute, the board governing board does have the authority to approve compensation and expenses for officers. And we're proposing that these three positions receive compensation and expenses. And I do have a motion for this and perhaps I should put the motion up and then we could have a discussion if you'd like. So, let me, and of course, what would a motion be if it didn't have a couple of warehouses, right? And of course, all of that is intended to provide kind of the predicate for any action that we take. So that's why I do that. Whereas the communications union district statute at section 3072 provides for the governing board to approve compensation and expenses for officer positions. Whereas the board has approved compensation for the treasurer and clerk officer positions in the past. Whereas the chair, treasurer and clerk positions have duties and responsibilities requiring knowledge skills and significant investments of time on behalf of CV fiber. Whereas the executive committee recommends the governing board approve compensation for the officer positions of the governing board chair of $2,500 a month, the treasurer of 1150 per month and expenses of $1,200 and the clerk of $500 per month. It is moved that the governing board approve the clerk's compensation of $500 per month and the treasurer's compensation of $1,150 per month and expenses of $1,200 each beginning in January 2023. And further, the governing board approve the governing board chair's compensation of $2,500 per month to begin in May 2023 upon the election of a chair. Second. Okay, moved by Ray and seconded by Chuck. Any discussion? So perhaps I could provide just some explanation. And the motion talks about we've approved compensation in the past for the treasurer and the clerk. And in the past, the clerk has declined accepting any whatever, notwithstanding his declination and he's certainly free to decline it again in the future if he wants to do that. But what we had provided before was frankly it wasn't worth the paperwork and the tax free impact but perhaps this is more fitting frankly for the position. But the thing I wanted to point out here is that this has to do with positions it doesn't have to do with people. Each of these positions has requirements by statute and duties and there's no question about whoever the chair is that they're gonna have to put in a lot of time to carry out the responsibilities. And I don't think we would elect anyone who wasn't willing and able to do that. You may recall that in other kind of legislative situations where for example, I think in that Alan correct me if I know you'll have the answer to this that typically one doesn't vote on their own salaries and whatever and that's the next elected office that comes in that that takes place. So this is why the chair is singled out. Now the other two positions are not because we've already provided compensation for them in the past. So this is just an ongoing effort to compensate them for their work. And I'll stop here and I see Jeremy has his hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to say that because this is about me, I do want to recuse myself from voting. So I think that means that my vote goes to John in this case. Any other questions, comments? Alan, you're on mute, Melan. Sorry, there's too much conversation in the background. I was gonna ask, how were these, how were these numbers figured out? Were there scales developed? Is it, did we look at comparables for doing this kind of work? And I'm actually asking, because how do we know this is a correct, proper, whatever amount of money to provide to these officers? It could be too much, it could be too little. And I'm just wondering moving forward how we make decisions about whether there should be increases in the numbers, whether other people maybe also should be compensated. Is there any background like that that maybe you could fill in with? Well, what we have for Treasurer and Clerk is frankly what we had before is our historical numbers and improving upon those. Of course, we've had nothing for the chair, but I think we all know that this is a position that's requiring at least 10 to 20 hours a week. And even at those numbers, it's close to minimum wage and certainly not adequate enough for the value that we're receiving. But so basically I came up with those numbers. Yeah, and when we were first talking about these numbers too, I remember when Ray and I looked at these numbers, I had done some just quick Google researching on what other chairs were getting paid, like just in the marketplace, like what's typical for a nonprofit. And this was conservative for what I was seeing. So it didn't jump out as unreasonable to me if anything very conservative. So I did have a second look at these numbers. So if I could just have a follow-up question, these are considered stipends. So they're not considered, it's not considered a salary, but still taxes, social security and Medicare taxes are gonna have to be paid on this amount by somebody. Is that correct? Yeah. Yes. And who is, do we have money in the budget to pay our share of that? No, we don't. No, that would be one. Well, maybe Joe has to pay that. Well, yeah, I mean, it depends on the relationship. So the third and final question is, I'm assuming the Department of Labor is not gonna come after us and say you've got an employee and therefore you have to be under a different set of, tax regulations and so forth, because the statutes for CUD say that we can provide this compensation and that therefore we think this is not something the Labor Department is gonna come after us for collecting unemployment tax payments and as well as the social security and the Medicare. Yeah, so in conversations that I've had with other CUDs, that's not been the case, with regard to social security, Medicare and those things, it's kind of like the 1099 situation. Yeah, I've been self-employed for a long time and I'll tell you one lives in fear of the 15% you have to pay when you're making your own money. So I just wanted to make sure that somebody was aware that there's a high likelihood that the feds would like to get their 15% out of this somehow, so that's gotta be considered by somebody. Yeah, thanks, Ellen. Linda? When did you say that this takes effect? For the Treasurer and the Clerk on January and for the Chair in May. And why in May? Again? We'll be electing a Chair. It'll have nothing to do with the incumbent, for example, we can reelect the incumbent, but this is not an unusual practice for legislative bodies. Okay, just asking, thanks. Is there any further comment for discussion? Are we ready for the vote? I'm not hearing any objections. Okay, so are there any objections to this motion? Are there any abstentions? I've got... Yeah, Jerry abstains, right? Jerry abstains and Jeremy abstained. Or, well, more precisely, I transferred my vote to John Hosford. That's correct. Jeremy, transferred his vote to his alternate. Do I have any other abstentions? Let me just ask a point of order, if I could at this point, and I put this to Alan. Is it proper for Jeremy to abstain or can the alternate, since he is not voting, but he is present, is it appropriate for the alternate to vote in his stead or must he just abstain? Yeah, I was wondering the same thing, Ryan. I'm not sure of the answer. I think it's okay if he votes unless Jeremy has got a direct line to him right now and he's saying, I would like you to argue for more money. And I don't think that's the case. I'm just wondering what's cleaner on the other end of this, for anybody that might look at this and... Yeah, I think in terms of the vote, it's not gonna matter. So if a person wants to abstain, I think he should. But I don't think he has to feel that he cannot vote if he wants to and feels he should. Right, and since we're not doing a voice count or a roll call, it's not as significant. Oh, my camera. Anyway, so hearing, no further abstentions, no objections, the motion passes. And I pass the meeting back to Jerry. I appreciate it. But it was important to take care of this outside the block now getting into the budget. And so the next thing on the motion, I'll strike that on the agenda, is the budget. And I want to bring to your attention that any changes that were made to the budget between our public hearing and to date. One of the points here is that processes, you recall, is that we're now in the process of adopting the budget. In October, we approved it, et cetera. And now we're adopting the budget. So let me review this with you. The changes include the town opera funds. It's been changed to 1.66 from the 833,000, which reflects the matching funds from the VCBB that we're going to get. It's coming from a different pot. And so that's been added. So we've obviously increased our income there by $833,000 in expenses, admin services. We've increased to $50,000. Admin services before was kind of like the regional planning council. And now as the board has approved hiring some additional assistance and civil being among them, for example, who's with us tonight, doing minutes and other tasks that are needed to be done to run the operation. So that's been increased by $20,000. Consulting has increased significantly here to 150,000. We're looking to, you may recall, looking to go after a loan from the reconnect sometime after the first of the year. We're going to wind up hiring a consultant to assist us with the application process. And that's not cheap. And so the money's been put in there. Legal we've increased because we just might need more legal. Website has been increased. Obviously the work that we've been doing, we've doubled the amount there. And we can see that we're going to wind up doing even more during the course of the year. Make ready services been virtually doubled. That reflects the cost and the anticipated mileage and work that needs to be done over the course of the year. You may recall the report that we had earlier, the make ready services that were done to date. And it was with the $800,000 range, right? Well, we have a full year in front of us and we're going to be doing 500 plus miles of that work. And I may seem, Conor, go ahead. I'm sorry to hear a question. What's PMCM? Oh, I'm sorry. It's project manager, construction manager. Who's that? There's, there may be some additional work that we're required to have or to have to pay for in that area. Let's see here. And that's pre-construction, right? I just didn't know what the term was. Yeah, this is the one that we're going to be paying like NRTC, for example, in the construction area. Fiber construction, the labor for this, the mileage, what happened here was a reconciliation of the mileage that is anticipated to be done in the budget and one of the changes. And that's it. So the reserves have gone up by $177,000 or gone up by $70,000. And I'll just say your total expenses have gone up a little bit as well. So that is, those are the changes to the budget. And I do have a motion, let's see here. And I'd like to stick into the chat room. There's a couple of warehouses. It won't take that long. Thanks for your patience here. Whereas the governing board approved a CV5 or 2023 budget on 11 October and forwarded to the legislative bodies of its member communities as required by statute, whereas the governing board held a public hearing on the budget at its regular 9 November board meeting as required by the statute, whereas the executive committee recommends the governing board adopt the CV5 or 2023 budget dated 22 November, it's moved. The governing board adopt the CV5 or 2023 budget dated 22 November, 2022. Second. I heard Jeremy Matt on that one, I believe. Thank you, Jeremy. So is there additional discussion on this budget? We have walked through all of the paces and I believe checked every box that needed to be checked for this budget. Is there additional discussion? Okay. Hearing none, are there any opposed to this motion? Any abstentions from this motion? Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, let's spend this money and get some fiber hanging. So now I'd like to move into the discussion about the operations manager. Oh, Ray, sir. I'd like to have the discussion on the operations manager. Oh, well, I didn't get there yet. Okay, that's fine. I was gonna offer Janiel to start the discussion, but Ray, go ahead. Yeah, it might seem self-serving if for Janiel to do that, to get a look for assistance. And what I wanted to say was this, we're now in the pre-construction phase for another six months plus. We're in the initial stages of the construction phase, which is gonna accelerate the two contractors in the spring for the next three years and require materials and warehousing. We're entering the operations phase, which will begin in Q1 and last forever. Unfortunately, the laws of physics prevent Janiel from being everywhere and doing everything at once. We need help and we have the position in the budget we just approved. We're asking the board to authorize advertising to fill the position and the goal would be to get someone on board in February, and I do have a motion. So I'm gonna put the motion in the chat room here. And whoops, I'm not sharing my screen. We've been through that. Okay, let's see if that's there. Move the governing board to approve advertising for and filling the position of operations manager and authorize the executive committee to manage the advertising and hiring process and make a recommendation of an individual to the board to fill the position. That's a second. David got it. Oh, I think David Healy got that one for the second. Yeah, I heard David. You can tell how anxious I am for this position. Yeah, I can not do what I'm doing. Yeah, David has been describing what he's going through with Callis and he's become the point man there for Callis with everybody asking questions about what's gonna happen next and who does what and how do I do that? And yeah, I like the laws of physics explanation. I think that was quite accurate. Janiel, is there anything that you wanna add to this discussion? And I don't find it self-serving by the way, please. I mean, we're all working really hard. I mean, it's everybody who is and the business is changing very rapidly. We need somebody to fill the gap both for construction phase and operations phase and we're gonna be, as you said, in construction and operations at the same time. So this person is a liaison between our warehousing construction management and myself planning a development committee and construction management and RTC. So this will be a construction role as well as an operations role and this is absolutely a full-time job. We've talked about doing it as limited services but chances are limited in this case is actually going to last for a while. Maybe it might not be considered traditional limited services in that I foresee that this position is going to be needed for a long time. So our intention is to do what we've done before with having a small group of folks that will manage the outreach for this position and then we will go through the process that we've set up previously. Basically the one that we use to hire Janiel will do something extremely similar that seemed to have worked very well for us and we will mimic that process. And we'll see, it's the holiday season. So we'll see when this begins to take off but we will start moving forward on this. If this is approved, we will start moving forward on this basically immediately. So is there additional discussion? David went, I see your hand is up, sir. Yeah, I mean this position sounds great. I'm wondering though, longer term or medium term if there's a staffing plan and kind of a timeline. If I can't remember if that was part of the business plan way back but just to make sure that as these needs kind of increase I imagine with continuing to build and then bringing on customers and everything there's probably going to be a long term or we don't want to get behind the curve I guess like having to hire people in a rush but making sure that we've planned ahead. Yeah, no you're absolutely right and there are a number of positions that are in our business plan and also I'll add to that that there is a number of responsibilities that will be taken on by our contractors as well when they get engaged at Waitsfield. David, I see you have your hand up. Yeah, one of the things that is going to have to be taken care of in the next year, two years and then ongoing forever is data management and that's sort of an operations function and it's both the GIS data that's all been created Waitsfield, Champlain and Telecom is going to manage the network for us but we better have a good handle on what it is and then the IRS requires us to have a Gaspi capital inventory. We have to know how much money was spent on wood capital equipment and a plan for how it gets depreciated and replaced. So there's a lot of things coming up in the next year that we can't, well, first off, I can't keep on working at the level I'm working at but it is some specific functions that need attention quickly. Thank you, thank you, David, appreciate that. David, when did that get to your question, sir? Yeah, I think so. I don't know if at some point we'll revisit the kind of staffing plan and timeline for as like given the schedule that we currently have for Scala. So yeah, maybe just something to consider for the future. I could speak to that for just briefly a little bit more and that is that we would love to have this position filled by the first quarter and give preference to maybe resumes that are received by our own Valentine's Day. That's what I envision. And then the other staffing that I envision that we would do next is a public engagement manager and then somebody who has knowledge in finances or some sort of a CFO type role to help us with audits toward the end of next year. So I would envision operations manager first quarter, public engagement manager second quarter or so when we're really starting to get busy with the lighting and customers and then toward the end of next year, the finance folk. David Ealy, your hand is up, sorry. The business plan we had done by NRTC has staffing in it phased in over the next two to three years. I think there's like five positions anyway and they come on over time based on the need in the revenue stream that we may or may not have at the time. But is there a detailed staffing plan? No, we have a budgeting plan or business model that has them slotted, but we certainly haven't scoped out the other positions other than operations and we've got a draft on the outreach public affairs person. And I would add that if there is anyone who feels they have expertise in this area, we would be happy to work with you on helping us figure all of this out. But as it stands right now, it's unfolding as Janiel has described basically. Additional discussion? All right. Oh, Henry, go ahead, sir. Yeah, I'm just a little curious about operations manager when I think of operations manager, I think of something that's operating, not something that's being constructed and operations manager would be involved in not only the day-to-day operations, but also the monitoring of the system that's up, SLAs and all that and over viewing the work of Waitfield Telecom, et cetera. So I'm trying to understand how the construction gets rolled into an operations manager's role. A couple of ways, even though we're in construction, we are also getting ready to be an operator and there are a lot of due diligence items that must be considered as we're becoming operational. Like just today, the overlap of regulatory between VoIP and traditional telephone. Like that's an operations question that goes to how we're even constructing and laying out the network. So there is an overlap with construction, but also we must get ahead of operations now. Ray, I see you have your hand up and also David Healy in the chat had mentioned that NRTC is our construction manager. I mean, that is their role. Go ahead, Ray, please. Yeah, that's one of the points I wanted to make. First, there is a job description that is almost completed. Secondly, the NRTC is our construction manager. Third, we have a warehouse that they're not managing our warehouse. We need someone to kind of oversee that particular aspect of whatever construction's going on. But for the most part, it has more to do with the operations and the operator and the ISP, et cetera. And other duties as assigned, Henry, because there's just too much darn stuff going on. So don't be taken by the title so much, but the executive committee will work through all of this prior to the advertisement going out. Thank you. Additional discussion? All right, I think we're ready to vote on this motion. Yes, looking around, I see nodding heads. Okay, are there any opposed to the motion? Any abstentions? Hearing none. The motion passes unanimously, thank you. And this is part of the growing pains here is to have to go through another hiring episode. Okay, so we had an executive committee meeting, a special executive committee meeting at 5.30 this evening, and we spent a lot of that meeting talking about our privacy policy, and we reached a place in our development of that privacy policy that I would like Alan to explain to folks where we are. I'm not expecting that there is going to be an action tonight based on the discussions that we had at the executive committee, but Alan, if you would please take a couple of minutes and let folks know where we are, and please start off with the heart of what is in our privacy policy. I'm even gonna go a little bit further back from that because people need to know that the policy committee and also Janiel and to some extent Linda, and I have been working on various documents that I made a list back in May of documents that we really needed to have in place before we went live as an operating system. And we've been attacking that list, but of course everything is moving faster than we think it's going to move. And we realized that we had to have a lot of these documents ready to go before we actually turned on systems and started taking subscribers and all that kind of stuff. And the privacy policy was one of those things that we know we wanna have and we want to have it ready for the time when we actually do start taking on customers. So there's an element of moving quickly on this, but there's also, we recognize a very strong need to make sure we get things right. And I think around privacy, we all recognize it's a somewhat touchy difficult subject, especially when it involves digital information going back and forth and high speeds around the world kind of stuff. So what we did was we started by saying we wanted to develop a privacy policy that really was something that the average person could read and could understand and would not have to look and scroll endlessly and look how long this is and determined I'm never gonna read this because I won't understand it. So we came up with a one-page policy that I think does what we wanted to do in terms of simplicity, but when we brought it up before the executive committee tonight, before this meeting, there were some things that were mentioned that really do need more review. We can't go quite as fast as maybe we would have liked to be able to get this thing done. So what I'm asking tonight is instead of making a motion that we approve this policy or even that we send it back to either the policy committee or to the executive committee, I think it might be best to not for the board not to take any action except to generally ask the appropriate committees. And I think at this point they really are the policy and executive committees to continue additional work to polish the policy a little bit further to have it reviewed by legal counsel which has not been formally done yet and then ensure that it's congruent with crowd fiber policies and operations. I think there were some holes that were pointed out in our prior meeting that we really do need to address before we should bring a policy before the full board. So I guess what I'm asking is actually no action other than if somebody has questions or if you wanna discuss what's going on with this document or other documents we could have Janiel, Andorra, Siobhan or Linda talk about that. Thank you, Alan. That was really well done. Henry has his hand up. Go ahead, Henry. In addition to the policy in general I think this gives us a market differentiation capability. So I think there's added benefits there where we're not gonna be selling their information and the commercial providers are. And so I think it has marketing advantage as well as respect for people's privacy. Excellent point. Excellent, thank you. Additional discussion? We will revisit this issue undoubtedly. Thank you, Alan. And thanks to everybody that's been working on this. We got to get it just right and we will. I'm looking now for an update on the outreach and our website. And I don't know, Janiel, will I start with you and we'll move on over to Linda and others? How's that work? That's fine. So as far as outreach and website, there's a couple pieces here. We retained Crawford agency to do some initial market research for us and they've provided some initial personas and are continuing on some interviews for potential subscribers in the district. So they're interviewing 30 people. We expect to have some sort of report within the next week, perhaps this week. I have my next status update call with them tomorrow. So they'll give me more detailed ETAs, but I do expect to have some market research details by this week. And then last week, they provided us some initial personas for how they envision our subscribers might be best marketed to. And we had a follow-up call with them because frankly, it was a little off from what we thought we wanted it to be. So we called a meeting with them and gave them our feedback on what we thought the personas might do for us in a better way than what they had presented them. So that's where we are with Crawford. Jeremy, did you wanna ask something on that? You're on mute. Yeah, just noticed. I'm sorry, I have zero marketing or public outreach knowledge. What exactly are personas? Yeah, okay, so and I'm also learning the marketing process as we go. So personas are, yeah, personas are, this is who you're talking to. You talk to a group of people differently depending on what their preferences, what their lights are. And so, for instance, somebody who's 70 and lives in a rural area and has three cars is gonna be talked to differently according to marketing. Yeah, who am I to say? Then somebody who's 25 living in the city who rides a motorcycle, for instance, okay? So you collect data based on demographics, yeah. So there, the marketing agency is teaching us how to talk to and get subscribers on who to talk to, how to talk to them. It's marketing research, essentially. And then from that will be derived along in short-term public engagement and marketing plan. So you need to develop who your personas are first and then from there you develop a plan. So we're in the initial phases now. So the other piece of this is going live, crowdfiber, going live. We have been working tirelessly. The work that Chuck and Linda have put into this amazing. They have put so much time and talent skill into this interface and it looks great. Linda developed a testing platform and we tested the system and Chuck has been in close communication with the folks at Crowdfiber to fix bugs. So we've identified so many issues, some of which were deal killers. We can't go live without this because it calls into question the trust of the system. And if it called into question the trust of the system and CV fiber, it was a deal killer. We won't go live with it. If it was just something that was aesthetic or an annoyance perhaps, then we'll let it go. It's not a must have. It's something, a formatting issue to repair. So Crowdfiber has been responsive. In addition, we've pulled in Crawford to help us integrate where Crowdfiber can't or isn't able to do it quickly enough. And together we're working out the bugs as well as interface usability and user-friendliness. That's very helpful. Thank you. Linda or Chuck, is there anything you would like to add to this discussion? Chuck, go ahead. Sure, yeah. I guess what I would add is when it comes to integrations with third-party software vendors and where you're trying to make it seamless an experience as possible for your customers, there's always the out-of-the-box way the software works and there's the way you want the software to work based on your knowledge of your own customers. As a concrete example here, Crowdfiber offers a step in their flow where after you enter your address, you can drag a pin on a map that says, hey, this address was wrong. My house is actually over here. As it turns out, our operator is not even gonna use that if a user does that. They're still just gonna base it off of whatever address they've entered and give them a call and be like, how many turns past Apple orchards do I need to make to get to your house? And so maybe a very useful tool if you're building out in Rome, Georgia, which is densely populated, but not something we needed. So a lot of what we have run into are actually not necessarily just bugs, although we found a fair number of those as well, but they're actually just the way their tool was designed and differences in what we want for our customer based on what their tool is designed. So after going through that, the back and forth begins of, okay, Crowdfiber, what can you actually do for us to make some changes here so that the experience is more ideal for our customers and our needs? And some of those things they'll be able to do quickly. Some of those things they may never do and there'll be some in between where we wait several months, but we will eventually get it. So right now a lot of that back and forth is occurring with Crowdfiber to get that integration off the ground as seamlessly as possible. We know some issues we don't like that we are going to have to continue to live with for some time, but they have been responsive and have taken a pass at resolving the ones we identified as, hey, we're not willing to live with this at all before we go live. There is still work to be done. Now that they've taken a pass at trying to resolve some of those issues, we have to go back and retest them. They won't have gotten them all perfect. And in fact, Linda found two today that weren't quite resolved to our satisfaction. So it will go back over to them for another round of development work. So that's where we stand with Crowdfiber. Best case scenario, there's no way this thing will be up and live before probably a week from today. And even that is probably aggressive, particularly with approaching holiday schedules and people taking time off and what have you. So that's kind of where we stand right now. It's worth noting we're still only trying to get preregistration live. There's gonna be a whole nother round of work that has to be done when we wanna actually start selling subscriptions through this tool. And so, you know, more, much, much more to come. And thank you everyone for your patience on it. Well, thank you for taking the song and doing it the way that you have been and to the degree that you have been. Linda, go ahead, please. So far we have only been working with Crowdfiber very little with Crawford. We don't have any branding from them, for example, to put into the website or any promotional materials that I have seen at Mugini, no. So most of the work has been done by Chuck and myself with the help of the Crowdfiber to try them. And most of the bugs we have found have been in Crowdfiber, Crowdfiber. So I would say we probably have eight bugs outstanding or so that are keeping us from going live. And I tested only, I only tested two today and they both failed so far. So we are not there yet. I wish we were gonna be there in time for the construction press event, which I hope Janiel will talk about. But I don't know if we can guarantee that. So Chuck says, nope. Because we still need to do the second round of testing. Okay, so we gave them a bunch of problems. Now we gotta fix it. Now we gotta test it again because we don't wanna cross our fingers on this. We need to make sure that it has been resolved in the user experience. But that's okay. The timing is okay. It's not problematic. It's the best we can do. And I think it's important that this is our outward looking experience to the customer. We wanna make sure that we look reliable. The website will prove whether or not we are reliable to the very first contact with our customers. Point taken. Additional discussion on... Linda, your hands back up? No. No, trying to get it down. Additional discussion on outreach and website update? Well, outreach. I mean, do we wanna talk about the event now, the press event? Why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is super exciting. Actually, Christine Holquist has offered to speak at our press event next week. We are going to be holding a press event next Wednesday. That's 12 21 from 11 o'clock to one o'clock. Now, David Healy has reserved the Callis Town Hall from 10 o'clock to two o'clock. So that gives us an hour on either end of the press event. We will have a lectern and Eustis and NRTC trucks have been reserved to get out there. So we'll have our construction presence to announce the beginning of CD fibers construction. We have officially started construction in Callis. We have done 9,000 feet of strand and lash. And we will talk about this at the press event. We will give notice to press partners, media partners in the region. VCBB has offered to do a press release as well. And so we'll get additional press exposure from VCBB. We'll invite legislators, local and state legislators as well. So this event will be a thank you to everybody, everybody who has made this possible. It'll reach out to what is still needed. That is that we've come to almost 50% of our expected funds through ARPA funds, but we need more money. And also it'll be an opportunity for everyone to get together and could glomerate in a physical setting rather than, you know, we're always seeing each other on Zoom. So please, if you can make it out there during the press event, it would be lovely to see everyone and meet folks in person. And there'll be more notices being spread around as the details firm up. Yeah, so John Walters is creating a press advisory initially and I will share that with, that should be done by tomorrow, I believe, and I'll share that with the governing board. Excellent. We have one more item on the agenda and that's the subscription terms and conditions. And as we get into that, I just want to forewarn people about what it is that they're actually looking at, right? This is the outline of what the content will be on our website when folks just open it up and what do they see as far as what do we offer? That's what we're talking about here. We're not talking about clicking on the document that is defined print, that's going to be 30 pages of terms and conditions, right? This is not the 30 page scenario. This is going to be the content that will be prettied up, made into something that's easily digestible and something that is draws people in and makes them understand what it is that they want to select. Now, is this going to come from Ray? Yes, or is this coming from Janiel, from Ray? Okay, go ahead, Ray, please. You're on mute, Ray. You're on mute. He wants to be on mute. He wants this to be sign language. I'm just going to sign this then. We're just, you know, I know you're tired of hearing from me. Okay, so we set subscription rates. Okay, those are done, but there are so many other details involved with this that they needed to get attention. And so on 28 November, the executive committee approved an outline of these details so that from this information, websites can be developed, pages can be developed, and information put in the crowd fiber, that's important to be in the crowd fiber. So I just want to give you an example, and this isn't a great example, but this is EC fibers, subscription, service plans and pricing. And there's a whole bunch of information in here that's above and beyond subscription rates, right? And there's just a whole bunch of stuff here. And then there's another page that they have, and I think it's this one here, exterior connections, which has, this is live, not Memorex, come on, there we go. There's a whole bunch of other information here that also needs to be incorporated into our particular offerings and stuff. So what we did was, we pulled from these pages and other pages, what are the set bits of information that we need to get some agreement on and the executive committee found agreement on these particular items. So for example, there's not going to be any contracts. We're not going to execute contracts with home users, right, for service. Now, there are terms of service that Watesfield has and others, you know, and you can read those, but nobody ever reads them, but there will be terms of service and we will be adopting some terms of service. There well may be commercial contracts because the nature of the service that's being provided to them, the cost of the equipment, the cost of the service, the level of service that they're looking for, there could be contracts with them, but there will be no contracts with people at home. The speeds are symmetrical, right? Okay, we agree on that. There's unlimited data. There's no caps on the data, right? We're not going to put caps on data. Home insulation costs, 99 bucks. We might have a promotion package that waives that fee that kind of encourages people to sign up early, right? So that they can waive that fee. And any insulation cost for commercial is going to be dependent upon the package that they're buying because the equipment is so expensive. Aerial connections of 400 feet or less, there's no charge. We have a contract with Watesfield Telecom that says that a typical drop is going to cost us in. Okay, 400 feet or less, it's going to cost us in. Over 400 feet, it's a dollar per foot. And this is a consistent kind of a thing that EC fiber and other CUDs do. Payment plans, if there's an installation cost that cost over so much money, and that was something that EC fiber has here, for example, they have a payment plan so that we can assist people in getting the service going. We'll adopt a payment plan, conduit. If we can use existing conduit, we'll do that. If we can't, then it's the customer's responsibility for the conduit installation. They'll get the 400 feet of fiber free, but thereafter there'll be a charge of a dollar per foot, for example. So these are the level of details that needed to be incorporated so that somebody can develop those pages that we saw in EC fiber, for example, and hopefully better looking than that. Telephone activation fee, home phone service, blah, blah, so these are those details. Are there more details? Oh, yeah, there's gonna be more details, but this is kind of the basic stuff and we'll get back to you, I think, after we brought some more stuff to the executive committee as we discover it as we go. So I happen to answer any questions, but this is where we're settled now and hopefully this is gonna feed Linda and Chuck for their work and maybe it's Crawford for helping us develop those pages that in marketing and branding and all that other stuff. So it looks better than this, please. Questions, comments? So we just wanted to give you an update of where we're at. Okay, thanks. I see a hand up, but I don't know whose name. Oh, David, when? Go ahead, David. Well, yeah, I just have a quick question about the, so some of that information is pretty self-explanatory and other pieces get into some technical depth that I imagine the average customer might have further questions on or need some explanation about. Is that part of, I mean, in terms of information about subscription, is there a direct line to one of our kind of service providers or a call center agent who would be able to talk to people about what some of these concepts are and what those costs are and all that stuff? So the short answer is gonna be yes. The longer answer is that if somebody indicates they want a subscription, somebody comes out and actually does a survey to identify exactly what's required. Is it aerial? Is it underground? Can we use what they have? Blah, blah, blah, all those things. So that's the case and hopefully we will have a lot more description that's consumable on the website. As we already have, David, we already have the conduit specs, for example. So that's one of those things that we've answered that question right now anyway. And I think we're also putting up, if we haven't done it yet, the names of some vendors of people who will do conduit trenching work for customers. We're not recommending them, but people have stepped up and said that they can do the work. Linda? I think to answer David's questions, we need an operations manager. Point taken, Linda. I think the good news is most of these calls are gonna go to Waitsfield. That's right. That's right. Or David Healy. It's impossible right now. I have an unlisted cell phone number now. As you can see from today's agenda and how we've moved around on all these different topics. We're just in multiple areas at the same time. I would like to say that we're not quite playing whack-a-mole, but we are definitely touching multiple disciplines at the same time and keeping ourselves very busy. Linda, go ahead, please. I just wanted to make a point on the subscription terms and conditions. We are working on a legal document that really is like 40 pages long, I think, talking about what we expect from our customers and what they can expect from us. So that is going to be one of the things that is necessary for the customer to accept if they wanna get service with us. Yeah, that's that term of terms of service that was mentioned in the very top thing there that we're working on. But it'll be pretty much kind of weight fields as the underpinning for that, thanks, but. Yeah, we're not reinventing the wheel here, but we do wanna make sure that it fits CV fiber. Is there additional discussion there? Well, I wanna thank everybody for all that you do. We're moving along and it's a team effort. All those shoulders to the wheel are making it happen. So thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. And do I need a motion to adjourn? I think everybody should show up for the press event and get some glory. Get some glory. Jerry, you may not need a motion to adjourn. When everybody leaves though, you're gonna be all alone. So it's over. Yes, well, I think we're gonna end the meeting. I am going to stop recording and have a good night, everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.