 I think that I think now we have 10 folks want to feel free to do account if you like. Otherwise, I am going to declare that we have a quorum. It is 602 and I'd like to call the special meeting of the CV Fiber Governing Board November 24, 2020 to order. Let me start the recording. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda for tonight? Hearing none, let's move on to public comment. Does anybody have any comments that they'd like to add anything they'd like to talk about that's not on the agenda? I do, yeah, kind of. Okay, Siobhan, why don't you go ahead and then, Andy, I think I know what you're going to talk about, but let's start with Siobhan. Okay, so I was just told by a co-worker today that Comcast is capping usage at one terabyte and then it's $10 per 50 gigs of usage after that, which I think is capped at another hundred dollars. Basically, it means that his internet bill is going up $100 because he's got two people working at home full-time right now. And he's really not about that. And I just thought that that was an interesting point of information for the board to know in case you didn't know. Chuck, you want to follow up on that? Yeah, the details on that. The cap is 1.2 terabytes. They have been running this model in 26 states for approximately four or five years at this point. And they are rolling it out to an additional 13 states of which New England is the biggest victim of this new deployment over the course of this rollout. And yeah, it's for people who work in data-intensive jobs like I do. I couldn't imagine being a Comcast customer right now. Well, that's certainly something that we can bring to the table as we start to build into these areas that we have no intention of ever doing that sort of capping or increasing profit margins. So, all right. Anything else on this? Otherwise, let's move on to Andy. Yeah. So, I just wanted to let everybody know that I am stepping down as the primary representative for Cabot. And R.D. Eno, who is joined, is taking over my role. I will be supporting and working as kind of an alternate, although the slide board might have messed that part up. I'll clarify that here over the next few weeks from now through the spring. And this is mostly just because we are moving out of town. And I felt like it was really important to get somebody on board who both knew the town well and was well positioned to help you guys and have a period where I could help him kind of get up to speed. So, just to let everybody know that. So, R.D. is the official delegate now and I'm acting as an alternate. Well, congratulations on the move. Hopefully, that's a good thing. I think they have fiber and hardwicks. Yeah, I'm counting on it. Well, I'll just have to join another board. And there are some seats available for you there up in the kingdom. So, but welcome, R.D. Thanks for tossing your hat into the ring after Andy's departure. He will certainly be missed. And I think, Josh, you have some similar discussion. Yes. Right now, I'm sure you can see we have another gentleman that is joined into our meeting tonight, Mark Weissman. And he is sitting in on this meeting to see if this is a board that he would like to be a part of. He would be joining as my alternate finally for the town of Barry. So, I'm really hoping that, yeah, that he's able to jump on board with us. Great. Well, welcome. Hope you decide to join us. We don't, as far as I know, we don't bite, but I think to... It's hard to do it through a computer screen anyway, so... That's true. That's true. Once we start, once we start meeting in person again, maybe, yeah, that's back on the table. But I think maybe to, as a welcome to R.D. and as a, you know, potential welcome to Mark, if we could all introduce ourselves like we usually do when we have new folks. I'll start. I'm the chair, Jeremy Hansen. I live in Berlin. Frank? Frank Moore, CIO at Norwich University, and I live in Williams, town. Okay. Tim, Shay? I'm Tim Shay. I'm the project manager for Central Montfiber and actually live in Berlin. Ray? Ray Pelletier. I'm the delegate from Norfield. Okay. John? John Russell? I'm going to... I sent him, sent you an unmute request, John. So, you are not currently muted on my side. I know we had to talk about that offline, but we'll let you try to sort... Oh, there we go. You are now unmuted. I don't know if go to meeting is recognizing your microphone or not. You are certainly unmuted at present, but if you hit the gear in the top right hand corner of this window and just make sure that it has chosen the right microphone that you're using. Okay. We just heard you. We just heard you. Yep. I think I heard you, John. You sign language, John. Maybe you just need to yell really loudly. Let's give him a chance. John, you want to say... Thanks, John. Chuck? Hi, Chuck Burt, delegate from Moretown. David? David Healy, delegate from town of Calis, saying I'm the business development committee. And communications committee. Yeah. Chair of the business development committee. And Chuck, you're the chair, also the chair of the communications committee. Josh? Yeah. Hi, I'm Josh Jarvis, and I am the primary delegate for the town of Berry. Siobhan? Hi, Siobhan Perico, and I'm the delegate for Orange. Hi, I'm Alan Gilbert. I'm the delegate from Worcester. I'm on the communications committee, and I'm also the temporary chair of the policy committee, I think. Jerry D'Amendidis. I'm the alternate from Berlin, also on the business development committee. Okay. Andy? Yeah, I was... Yeah, I'm Andy. I'm not the alternate from Cabot. I kind of sit in on BizDev and communications when I can. Hi, I'm Jeremy Matt. I'm the alternate delegate from Plainfield and the clerk. I used to show up for the communications committee meetings, although I haven't had time for that, and I'm on the business development committee. Okay. David? David Wendt. Hi, I'm David Wendt. I'm the alternate for Duxbury. Thank you. Katharina? Katharina Mack, the delegate for Washington. Okay. So, I think... So, R.D., if you'd give us a little introduction to yourself, maybe. Don't have... Doesn't have to be long-winded unless you feel long-winded. You need... I'm R.D. Eno. I'm... I'm stepping in for Andy Gilbert, representing Cabot. I've been on the Cabot Select Board, chair of the Select Board for three years. I've been on various town committees. Really, that's all that I have to say for myself at the moment. I'm happy to join you. All right. Well, welcome. And, Mark, if you feel like introducing yourself, we would love to hear from you, too. Otherwise, if not, if you're still thinking about it, we can... We can do this some other time if you choose to join us. Yes. And you're muted. Yeah. I'm going to send you an unmute request, if I can, which I can't, apparently. There's the little... The mic button down at the bottom of the screen. It's all the way at the bottom. Okay. But if you... If you... If you figure it out, feel free to just pop in whenever you like. We're not super formal here. So we'll definitely... Go for it. The buttons show up if you move the mouse around over, like, where people's faces show up. The... There should... Four buttons should show up down at the bottom. Or maybe try reducing the window size, if it's... I don't know. Just trying to throw things out there. Okay. Well, let's move on, if we can. And actually, as a... Administrative... Administrative thing to do... RD, if you could send me an email, I will put my email address in the chat. Send me an email so I can make sure you get on the distribution list. RD is already on the distribution lists. Okay. Thank you. I'm very glad to hear that. Wonderful. So you maybe already got the invite and everything. So good to go. Thank you. Alan? Jeremy, have you asked the caller, caller one who's at the meeting, if he would identify himself? I think the minutes, technically, are supposed to include the names of everybody at the meeting, including people attending from the public. Or at least they have to be given the chance to give their name and if they want to state why they're there. I'm pretty sure that's Jerry. I think Jerry's seeing the video with this computer and he's on the phone. Yeah, let's see how that works. Sometimes I'm caller one. Yeah, I'm showing up this caller one. I see it now. Okay. Good call, Alan. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yes. More to count, everybody. Okay. So moving on to the next one, we have the consent agenda, the approval of the November 10th minutes. Thank you for those, Jeremy, and payment of bills, the COS bill. So this is something that I'm pretty sure we've already approved. I wanted to make sure that I gave you all this specific invoice. I mean, the check has already been cut. It's technically already been signed. Tim is already using it. So I just want to make sure everybody had a copy of that invoice. So I'm going to move that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. Second. Okay. Siobhan, as usual, ready to go with that second. So seconded by Siobhan, any further discussion? Yes. Jeremy, what is COS? Tim, would you give R.D. a quick overview of what COS is doing for us? Sure. So COS systems is a software system that we are going to use. It's called demand aggregation. So it's going to be a customer facing software that can provide information to the customers as far as where their location is and whether or not we're eminently close to providing service as well as used as a marketing distribution back-end software as well. And Tim, question if I'm wrong. Doesn't it also handle billing and subscription? It can, yes. So it can take for free subscriptions and so on. Yes. Correct. And to be clear, this is a, this was paid for by some of the CARES Act funds that we received to do some outreach and it's an initial step to our, hopefully, quite imminent deployment in some places. I can, R.D., if you want to, if Andy hasn't done a brain dump with you and if you want to ask questions, I'm happy to sort of give you a kind of board member's view of where we are at some point. So it should be an email. We'll set up a time. We'll just get on the phone. But thank you for the questions. Okay. Any further, any further questions or comments about the consent agenda? Okay. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any, any opposed abstentions or folks who want a roll call vote? Okay. It appears we have a unanimous approval. Thank you very much. Moving on, review and ratify new branding communications committee reports. Chuck, take it away. Great. Thank you. So I sent a copy of some logo options to the board as of yesterday and it's worth noting that we went into this process because there were a few of us were not particularly happy with the first round of logos we saw. Not to say that they were absolutely without merits that there were some options that had some really good ideas. But I personally felt and I heard feedback from others who agreed that they didn't quite come together in a cohesive way and represent us in a way that is modern and fits with a brand that is launching in 2020. And so to that end, we contracted with a small agency called Expand Creative Group and they developed some options for us. Tim Shea and I met with them on a first round of options, gave them a lot of guiding feedback, gave them some revisions to make and they came back to us with a second round of options. Now the communications committee met last night and we all voted on the two of the second round of options that we had a strong, it was a fairly overwhelming preference toward. And so the two options you saw as of last night were what the communications committee decided to pair down to to help streamline this conversation. Now all that said that doesn't mean any of the prior logos we talked about have to be off the table. If you personally strongly favored one of the earlier logos we looked at, we can absolutely talk about that. Those opinions are just as valid as the communications committee deciding to help streamline this and suggest two options. So we can bring those up. However, if everybody really likes the two options we put forward, then we can have a much faster conversation and get to the business of deciding between those two. So before we go on the merits of those two, I would like to take this opportunity to open it up to everyone to ask if there were other options you would like to be in the final consideration along with these two options. Seeing a lot of head shaking, so that's good. Javan? I like the two options. I like having just two options. I'm good with choosing between these two options. Same. Fantastic. Okay, so in in the presentation I sent around the first option presented which was labeled design three, but it was the first option was the horizontal treatment with the lines coming through it, sort of expressing the concept of fiber and connectivity. The second option was the option that used the admittedly somewhat cliche concept of a mountain as the logo, but it has some merits as well. For example, we could take just the mountain of the dots, and the idea there is the dots help express the concept of pulses of light, and we could take the concept of just the the mountain range with the dots to use standalone, for example, in social media outlets where we have to do a square, you know, or square or round logo, and you maybe don't want to use the word, or for those familiar with the term the favicon or the icon that shows up in your URL bar on your website, you could take that little mountain outline and make that work in that kind of context, whereas you could never make the word CV fiber work in that sort of context. So I think both logos have strong merits. I do have a personal preference toward one over the other, but I would love to give the opportunity to the rest of the board to weigh in on these. And then what I'd like to propose is kind of at the tail end of a couple of discussions, maybe we just take a straw poll asking each board member, voting board member to, or I guess we could ask everyone to weigh in on whether they would prefer three or four, and then whichever one gets kind of the most consensus at that point, we can move to add a five. Jeremy, how's that process sound to you? That sounds great. Take it away. Okay, great. So yeah, I guess open to discussion at this point, if anybody has questions on the process, questions on the actual logos or any other matter related. This is Jerry, if I can jump in, because there's no visual. It seems to me that there's a, was there a combination option that was also looked at? It seems pretty obvious that having the fiber and the mountains at the same time kind of gets, you know, the whole, the whole piece of information across. That's a great question, Jerry. And we did actually talk about that last night at the communications committee meeting. It's an interesting idea. My personal opinion is that it might be trending towards a little too busy at that point. That said, I'm certainly open to hearing that. And our designer is absolutely willing to go down that path. If as a board, we think that is the best path to go. And to your comment about visuals, Jeremy, if you want to try to make me presenter, I could pull them up on the screen. Okay. So I will not be able to see everyone who is raising their hands now as a result. So I would ask that folks who want to jump in, just go ahead and jump in at this point, since I won't be able to see you raising your hand. So this is the first option, the option that has the lines around connectivity. For each of these, they've provided two treatments, one on white and one on gray, with, of course, the gray letters being reversed out to the white when it is on the gray treatment. And there are certain treatments where you might want to do that. There are also certain treatments where you want to might want to go in all single color treatment. And you would have that capability as well. Here are some examples of how that might look out in the wild. Here it is on the side of a truck, on a hard hat, on a fleece, everybody in the tech world's favorite garment of swag. And then the next one, this is the one that has the mountain treatment. About the previous one, I just wanted to mention that I love the idea of the lines, but they just disappear at distance, just because they're so thin and you wouldn't want them to be thicker. So I really like the idea. I like what they convey, but I just don't think in practice it looks the best. This is Frank in Williamstown. I agree. Until you just mentioned the fibers about 10 minutes ago, I didn't even see it the first time. I had to go back and say, oh yeah, they're there. I didn't see them before. On the other hand, the other one, you see the green mountains. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if you want to see what she's talking about, you can see here, I mean, it gets totally lost when you're not zoomed in on a nice big screen. And that would be true on a lot of smaller treatments. So business cards, letterhead, things of that nature, it is not going to be as strong. And certainly, depending on how big and prominent we might want it to be in website designs, even there, it could have the opportunity to get more lost. It actually, when you had it zoomed out like that, it actually looked, the dark, the light on dark actually looked kind of dirty like there is crud on my screen or like, you know, like a hair on my screen that I wanted to pick off. Yeah. I don't know. I like the other one designed for, I guess it is with the mountains a whole lot better. You've got the mountains with kind of, you know, discretized, you know, like like packets of data or, you know, anything digital. It's got the green mountains or Vermont. I think it's clean and you can tell at an immediate glance what it is and it's recognizable. And that kind of ticks all my criteria. So that's my favorite one. And here is that logo again in the treatment of the truck, the hard hat, and once again, everyone's favorite, the fleece vest. I buy that fleece. Yeah. My thoughts about the previous one kind of echo what Jeremy was saying. I think it changes, it changes the readability of the letters. Not that people are going to be spending a lot of time reading this, but in terms of accessibility, I think it's a little bit, it's harder to read. The contrast is okay, but it breaks up the shape of the characters such that when you're actually trying to figure out what it's saying, it could be slightly harder. But that would be a sort of a tiebreaker thing for me. I definitely also like the, having the standalone kind of iconographical element that's in the subsequent one. And I would also be, I would be opposed to adding the kind of the fiber strands through the words. Would concur that it would be too busy. So people can get a flavor of what that might look like. So here is just the mountain treatment. And if you were to flush that out so that it has kind of a square wrapper to it, it might look something like. Well, Chuck is doing that. One thing that just to say that I like about this one is it, again, it gets back to what Siobhan was saying, is it scale invariant. You see it on a truck at distance, and it's recognizable as the CV fiber logo. And if you see it, you know, up close, it's also perfectly recognizable. Whereas the other one, I think would look like a word, and you might not be certain of what you were looking at until you got within a certain distance. Well, one, one minor concern that I have, and I think, and you alluded to it slightly at the beginning of your presentation, Chuck, was that this is a style with the mountains and whatnot that's a reasonably common approach. And what I would not want to see would be trademark infringement. If this is too, this is too close to someone else's existing logo. I mean, I'm going to, I mean, it looks, I can't think of it. I feel like there's a paper company that has a similar sort of similar sort of logo, but I can't, I couldn't, couldn't find it, but I don't know if it's worthwhile for us to do a trademark search before we were to go all the way into this, or if that's something that your designer is an easy way of checking. I see RD, you have your hand up. Exactly. That was exactly my point. We ought to do a trademark search. And then if we find that we are first off the mark, we should pay to trademark our logo. Yeah, we could be confused. That's great feedback, Tom. Oh, with fibers, we could be confused with a paper company. Different kind of fiber, but anyway. Can I say something? I have a problem with the mountains just for the reasons that Chuck mentioned in the beginning. It's very cliche, not for trademark reasons, but I'm so tired of seeing those mountains everywhere. And it doesn't seem very innovative to me. I can see the issue with the other logo. So my question would be, is this the last round or can we, are we exploring other options? Or is this it? We, we absolutely could go back for another round if, if, as a board, we decide we're not happy with these two options. I think we just take the consensus of whatever one thinks, whether they like either, you know, the first option or the second option here with the mountains overall as a board now, or they feel like, or as a third option, we feel that, you know, we need to revisit this, get that consensus and then go forward from there. I don't know. I mean, honestly, I think that we kind of need to make a decision because we need to put together the door hangers and all of our marketing materials and get that stuff going. I don't know if we have time to send it back to the designers, get it back, have the communications committee vote on it, have another board meeting to discuss. We have to have that money spent by the end of December, right? Correct. Yeah. And there's some steps along the way because we're doing printed materials. We have to get the printed materials to the printer in order to get them to the canvassing firm so that they can distribute them. Do you want to provide board member now and just get a consensus of what we prefer? Does anybody else have any feedback or any suggestions? I mean, especially if this is a, if there are things that we could take the existing elements and we could tweak it, maybe the mountain shape is not the ideal object to put up there. We could have the same sort of like gradient-ish dotted design pattern with the different shape. The previous logo looked basically kind of like a benzene ring with CV fiber inside of it, which if you're a fan of benzene and hydrocarbons in general, then yeah, I think we can stick with that. But that was free. That was something my ex-wife did quite quickly and it's been serving well for a while. But I like number four. I think we can go around the table and vote. I don't know how you want to do this. I mean, I'm ready to vote on number four. I think we just kind of do it as a straw poll and let each person weigh in if they have a preference for three, for four, or for going back and revising. And I would be happy to hear from our non-board members too. We have some folks here who are not technically voting members and some folks who have, you know, fresh eyes who are not, you know, who are not going to be voting. So, see Mark, Sam, if either of you have thoughts about either one of these or if we have, you know, our orca staffer, if any of you have any thoughts about this, I would certainly like to hear it. Hey, some great commentary. When I was on a select board, some of our best commentary came from our camera guy, frankly. So, Michael, I see you raising your hand because you're so small, just I think everyone's just jumping in at this point. Oh, okay. I'm very sorry. I'm so late, folks. So I missed almost all of the discussion. I prefer the mountain sign to the other one. And I just heard somebody not liking the shape of the mountain. We could always camels hump it or something. But I think it's, I think it's a great improvement over the previous ones we saw. And I agree that we should move forward. So I'm probably going to vote for number four. And if anyone wants to modify the mountain shape, that's fine with me. Second. I concur. I agree with that for what it's worth. Okay. Sam Rosenberg had a suggestion about if you change that particular mountain shape to something that looks more like camel sump. Camel sump is in our district. Yeah. In fact, Henry made the same comment last night. You know, Henry, I for one would be totally on board with that. I have a view of camel sump from my office right here and then quite fond of it. So, you know, for me, that sounds great. But I know that that particular range doesn't necessarily represent everybody's idea of Vermont and particularly those in the eastern end of our district. You know, there's a different viewpoint of what Vermont mountains look like. One thought on that. It also might get a little bit more into trademarky issues because it's a more recognizable profile. Whereas if you have just sort of a generic mountain versus camel sump, I don't know. We could also go with Spruce Mountain and the whole Groton Islands, which are in central Vermont as well. So, another iconic shape. All right. So, I have an idea. Let's do this. Let's get to a general design agreement and then if we want to have the designer work out which mountain range to model and then kind of kick it into the communications committee to have them figure out what looks the best and do the final thumbs up, thumbs down. I mean, if that's the one that's chosen, does that seem reasonable? Sounds good to me. All right. Is anybody opposed to design for just totally opposed to it? I don't hear anybody. I don't hear anybody. It sounds like a modest amount of tweaking might be acceptable if you want to send it back to the communications committee. Katharina, do you have a preference about how the mountains might look? I know you kind of don't like it to begin with, but if it was changed slightly, would it feel better? Yeah. I think I can live with that. Depending on, yeah. I don't want to be too finicky. It's just, yeah. Yeah, I can live with that. Okay. So, thanks for that, Ray. Is there anybody that, so I mean, I think we're approaching consensus on design for the bottom one with the dotted gradient mountains. Is there anybody who is opposed to this? Okay. So, I'm, yeah, so I will move that we adopt the logos. That's what design for, is it Chuck? I move that we adopt design for and direct the communications committee to decide whether, whether any changes to the mountains need to be made and leave it up to their discretion for the final, the final arrangement. Second. Second, Matt. Okay, Siobhan. So, yeah, Siobhan was first on the second. Any further discussion? All right. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. Hi. Opposed? Abstentions or folks who want a roll call vote. Excellent. We have a logo and Mr. Communications Committee chair make it so. And we, I think we have some, some artists to pay and such and some stuff to print. Yes. Yes, we do. So, moving into communications report, the other topic that came up at last night's meeting was the canvassing materials. Tim has received a lot of feedback on the canvassing materials. Some of it in direct competition with some others of it. So, he's got some work to do to suss that out. Tim certainly let us know, you know, if you need assistance on that. But now that we at least have a direction on the logo, we can take the logo, start to incorporate it into those materials, ensure that the color palette of those materials is uniform along with the logo. And really, we need to try to get these things to print pretty quickly here. So, we were not quite ready to say we're ready to approve the materials because there was still so much feedback flying around. But I think after one more round, we will be ready to pull the trigger on that. So, Josh, but first, one of the things that one of my criticisms of the literature and some of the stuff is that the words central Vermont fiber has been used extensively and we are not central Vermont fiber. So, my question here is, should we register that as another trade name? I mean, because we are technically central Vermont internet doing business as our trade name CV fiber. If we should spend the, however much it is per year to register central Vermont fiber, is that useful? David? I just think it can further confuses our identity. Michael? Long time ago, Cloud Alliance had another name and it was doing business as Cloud Alliance. And we ultimately, and we created, did a trademark for Cloud Alliance. Ultimately, we decided it was just too confusing and Cloud Alliance became the name of the company. And I think CV fiber should be the name of the CUD and we shouldn't have any DBAs or anything else. And if that's not the case now, I make a motion that we proceed with registering it, re-registering it with the Secretary of State in that fashion. Chuck got in there in that time. Okay. And amended filing with the Secretary of State, updating the CUD's name. Okay. Any other, any other thoughts about this? Yes. Do we have to re-register a trademark? You have to register a trademark. You've registered a trademark. It's yours. Yeah. We need to keep the registration up to date with the state. Otherwise, it, it's like, it's not every year, but it's like every three or four years, you need to pay them more money, or it kind of goes into the bin of trademarks that were formerly used, but are now not active. And then after some period of time, I believe people can take over trademarks that are not being actively used. And if I could add please to that, we've had a problem with that already, RD. We, we, we, we had a competitor that tried to grab our name. So, you know, we may want to trademark more than one name if that's possible, but only use the one and keep the others in a band so that we're not worried about confusion from someone else. That, I don't know if that's possible. I'm just throwing that out there. I think it's possible to register multiple trademarks. My question was whether you have to renew the trademark registration either every year or every periodically. I wasn't aware that that was necessary. I know that you need to keep your filings with the state up to date. But I wasn't aware that that had anything to do with, but yes, I think it would be wise to register multiple trademarks. So, so, so the difference is trademark versus trade name. These are, these are two different things. So, trade names are registered with the Secretary of State's business division. And if you're going to have the name of your organization be used in any sort of official way, we have to register that trade name. The trademark would, could be, could be a name too, and that would be more long term. Those trade names do need to be renewed every, I think it's three years. It's not, it's not crazy expensive, but it is sort of just teased to cross and ice the dot and such. David, you had your hand up. It's house. No, you ended it. You answered it. The difference between a trade name and a trademark. Okay. Michael. I think it's $35 every time you do it. You can have, there's a difference between a trademark and a service mark. And service mark probably would be fine. And yeah, just, I agree with what Jerry said. In order to protect us from confusion in a marketplace, we should probably protect that previous trade name that was registered against our will. And so continue to possess it under our registration. But what we're talking about right now is, is changing the name of the organization. And that is separate from the trade names and trademarks and service marks. Okay. So that may require us then, if we change our name, then to go back and register essential Vermont internet as a trade name as well. Yes. So that's straightforward anyway. That's something that Jeremy and I can do without too much effort, just a little bit of, a little bit of cost. The other, the other logistical bit is that I would need to go back to the bank and re-register there as well. Because if we're changing our name, we have to, because all of our checks say central Vermont internet. Because when we first opened the bank account, that's what we were before we declared the trade name. But we can, we have it now so that we can accept checks to central Vermont internet. We can accept, accept checks to CV fiber. But we would need to then make it so that CV fibers, the primary, central Vermont internet and central Vermont fiber are, are names then that we could accept checks as, because that's, that's, they've, they've, they've been at VSEC, they've been very kind when it's come to sort of these checks written out to a slightly variant version of our name. So, okay, so we still have a motion, a motion out there right now that we should amend our filing with the secretary of state updating the CUD's name to be CV fiber and not have that as a DBA. Any further discussion? That would be central Vermont fiber, not CV fiber. Or would it be CV fiber? CV fiber. CV fiber would be the main name and then, and then we can go and kind of, and we'll do another motion in a minute to go actually go register and spend the money on the other bits. But for right now, we're just saying we are now central Vermont internet. We're going to change that from central Vermont internet at the secretary of state's office, which is a slightly different filing than your average, you know, corporation filing as we're a different sort of organization. But it's not very hard. It's just, just a slightly different bit of paperwork that you or I, Jeremy will sign and send it in. Anything else on this? Yeah, I mean, I can do that the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty darn busy with me at the end of the semester. But after that, and I don't think it's a massive rush either. So yeah. Okay, so I think we're ready to vote. I'll signify all those in favor of Michael's motion. Please signify by saying I. Okay, opposed or abstentions are folks who want a roll call vote. I couldn't hear you already, but it sounded like you're trying to say something just I. Okay, okay. Sorry, your audio cuts in and out a little bit. So if I miss stuff that you've said in the notes, I'm sorry about that. Okay. All right, so I think we have a unanimous vote on this to amend our name. I will move that we make sure that CV fiber, central Vermont fiber, central Vermont internet, and our design, our logo design, receive the appropriate protections through the Vermont Secretary of State's office. Second. Okay, so I think, right. Okay. Seconded by Frank Moore. I had to beat Siobhan. Any further discussion? Yes. Get it? Making things, trademarks, service marks can get expensive. Registering them with the Secretary of State as trade names is real is a cinch. And they do a quick search to make sure there's no similar ones from similar types of organizations within the state and then they approve it. But if you want to register trademarks, that's not a lawyering. It's a national thing and it gets expensive. So I recommend only registering these as trade names with the Secretary of State and be done with it. And we can cross that bridge if we have to go to the USPTO. We can go through that process if we need to later. Whatever protections we can be offered at the state level, frankly on the cheap, we'll do that. Okay. Any other thoughts about this? Okay. All in favor of protecting those various names and our new logo, please signify by saying aye. Opposed abstentions or opposed abstentions or folks who want a roll call vote. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Anything else on communications, Chuck? Stuff in the pipeline. You have some website stuff, I think, right? Yes. So we have a website RFP out there. We have gotten at least one response to it so far. The deadline is end of day tomorrow. So hopefully we'll get a couple more coming in 11th hour. Sounds good. Anything else then from the communications committee? That is all. Thank you, everyone. Thanks, Chuck. Moving on business development committee report. David. Well, the business development committee hasn't met since the last meeting, but I've been busy anyway trying to get the canvassing project underway. I had a phone call or Zoom meeting today with last mile, our consultant, and they've got their database all set to go. They want to do a training on Friday. They want to, with their own, with their canvassing team, they have a team of about 10 people, and they're going to start probably making phone calls early next week. The question that they have is they want to get the names and emails and phone numbers of the each town's representative so they can talk to them or get familiar with points of view about the towns that they're talking to. And so I said to them today, the team would get them that list. I'm feeling very confident about them. They've done a lot of political canvassing, so they know what they're doing. They actually have the tools to do it right, how to follow up, how not to follow up, how to not be a pain in the neck. So I was impressed with them. It turns out the guy that's the lead partner in this organization used to work on Matt Dunn's campaign for governor two years back. That's number one. And number two, I've been sort of busy while Jeremy and I have been busy on grant stuff for the last week a month, which that's another topic on the agenda. But the next is this development committee meeting, which is I'm going to schedule shortly. There's more of an open discussion about prioritizing what we need to do next. And to me, it's about moving on the Vita grant application, figuring out what we're doing with ISPs and how we're going to go full with ISPs and organization. And then it's my little list item. And that's it on that. I do have some news. I did talk to Velco yesterday, and they I wanted to get an update on the their fiber deployment in the district. And they're moving along pretty heavily. And this came up because the town of Calis is desperate to get fiber to their town office. And so I wanted to find out what the status of the fiber project to Maple Cronus substation was. And it's going to be done with WEC in the second or third quarter of next year. So the timing, depending on our build out next year, that fiber will be there. So if we end up going there. So that's sort of I think that's my update on on business development. It's probably something else, but I probably forgot. So you could talk about the the more town project. Okay, I didn't know I put that in the grant subject. Oh, yeah, you know what? Yeah, let's let's give it for the grant. We got some other stuff to do. While we're talking about committees, it occurs to me, RD, would you like to be a member of any of these committees? Can we appoint you to one of them? If you'd so desire that's kind of where some of the heavier lifting happens. A point where you think I might be most useful. Okay, I don't I don't know that much about you. So I don't know how useful you are. We can talk about this in private instead of MIDI is losing Andy. And so we're we are down a member technically because Andy was though he was a business development committee member in spirit, he was a full-fledged member of communications. Okay, so that that might be a good fit. But yeah, appropriate, but I'll talk about it with Jeremy. All right, sounds great. Okay, thanks David for the business development committee stuff. Project managers report. Tim, this is yours. All right, I'll leave in a more town in in Roxbury to the to the grant discussions. So we have I did have a kickoff meeting with COS systems. They are working on standing our system on their end. Been working with David on we've got some decisions to make as far as the setup goes for what we wanted to find as service areas and then subsequently we'll draw the service zones, which would be similar to the routes that I think we lost your audio, Tim. Yep, we just lost your audio just dropped out completely. I think you need to go to your audio settings. It's not just muted. All right, can you hear me again? Lost my connection there. So obviously the logo design work has also been going on. Checking I've been working with them. So we've got our take back to Nelson to finalize that for logo. Been working with last mile. Also to get things going for them more mostly on the marketing materials with the designer and also looking for printing shops that can turn around the trifold and the door hangers quickly for us as we can get those in the hands of the canvassers when they start getting boots on the ground. Also, as Chuck said, we've got the website design. So I've been feeling a lot of questions and going back and forth with a lot of potential companies that are going to bid that work. So I've got a few that said they're not, they just don't have the bandwidth. And I expect to hear from a few others that will be submitting proposals by end of day tomorrow so that we can begin that work of those enhancements, which will include integrating the logo, COS systems, and also some additional features and functions to do an uplift on the website. Did another thing, David, maybe to add to the business development is just kind of next steps with pre-subscription program and what we want to do with next steps there as well with some of that initial research I had done in addition to the crowdfunding and potential loan programs available. Let's see. And I have been working on the narrative sections for the Vita application so that we can fill those in when the time comes as well for that grant or loan. Those are my things I've been working on. All right. Any questions for Tim? Okay. Thank you very much. Jeremy, just one thing for clarification. I'll help Artie a little bit too. And I just, what's the gator on the Vita? Is it just when they open up? And it's really for you, Tim, I guess too. When does that go in, that application? I can't hear you, Tim. I can answer this. Still having some audio issues there. So, Andy, it's as soon as we get it in. I mean, there's already been one successful applicant for some of that money. It was not a CUD, but when we are ready to put it in, we can put it in. So, we have to have our project fully fleshed out, priced. We have to have our matching funds. The main thing that we're waiting on before we can get to that $4 million is the matching funds from the department. But, as I understand it, the department has that process in process. So, when they have the ability to release those, or at least commit those, I don't think they even need to write us a check. They just need to say, you know, we are underwriting this essentially to this amount. David, you maybe had something about this? Yeah, this week's Recuda meeting, the group that's the association of all the CUDs, Rob Fish from the department said that Vita is already, is only has $10 million left. I thought they had more money than that. But anyway, so it's making me want to move quicker than slower. When I heard that, I got a little nervous. But I think compared to the other CUDs, I think we are going to be first to the trough as it were. So, I don't think it'll be gone before we get there. If we were to wait another year, yeah, there's not going to be anything left. That said, the legislature has signaled, as I understand it, has signaled interest, willingness to commit extra funds to make that pot bigger, to make that Vita loan program bigger. Because once we take four, and another CUD is the kingdom, they take four, then there's a half size project for some other CUD. And now there's still five CUDs sitting out there without any of this subsidized loan. So, you know, who can move the fastest at this point? But hopefully the legislature in their next year budget will account for that. Quick question. Are you allowed to say who got the money already for this? Or at least what type of organization it was? Is it like a for-profit? It was a for-profit. It was Mansfield Community Fiber. Okay. And I don't know if somebody else, Michael or David, if you know if anybody else went to the Vita loan pool, I think it was just them. First, I know that's the only one. There was originally 11.8 million or some number like that. So, with only 10 million, it's actually most of it. Okay. I didn't know that. Yeah. Right. So, I'm looking at the draft CV-5 loan budget 2021 and what it reflects is loan proceeds of $1.6 million. So, is our Vita application going to be for four? Or is it going to be for the 1.6? They're going to take the four. I saw you hit hold up four. They're going to take the four kind of escrow that away and for us for implementing over the next three to five years? Yes. Yes. So, because we simply it's another similar situation as to where we are this year, we simply can't spend the money that fast. We can't build the full $4 million project out in a single year. So, following the cash flow model that Fred had put together for us, we're just doing the first four quarters of that and that ends up being only a portion of that. So, the nice thing about it is we only end up paying interest then on what we've drawn down from that $4 million essentially line of credit in a way, which is a similar way that the municipal bonding I mean or other like big loans like this would work. So, is the matching funds related to the 1.6 or do we have to have 400,000? I mean, it's 10 percent, $400,000 up front or $165,000 up front? $400,000 up front. We apply for the entirety of the funds for the entirety of the project. So, when we walk in the door, we have to say, here's these $400,000 that's going to match the $4 million that we're asking for and that's and again that probably does not require us to have a bank balance of that. That just requires us to essentially present a letter. I mean, everybody knows everybody in this process at this point. So, it's going to be a matter of, you know, Rob or Clay or June or whomever at the department signing a sheet of paper that says we are committing, you know, $400,000 of this pool of money that we have as matching funds to the Vita loan program. And then, you know, voila, then the rest of the Vita money appears. The process of, are we allowed to draw on the matching funds first before we can draw on the loan funds? I'm hoping that that's the case that we can grab that first so that we pay less interest in the long run. But I have no idea how that's structured. And hopefully it's not a reimbursement sort of thing where we have to pay a certain amount and then get reimbursed and pay a certain amount, get reimbursed and play this sort of back and forth game. That would be pretty annoying. Did I hear there was some optimism about $10 million that was in the pot being added to? Yes. Yes. The folks at the legislature, I mean, I don't know that I've run into anybody at the legislature that said that it's a bad idea to make that pot bigger. I mean, I think that's going to be part of the vision, the plan for the next two, three years is to make sure that you have this kind of match, this like starting fund for all of the CUDs, the entire state. Because if there's a CUD that doesn't get starting funds, they have to go and shake the money trees themselves, which as proven, as many of you know, don't know, to be hard. Easy Fiber did it, but they did it over a much longer period of time. So if we want to serve people in a reasonable amount of time, we're going to have to have a big infusion of capital. And this is the way that the state has chosen to do it. And for them, honestly, it's a pretty cheap proposition. They don't have to build the whole project. Whose dog is barking? Okay. So it seems like we've already actually started tipping our tail into it. Grant funding update and the CARES funding options. We've already started talking about this. So David, you want to take this about the... So we applied for round two funding to do some communications work, which have got underway and going, which is great. And we had two projects, one for Fivert to the premise for about 50 houses in about 50 locations in Moretown, working with Waitsville, Champlain Telecom. And the second one was, well, deal with the first one. And so in the meantime, we have to get the money. And before we get the money, we've been working, Tim and I have been working with Waitsville, Champlain Telecom. And they went out and looked a little bit at the lines and said they could not do it. So I said to myself, why don't I see if Washington Electric Co-op would be interested in doing it, or at least running the fiber, and we'd hire, you know, Waitsville Champlain to run it. So Weck was incredibly interested in doing this. They sent somebody out the next day and walked all the lines, drove all the lines and said they could probably make ready and get the polls ready if somebody could, you know, string the fiber. So it sort of caught me too. The best news in this is that I think Weck is just ready to go. So this is really exciting to me in the long run. But the bottom line is I think Jeremy already told the state we couldn't do this project. That was $150,000 we're giving back. The second fiber to the premise project is with ValleyNet EC-Fiber and it's for 50 houses in Northfield in Roxbury. And we had a sort of a go with them. And now Tim has been struggling trying to get a commitment from ValleyNet. Oh, Jeremy may have something on this. And I'll let him say that because we have to turn this money back too if we can't get a commitment. So Jeremy, why don't you finish this one? Yeah, I had a good conversation with Carol Monroe from ValleyNet earlier today and she will have some answers one way or the other tomorrow. So they're closing the office early tomorrow at noon. So she will hopefully have something to me before then. The troubling thing, the thing that's troubling to me and this is a lesson learned for all of us, the first Carol heard about this was today. Oh Jesus. So it was not being communicated from EC-Fiber to ValleyNet effectively. So the good news is she said, well, where is this project? And I said, oh, well, David has a map. We've got a spreadsheet. We've got all sorts of this stuff. Here you go. And she's like, okay, let's make this happen. And so she's going to sit down with Chris Recchia tomorrow and we will hopefully be able to make some sort of forward progress. I mean, ideally we would assign this contract last week because the more that we talk about this, the less that we're putting fiber on poles. So yes. So she was amenable to our terms. She was amenable to kind of our strategy and everything like that. So I will be in contact with her tomorrow and David and Tim, I will loop you back in as soon as I hear anything one way or the other. I think we should, I'm not sure if we need the whole board to approve the contract that we're going to sign with ValleyNet. If you think that we need to, I know we had had this conversation before. We have already applied and approved, you know, applying for the grant money to do it. But we applied for the grant money knowing that we'd be working with EC5 or ValleyNet. So if, I guess my question is, if this goes forward, do we need to have another special meeting to approve that contract before I sign it? Or is everybody okay with me just plowing forward as chair and saying, I thought we'd already approved it. Right. But you haven't approved the contract. So the contract, that legal agreement that may have more nuance than the conversations that we've had or things that we've approved in principle or, you know, 30,000 foot view sense. If y'all think that we need a meeting, I don't have any problem with that whatsoever. I mean, I might have a flexible enough schedule. We can do this. And hopefully it's not going to take very long if folks, you know, want to commit to actually reading the contract. But again, this is like, we got five weeks to serve, you know, to serve these folks. So Jeremy, I see your hand up. Yeah. So you said that they were amenable to the terms. But I remember us having a pretty extensive discussion about a whole bunch of potential terms. So if maybe you could give us a rough idea of sort of what you discussed, and then maybe what we could do is approve terms that are, you know, basically the same as what you talked about. And if it's substantially different, then we might need to have another board meeting. But I think that you're right that we just need to get this moving as soon as possible. Okay. So we had previously approved that language. That was already, that was already approved. And that was, we were going to, were my notes here, we would own the Fiber, we would own the subscribers, we would contract with, with whomever as a, as an operator. And that we would, you know, try to apply leverage so to get them kind of incentivized to build more. That was the, these were kind of the four high level things that were our starting point. And then we had some flexibility like that we had fall back to. But my conversation with Carol today, she was like, no, that's all, that's kind of what she thought. I mean, this is, this is a conversation that we've been having with Valley Net for two years, three years now. So they want to help, they will help, and they know what our motivation is and why we need the customers and why we need to own this stuff. So there's no, there's no ambiguity here. They're, they're willing to plow forward. And because it's contiguous with their existing network, it's really much less of a lift than if we were to say, no, we're going to go build, you know, David Healy's house over in, over in Callis and just backhaul it. Well, that's, that's fine in principle, but like, but literally there are easy fiber Valley Net fiber, it's literally right there. And they would be extending it, which is not, which is not trivial, I should say, but they're at least there. I guess that's what I was thinking. Because we've been talking about this for so long, and we've talked about, we've talked with them in the room, and we've talked to them, and all of that, that I just, I felt like this is more, okay, we're putting all of that in writing now. So I'm willing to meet two, if people feel it's necessary. I don't personally feel a drive to me. I trust that the contract that comes out is going to reflect our needs, and that we've adequately expressed those needs. Okay, Ray. I think our last conversation really had to do with what we felt like the terms ought to be with the understanding that that was the starting position. In some cases, we needed to back off a little bit, that each one would be different. It wasn't an authorization, it was an authorization to negotiate, it wasn't an authorization to execute the contract. My view of the world is that we need the governing board's responsibility is to authorize entering into contracts. And so I think we need a vote on it. And it doesn't sound like we're prepared to vote on this evening. That's kind of what I'm asking for. If you are prepared just to, you know, to let go of the reins, and we will, I mean, we'll make it happen. If it's possible, we'll make it happen. Josh, you had your hand up too. Yeah, I'm just thinking with the five weeks and a limited time that we have, we just need to move forward. I think we beat a lot of this stuff to death already. And we need to just move forward with it and get things going. So I'm all for approving right now. Any other thoughts about this? Jeremy? Jeremy? Yeah, just, I would tend to agree with what Ray said. And I realize everybody, you know, it is doubting, you know, the eyes and crossing the T's contract approval should happen. And we did kind of prove negotiating positions and, you know, authorization to do that. But the devil's in the details when you sign a piece of paper, it shouldn't be much more than a 15 minute meeting. You send out the material, you just vote it up and down. And, you know, even if it's whatever, it just seems more proper from a process perspective to me. That's just my opinion. Thanks, Andy. Back to you, Josh. Yeah, Andy, I completely agree with you on the devil in the details in regards to, you know, final contract 15 minutes. So in a meeting, I mean, have you seen our meetings? I'm not really sure that that's possible, but it's nice that you're optimistic. Yeah, okay. I could preemptively suck at the motion to make it faster. Okay. Good. Allen Gilbert had a suggestion in the chat that could the executive committee handle this rather than the full board? And the answer is probably, but we are missing a member of the executive committee. So if maybe we could just, I mean, if you wanted to bring it to the whole board, we can do this. So I haven't heard from enough of the board. I mean, we've heard a couple of folks who want to see this in front of the whole board. But otherwise we could have, you know, the chairs of the committees and our clerk and me, Phil is out. Phil's not going to be able to weigh in. You know, he could delegate it to us and we could move forward with it. Yeah, happy to hear any other feedback. Chuck. I, for one, have never seen Jeremy Hansen act in anything but the best of faith with the interests of CV Fiverr in mind. And I personally would trust him and maybe one or two others, maybe David or someone else to take it to the finish line in a way that carries the board's best interests. So I would be willing to delegate that responsibility. Same. Okay. So let's see. Jerry says, I think we need this to be voted on by the board. It's not a matter of trust, but a process. Okay, fair enough. So another sort of suggestion for the whole board. Allen is asking, could somebody be temporarily appointed to Phil's position on the executive committee? And yeah, I think that's kind of what we're talking about. That would be, could be David and or Chuck, I mean, as chairs of committees that seems to be, they seem to be in reasonable positions with big picture responsibilities. What do you think? Let's see. Tim. Tim Shea. Still no audio, Tim. Sadly. Yeah, put it in the chat. I did, I did read your lips on that one. Anybody else that we haven't heard from yet about what you, what you think we should do. So let's see. David Wendt, you're a voting member today. Any, any thoughts? Maybe a question. I mean, as Andy was saying, if it, if it can be a streamlined process, would it slow down at all the, the actual board with the contract to, to do a quick meeting and just a board review and go through the, those procedures? I, I don't think it would slow things down, frankly. I mean, the trick though is that if I schedule a meeting, we have to have 10 people. So provided that we all have flexible enough schedules that people can show up on, and I'm, I'm depending on, I mean, if we want to move fast, I would want to do this as an emergency meeting. So we wouldn't even have a 24 hour notice. And then as soon, essentially as soon as I have noticed that we have the contract ready to go, I would call it, you'd need to all be able to review it after a couple hours and be ready to go. And guarantee they're going to show up. I mean, we barely made quorum for this meeting. Right. Well, I mean, so, so we, we eventually did. I mean, could we pre-approve that you could take the decision without a quorum? Not, not really. I mean, that's like, that's our overall rules. So what we're suggesting though is to take a subset of those of us that are here right now and delegate this decision to that subset of people, which is something that we have done in the past. But there's, but there seems to be, seems to be a number of voices who, who want to have this in front of the entire board and we'll say entire with finger quotes for those of you who can't see my video. Jeremy. Perhaps the people that want to, that think that maybe it shouldn't be just one person making that decision would step up and be part of the process to review it. It could. And so I see some delegate the people that want to be involved. To clarify that too, Jeremy, from my perspective, I probably not as, I probably not as bothered by the process of the board delegating to a subset. I, you know, three, three people or something. I was a little initial reaction just to you and kind of a sole discretion, not that I don't trust you, but just more process and transparency perspective. And then at least you have the explicit vote of the board delegating that authority to an executive, you know, body. Like that would be, that would seem from a process perspective to be pretty sound. Fair enough. And I see some, there's some, I do see you, Siobhan. I see some folks in the chat saying the biggest decision will be setting the rates for subscriptions. I don't think that we need to do that at this point. I think that's something that we can cross the bridge. Let's, let's get this signed. Let's get them rolling the trucks out. Yeah, Siobhan. It's not going to be hooking anyone up for a while. I would like to make a motion to appoint David Healy as a temporary co-chair of the board. Vice chair. You mean the executive committee? Vice chair. Temporary, temporary fill. This fill. It'd be a fill in. Vice chair. Vice chair of the board. So that he can sit on the executive committee. Okay, I will, I will second this so that we can get into discussion. What, what I was going to suggest is that so that we don't spend any more time on this, I was just going to say, let me just call a full meeting and whoever shows up shows up. It's going to be a last minute thing. And I'm just going to count on those of you who, who care about this to please just make sure that you set aside time and if you have to move an appointment that is otherwise important to you, I'm going to ask that you give this priority. It's going to be something in the next week. So it's not going to be on Thursday. That was the only thing I cared about really. I mean, if, I mean, I don't, I don't personally care about, about Thursday myself, but I'm, if they get me a contract and we need to get it approved because we need to move this by the end of the year or we lose $150,000, I'm going to, I'm going to call it. I mean, I'll show up on Thursday or, or I can send out an email message and we can schedule it, find a better time like Friday morning, you know, zero, I can make Thursday. It's just me and Frank. I can make Thursday work. I'll be making stuffing in the morning. That's all. So we, we could go and delegate this to the executive committee and I'm, I'm confident that everybody in the executive committee, including the, you know, maybe potentially temporarily appointed David could do that. I think we should still say yes to this if the executive committee needs to do anything, but I think what I'm going to do is I'm just going to call a meeting of the entire board with 24 hours if I can, otherwise as an emergency meeting and warn it as well as I can. Does that seem second? Okay. So, so no, it's, so there's already motion and seconded. So right now we're voting on whether we should appoint David Healy to be temporary vice chair and Phil's absence while he's recovering. So if anybody has any commentary on that, otherwise, I think let's just go to vote and wrap this up. We can. So all in favor of appointing David as temporary vice chair, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed abstentions or roll call votes? Okay. Motion passes. Congrats, David. Thanks. Smart force campaign. Yeah. Okay. So I will, I will take responsibility for calling that and Jerry has a really good point there. If you don't think that you're going to be able to make it to this meeting whenever, whenever it gets called, please take responsibility for contacting your alternates. We have them there and we need, you know, not exactly butts in seats, but we need faces on zooms, faces on go to meetings so that we can do this correctly. Right. Anything else on grants or funding or cares funds? David? Yes. The other grant, Jeremy is applied for $20,000 from the Vermont community fund for CUD development. I think it's pretty generic. And then the only thing I would say is the ARDOF auction is moving along. We won't be able to say anything for a couple of months, but it is moving along pretty rapidly. And so just keep posted on that at all. We can't keep you posted on it, but just to let you know it's ongoing. And Michael may want to be able to say something. Michael? I can say tomorrow is the state of the auction. Oh, wow. The auction closed. We still don't be able to talk about it. And it closes to the results for at least a month after that. No, no public communications. So, so, and then the last grant opportunity, and I think Tim has looked into this one is USDA business development. Another round. This one doesn't require any matching. And we might be able to use it for something. I haven't thought, thought it through yet, but it's something worth spending a little time on what we may want to use the business development money for. So that's the grant update from me. Jeremy? Just a thought. Could we use the money to develop our business by extending Tim's contract? Because it seems like we have lots and lots of work for him to do. So the good news is that we did receive the Vermont Community Foundation grant. We have the, yeah, they were, it was a, it was a quick turn around. We got it. It will be, I expect I'll see a check in my mailbox in the next week or so. So we have that. We have not decided how we're spending it, but extending Tim's contract seems like a reasonable, a reasonable approach. And I expect that that will be on our next regular board meeting once I, excuse me, once I have that check in hand, because that will be, Tim's current contract is up at the end of the year. So, So many things. We're not sick of dealing with us. Yeah, that's good to say. So you can have us. We're going to be trading by group. We'll have, we'll see them in under that in this, that 20,000. So, yeah, anything else on grants, funding, anybody? Okay. Moving along round table. So for newcomers, this is where we take the opportunity to just say anything that's on our minds, whatever to sort of wrap up the meeting. If you have any access to grind or backs to Pat and such, you can certainly do that. And we usually afford this to anybody who's here. And so alternate voting members doesn't really matter. I'm going to go in reverse order of what I would normally. So, Jerry, you want to start us off? Sure, I'll be brief. I just want to give a shout out and a thanks here because, you know, there, there's some folks that are really carrying a lot of burden here. And I really appreciate the way that Tim is folded right into the, to the team. And it's, it's, it's a wonderful thing to see because, you know, we, we were kicking a lot and, and moving our arms a lot, but we weren't getting very far before and things are really starting to gel and we're moving forward and there's going to be fiber hanging in the not too distant future. I just want to say thank you to everybody. That's it. All right. Thanks, Jerry, Michael. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Michael, R.D. I'm really glad to be here and I hope I can fill Andy's shoes. Thank you. Happy to have you aboard, Jeremy. Yeah, just thanks everyone for all the work you put in. And I think it's really, really exciting that we could potentially have fiber built and people connected by the end of the year. I really, really hope that happens. Thanks, Jeremy. Andy. Oh, just general appreciation and thanks to R.D. particularly to step up and look forward to kind of making sure this just all keeps going. So thanks. Thanks, Andy. Alan. I'm good. Let's build fiber. Yes, indeed. Thanks, Alan. Siobhan. Please just remember to wear your mask and stay safe. That's it. Yes. Thank you for that, Siobhan. Very good advice. Josh. I just want to say, happy Thanksgiving, everybody. COVID safe, Thanksgiving, that is. And Mark, if you wouldn't mind sending me an email at some point in the next few days, let me know if you are indeed planning on going to the board to be formally appointed as an alternative. That'd be awesome. Everybody, thank you for your work. Thanks, Josh. David. I'm going to pass. Thanks, David. Chuck. Mark, I hope we haven't scared you off. All right. Thanks, Chuck. Thanks to Josh for inviting me. All right. John Russell. If you can hear me, I'm going to pass. Thanks. Thank you, John. Ray. I want to echo Jerry's kudos for all the hard work that David and Chuck and Jeremy and Tim have been doing. We are starting to get some traction. I really appreciate that. The other thing though is that we can't let these time pressures, shortcut processes that we need to establish and do correctly. And approving contracts is one of those. We have lots of contracts in front of us, and the board should be the group that approves contracts. That's my view of the world. All right. Thanks, Ray. Tim. I'm good. Thanks, Tim. Frank. I'll pass. Thanks, Frank. Mark. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. And special thanks again to Josh for inviting me. Thanks for joining us, Mark. We appreciate you being here. It's lonely with only 20-ish board members around. Good to have some more folks. I want to thank you all. I definitely appreciate all of the work that you do. Many hands, light work, et cetera. Again, continuing to be encouraged by the fact that we have funding, the fact that we're paying for stuff and getting stuff, and we can see the light at the end of the fiber. Can I do that? Can I make that dad joke? There you go. That's all I got. And all right. I'm going to declare us adjourned at 7.32 p.m. Have a wonderful night, everybody. We'll talk to you probably quite soon. See you, everyone.