 I can, at the very least. We're called to order. Yep. And public comment. Now is the time if, if, if anyone has public comment. Hearing none that agenda item. Has passed. We're now moving on to the approval of the minutes of the October 27, 2020 board meeting. Present was Carlos Sue CJ, myself, Rob, Dave and John. If everyone could open that up and take a moment. Say now. Has everyone found that document from Rob's earlier email. Minutes from October 27, 2020. That is where our attention needs to be for approval of the minutes. You could just take a minute or two with it. And scan for accuracy and. I guess typos as well or welcome any corrections. Any and all. All right. I'm hearing no one's having trouble finding and I'm taking that as all as well. And I'm going to go quiet a minute and do a close reading here. I welcome you all to do same. Did. Mike, did you reach out to Rachel about. Being the. Second in line for treasurer. Not since that election. But I think she was in agreement and was lined up, but it is concerning. We haven't seen her for, I don't know how many meetings in a row. And Mike. I see where you're thinking. Mike Doyle has made some noises about, he may be in his swan song. And looking for a handoff and if it's a handoff to someone who isn't present, that's, that's potentially a problem. Perhaps we go deeper in this conversation and old minutes. I mean, in old business and just for now, see, I actually didn't see a typo or any problem with it. If anyone did catch anything, it is, it has been really helpful to read a jog my memory. That was when we elected officers and had the annual meeting and right. There are some loose ends we ought to touch on in old business. But for now we're just giving this the stamp of approval amended or not. Fair enough, Sue. Yeah. Yes. I, I moved to accept minutes as presented. All right. We have a motion and a second to accept the October 27th. Minutes. As presented. All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. And CJ's right on time. And those opposed. All right. That's unanimous CJ. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Following the agenda. Lewis as. A proposal for the board. And we recently received through Rob. Some. Supplemental materials. I don't know what it is. Yes. No. It would have been. It's it's only male. Only male. So I have a question. I'm sorry. I'm Mike. Yes. First off, where am I going to put this? What section are we going to put this under? It is been created as. It has been created as item number four. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Financial reports and after approval of minutes. Yes. It's a slight adjustment to. Our standard. Agenda. Good catch Carlos. I don't know if we've met on Michael body. I'm the board chair here. I don't know if you know other folks, but maybe we ought to just go around quick. Sure. That'd be great. Yep. Lou and I have met many times. So she knows who I am. And I've worked at, at VCAM in the past. And I was on the governor's board, governor's institutes board with Emma. A couple of years. And I know your, your mom from bread and puppet stuff and activism stuff. If we're alphabetical, Mr blocks up next. Yep. Hi, Lou. Haven't seen each other for a number of years. But we're still. So it's great to have you. Bring us an idea. All right. Diaz for Diaz. So hi. Hi, Lou. My name is Carlos Diaz. I am the secretary of the board. And just so that I'm correct here, Lou. You're, you go by your full name is. Livia Mulvaney. Static. Yeah, I just go by Lou, but yeah, that's the last name is Mulvaney Static. Yep. Yeah. Right. And I use, I use they, them pronouns. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right. You're welcome. All right. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. CJ, you're up to introduce yourself. I am a CJ stump. From Randolph. And. Nice to meet you. The floor is yours. Okay, great. All right. Well, first off, thank you all for letting me steal a little bit of your board meeting time tonight. I just want to make sure that you know, that you can ask me any questions after this as well. Like Rob's got all my contact info. And again, my, my goal tonight is to just give you a, an overview of, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you just need to give you a. An overview of an opportunity coming from the FCC for a new window for low power. radio community, radio or and or full-power community radio. And so I'm going to push the share screen button, Rob, and let's hope that a, Oh, Now you can, if you disable it, or if you enable it, Okay, I'm getting host disabled attendee screen sharing. Oh, all right. Well, Rob is working on that. I will kind of just give you a brief framing here. So you all have the PowerPoint in advance. My hope there was that I actually had a little bit more content than I usually would to a PowerPoint, just so you've got some reference points to go back to and that I wouldn't have to just drone on and on for the whole time. Um, but low power radio is exactly what it sounds like. It is intentionally localized radio broadcast that is no more than 100 Watts of power, which, uh, you know, the context of that is quite literally think about a light bulb, most standard light bulbs at this point are between 60 and 100 Watts, maybe 120 Watts for a really bright one for this time of year. Um, and the intent of low power radio stations, uh, started about this point almost 20 years ago. And it was an idea born out of a fight actually that the FCC consistently had with pirate radio stations, which in their infancy essentially were low power stations where people would just have enough broadcast power from a small transmitter and they would be able to pirate radio in various places. This was largely an issue in places like New York City, Philadelphia, uh, major urban areas where, uh, activists were trying to compete with commercial broadcasters, which is a very popular format in the, uh, late 70s, 80s and 90s. Obviously, as technology and the internet, uh, kind of exploded, there became this kind of, um, shift where internet radio became to meet most people's needs at that point. And as people were moving off of what is called terrestrial radio. So, Jimmy was chair now. All right, great. So, um, let me see here and share this one. All right. I hope that you can see the, uh, screen now. Yes. We can. Yeah. Perfect. So, um, there's been two windows of the FCC opening low power, um, radio frequencies to the masses, to community nonprofit and educational institutions and tribal, um, organizations and usually tribal councils, um, of, uh, native people all over the country. Um, the, before I go more into history, I wanted to kind of just give you a framing of community radio. I'll assume that everyone knows nothing about community radio, even though actually Montpelier and central Vermont is home to one of the most popular and only community radio stations in, uh, Vermont, which is WGDRs, uh, at Goddard College's radio station, which again at its heart is actually a college station, even though at this point it is about to go independent. And it's truly actually mostly been a community radio station. But why is community really important? It pulls from the same heartstrings as, um, peg centers and community media centers around the country and how those were started. Um, what's different about radio, however, is obviously there is no screen involved. And so it creates it as a much more accessible medium for individuals, uh, who want to participate in that medium. So as listening as listeners as programmers, um, it also is consumed in a much more easy format as we're all experiencing with screen fatigue during 2020. Uh, there's only so much attention that one can really truly give to a screen, whether you're passively viewing or actively engaging radio. On the other hand, as I'm sure you've all experienced at this point, either driving in your car, listening to podcasts, um, through mobile devices at home, while you're washing dishes, whatever it is, um, is an extremely, um, accessible format in that way where lots of people, it's a reduced price barrier. There's no subscription service needed to listen to that kind of stuff. Um, what I love most about radio too is that there's this power of imagination that's invoked that doesn't come from screens. Um, you don't have to show me, you just have to tell me if you will. And then finally, uh, I believe the community radio is, is, is very intimately connected to community media centers like orca. And as I experienced up here in my hometown here in Burlington of, uh, V cam and retn and channel 17, where we all came together, um, using those three different peg stations of missions to really lean into their mission, which I know is essentially a shared mission with orcas, which is to promote participation through technology, um, engage citizens in the free speech engagement and representing the variety of perspectives out there. So again, I think it's a, it's a, they are, um, sisters in many ways. I think of, uh, public access TV and community radio. Now I was giving you a little bit of history, uh, of LPMFMs. Uh, there were two windows so far. Um, again, the FCC born out of the pirate radio fights of the 90s, um, opened their first window in 2000 and they kind of didn't know what they were going to get. What they ended up getting is over 20,000 applications that largely the system got gained by, um, religious entities, largely big mega churches, uh, got all of, a lot of these applications, I think somewhere around 90% of them went to churches, um, and they ended up doing what are called relay stations. So it wasn't the true, um, intent where it was locally, um, created content in communities. It actually ended up being, it was like this loophole day that exploited. And most of those went to, uh, being able to pipe the same content from city to town to city and town on these big magic mega churches, which was obviously a big heartbreak to anybody who loves community media and particularly radio. And so this great organization, the Prometheus radio project that organized in Philadelphia and they lobbied Congress for 10 years to open another window. And that was the second window that happened in 2010, uh, which was the window that I was part of for WBTV in Burlington and also a number of other LPMFMs were part of as well around all over the country. So in that round, there were about 6,000 other additional radio stations that got started because that first wave was, um, really focused on urban, uh, centers because I really wanted to get rid of the pirate stations to be totally frank. Um, they, the FCC focused largely on rural counties and rural communities in places like Vermont and Alaska, um, and other and South Dakota and North Dakota. So those 6,000 organizations, um, came together and built different low power radio stations again connected to existing nonprofits, became their own nonprofits here in Vermont. And so, um, one of the things that I wanted to share with you guys is here in Vermont, we got WBTV here in Burlington. We got, uh, Royaltons, uh, um, radio station, which you might hear every once in a while. If you're driving past, uh, uh, Vermont law school. Um, and we also have the Mad River LPMFM radio station out of this. If you haven't heard of these, it's because they're intentionally locally. You can only get them with, if you're within five miles of their broadcast transmitter. Um, and they're in valleys, obviously, as we all know as Vermonters, right? Um, finally, I wanted to make a quick note on the history of the stations in that there is a growing connection between LPMFMs and peg stations around the country. Some of the bigger peg stations like Philly Cam and Davis media access. Um, and now the media factory here in Burlington saw LPMFMs as a great opportunity to, um, dramatically expand outreach in their communities and to create almost a new entry ramp for community media makers into their, um, into their centers because they all realized that TV isn't for everybody, right? I mean, we're all a little bit squeamish of like, are we going to hit record and how's my lighting and all this? Like it does, uh, reduce that intimidation factor for community media makers who want to tell their story, but are a little bit shy about getting in front of a camera. And so many different peg stations in that second window applied and successfully got LPMFM stations and now have these radio stations as essentially programs of their peg centers and they're seeing dramatic increases in the number of people who are entering and using their media centers. So it's become this like multiple checkbox bonus. So why right now am I talking to you about LPMFM? Well, there's a third window happening. Um, and it's coming up in 2021 or 2022. Um, it's a moving target because of the presidential, um, race and that most like most other government entities, the FCC did not want to put firm dates for anything out in 2021 until there was a new administration in power. Um, there's actually going to be two windows from the FCC. There's both going to be a full power, um, application. So that's a station that's more like WGDR, which is full power. I forget what their full wattages, but, um, but they get far, they're, they're, so they're pushing probably at least 15, 16,000 Watts, which gets them pretty far into the valleys and peaks of over in Plainfield, Marshfield. And I know they've got a relay station going on up in their hardware. Um, again, for low power, we're talking about a five mile radius, depending on where you put your antenna. So there will also be an LPMFM window. The anticipation right now is that it will be full power first and low power second. Don't worry. I'm going to go a little bit faster here. I know there's 15 total slides. So you can read a little bit more about me and, uh, why I'm the curious creature who's fascinated with community radio and a big advocate for it. Um, in here in Vermont, I've been doing it for about 25 years. Uh, John knows that I'm originally from Barry. I'm a lifelong Vermonter. I went to Cassington. I went to UVM and I've been working in nonprofits, um, and dabbling in community media as a media maker, um, for my whole career here. Um, and I'm passionate about making sure that Vermont particularly, um, uh, doesn't miss opportunities to get more media making in the hands of citizens, because this is a state that really, um, I think showcases the, uh, how activism, how, um, really passing the mic to just about everybody can really transform communities in a powerful way, whether it's in times of crisis like right now, or it's in times of need, or if it's in times of activism. So I wanted to, um, Rob and I, Rob, let me bend to zero about a month ago when I was like, Rob, this is happening. Like, do you think Orca might be interested at all in, uh, in partnering with this or, or exploring this or something like that? Um, because I think Montpelier is actually what is essentially a radio, um, desert. So you've heard of food deserts on shore and other places where the resources are not there. It's the same kind of idea for radio, especially in a mountainous state like Vermont. Um, because if you're on the wrong side of a mountain, you can't get the signal. And I'm sure you experienced this even with large, um, powerful stations like VPR. Um, if you're on the wrong side of the mountain, it's going to be staticky at best, um, if you get it at all. And so Montpelier and Barry are deep enough in the valley, and I'll show you this in a quick map in a second that they actually are not in broadcast, uh, frameworks of GDR. As I'm sure you've actually experienced, you can barely get GDR in most places in Montpelier unless you're further up the hills. You certainly can't get the Mad River, LPM FM or the Royalton, um, stations. And every other radio station is commercial. Um, even the WDED, which sometimes people confuse just because it's a locally owned radio station does not mean that it's not for profit. Um, in addition to this, if you think about the Barry Montpelier combined, um, listening power, it's 20,000 people. It's a large, uh, Vermont metropolis. If I dare say that, um, uh, you know, on the scale of most other, um, places, it's, uh, it's a place where there's lots of potential media makers, listeners, and also, um, people who are interested in, in the power of what community radio can potentially bring, uh, between activism, et cetera, and culture. And then when Rob told me that you all had moved up the hill in the midst of a pandemic, congratulations on successfully moving by the way. That's a, that's a feat in itself. Um, connecting with Vermont college of fine arts, it even, it made me even more excited about the possibility of connecting education, arts, culture, and a powerhouse community media center, like Orca, with a potentially an opportunity like bringing in an LPM FM, um, into the, the mix of things. Not to mention that it's physically on a hill. I have to say, like, radio 101 is that you want the highest point in your area, uh, potentially to put an antenna. Um, so just a couple more points I wanted to, to make, um, again, I was talking a little bit about the radio desert from topography there. Um, this is the couple of maps I wanted to quickly show you. So I am not an engineer. I will make that clear. I'm a, I'm an organizer and fundraiser. I'm a community maker maker. Um, I'm a media nerd. Um, but there are tools that you can kind of get yourself an idea of if you put an antenna at a certain latitude and longitude at a certain power, what would it broadcast? So this is not something we would ever submit to the FCC, but this gives you an idea of how much your broadcast would get. Again, 100 Watts throws about five kilometers or about three miles, actually, inverting miles and kilometers there. So as you can see, if we put this on the top of, you know, Vermont college and just on the hill, if the antenna was on the ground, not on top of the tower of, you know, the, the main building there or anything, it would throw in a coverage well all over Montpelier. Green is really good. Red is like it's getting a little staticky. Um, it would get pretty much all the way into Berry. And it certainly would scatter into most of the, um, up and down 89 and places where essentially the, the sprawl of folks who live and work around Montpelier. Essentially they would be able to get this on regular old radio, um, radios. So radios in their home or in their cars. And of course, when you stream online, you can get it anywhere. You could be in California and stream a station. And here's where it gets interesting. I thought. Here's what GDR is map is, and here's what the Mad Rivers map is. I did not make these. These are from the stations. Again, I'm not an engineer, but, uh, I was talking briefly about how GDR has technically two frequencies because they have a relay station that takes them north, but not south towards Montpelier. So GDR does, um, count Montpelier and Berry in their coverage area, but that's a second band. So again, that's the beginning of fuzzy fuzz. That's the fuzz start, uh, there. So it's not guaranteed. Um, same kind of thing. You can see what their second station, their intent was up, um, in the Morrisville, uh, Wilkett area. Um, but it gets fuzzy as you go to stow. And those of us again, know the mountain ranges that we're talking about there. There's the difference between the big difference between. The high park in Morrisville and stow because of the mountain of mountainans filled there. And then finally over in Mad River, um, they're intentionally deep down in that river, uh, uh, Valley there. So they actually go right up the river bed. Uh, as you can see it's a directional, almost a directional frequency. Um, and so depending on the topography of which side of the Green Mountains you're kind of looking on to. Um, again, there are very concentrated, low power station rate in that part of the Valley. more things to say here and then I want to open it up to questions. Radio building is not a complicated process. You kind of envision it. You build interest. You build a mission and a purpose. You find your spot. You find a dedicated spot. You can have an antenna. You do an engineer study. And in the context of the FCC, the big kind of things you need to know or you need to have in existence is a nonprofit status, right? So either a fiscal agent who is willing to lend you your nonprofit status or you need to incorporate before you actually apply. And you also need that engineer study, which is basically the fancy version of those maps I just showed you to make sure there's no competition and that there's a free band on the frequency. And the frequency just in case folks don't realize is 88.1 all the way up to 107.9. And in a place like Vermont again, we benefit here that we're not in New York City where everything's taken on the band. There's quite a few frequencies available in the Montpelier Bay Area, which is exciting for anybody who wants to go after this window. The phase two would be the FCC has announced when they're going to have the application open, whether for full power or low power. And you get your application in. They give you about 35 days to get an application in. You file it. There's five or six attachments. It always sounds more intimidating than you think it is. Having gone through the incomplete process of building a station, I can say that the FCC application process was the easiest part because even in the midst of that, they had the government shut down in 2011. And we thought, oh my God, this is going to be so complicated. And they were actually very great to work with. So despite what you've heard about the FCC, they want to help you get a radio. They want to help you get these frequencies out there. At that same time, once the application's in, what is the curious thing about this is that the FCC takes almost up to a year to look at all of the applications that come in. And at least in my experience, they did it alphabetically. So this is where Vermont is not of benefit to being a state in this country. These were one of the last to be reviewed. So we had a full, almost year to do our part of, let's raise some more money. Let's raise more excitement in people and community and really start dotting our eyes and crossing our teens. Finally, the FCC will announce what the application results are. And there's a couple versions of it. Either you win it out straight, straight out. There is no competition. If there's competition, they have a thing that's called a competition kind of negotiation. You see if the other entities who applied want to maybe merge up and create one station together. It's kind of a shared timeshare, is what they call. Generally what I discovered is that we actually, we were in a timeshare for WBTV in Burlington against, believe it or not, the Catholic Church of Winooski, which was fascinating because they're technically their 5-1-C is the Vatican. So again, intimidation, large organizations to work with or partner with. We convinced the church in Winooski to go to an adjacent channel, and we both were able to get our own LPMFMs, which was a great outcome for everybody involved. We didn't have to share. That's the airtime, literally. But the FCC will essentially say, okay, you figured it out great. Here's your construction permit. You have 15 months to build a station. And even after that, you can file for an extension if you need to. We actually found out we needed to file an extension because we couldn't quite figure out where the best place for an antenna to be in Burlington was at the time. But you basically, you build it. And it's literally wires plugging in, finding all the equipment. But the most important part of all that is actually not the physical year, it's the people. You want to have a schedule that you can launch with enough people that you've got content ready to go. Because nothing is more heartbreaking than spending all that time building a station and having no content to put out there. So again, that's essentially the three phases that we're looking at. And so this first phase one here is kind of the first like gain some interest, gain some excitement in the community, see if people even want to do this. Because one of the lessons learned that I heard from many stations during that first phase was we didn't do enough community investment out of the get-go. So then we went through this whole process and all the money and all the time to build a station. And then we didn't have enough people to really fill a schedule. And that was just like a heartbreaking kind of cautionary tale that I heard a lot from other places around the country. This is just a quick example and you can see it in your packet again of how long it took WBTV. It took us almost 10 years to get on the air, about seven or eight technically between actually dreaming it up, pulling it all together, the window application process, building the studio, needing to get an extension for that, and then actually physically getting on the air. I will say that I think one of the biggest reasons it took this long is that RITN, VCAM, and Channel 17 relied heavily on community volunteers to push that process all the way along. And so as you all know, being volunteers yourself, you only have as much time as you have to kind of like keep meeting and to really do all these critical pieces. So I'm a big believer also in a well-planned station from the get-go, if it can be well resourced from the jump and if there can be some sort of dedicated staff time, whether that's a part-time station manager builder or something like that, it really can set the station up on a much better capacity level from the gate. In fact, what where WBTV ended up is right after we launched, all of a sudden we had all these people that needed to be managed and VCAM and RITN weren't able to kind of figure that out how they were going to support that. So we ended up needing to get a staff person already or like on our, I think, second month of broadcasting. So again, cautionary tales and learning like it's better to you build it stronger from the get-go in thinking about resources invested out of the gate there. And I can answer more questions about that if you want. But finally, the big question, of course, is that's all great. We love, you know, the idea of community radio, Lou, but like everything costs money. So what does that actually look like? So in companion to this PowerPoint I sent along, I also just sent a very rough budget idea of the startup costs. That's literally just the technology that you only kind of buy once. And then as you actually are all pretty well familiar having just done a move, right? There's some one-time expenses of like needing to rebuild a studio essentially. And then there's like annual operating fees. So this changes if you have staff or no staff, but essentially the most bare bones, just like get it done and no, don't buy the fanciest stuff ever, you can build a station for about $15,000. And then it can range pretty much above that. I think WBTV ended up costing about $20,000 once we finished building everything out just for some some context there. And then again, annual operating. So like now you're on the air, you've bought all your equipment or you've got it used or some sort of combination of it. And now you're thinking about licensing fees, broadcasting fees for like streaming online, electricity, are you paying rent or you're not paying rent? Those kind of things. It adds up to about $10,000. So it's actually pretty cheap in the grandest scheme of things to run a radio station. And again, this is assuming no staff right now. And then again, I made a note here about having staff can really help and that obviously would change some of these numbers. But funding it really is like most nonprofits. What I think is really benefit to community radio station is that you are your own advertiser, right? People are coming to you. It's a lot like VPR. VPR's model is exactly this right here. So you have annual underwriters, you have annual listeners and program supporters, and then one time or more grants, events or crowdfunding. So you get to take the benefit of or launching a station, you can crowdfund yourself for most of that initial startup cost, which again would be one time. And then you can look to other things like grants, events, or frankly, a stronger model in my opinion is almost like a 40, 40% between annual underwriting and annual listener and programmer support. WBTV has a model where we ask people to volunteer a certain number of hours or to give a certain amount of money each year as a member by a model, which is different than public media centers, right? Like so, I know the community media centers are like it doesn't cost you anything if you live in our broadcast area, you get to come use these facilities for free. With programmer support, it's kind of like a co-op, right? You either donate your time or you donate a little bit of money and it allows you to come use these facilities and broadcast your show. We have found great success in that model and people actually want to give more time. It's largely people who want to volunteer in addition to doing their show, and it has helped us really a lot with making sure that we've got a governance board, we've got people on subcommittees doing outreach, and some of the other stuff that we didn't quite have the staffing to be able to do. So I think it's a model that's definitely worth replicating, especially because there is other stations in Vermont who have not done that kind of model and they have like one person running the entire thing. So this is the story of Bellows Falls has a low-powered radio station that is essentially one or two very dedicated retired volunteers who kind of do it all, and then it ends up kind of burning people out to be totally frank, and they've said as much when I was talking to them about their experiences there. Finally, again, I just want to note that I know that GDR is about to go independent, talk about timing. So Goddard has given them the station and they're going to become an independent nonprofit by the end of the year here. They're in a fast track funding campaign if you haven't heard. I do want to note that also the FCC application adds extra bonus points if you are collaborating with educational institutions or again pre-existing nonprofits, which Orca and Vermont College of Fine Arts is. Again, a note that other PEGS centers and Rob can back me up on this by talking to his national colleagues have seen double or sometimes triple the community engagement once they've started an LPM FM because it is such a nice on ramp to getting people involved in the stations. And then I talked already about station building support for those couple of different organizations and staffing there. So my option here that I've given you is most I wanted to tell you about LPM FM and let you know this is happening. And you all can just kind of put this in the back of your brain and percolate this about where Orca might be going or want to go in 2021 and beyond. There's lots of different options. You could go the direction that the media factory did here in Burlington, which was go after the LPM FM and make it a program of. There's hybrid models out there where a PEGS center ends up being kind of a partner with the radio station as a separate entity. So they end up being a fiscal agent and then helping them launch and then it becomes its own independent nonprofit. And then there's so all sorts of different hybrids. It's like you're a program of until we launch you like a, you know, a tiny bird out of the nest in three to five years and then you become your own nonprofit. And and then the the unknown is I don't even know if Mount College of Fine Arts would be interested in any in all of these different hybrids as well. So I'll leave you on this, you know, final slide here of the 13 different community radio stations in Vermont. Most of these are LPM FM's. And as you can see, there's there's kind of scattered around the state, which I find to be pretty impressive. And I believe, yeah, that is my attempt at 15 minutes and I apologize I went over, but I get excited and I wanted to make sure you had some context about these two windows opening for the FCC. So, Lou, that's a great presentation, but it does bring up a lot of questions about who who is really spearheading this? Is it you or is it a group or, you know, and how do we, how do we, what would you like from us in terms of partnering and and then who would run it? And would it be part of, would it be situated where we are now up in Vermont College? I mean, that makes a lot of sense because it's high up on the hill and because there's space, but who would run it? And who would get these 40 presenters to, you know, to be regular producers? Yeah, great question. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, because I think it it sounds great. And then there's also the question of how does it, does it interfere with WGDR? At all? Does it, you know, it detracts from their listenership? Great, great questions. Yeah, who would staff, you know, how would we, how would we get people to come and be DJs on the radio? I know Goddard has encouraged his high school kids a lot and it sounds like you did that and my son did that. And I know a bunch of people who, you know, came on as teenagers and and produced their own radio shows, which was an amazing opportunity for them. Yeah, so somebody has to do that recruiting too. So exactly. Those are all questions. Lots of great questions. I guess I'll start towards the end and work my way backward from there. So that was one of the big questions about competition when we were thinking about WBTV in Heron Burlington because we have the beloved WREV at UBM, which has like, at the time had 40 years of loyal listeners and we said, how could we compete with them? We had the radiator happening with Big Heavy World that was already an existing LPM FM that had, you know, its own kind of listenership. There's WPPV, which is the St. Mike station, which interestingly in that last window, they jettisoned their full power station and they became an LPM FM instead. So they sold their license off to another entity and instead decided they just wanted low power coverage because they realized there's a thing called low power when we just really care about our terrestrial area of campus. So when we did the assessment of that, we thought a lot about what does our programming look like? What's our mission and our values? What's missing in the current airwaves of the Burlington listening area? And we realized there's a lot missing. All of those other stations are primarily music based. And when we looked really at the media factory, I call it media factory now because that's where they are, but at the time it was VCAM and Channel 17 and RITNL as very separate entities, we said there's an educational missing opportunity here that's not on the air. There's a missing diversity of voices, quite literally in opinions and talk shows, if you will. It's much more than talk shows because I don't want you thinking just like Howard Stern when I say talk shows. I mean interview shows, I mean folks diving into deeper topics, political shows, shows about. I think we're well versed with when you say talk show. GDR actually has a really nice mix of talk and music. So the Burlington analogy can be helpful, but it can also be confusing. My big concern echoing the GDR question is I understand that the reason the college Jettison GDR to be out there on its own is because a grant dried up, a major grant dried up, and you probably know better details than that. But I would hate for it to look like Oracle was circling around the carcass of a, I really value WGDR. And I know if you work there, you know how special it is. We don't get it in Randolph. We lose it in Northfield. So when you say Montpelier is a media desert, I invite you to come to Randolph because that's a true media desert. If you compare Burlington to Montpelier, yes, you can make the case. GDR can get lost downtown when you're under the wires and stuff. But for me, staying in the context of central Vermont would be really helpful. Absolutely. So in the same spirit I would say about central Vermont, there is mostly commercial radio there. And while GDR does exist in a much more diverse schedule of programming than say music-based only stations that are community, I think there's an opportunity to really tap into the activism, political epicenter, and honestly much more diverse history based out of the population of, again, the Montpelier-Berry accessible area there. You do have to still schlep to GDR to do a show, is the piece there. So the accessibility component of people being able to potentially live in Montpelier and be able to walk to the studio to do a show I think is major bonus points. That's especially for young people. So my quick story there is that my parents had to drive me from Barry to Plainfield every week to do a radio show. And I think they felt great about it for probably the first two or three weeks. And then they were like, oh my, we're doing this now and waiting for two hours for Lou to do this show and then drive me back. So again, when I emphasize accessibility, that's what I'm talking about is people being able to truly just access the station in that way. In addition, what we realized here in Burlington is that there's actually more and more people want to be part of different radio stations for different reasons, whether they have a friend who's already doing a show there, whether they've got an idea that doesn't fit with the existing programming or frankly just competition. So GDR has a pretty full schedule a lot of the time. And so people can't necessarily find a spot in the schedule that works with their schedule. So I think there's an opportunity to be in chorus with GDR, not in competition. And I have actually talked to Chris, who's the GM, and I said, hey, Chris, you know, this window is opening. What do you think about it? And part of me talking to Rob was saying Montclair or other places like other other pegs that might want to partner around the state to do low power. By no means was I thinking like it has to be Montclair or only or only. You guys just happened to be the first board who was interested in hearing a little bit more about it. So again, my emphasis there is chorus, not competition. And there's room for many people. And quite literally physically, there is no competition with any other radio station because you get your own frequency. And you would need to find your own voice quite literally as a station. So what would this mission and vision of the station be to add to the concophony of community media and voices not compete? And again, certainly here in Burlington now with five different community stations, I'm actually constantly amazed at the constant increase of programmers, not the competition for. And so the other thing I'll go back to answer there about like, who would actually run it? How do you pull this off? How do you get people involved? This is new information that the FCC is putting this window out. They just said they just announced this in late October. And then of course, we've all been living through a pandemic and presidential elections and nobody's been paying attention to it. So now would be the time to raise interest in this, to make sure there's a community interest enough to pull off a station between programmers, potential supporters, all of those kinds of things. I would never encourage any organization to go after a license if you didn't have that at least, because nobody wants to build a station and have it just be burnout after the construction permit is granted. And again, my recommendation there was you would start also doing some fundraising so you could support somebody to help spearhead this, a part-time station manager who's able to really station build this and do that outreach that you were just mentioning there to do the networking to build kind of a crowdfunding effort, whether that's literally a crowdfunding donation site and or community events to build that. So there's certainly a million different ways you can do it, but those are some hopefully quick answers to all of your questions thus far. Before we go on, Luke, could we stop sharing your screen so we can get an aesthetics of my recording? Thank you. That's the legendary Milo Grant that was just on the screen for a long amount of time. I'm sure she will thank me for making her famous. And I think Dave Connor has joined us. I was excited to hear the part of who's talk that I got to hear because I'd already been sort of gone there in my own head. I'd always wanted to build a bridge between GDR and Orca and I also was excited, but then I don't understand what it means that GDR might lose the grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and I don't know if we'll address that before she started. Yeah, so I can answer that a little bit more. I think it's public information, so I don't think I'm revealing any. It's in their fundraising letters, but I'm sure there's a story behind the story. Yeah, so the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a major funder of a lot of stations. Without going into kind of like really nerdy details, it's like you have to kind of be invited to apply and it's a little bit of golden handcuffs, right? So they tend to only grant you every about two or three years and then that's kind of it. So the intent usually is to launch new efforts or to sustain programs or something like that and then your day expectation like most grants that are structured like that, whether it's community broadcasters or not, is that you have figured out how to sustain that program after that. So it was a combination of really bad timing and some mismanagement of Goddard funding that basically made them ineligible because for the final year of that funding. And you can get the, it sounds like you've heard this in their fundraising pitches about how they kind of end up where they are, but the funding was going to end anyways, the short version of that. And when you, whether it's that kind of funding or other kind of granting organizations like I'm thinking from our Community Foundation and others, you do have to be careful about when you go for big grant funding. And as a long-time non-profit fundraiser and former executive director in other sectors, not community media, this is true for every sector, whether you're getting public health funding or other things like that. So that's what I would say is that it's, I would never suggest that you would build a radio station just purely on grants. It's nice to get them when you can, but usually they should be done in a responsible fiscal balance with, again, more of a 40-40, maybe 20-25 balance there with grants. Anne? Thanks, Lou. Any other thoughts or questions? Well, you know, I think it would take a lot of people like you coming here to talk to people and maybe do surveys to the community to see how much interest there was. I mean, I'm sure you can drum up interest, I'm sure of it, but who, you know, who will actually commit. Yeah. So is that something you're willing to do or are there other people willing to do it? So that's part, that's like kind of the next step is to find, is there a board-sized, gather together, interested in this to help kind of the mission and visioning process of the board. My experience at WBTV was that we had about half a dozen to a dozen at any given time, community members that were excited enough about radio that they were willing to come to meetings even though a station did not exist. And it wouldn't exist now for another four or five years. It was the visionary kind of people. And that came from people who were maybe past community media makers themselves at either at the Peg stations up here or past radio DJs, but just weren't doing it anymore. Or people who just generally liked consuming it, listening to or watching these kind of media things and they wanted to help further the effort. And then what I would say is that it was a little bit like Field of Dreams. Once we built it, the people came. There are a huge amount of people who kind of honestly just want to make the media, right? They don't want to learn how the sausage, or they don't want to make the sausage. They just want to eat the sausage, right? So they don't want to be involved in the mission visioning or all those planning meetings. They just want to come and do a radio show. And so WBTB right now has nearly a full schedule of people who I've never even met. And I thought I was, I knew all of the radio nerds in the Burlington area, and they have come out of the woodwork for sure. And especially because there's this digital age now that we live into, people are much more into it because they can share it online that, you know, there's like, not to age myself immediately, but like I'm always amazed by young people coming in and being like, they don't even care that there's a terrestrial way to listen to the radio in your car. They just want to share the link to, you know, on their social media or whatever it might be. So it's almost like a couple different waves that we're talking about. And I think this is true for most community effort, organizing efforts. I've been involved in it as well. You know, the people show up at the big demonstration, but they're not all in the planning meetings, right? There's a core kind of group of people. So, so you're right that the next step that would be is in this process would be reaching out to wherever this location, it might be located, whether it was Montpelier, Barrie area, or maybe there's another peg center in Vermont that might be interested in talking to local organizers and community folks to say, hey, here's this idea. You don't have to already know how to do radio. What would you be interested in, in the creation of this station? And I've taken up a lot of your time and I just want to acknowledge that and I really appreciate letting me yap at you for this long about radio. Well, we're delighted to have you here. Yeah. And I find it a fascinating process. And I just, I don't, would it be possible to partner with GDR or there'll always be, there would always be this parallelism? You know what I mean? It's a great question, Michael. Yeah. So I double checked that before, because I thought you might have that question. I thought somebody might have that question. So the FCC, we could partner as in like, you know, it's just a separate nonprofits, like separate radio stations that are, you know, supporting each other in some way. There's no need again to compete, especially because they're nonprofits. In the world of the FCC, for example, I thought was like, oh, could GDR just apply for a license for another relay station into Montpelier? And that's not the case. Like, it has to be a truly independent, intentionally new created programming for the area that you're broadcasting to. So that's like, that is the only kind of like definite line in the sand is that the programming has to be separate. But as far as like, once the station we're up and operating, and maybe even during station building, who knows, there could be a cooperative effort there to say, hey, these stations are coming together to raise money and then you split it or something. I don't know. But, but absolutely, I think by far, especially on any in Vermont, you get much further when you work together in ways that are collaborative and engaging in those ways, rather than saying, hey, we're going to do our own thing. We don't want to have any involvement. So that could be a lot of things that could be joint program or trainings like to do a radio station is pretty, or do a radio show. It's pretty much the same technically. So maybe they trained, we do trainings together, maybe we cross share programming, maybe there's, you know, all sorts. I think there's lots of possibilities and platforms perhaps. Exactly. And, you know, I didn't want to bug Chris too much because he's got quite the bit on the, on the plate to kind of go independent before the end of the year. But again, he wasn't, he wasn't alarmed. And again, he was the Rob was my first call and Chris was my second call when I heard this window had opened because I certainly did not want to at all come off as competitive or, you know, the kid from Burlington coming down saying, hey, you all should do this. Again, I'm from Central Vermont. So like, I've got lots of connections there. And, and actually back during that first window, my dad actually wanted to get an LPM FM built for the old labor hall in Barry. And I actually back when I was 18 trying to help him with that first FCC window. So, so there's definite interest kind of percolating with lots of folks in those ways, but not in a repetitive way. Just as a sideline, do you have a sense of when sort of Central Vermont will know that GDR has landed on its feet? You know, it's a good question. I think for Chris, I think it comes down to can they make their how much I think they were going for $50,000 before January 1st. So um, ask is more like 15. Yeah. So I have, I think that there's it's been around long enough and people are dedicated that I have, I have hope that they'll make it. Um, I don't know any of the backstory to know if it's dramatic enough that they're really literally just going to shut the power off or something. I think there's a drive of urgency of let's do this so we can launch well as opposed to let's do this or we don't watch. So, but we'd have to ask Chris directly about that. What's the history of, I mean, I'm wondering if this would be like a mall, we're having more of them in close succession actually ends up being a good thing. Is there history of multiple stations nearby each other and do they reinforce or do they compete? I think that largely they are, they reinforce each other. Again, Burlington as an example here. Vermont doesn't have enough that I would say there's anywhere else that I've seen that. So actually Mount Clear would be the only other one that has kind of close or again, closeness in Vermont terms, right? So it would be Royalton, Mad River, and, and essentially GDR, which again goes north with more of their signal than, than south. So I think, I think it's about geographic representation because also depending on where you live really strongly determines where you feel allegiance to, right? There are people who live in Plainfield who don't feel connected to Mount Clear, but then there are people who live in East Mount Clear who feel way more connected to Mount Clear, do you know what I mean? So, and that's just one town over. So I think I think it's a collection, a collective power that comes when you have more stations rather than a competition. Because also I will also say much like Peg stations, it's a lot about who the personalities are. So you've got people who are, and GDR, I think Chris and GDR would be the first to tell you, and you've got a lot of strong personalities, which radio tends to attract. Sometimes if people get turned off by that, they don't want to be part of a station when there's certain folks involved. I've certainly experienced that at certain stations too. So, so you know, some stuff you can control for sometimes some stuff you can't at least on a mission that values kind of way. I think the intent there is very collaborative and not exclusive in any means. Mike and Rob, do we have content already that's video that might also do well on a radio format? In other words, can we transfer or co-broadcast? Before I touch that question, can I just kind of elaborate on your your last question? I have noticed in, so if there's a number of low end of the dial stations, which is where my understanding community radio tends to be. So if you've got something, you know, good at 88 something in 91.1 and 87.1, it creates a critical mass of sort of low end of the dial community radio culture. I've lived places where that occurs and I've lived places where that doesn't occur. So, I mean, you could easily make the case that populating that that end of the dial, which is reserved for community radio or non-profit generally, because I think that's where the Jesus stuff ends up too. Sorry, that made me forget your next question, which I'm going to say Rob's probably better to field anyways. This video that's ready to go on audio. Yeah, yeah. So before I do that, I just want to say today, I muted you, Dave, but it doesn't look like it can unmute you. So in order for Dave to unmute, it looks like you have to press star six. I wanted to hear about the dog bar, Rob. I was listening to the dog throwing up and then I muted it. And so Dave, if you're hearing me, you can get back into the conversation by pressing on your phone star six. And then to lose to CJ's question, we already have a producer here who does a show called Mox and Tracks, who actually brought her show to the Burlington station because she was very interested in doing that. So we already have a template in place that I can think of a number of different shows that will probably also be interested in that. So yeah, it's an automatic sort of like you can assume that the type of content that you find on an access station would easily translate to a radio station. And I even know that like when we were doing stuff with Steve Pappas, and he was doing two of the issues, he had talked about doing something that was a podcast. And how do we get that? So I'm sure that there would be lots of content that could be easily go between the two. Could you hear me now? You can hear me. I've been on Mox and Tracks and she was doing it out of her studio in Burlington. So yeah, I'm agreeing with everything that everybody's saying. Thank you. All right. Could I have the floor and ask one more question? Just a CJ again. So is there, would this be suitable just asking probably more of a Rob question or the scheduling person? But can we go ahead and just co-broadcast, for example, some of the hearings that take place in the state house or the governor's mansion? Yeah. I mean, that's a good point, CJ, is we have a lot of content coming from the state house that would also be appropriate for a channel, for a community channel that's coming out of Montpelier. That's a great example, CJ, of again, content that wouldn't otherwise be able to be found on a GDR schedule or any other station. They don't have literally the direct fiber options going to the state house to be able to do it, but that's part of what builds the uniqueness of the potential of a station that would connect with ORCA. So I have a question. If ORCA was to take this on, how do we differentiate between content that is subjective and content that is objective? Because ORCA media has to adhere to objectivity, right? It's content neutral, right, in that sense. So how will we differentiate that within the station if we were to take this on? That's a Rob question. That's a Rob question also, right? Think about, you know, I would imagine you'd have statements up front, letting people know that this is either an editorialized or you'd have this is just a unfiltered straight content from the state house or from the views of the people involved are theirs. So there are standard things that you would do. GDR has always done that anyway at the start of their program day, making an announcement that it's the opinion of the programmer or the programmer's guest, not the Goddard University or college, I mean. And, you know, part of the beauty of this is it's already been done and it's been done by people that we know in Burlington so we could look into their policies and procedures and pull from that as well as, you know, we are connected into a network nationally with the Alliance for Community Media. I know the folks at Philly Cam, so that, you know, there are people and I even, I think I know who's in Davis Media. So we can obviously touch base people who've already done this and Lou's been very involved in creating it as well. So I would move that we have an exploration committee set up to bring back a report at the end of when do we meet again, Rob? It would be the February meeting. Yeah, there are preliminary findings be submitted at the February board meeting. I second that. To be sent out before the day before the board meeting that the findings be set out enough time to give people to read and cogitate. You said not the day before, right, John? You said a little bit more time. Yes, a little bit. Well, as soon as the committee had this non-existent committee get their act together and pull together some findings, they could be posted to the board. Yep. Yep. So I heard a movement. I seconded. I think that's good. Yep, Dave seconded. Any discussion or volunteers for such a subcommittee before calling the question? Well, since I made the motion, I'll volunteer my little bit of what's left in my head to that effort. We went through it way back when we tried a mini run of it and we got a lot of interest from high school students. That might have been the 2010 window. Whatever it was, I don't know. Who is that? The first big one was talked to an active janarian and they forget what century they're in. I guess that was 2010. In the 2000 window, I don't think much money from honors unless it was engineering or it's even new that it was happening. So, yeah. Well, we actually, somewhere, Rob, we did an engineering study. Yeah, I've seen those documents, so one of the places that I would start is just to review what happened then 10 years ago. And there's some new technology that's come out that might start getting interesting to boost, augment, spread the signal, but we can get into that later if we go ahead. I would say that I'm happy to help. My time's pretty limited, but if it's a matter of coming on for an hour or two or three to help brainstorm and do some research, those are things I can do fairly efficiently. This is Dave. I'd be happy to be on that committee, too. Who's taking notes? Carlos. Carlos, God bless him. Thanks, Carlos. Is Dave's interested? CJ is interested. I'm interested and I hope we can get Lou, some of your help. I was just to say, if you accept ad hoc community members, I'm happy to. This is why I'm here, is to like share this information and help you along. And as Rob was saying, the path is well-worn, so there's, you can crowdsource and I can share a lot of what has figured out. Rob, if you could contact your minder there at the college and find out if they'd be willing, number one, to give us antenna space and number two, to come on and be, you know, join Ventures, you will. They, you know, when we first were in conversations with Vermont College of Fine Arts, they were very excited about the partnership. It's been fallow because of the pandemic, and they haven't really been here. But I know that we're all looking forward to a time when we can begin to discuss the partnership that we can construct and create with Vermont College of Fine Arts. And I think that they, they would be very excited about this. They have content that we know with their performing arts. Yeah. Right. If it's a non, I would be surprised. The beautiful thing about radio is it's cheap compared to TV. Yeah. And I think that the real questions I have is like, what's up with the antenna space? Where could we conceivably do this? But, right. At least we've got a high location now. You know, we're up the hill. It would be really fun and very surprising to many people outside of the state is Vermont actually has both a very large liberal constituency that's, you know, generally geographically concentrated. And it has a very large conservative constituency that's geographically disparate because of the, the rural nature of it. It would be interesting to see if we could give them both a voice in the same station. Said an example for the country. Yeah, absolutely. Right. I would, I would argue those labels don't work as well in Vermont, but I do, I do understand your point. Is there, is there, is there more to discuss or I could call the question, the formation of an ad hoc subcommittee, which looks like it has a membership of four, hoping you guys could meet and meeting is a lot easier under Zoom conditions now, in terms of finding a time and not having to figure out a place. I could call that question. Any more suggestions on the formulation of this? I just wanted to ask one question. VTR had had an antenna at Vermont College of Fine Arts. They had a booster. Does it still have it? Is that still there? I think we'll want it. May still be doing it. I don't know. Rob can look into that most efficiently and just give us a memo so what do you find? Right. And those are really important initial questions to get answered, so we can go on bringing that up. Based on the interference that we get in our studio, we know that the antenna is still pumping. Do you know who can ask Rob? Yes. I could start with Katie or Peter Timpone, who's the IT guy. So I, you know, I would know, but we find out where it is. Yeah. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. Let's, let Rob use his channels. And I think I've identified it on this building. So I think I know where the antenna is. So I, so it's not as high as Chapel Tower. We want the Chapel Tower. Whatever. You do it. Yeah. We'll talk to the, to the college for sure. Well, since it was presented as a motion, I would like to just formally close out and call the question. All those in favor of the creation of the subcommittee? I want to make it truly, truly formulated to issue preliminary findings to the next board meeting in February. Please, please indicate by saying I. Thank you. And let's just take a quick moment to discuss what the preliminary findings would be. Can I say this CJ? Just do, do let the question be defined before you vote, because in the past we've had problems where it's like, what did we actually vote on? So I, my slow choosing of words was intentional. And I, I understand it's a measure of enthusiasm to vote before the question is actually defined, but it could get us into trouble. Just as, as best practice. Okay. So it's unanimous. And I'm psyched. Good. So CJ's question is to what the preliminary findings might look like. I think that's the subcommittee's job. You guys just, just elected yourself. Yeah. And we'll just go back, relax and enjoy your time. Yeah, we're, we're, you know, pretty deep into the meeting. We got a couple of the things to deal with. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're actually just getting started. So, um, Lou, I really appreciate your time. You can also pass on to the committee, the new committee for the GDR, the fact that there's serious interest that we're pursuing down here. I'm very happy to do that. I'll catch Chris up on that, uh, that I pitched you guys this concept tonight. And, um, and again, I really appreciate you all being interested in this and, and taking to it. So with such interest, um, and John, it's, we have an opportunity to do some organizing together, like efforts here, man. It's like, well, I'll do what I can. Yeah. Just when you speak with GDR, just the language of partnership and support. Absolutely. Yep. That is, that is my spirit from the get go. So absolutely. Tell John that, um, you know, he might want to also spearhead the, uh, a show on being the Gray Panthers again. There's one octogenarian to another. We'll see. We'll put that in the suggestion column. Thank you, John. All right. Heading up, uh, we're heading into like 10 of eight here. So I'd like to move on to the financial reports, which will be, um, foreshortened, uh, because Mr. Mr. Mike Doyle, our treasurer is in here. So that will immediately take us to our executive director, Rob Chapman. For actually presentation of, uh, next year's budget is probably primary. Okay. I would, I would assume. Yeah. But I will just say that I'll give you a balance of the accounts right now. Sure. Yeah. Currently we have. I'm just going to jump out. I'll see you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Lou. So in our PayPal account, we still have the $45 and now 93 cents with the one cent, interest that we tend to get in that account every few months. In checking, we're currently at 13,845 and 42 cents. And the savings, we have $165,267 and that's even with zero, zero cents. Did you get those numbers, Carlos? Do you need them again? I got, hold on. So I got, um, 45, 93, 13, 845.42. Yeah. Correct. And then the last one is the one I didn't get. 165? 165, 267. 267. And zero cents. Yep. All right. And then you also had with you in your packet, the first part was the, the, uh, budget versus actuals. You know, I, I don't know if there's anything there I need to point out to you as I've been saying, we've been saving money this year with many different parts of our budget. So the numbers are quite good. We have a lot in the bank and we have get some, we have received full compensation for the COVID funds that were made available to us. I don't know if anybody has any questions on the budget versus actuals that they'd like to ask me now before I move on to the proposed 2021 budget. But I didn't see anything of anomalies that I thought were rose to the level of bringing to your attention other than that general statement about the savings we've been, we've been getting this year. Don't pause and get in case anybody has anything. All right. Then we can move on to the budget and I will pull up my spreadsheet. And maybe I will see if I can even share the screen. So now you should be seeing my Excel spreadsheet on the 2021 budget. Yeah, correct. Okay. So one thing that I started working on was noting that, you know, what are our funding levels from Comcast and they are basically flat lined at this point. So we have, you know, within a 2% percentage points each one we've been getting about the same amount. So I feel comfortable in keeping that flat line for next year until we start to see some significant dips in cable revenue, which we all anticipate will happen someday, but it hasn't really come into fruition yet. So I did keep those at the same level, although we did receive a little bit more than what we had budgeted for. So, you know, as you can see, we got a little bit more, about 9,000 more than prior year for operating revenue. But so there's still a little bit in being conservative in there so that we don't expect to see more than see significantly less. So yeah, I guess it's about 6,800 over budget, what we got in extra money, including the capital revenue, which is about 1,300 more. The production revenue, I kept it the same because we have an inventory or we invoice that mostly is the money from the city of Montpelier where they pay for the extra meetings. So I haven't done the second half of the year invoice yet, but you would expect to see that that's about 3,500 as well. Duplication revenue, I've just pulled completely out of the equation because nobody seems to be getting any DVDs anymore. That's really what it was. And so we've seen no revenue from that, other than if lawyers want to see it. So for instance, every once in a while we'll get a request from some lawyer's office about some meeting and we charged them $15, but it seems to be so nominal as to not really warrant its own line on the budget. We do, I do like to keep the reimbursements and underwriting and sponsorship as a reminder that we're going to try to bring that number up. We didn't get anything this year. We did get a donation of $1,000. That was because the school, the Burlington High School, donated for the work that we did with the graduation. So there is an opportunity to try to meet those numbers. We've brought them down from the prior years, we were at $5,000 for each of those categories. I brought them down to is to make a more reasonable goal. And I'd like to be able to see that goal. So I'd like to be able to keep that in there as a goal, although we didn't really get anything in that area for this year. So that gets us to a budgeted income level of $414,500. And then on the expense side, the compensation, I did try to extrapolate some numbers that the accountant periodically goes through and transfers stuff from asking my accountant into the proper accounting categories. So you will see a difference from the profit or the my budget or the budget versus actuals. This is my ability to punch some numbers into this worksheet that I think is really what we're going to see at the end of the year. So with the compensation, we are significantly less. Obviously, we noted in the past that we haven't had the personnel expenses this year because of the COVID and because of the limited staffing that we've had to respond with. So that made a little bit more difficult in trying to figure out what next year's numbers would be. But I figured if we kept it at the same level, that would allow for an opportunity for maybe a little bit of an increase for staff as well as expectation that we will see operation catch up again in the next year as the pandemic decreases. Although most of our compensation really does take place in that first few months of the year while the legislature is in session. We don't know when the legislature will go back into session in person. We hope that maybe sometime during this session, but it's entirely conceivable that the majority of the session will be done remotely as it was done at the end of last year. But I did like to think that those numbers would say the same. I didn't know. Let's go down till we see all expenses. Let's go down. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that really helps. Yep. And then health insurance had gone up quite a bit. I think that was, I'm not sure why we budgeted it. I think we're just looking at some costs and maybe some additional family stuff that we'd taken on. So we did do a boost on that as compared to last year from the 384 up to the 54, which is where we're expecting this year to turn out. So bringing that number forward into the next year. We did see some savings in dental insurance. I think one month they did not charge us because that was when you couldn't go to the dentist. So we did make some money there, but looking at what the cost are, I figured that the cost would be about $4,800 if we had not included that month. So that was the savings of about $1,000. And then the pension expense drew those numbers out. And I think that we'll end up around 3,900 in the year. The consultants, the 1,500 in the consultants was what we paid to Van as our contribution to action circles. Haven't included anything for the next cycle. But if we end up with some extra money, we might be able to consider additionally supporting that work because of the magnificent work that they've been doing with regard to that. Legal funds, we did have some legal expenses this year. I don't know if we're going to expect to see that same kind of legal money, but I did put in $3,000 because that's where we came out this year. It's always nice to have some funds for legal, just in case. As you see, we didn't budget anything for last year. And we ended up with about $3,000, a little over $3,000. So I thought it might be prudent to put in the $3,000 there. Subcontractor expense is what we pay for the sports, our support for Carl Parton and his sports. He really is a videographer, but he's not an employee. So he really does sort of enter into the subcontractor area. That's where we've kept him all these past few years. So just carry that forward at the same level of support. We don't have any cleaning and maintenance now that we've moved to that initial $900 was for the first few months. So that's been zeroed out in the budget. Office expenses leveled out. We didn't have, we were closed. There wasn't much going on here for a few months. So that's why I figured the office expenses came in quite under $800 under what we budgeted. So I figured, let's leave that at $3,200. Do's and subscriptions were up. And I think that had to do with a van increasing its dues. So that was adjusted as well from the $3,000 to the $4,500, as we see the real numbers in 2020. Telephone and internet. So we had to increase this. So part of the deal that we made with Comcast when they did the settlement was that their one-time payout for remote capacity to stream from sites throughout the community, they paid it out. But the part of the deal is that they would no longer subsidize our internet. So that turns out that we will have an additional $60 a month. So I've compensated that by that by increasing the telephone and internet from $3,400 up to $4,500 for next year, as we expect to see that increase. And then electricity. We don't pay any electricity up here. So that's been zeroed out. Business insurance. We seem to have hit the nail right on the button with that one. So $3,400 carried forward. Workers comp. I've been trying to wrestle with, I suppose because of how few many hours we had this year that we got refunded quite a lot of workers' compensation and insurance. I didn't want to go all the way down to 532. So I just dropped it to 2,000. If they're gonna, that would be my best guess. Outreach. We do now pay $300 a month to have our listings in the electronic programming guide. So that was not included in the 2020 budget, but I'm including it in this budget under outreach. And it bumped it up from 1,500 to 3,500. Advertising. We budgeted 1,500. We tend to not spend that. I'd like to see that start spending that better and find some people that we get some advertising and get some word out there, particularly with the new location and us opening up after the pandemic closes or finishes. We will be at one to spend some time and advertising and letting people know where we are and what we're offering. The educational development typically has to do with registration for conferences. Since both major conferences, the regional and the national were canceled this year. So that was significantly reduced, but I kept it the same for next year with the expectation that the conferences will be held and that we will want to send some people to those. Meals and entertainment obviously was low, but I kept that the same because we figured next year we'll look more normal. There might be some room to bring that down because normal will probably be something about six months into the year, as I understand it. And travel expenses were also significantly less. So I've kept that at 3,000 even though we spent none this year or very little. That's for travel to the conferences and then the mileage for the camera operators. We typically go for 5,000. So maybe with the year, the pandemic, so I brought that down to about 4,000 with some savings that are expected as we won't be traveling very much in the first few months of 2021. The interest expense, I think hasn't been done by the accountant yet. So I'm not sure why this $11 is here, but I expect that that'll be about the same as it's been for the past year. This relocation obviously is something that we've already paid for. So we're not going to be, that's nothing for this year. And then capital expenses. So the rent is in capital expenses as separate line, 70, 70 C. We actually, when I figure out the numbers, our rent will increase a little bit in March 1st because it'll be our second year, but still we'll be under the 3,400 that we budgeted and certainly under the almost 37,000 that we spent with the months and the share of property tax that we paid in for the 89 Main Street location. So looking at the numbers, it's pretty rock solid. We can know that will be about 31,562 in rent for 2021. And then the remainder of that capital money is just taking the money from the, this number here, the capital expenses and putting the rest of that, but it's not in rent into the equipment purchase. That being said, we get to a full expense of a 401,200, which is about 13,300 less than what we expect in income, which is nice. So if we know, if we had their unintended expenses or if we decide to bring on extra staff or extra projects, that we have also Christopher Wiersma looking at it, but in loose proposal, we may need some money there, but we don't know what those might be in the year. So we do have a little bit of a wiggle room. And we, as we said, we do have some money in the bank as well. So. Rob, question. Yeah. I'm not sure if I saw it on the itemized, but do we have insurance like for gear equipment for everything that's in the building? That's the business insurance here, 6030. And that covers absolutely everything. Yeah. And do you have to itemize every camera, everything that you have in the system for that? I have not had to do that. And then I'm surprised at that. So I will ask them again if they want an itemized list, but they have not asked for that. Do you have to provide some? Is there a database that has serial numbers, what you paid for? Absolutely everything. So in case everything burns up, which right? That's what they would like is to have that at the aggregate number. And so we do have an inventory and we typically do it at the end of the year. So I'm getting ready to do it again for this year. So I would take that and try to place some value on all of the equipment and then get that to your insurance company. So if we needed to adjust that, we could do that. Any cover theft, vandalism? So interestingly enough, yes, they would cover theft, but we've had a case where a camera didn't come back. And it turns out that the insurance companies do not consider that theft because we gave the camera to them. And it's actually a civil question and a contract question. So in that situation, we were not able to recoup the cost. And I'm not sure that we have... I'd have to ask something about the Marine and the insurance, but it's worth looking at again because we would want to be able to cover and recoup that if somebody decided to sign out equipment and then just disappeared. That would probably be the most likely loss. So failure return does not meet the definition of theft because you're in a contractual agreement at that point. Right. Rob, I know it's a 2020 question, but is the COVID stimulus money off budget or would that just not show up on the line item for 2020? So it's... Or is it in there? It's right here. It's just uncategorized income. Okay. Thank you. And I have the second check, which gets us up to the full 18,000. I haven't deposited yet, but it would be 18.6, I think. Thank you. Other questions for Rob? Thoughts? Rob, are we done with all legal payments from the lawsuit with Comcast? Yes. That's been settled. We paid all of our contributions to that. And they didn't appeal or they're not still trying to take us back to court or anything. No, we settled. We settled. So it's all done deal. I'm glad you brought our attention to that line. Rob, would it make sense that if we don't end up having much in the way of legal expenses this upcoming year to give the balance of that three grand to van as they do a lot of their source of knowledge that would otherwise probably be legal fees? Just thinking out loud here. I think that the contribution that we made to the advocacy would be an area to go with. I don't think that van has any legal stuff. They put the time into the contract template. Doug, but that's, as I understand, it's been paid for out of the dues. And so I don't think that there's anything that we're on the hook for. But I'm sure that van would appreciate anything that we could contribute. And I think the most likely place would be in the renewal of Action Circles contract. Got it. Any other thoughts or questions for Rob? I would just like to share a tale. So I started a little show on the Georgia runoff elections. And that caused me to check in with the public access world in the state of Georgia. And when I started poking around, it was very clear that their access centers are sort of folded into school districts or municipalities. And I was just really scratching my head. Atlanta still has a standalone public access media center, but they charge like 200 bucks to get your show on the air to put in an application. And I was just really scratching my head. And they explained to me 2007, the state legislature changed the law and the franchise fees dried up. Atlanta's access center had a budget of like 650,000. And now they're trying to figure out how to make do with like 175. And that's the city of Atlanta compared, you look at our little, you know, how many people we serve in our budget. It's just like we are very lucky to have a state government that appreciates what we do because they got decimated. I will add that we were at the state house yesterday morning for the electors. And it was done through the secretary of state's office. And secretary of state's office was very appreciative of the work. We have an ally in Jim Condos who appreciates what we do. And we relied on us to be there to people who could actually witness the electors voting for the ticket. Excellent. And like I just to piggyback on what Michael was saying, we have a lot of people who appreciate what we do, particularly in the state house. I think that people are beginning to recognize or as a resource, obviously with the governor's press conference, that's been a big, a big boost for our exposure. And actually we've got, we're now, we feed Vermont Public Radio, the audio from it. So they're actually calling us to help us with the audio. So we are scheduled this week to go and get some engineering sort of help for them on the audio. Great. Any more commentary on the 2021 budget as proposed? I think that would close out the financial reports. And Rob, you can just ease seamlessly into the executive director's report. Just pull it up here. I'm going to stop sharing my window, I guess. I don't think we need to stop doing that. I stopped sharing. Stop sharing. And there we go. So staffing, as I said, we're very small operationally. It's just basically the three full-time. We do have one part-time person who's been regularly going in and doing the press conference, as well as babysitting some of the later night meetings that need to be babysitted, particularly the live ones. So it's the Montpelier City Council, it's the school board from Montpelier. So there, and so Zach doesn't have to sit here until 10 p.m. at the end of the meeting. We now pay Greg to do it. So we hope that we'll begin to be able to bring that up and start getting some of our part-time people to work again. But mostly they're on unemployment at this point. So it's nice. And when we do get to see them, it was nice. I was able to, we were able to work with Sue yesterday at the State House. So it was nice to be able to catch up with Sue and get her a couple hours. It wasn't very much, but it was a couple hours. Finance. And they used, VPR used one of the, used a screenshot from that. The frequency that they send out every morning. Yep. We've already covered finances. We are looking to, we have about $8,000 left in the capital budget. So I've instructed my staff to go ahead and figure out how to spend that in the remaining few weeks as we are coming up on contract negotiations. I didn't want Comcast to say that we weren't spending our capital. Although when she sent the note, I did see, I might say, should I be saying this at the front? What's going on we're doing? Let's just say that we have some opportunities to finish out our capital expenditures. Hey Rob, that, remember I sent you a link or we talked about the owl? Yeah, it's included in our wish list. So I added it in there. So I'm excited if I can only get you in to let me buy it. So that's the important thing. Because she's very frugal. But it's on my wish list. It's a very nice piece of equipment that we really would like to explore with. Also the equipment to the libraries. You're going to spend some capital. Okay. I don't know if you made a delivery to Randolph, but it was kind of just stuff that was lying around? Yep, we put together some stuff. So I mean, I think that we may not have anything this year, but it might come in next year's budget with the money that we have for next year. How's the library and water barrier maintaining interest? Like I said, I haven't had a chance to reach out to them, but it's on my list of things to do. I'll try to reach out to them this week and talk to them about what they're doing and circle back with Randolph to see what they're doing. I dropped the equipment off and haven't heard from them. So I'd like to see just checking with them and see if they need any help. Yeah. Yeah, ideally we have a couple of Dropboxes dedicated one for each library. And content can get delivered without a half hour drive from our two other big towns. And then go ahead, Dave. Sir, is there any kind of a first night event? There is actually, it's up in St. John'sbury. Yeah, so there's nothing going on in Montpelier. There's no first night parade. There's no, you know, things with concerts, not this year. Blues songs and dances or firework displays, all that stuff has gone to the Northeast Kingdom. Yeah, well, they're not even doing, I think they're doing it pre-produced. Oh, I see, okay. So they're getting some people that pre-produced it so it's all COVID safe. So, but they have been working hard and they're going to have some content with us for us. We should be shared across the state. So I think Jen is planning on taking it as well as it'll probably go on the statewide channel too. Oh, that's good. Next item, excuse me, is that on the van front, the Vermont Community Television Live statewide high-definition channel went live last week, December 8th, was it last week? Week before. I chair that committee. We've been very involved. We've got some branding that's going on with it now. It's really a soft open, but we anticipate after the first of the year that we'll begin to send out some emotional stuff as we get the programming worked out. But if you have cable, you should be able to view it on channel 1070 now. And if you are not able to, I'd like to know because it's supposed to be free to all of them. So if you're not having a problem watching it, I was utterly surprised at myself. I had just how much I enjoyed being able to watch the content in high definition. So, you know, I'm used to watching it in postage stamp on our channel, but to see community access content in high definition was nice and it was exciting. It's been a lot of work. So 1070, we have 1075, 85, and 95, right? Okay, great. They're close to each other on the dial. Yep. Yeah, 1070's been great. Congratulations. Yeah, it's been a long haul. Congratulations. As I was telling the staff as they were going through the programming, I kept wanting to remind them that this is exciting. This is very exciting. They tend to forget that because it's just been so much work. But yeah, so that's exciting. Rob, I know there was some discussion as to whether it would be live-streamed. And do you know how, if that, the statewide channel... Yeah, so there's some talk about the world. It's like a community radio station. I know we think video on demand in the peg world, but this may fit more like a community radio station live-stream model. I don't know where the great minds came down on that, but... I think it's on the agenda for our next committee meeting, which is tomorrow at three. So Drew, who has been working on some of the programming, had a proposal of some way of doing it with some expenses. So I think it was a $1,500 expense. So we are looking at that. I may not make it, but I am an I. I do think actually thinking it is more like a live-stream of a radio station than a standalone. I want to watch this select board meeting. Yeah. So just as a model, I think it leans more the other way. And the last thing is that you guys got it in your packets. I just received it yesterday or the day before was the proposed contract from Comcast for renewal. Ours is up, I think at the end of this month. There's no rush because it remains in effect until a new one is signed. But what is coming from Comcast is level our funding. And I haven't had a chance to read it, but it's been negotiated by Vann. So I imagine I've been in some of the seminars that they've been talking about it. So I expect that everything that they got in the statewide template is in this contract. So you have a copy of it for you to look at if you have any questions. We don't have to go over now because, as I said, we only just got it anyway. But we anticipate they said eight years and keep our funding at the same percentages, which includes a 0.9 percent capital, which is not standard. They usually do 0.5 across the state. When we last negotiated 11 years ago, no, can't bet at that. Eight years ago, however long ago it was, we were able to get them up to 0.9 percent on capital. So I was glad to hear that they're willing to do that and to keep that in there. And it's only, it makes sense to me because of the extra work that we do with the State House. That would be the end of my report. I have a question, Rob, about the classics that goes from midnight till noon. Yep. Do we pay for that? No, that's free. And do we have any kind of connection with the people that do send that out and broadcast it everywhere in the world? Not really. I mean, as far as- The reason I'm asking is that we have many of our own performers that are doing the same thing. They're basically making videos in order to be seen or heard. And that's happening all over New England out of New York City and everywhere. And it would seem to be that the guy that left all the money for that classic show might be willing to accept some of those videos that are now being made without audiences to be sent all over the world on that particular network. I can certainly look into it for sure. Okay, thanks. I could entertain a motion to accept the executive director's report. So moved. Second. Moved. And CJ has second. And all those in favor of accepting the executive director's report, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. And nays. The ayes are unanimous. We can move on to old business. Can I just get a clarification, Michael? Does that include the proposed budget as presented? Do you want to hear that as a separate motion? We could entertain that. I think so. Okay. Good catch. Rob has indicated that we really ought to accept the proposed budget for 2021 as its own motion if any board member is so willing to. Yep. I'd like to move it, but then I'd like to discuss one question. All right. We have a motion to accept 2021 budget. Is there a second? And we can certainly have a second period. John has seconded. And CJ, a thought or two before we call the question. Sure. So my main question is this. I serve on several boards. And does ORCA have a DNO policy? A what policy? No, you broke up. A direct, an ENO or DNO directors and officers or errors and omissions? I do not think that we do. We have discussed that. I mean, Vermont has a pretty good protections for DNO. The only thing that we that it doesn't really, and I've looked at this in the past, is that it would not compensate for legal fees. So I mean, they could not come after your assets, but we might, you know, we wouldn't have anything for directors and officers as far as any legal fees that might be accrued in trying to defend that. So we can look into it. If you'd like me to look into it as to whether or not it would be recommended that we do get a DNO. It seems, I remember going through this when you and I and John were all on the EC fiber board. And if I recall, the cost was on the order of $7 or $800. Yeah, it's not a lot. And it tends to make people, it removes a major impediment. So let me, when I talk to the insurance people, I'll ask about directors and officers as well. Sounds good. Could you tell me what that is? It's a policy in case the board were ever, yeah, it's an insurance policy that covers not-for-profit unpaid volunteer board members. So in many states, it would be an ability to protect your own assets. If there was any funny business going on by the Orca board and they needed to be covered in some sort of legal fashion, they would not be able to go after your assets. But as I said, I don't think that in Vermont, they can do that anyway, but there are some costs that might be worth. The main thing would be the protection against legal fees because we live in the United States and anybody can sue anybody for any reason. Yeah, and legal fees can go up pretty quickly. They can. So this would be, for example, if somebody sued Rob for something? Or so it's- No, Rob, yeah, Rob would be covered as a board member because Rob, you're part of our board, right? Or not? I'm not a member of the board. I'm the employee. I think it would only cover us, Susan, although- Yeah, but I think it would cover me as- Yeah, I think you're right. What would be an example of a situation where that might happen? I guess if a whole lot of money disappeared and someone wanted to go after board members for mismanagement. Or if we were accused of doing something that hurt another business, for example, you know, if we were in, you know, joined, if somebody said, oh, you said something and we were brought in as somehow having enabled it. But, you know, for example, somebody said something that hurt another business or an individual. Susan, honestly, it's not a matter of trying to think of an example. It's trying to think of all of the ways that somebody can say anything in the United States. CJ, are you comfortable with Rob assessing whether or not adding that to the insurance line item would be in consultation with the insurance company? Or would you like to see some kind of amendment to this budget before we move the question forward? You see what I'm saying in terms of that? Yeah, I do. I'm wondering, I do think that Rob needs to have the freedom in the budget. So I think we would need to request an amendment to give him a bucket if he needs to have that bucket. But the vote this evening could go forward. Absolutely, yep. We could do an amendment to the budget. We could propose to, as a board, to... That sounds good. And Rob may come back and say, we are so robustly protected by Vermont law that it's a moot point, or he may say, you know, it's only 800 bucks. But you don't see that holding up the budget vote. Great, thank you. Mike, question now. So if what we're talking about right now will we include this under new biz? Do we like to discuss this under new biz? I know it's part of the budget planning process, Carlos. It's just something that you need to... You know, we're going into the next year. If this is something that's going to get done in short order, then I think my question was to bring it up. And it's not really an old business or a new business. It's just kind of a budget matter. That's kind of routine for most boards. We still need to call a vote to accept the 2021 budget proposal. And I did, I moved this to a second for old business. So I apologize for that. We have a motion and a second, and we are discussing the 2021 budget. Right. And I can entertain... So I guess I would... If the discussion's over, but we can keep going. What if... So here's... I don't know. I don't know parliamentary procedure well enough to know. If there's a general agreement, then do we... Rob, do you need any of us to do anything? Or do you have sufficient freedom to simply get this done? Yeah, I think I would be comfortable in just getting it done. Yeah, and I think he appreciates the thought, CJ, and the direction there. Yeah. I mean, the only thing I could think of maybe if we wanted to bump up business insurance as a line item to add another grant into there to make it $4,400 to just have the opportunity to play with that. If the consultation with the insurance agent comes back with the recommendation that we do purchase, it would be already in the budget. But I'm perfectly comfortable coming back to you guys and asking for an amendment to the budget as well. I would support your... As a straw man, I would support your being able to do that. Great. Any other discussion on the budget before the question's called? It sounds quiet. All those in favor of accepting Rob's proposed... Sorry, the executive director's proposed 2021 budget, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. That's unanimous consent on our 2021 budget. We've got a nice direction. Thanks, Rob, for sorting out the normal years from the... COVID years from the probably half and half year we got coming up. Something like that. And are you able to think you... And you're going to be talking with the insurance guys when? Obviously before the end of this year. I mean, the holiday may get into it, but we'll be finishing the inventory trying to get them the aggregate number on the account that Carlos was mentioning, and then I'll bring up the question of the DNO. Certainly, if not, by the end of the year, we'll be into January. Rob, I have a procedural question about our connection with the School for Fine Arts. When they make their big decisions about their budgets in the year and whether students will be there or not, and what community activities there are, does that turn into an agenda for a meeting that's open to the public? Is that a private message, a meeting, and do we as tenants have any access to the either before or after of the private meeting? I don't have an answer to that. I can investigate. Okay, thank you. Yeah, it would be great if their board and us got together at some point. I know we're still COVID times, but yeah, I think Dave's question speaks to strengthening that relationship, I do believe. Yeah. And supporting them. Many of the places are going through Goddarditis. And so I just don't want MFA to go down because of anybody's negligence or our assurity that is going to happen without constantly looking at the world. Rob, would it be appropriate to offer to capture their board meetings? Certainly. Okay. Just a thought. Yeah. Yeah, I think Dave, that's a nice line of thought. And actually we can say since we've accepted the budget and the executive directors report that falls nicely into old business. Any other old business? Yes, we have under old business and maybe we could do this for next time, but we talked about the idea of a alternate board member may vote on items unless we have full attendance at board meetings. Yes. Which we disabled this discussion. I don't think today is going to be the day to do this, but it's something that's there. Well, that is actually a lingering oddity because as of now, John is operating like that all the way. I know. We got a quorum. So maybe we just call the vote and say why does this continue to be pending? Because functionally it's working. John's participation and I made it possible to call a quorum when we did. And then Dave, I believe Dave and CJ joined. So we're well above quorum, but that's something I have to keep an eye on. And I don't, I would, we could entertain that question and just memorialize what is actually functioning. Yep. If anyone wants to close the John Block, we officially are alternate. That would be good. Because when I, when I, when we reviewed the minutes, I was like, oh, we didn't actually close the last meeting. So thanks for catching up. So, you know, I propose, I, you know, I do the motion to. Yeah. Carlos proposes that we actually get John in the, in the officially defined role. He is so graciously taken on and meets, meets our, is our alternate board member. And, and just remembering that we're hoping to, to pick up another, another board member from Waterbury to get us back to an odd number, but John is really stepping up. So we don't get caught in that weird, even number place. And that was a lot. So is anyone second that motion? I'll second it. Beautiful. Thanks, Dave. So Carlos has so moved and Dave has seconded to welcome John to our board as an alternate member. All those in favor saying aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed by acclamation. There we go, John. Thanks for bearing with us. And thank you for getting, getting through some of these thinner meetings. Much appreciated. Welcome back, John. Yeah. Any, any other old business? I have just robbed timeline on staff evaluations because once that is completed, then Carlos, myself and Dave have to kick in to perform your evaluation, but that really can't happen until you've done your bit. So. Okay. Yeah. So I have them halfway completed on my desk. I'll finish them in the next day and schedule time with them. Probably beginning next week. Okay. So maybe through the holiday season, Dave and Carlos, who have both both graciously agreed, I do believe maybe it was a while ago to be the subcommittee in evaluation of our executive director. We'll, we'll get together and just game plan it. Sounds good to me. Great. Any other old business? All right. Sue, what was the issue you, you recalled from when we were approving the minutes? Forget. I know. And I was like, you know, I'm there too. It was a good, it was a good loose end. That's what old business is all about. All right. I don't remember. I'm actually going back to the minute, see if it jogs my memory. Oh, was it the, was it the treasure issue? Oh, yeah, Rachel. Rachel. Yeah. Right. So Rob, you did receive communication. I did. Okay. Just saying that she would not be able to attend tonight's meeting. Okay. But I did not get a chance to discuss further as to whether or not she wants to continue on the board and in more capacity. Right. Because if you give her an important position like treasurer, like treasurer, she ought to show up. I don't know if you want to consider somebody else in that role or at this point or just. Let me propose, could you see if, I don't know on a conference call or a meet like this, you could just, because we haven't seen Mike in a little bit either. And if we have a, you know, if we have a phantom treasurer and a phantom treasurer and waiting, it's, could you, could you see if you could get the two of them on a call and just express the board's concerns. Sure. And if, if, if someone or either or both and give them the opportunity to bow out, if they're just, if it's just sort of politeness keeping them from either or both, I'm just. Just the report I did was able to get Mike on the phone before this meeting as well when I was calling at the beginning of the meeting. He just said that he is looking forward to being back, but he's still going through the health problems in this treatment. So he did not feel comfortable or up to being on the meeting tonight, but he did express an interest in, in the future. So you, you got some clarity from Mike and, and, and can you. I'll work on Rachel. Thank you. Any more old business or we can move to new, new business. These thoughts on new directions or agenda items, pretty robust. The, the two, there's, these are just two content questions. And I'm going to put them out there, but I don't have any particular agenda. The first is the broadband and coverage. We probably should really actively try to move that forward. And I'm wondering, I'd like to board thoughts. EC fiber, if I recall had declined coverage. And I don't, I wanted to find out, can a municipality decline coverage of public meetings? They cannot. So if we decided we wanted to do it anyway, we could, but it's virtual now. And I don't know, I see, J, if you're still on that board, governance board, if you get to, if you get the links, you can just simply forward them to me or you somehow get a copy of the video. So that would be one way of doing it. I think the key thing is the real time coverage is different than having it after the fact, because in real time, a citizen still potentially can, can monitor and then even weigh in because they are public meetings versus playing something after the fact. And so that was the first question. The second question is, due to unfortunately a family situation, I have become much more aware of the situation that's happening with our older family members. So I wanted to throw a few statistics into the mix here. And it looks like this COVID situation will continue probably for about another three months maybe. And it's been going on for maybe nine months, but this happened in Vermont and so it's, it's local. 42% of the deaths attributed to COVID have happened in long-term care facilities, such as rehabs, assisted living facilities and the like. The, it's not happening to the staff there when they get an infection. There are chances of having a mortality event are 0.06, 0.05. But an elderly person, their chances of dying are 22.5% nationwide. The, so between over 40% of the country, the United States deaths being seniors in long-term care facilities, that figure, especially given Vermont's elder population, is striking. And the second report that just came out has to do with loneliness and isolation and its effects on the elderly. And those include a 50% chance of increased chance of dementia, a 32% chance of increase in stroke and a 400% chance of death due to heart disease getting, you know, if you already got heart disease, your chances of dying in a situation with isolation and loneliness, it just goes up dramatically, 400%. So I haven't seen any particular focus on this in Vermont. And those are the two items that I wanted to just mention to see how the board felt about requesting that they get additional attention. The broadband John's got covered, but the elder situation strikes me as being current and pressing. It's not really a board matter. So I'm sorry to bring it into this meeting, but it's kind of a short-time pressing situation. But the program of the governor's press conferences is sort of what we can do right now. He's very articulate about what's going on and very conscientious about reporting what's going on. So I think that counts for something. I don't know if we can do some kind of separate programming on the topic. I think that I can also maybe reach out to, I'm sorry, go ahead, Sue. Could you say it louder? I didn't do it. Yeah, Mike, your microphone's gone a little dim. Oh, I'm sorry, I am still on. I just said, yes, Sue, I do think the governor's press conference is operating as a lifeline of a sort. Just agreeing, just agreeing with your point. And I would just add that I might have a connection. I know I have a connection with the Department of Aging and Independent Living. It just so happens that my sister-in-law is the commissioner, so I could ask her if there's any. Oh, yeah, that would be wonderful. Can we start a dialogue? I'll tell you why. I posted about something that happened on my Facebook page, and I got 100 responses plus calls, plus a couple of emails. And I had said to people, try to bring your parents, your aunts, your uncles home if you possibly can. They're safer with you. And I did that after talking to the Vermont Department of Health, Gifford Medical Center, Vermont Health Connect, which in our area is Michelle Packard, and both the Middlebury and Orange County Councils on Aging and the Relief Coordinator of a rehab center. And they all agreed that at the moment our older people are safer at home with us than they are in any of these facilities. Now, that might be a difficult message because these are businesses. But in a case where the chances of dying in a facility is so high and the chances of dying at home relatively are so low, if we could facilitate a dialogue where we could bring in the people from the councils on aging from the Vermont Department of Health and talk about testing, you know, the Vermont Department of Health told me we don't recommend testing asymptomatic people, which was a surprise. And so a little bit of a discussion about testing what's accurate when it's called for. A little bit of a discussion about all that Medicare enables to help keep seniors in their homes or at home with family, making it financially and practically possible. Go ahead. Well, I'm just general to all board members. I'm a huge advocate of board members as show producers. I just got the bug again and I launched a little something. It sounds like something's percolating up with you. So I don't know if that's something you could just hand a rob and staff and say do this. But if you want, if you want to become a producer, these guys are great. I mean, these guys are great in making an idea like this come true. So I just I just want to encourage you and all other board members if something does percolate up. And also staff members, Rob, I know it's quiet season. If you could just, you know, tapping into your passions and creative energies and and and Zach's and Jin's as well. And, you know, Jerome's already got the flow going. But just, yeah, this, this kind of conversation can actually turn into a show. And it's like, that's just that's my response and Rob was getting ready to say, no, no, I think that's, that's, you know, as I said, I could reach out to the commissioner of Dale and see if there's anything that we might be able to do, maybe get some dialogue going on with some content, but absolutely to piggyback on what Michael's saying that I know you're a busy woman, CJ, but if you're if you want to get some people in on a zoom call for the dialogue, we'd be happy to facilitate and do the, you know, the back end and production of it. Okay. Can you follow up with me and you'll need to chase me? I have a bunch of contacts just because this caused me to end up with a bunch of contacts. And I could perhaps my running around trying to facilitate being able to bring somebody home can be used as a way for other people to learn, you know, learn about it. And so I've been, because of COVID, I've been running a very large zoom meeting every Thursday night with a group of other people that are helping me a lot. That's got anywhere between 50 and 180 pilots in it. So if that format might work, well, anyways, call it. If you could follow up with me. I will. I got a note here to follow up with CJ. Okay. Thanks guys. Appreciate you're taking the, letting me take the time to bring this up. Well, thanks for doing that work that you're doing. Yeah. And also, I think, you know, it might be possible to get somebody from the agency on aging to run the run that program. It doesn't have to be you, but, you know. Yeah. There is an amazing woman that runs the Middlebury Council on Aging. She called me back the evening before Thanksgiving at 5.30. I was standing out in the middle of a field with two miscreant animals that had run off and she called me back. So she might be, she's been in it for 32 years. She might be the perfect one. There are a lot of heroes out there. There are very few villains, but there are also a lot of people dying alone. And I think we may be able to help change that. That's a really worthy pursuit. Thank you. Yeah. Looking at 847, any other new business? We've had a very full meeting. Hearing none. I motion to adjourn at 847. I will second that motion. Excellent. It's a privileged motion. Good night, everybody. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. Last board meeting of 2020. What a year. We'll see you all. Let's nail down February, February, the 4th, Tuesday of February, 2021. By my count is the 22nd. Not the 23rd. Monday. The 23rd would be the Tuesday. Okay. And Mike, these warnings that you've been sending out a couple of hours ahead are wonderful. I just want to thank you as chair. It really helps me. Yeah, I think maybe two-thirds of the board is on the text, but yeah, I do get a sense that it's worth one last rattle of the cage. What date? I'm sorry. I didn't catch the... 23rd. January 23rd. February. February. 223, 2021. And Rob, I want to thank you for all your prep to make these meetings happen. Absolutely. And yeah, those initial emails, just getting it on people's... Oh yeah, that's next week. Yeah. So, we'll have a great evening, everyone. Yeah. Enjoy the holiday. Safe and peaceful holidays. Take care, everybody. Happy new year and happy holidays. Still alive, right? Keep the sunny side up. Yeah, stay safe out there. Okay. Bye-bye.