 May 9th, Governing Board meeting for CBFiber is now called into session at 6.03. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Hearing none. Is there any public comment? Hearing none. Okay. CBFiber, year five, I just wanted to put this up here in recognition of the fact that we are now entering year five. Fingers crossed and toes. We will have subscribers in our fifth year, many of them. And I can't possibly thank people enough for how much work they've been doing. We are blessed to have the talent and the people that are willing to work so unbelievably hard on this team. It is absolutely amazing. I want to thank everyone. And if anybody else wants to say something briefly right now, let's do it before we get into the business. Oh, Jeremy, Matt, hey, I'm just up. All right. Yeah. So, sort of in honor of this, I prepared a few statistics. This is the 81st Governing Board meeting that we've had since we started. In total, the total number of hours is 142.95 hours of Governing Board meetings. That's almost six days continuous of Governing Board meetings. If you multiply that by the number of people in each Governing Board meeting, that is 1,959 hours, like person hours of work, or 81.63 days of people work. So and that is the Governing Board meetings only. This is not committee work. This is not anything else. This is not all the work that people have been putting in. So, you know, it's just an incredible amount of work. And you know, everyone should be proud of all the work they're putting in and just wanted to say thanks to everyone. Maggie's got her hand up. I just wanted to say that I have never worked with an organization where I have seen such dedicated people and I'm blown away. I'm looking right now at the individuals that are volunteers that have already shown me. I can't even imagine how many, it can't be hundreds. It has to be thousands of hours. They have poured into what has happened already. I'm looking at you, Linda and you, David and Jeremy and Chuck. And I don't see you, Jerry, but I know you're there. And I haven't had the opportunity to get to know the rest of you quite as well, but I'm sure that I will. And I'm very, very amazed by all of you. Thank you, Maggie. Alan, you've got your hand up. Yeah. So I actually went back and I found the minutes from the first meeting of May 8th, 2018. I'm not sure if they are they up on the website, Jeremy, I'm not sure. But one of the things that's interesting is I didn't realize that Jerry, you started out as an alternate that first meeting. You were not a member of a full delegate at that point, which I thought was interesting. So you were in with Stephen Whitaker and several other interesting folks. And when you read these meetings, these meeting minutes, and you get to stuff, here is an agenda item from the first meeting. Meeting scheduling and location. Discussion included desired frequency dates and location of meetings. And it makes you realize how we really started from absolutely nothing. I mean, there was there was nothing except a bunch of statutes from the from the state that said, this is what a CUD is and here's what you have to do. And here's how you put it together. And after that it was all on us and I don't is is Jeremy Hansen on the call tonight. I don't see him there. I don't see him. He said he was going to be in Europe and he may not be able to make it. But let me tell you, starting from nothing, Jeremy Hansen standing in my driveway with a clipboard looking for signatures to get on the meeting, you know, meeting day town meeting. To that end, all the presentations, Jeremy Hansen did to select boards. I helped him with a couple and they were a lot. Yeah. So on those first few meetings. Oh, I'm sorry. I can't see. Yeah. So on those first few meetings Alan, that first meeting where we're trying to figure out just where to meet. It was two hours and 40 minutes long. Of the first. Of the first 10 meetings, there are one, two. Two of them were the, or the average length of those first 10 meetings was two hours and 44 minutes. We, we've had only I think one meeting that long in the last two years. Yeah. It's so we're not looking for scapegoats I'm sure on this. I'm not looking to do it tonight either. I don't remember how long it took us to do our mission statement. How many meetings that span. Thank you, Jerry. Yeah, I mean, that sort of tells you how much we really didn't know what we were doing and you didn't know how to do anything. So we focused on stuff we thought we could handle like a mission statement. And I mean, we kind of handle it, but it's a, if you go back and look at it now, it sounds pretty quaint. I'll tell you. Well, anyhow, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories, just good ones. I thought it was interesting and congratulations to everybody for still being around five years later and actually having some fiber being strong as we speak and we'll be speaking for the next couple of months and years. It's a, it's really impressive and it's all about people power. So thank you all. Oh, thank you, Alan. Thank you. John, are there any more hands up on this one? No, my hands are up, but lots of applause is coming across the screen. Okay, great. Well, we all deserve it. Thank you. So I'd like to move on to the election of officers. We've, we've had a number of folks identify that they, they wish to be, or they would be willing to be an officer if so chosen by the board. I would like to hand this over to Janiel to just to run this part of the meeting because. Siobhan is an officer that, that is willing to continue. I'm an officer willing to continue. So it, I think it would just be easier if Siobhan ran, excuse me, if Janiel ran this part of the, of the show. Is that okay with everybody? Chuck's hand is up. I'm going to wait. I'm going to go in for a minute longer. Oh, okay. Chuck is saving his action. It's your role, Jerry. Do you want it? Yeah, that's fine. Go ahead, please. Sure. Thank you. Sure. So we will appoint chair, vice chair, clerk and treasurer. So I'll open it up in that order. Are there any nominations for chair? I nominate Jerry D. I'm in TDs for chair, Siobhan, para cone for vice chair, Jeremy, Matt for clerk and Lori Beth Putnam for treasurer. Is that your comment, Chuck? Yes, it is. Okay. Any other, any, any seconds to that motion? Second. And with that RD. Yep. Yep. Okay. Any other nominations? We just got to keep the meeting to under an hour, right? Under, under a while to get in. Okay. Hearing no more nominations. We have a nomination for Chuck Burt. Or we have a nomination from Chuck Burt. We have a nomination for Jerry D. I'm in TDs as chair, Siobhan, para cone as vice chair, Jeremy, Matt as clerk and Lori Beth Putnam as treasurer. That has been seconded by RD, you know, any further, any further comments or discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, say I or raise your hand. Hi. Hi. I think Linda's actually frozen that. Yeah, I think Linda's frozen. Usually, Janelle, what, what you do, because there's only one nomination. A lot of times the person running the meeting just instructs the clerk to cast one vote for each candidate. Because there's only the one. So I'm not sure we can do that because you're the clerk. And this is a vote about the clerk. So, I mean, okay. And I hear no, not a problem. Okay. I hear no opposition. So it looks like this was passed unanimously. Yep. Well, thank you, everyone. Unless there was to be clerk. I hope we can all live up to the challenge here. Thank you. I'd like to move on to the committee chairs. And what, what, what I would like to do is ask each of the, someone to speak for each of the committees. To identify who is there. Who they've nominated for chair. And then I think we can make a single motion. To, to, to ratify, if you will, all of these chair people. Does that make sense to folks? Yes. Yep. Chuck. Chuck's hand is up. Okay. Okay. Communications committee did not have a chance to get together to do an election. How would folks like to handle that? David Healy's hand is up. No, I'll wait. Okay. I didn't know if he was responding to that. No. We can appoint you temporary. Until, until you have that meeting. And then we can come back and it'll be a, an item for the next governing board agenda. And you, you can certainly be in the position, you know, temporarily, if you will. We do tech. I'll just call out. We do technically have a quorum of the communications committee present at this meeting. If that somehow changes the, the math, but happy to do it that way. If that's what people prefer. I defer to Alan. Yeah. The way the rules. The way the rules are procedure work is that if a person is not chosen tonight, the person who has been chair stays chair until there is a recommendation from the committee of who should be the, the new chair or the same chair, whatever you want to say. So there's no reason to do anything other than just wait till the next meeting. And put you in there. It's no big deal. Sounds good. And David Healy has his hand up. No. Sorry. Go ahead. Now the planning, the operating and planning committee has put forward David Healy as chair. Thank you. Is there anyone to speak for the finance committee? Not seeing any. Alan's got his hand up though. Yeah. The policy committee is put forth me. We're all so excited about these victories. The hard campaigns. And Tom Fisher's hand is up to, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Jerry. No, I was going to ask if Tom Fisher was, was, was attending. Yes. Yeah. And we put forth Ray for the chair. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know if Tom Fisher was, was, was attending. Yes. Yeah. And we put forth Ray for the chair of the finance committee. Does he know? He was president. I think he did. Oh, good. Okay. I don't see any more hands, Jerry. I think we just covered all the committee committees. So. I, I, I will move that the governing board, except the nomination of. Alan at the policy, Alan Gilbert for the chair of the policy committee, Ray Pella chair for the chairman of the finance finance committee and David Healy for the chair of the op some planning committee. Second that we will. Second. Perfect. We'll wait for, for Chuck for the next, for the communications committee for the next meeting. And I heard a second from our D. Yep. Is there additional discussion? Any hands up, Siobhan? Nope. All right, then. Hearing none, are they, are there any opposed to the motion? Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously. Congratulations, folks. Congratulations. We got the hands back together. My condolences. All right. Well, even though Maggie spoke for a few minutes there, there is a. There is a slot in here for Maggie to introduce herself. To the governing board. I don't believe Maggie was here for our last governing board meeting. So Maggie, you want to take just a couple of minutes, please? And introduce yourself a little bit. Not everybody knows your background or, I mean, you know, they know we have hired you, but they don't necessarily know who you are. So please take the floor there. Hi, everybody. For those of you who have not met me yet. And I see a few of you that I haven't had the chance to get to know yet. My name is Maggie tech sucks. Sorry. I'm so sorry. I am laughing at what check just did to my comment. Maggie tech sour. I do know my name. Right now I live in Vernon. And I just signed the contract and sold our property. And I'm moving to Randolph in two weeks. And I am extremely excited to be here with all of you. My background has been in marketing and communications for a couple of decades now. I was in the military. I have raised four sons and they are out of the house. So I'm also celebrating that this year. I have a lot to celebrate this year. So I'm going to be in a really good mood for 2023. We moved to Vermont three years ago during the pandemic. And we built a little log cabin here. I'm 50 acres. And so it's bittersweet to sell it. So my philosophy for marketing is to meet people where they are. And that is something that I feel like all of you take very seriously here at CV fiber. And your mission and your purpose really spoke to me because it is really important to me that everyone have a fair chance at education and everyone have a fair chance at building a better life for themselves. And I think that knowledge and an opportunity to get knowledge is how we do that. So I think every one of you, especially those who have been here for five years, have been changing lives for every hour you have been in a meeting. And I am super excited to be here. And I welcome all of your ideas. I ask that you don't pull a ray on me and send me 30 emails at four o'clock in the morning to share your ideas with me. Maybe one consolidated email would be super great. I'm just kidding, Ray is not here to defend himself. But I seriously do welcome all your ideas. And I'm very excited about every one of you volunteering to come to the events in your community with me this summer. And for every one of you to hit up your select board for all that ARPA money if you haven't done it yet. That's my sales pitch. Thank you. I didn't realize the military aspect what branch if I may. Um, I did army and Air Force reserves, I did army. And then I went to the Air Force and I hated the Air Force and I asked them if they would put me back in the army. And they said, are you crazy? And I said, yes, sir, but they did it in any way. So I went back to the army and that's where I finished. Okay. Got it. Coast Guard here. I'm always looking for old coasties. That's all. Sorry. So I'm going to, I'm trying to log in here. Shavon, this might actually work. But let's let's move on to the meeting minutes approval while I'm while I'm trying to get online, please. Thank you. Thank you. I have a motion to approve the April 11th, 2023 meeting minutes as drafted. Second. All right. That sounded like a second from Chuck. Is that correct? Yes, sir. All right. Beautiful. Are there any discussion? Any opposed to the matter. Any abstentions? Thank you very much. We have some approved meeting minutes. Excellent. Is Lori Beth on the line? I see 21 participants. That's wonderful. I'm down at the bottom. Well, let's get you right up to the top there, Lori Beth. And if you, if you would walk through the treasurer's report, please, that would be fantastic. Sure. I sent out copies of the balance sheet, which is a summary of what we've done in the past year to date, profit and loss. And also a detail by vendor. Of the expenses that we've had so far. It is a summary. A couple of times in the past, when we've discussed the finances, they've asked what are the prepaid expenses. And it actually is four items that are journal entered. The accountants come in, they journal entry it, anything that's been paid ahead of time deposits on things. In this particular case, there are four of them for BKB and they totaled that 826,000. Now, at the end of the year, the accounts will come back in again. And as part of the closings for the year and make new entries and reverse any of these that have been used to be paying some of the bills. So that you probably will see these amounts go away, but there are probably going to be others that replace them. So there's usually always some amount in that column. It's rare that you end up with no prepaid invoices, especially when some of the big companies ask for deposits. And that's where those deposits show up. I'm not sure if there's any other questions. It's pretty straightforward. Unless someone has a particular question. Hearing none. Thank you, Lori, Beth. Excellent. Let Janiel and. Lucas, could you, could you, however you want to do it among yourselves, give us a construction update and an outlook for where we're going in the next few weeks. And I specifically put outlook in this agenda here because we usually just give an update of where we are, but we are, we are pivoting hard here. So I want to make sure that folks, not only understand where we are, but where we plan to be in the next few weeks before we, we get together again. So Janiel, I'll hand that over to you and take it as you will please. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to say Lucas, I would be happy to hear from you first and then I can fill in anything that, you know, after you have a chance to speak, do you want to, you want to start this conversation about where we're at with construction and where we're going with construction. Sure, absolutely. So we added another crew this week to call us. So we're not running three crews. And from what I've heard in two days of it, they are full board and they are very caffeinated and ready to go. So we're getting a lot more done already. So that's the good news. We're hoping to add another crew here any day, any week. Once we can free up more guys. So last, last numbers we had were 16 miles of fiber and 21 miles of strand. I'd expect in the last couple of days that's, that's upped by a little bit. So that's where we're at mileage wise. We received our A and R permit for the callous substation. So we're going to begin construction on that OLT any, any day now we're just waiting to get the underground crew on site. And we'll be immediately following that with getting electronics and lighting it up. So things are looking good and callous for sure. And in addition to that, we're hoping to get going on the run the area very soon, get that scope of work approved and get crews going on that. We're told, you know, back to the outlook, I guess, we're told that that is a much cleaner run. So we're hoping to be able to move a lot faster there. So, you know, with any luck, we will have a lot of miles behind us here in the very near future. Anything you want to add to that? Just that we are our contractors looking at a lay down yard that will be exclusively CB fibers in the next couple of weeks. And so we'll be able to kit up to a month's materials at a time. And so when we get the crews going, they'll be able to get direct kit from the warehouse to the lay down yard and work a lot more efficiently and quickly toward getting first strand and then fiber laid down. Yeah. So things are, things are looking very good in both the construction and in the process to get the construction going. Alan, I see your hand is up. Sorry. Sorry if I didn't have my mic off. I've been wondering if it might be a good idea that when we move into a, to a new area, there couldn't be some briefing for the delegate in that particular or delegates in those particular areas because so much of this is theoretical and abstract to us. We haven't really seen the work that's, I haven't seen the work that's being done in Calis. I don't know where it's going. I actually don't know how the construction is going to proceed in my town. And I think Worcester is in the, is in the, the, the middle sex area. So there's going to be a lot happening here. I'm getting more and more questions and it makes me a little bit nervous that I don't know more about how the system is going to run, how, where it's going to be built, what kind of crews are going to be around soon. I'm getting lots of questions about conduits and drops and that sort of thing. So I just wonder if other delegates are beginning to feel that way too, because this has become real and, and I feel like up to now it's been easy to sort of sit back and answer the few questions you get on the internet, but it's really picking up speed quickly. And I find myself not knowing as much as I'd like to know about what's going to happen in my town. Well, Alan, we're in luck because this is one of Maggie's major tasks is to help us through this, this process. So Maggie, go for it, please. I'm so glad you asked that, Alan. I was hoping somebody would ask that. I'm glad we talked about it. I'm glad we talked this afternoon. Yes, yes. So what we would like to do is offer some delegate and other volunteer training and really catch everyone up to speed on, you know, exactly what the technology and the operations looks like so that when you are approached by someone in your community, you can speak of the technology and feel comfortable doing so and have answers to their questions. In addition, I'm forming a task force of individuals that is going to help answer some kind of canned responses to what we're seeing is very common questions asked after we have done some kind of media blast or an article comes out that they, you know, pick up on. We get emails and many of the questions are the same. So we're going to form a task force and put all of the brains together to come up with responses. And then what we're going to do is we are going to form an on call group. You're welcome to volunteer for that, Alan, as is every delegate and because we don't want anyone to burn out staff or volunteer alike. And that individual would have call for one week. That might mean answering maybe eight, maybe one, maybe 12 emails, but we're already going to have most of those emails prepared and you're just going to plug in one or two words. And if the question gets super complicated, then you're going to say this is what I know of the situation, but on Monday, I'm going to have our operations manager, Lucas, reach out to you. If you're talking to someone in person in your town and it, again, it feels like it's more than maybe what you feel comfortable answering. You're going to be able to do the same thing. You're going to be able to say, you know what? This is what I know, but I'm going to have Janiel or Lucas contact you, but we are going to have trainings very soon. And if it were up to me, we'd have at least 40 seats available. That would be every delegate and every alternate. See what I did there. We're getting alternates too. Good idea. The one thing that I would warn you about is we're slowly wandering into the most difficult time of the year to gather people together for meetings. I mean summertime is when everybody sort of escapes or shuts down or whatever. So I think the planning of when meetings will be held and getting groups of people together, we've got to be ahead of it so that people know when things are going to happen and they can as much as possible try to plan their time around being able to get to those meetings. That's good, Alan. Henry, before I go to you, let me make one statement. I saw Tom Fisher put in the chat. Maggie, please include select board communications in that plan that you're developing to let people know where we're working and where we're going. It'll be important for the select boards to be aware. Henry, please go ahead, sir. Yes. I think it would be really helpful at these meetings if we had a map of the CLOs and our progress along those lines so that we can see every month from a visual map point of view how we're progressing. Thanks. Good point, Henry. I like that. Janille, did you get that? Kind of a progress map? Yeah, a progress map is something that NRTC has been toying with the idea of offering us so that we have a visual for where the crowd is or where the construction is happening and where it's going to be happening next. Yes, it would be. It would be very good there. I'd like to add just one thing on the construction update just for the governing boards awareness. This isn't necessarily a problem at all, but again, it's just for awareness. We're finding that it's a little bit more expensive doing work than was originally anticipated, not by a tremendous amount, but we have been approached to negotiate a minor uptick in the rates that we're paying in order to get the work done. And it's something that we will be considering in the future as we're working with our contractors. Things have changed, prices have increased. So I just wanted to put that out there for the governing board just for your awareness. It won't require governing board action, but again, it's just for your awareness. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's doing business and things are really moving forward. So I'm looking forward to having the same discussion next month to see where we are. Anything else, Janiel or Lucas or anyone else on the construction update? I'll just add in the meantime, to make it get something rolling, if there's any questions you have, feel free to give me a shout and I can update as best I can. I'm available all day and always happy to talk with you. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you. I'm going to shift now to a website marketing update that I'm looking forward to. I'm going to talk about the website marketing outlook. And my intention here is not just the website, things are really coming to a head. So, you know, we've started by separating out construction. We separated out the website. We had separated out marketing. And now we're really finding that these things are blending together more all the time. So what we're trying to do is really blending into operations because they're setting up operations in a somewhat similar manner that construction is setting up operations where all these things are blending together to make a unified CV fiber presence. So I don't want the kickoff of our actual operating to be looked at as a sidebar somewhere. So I'm going to start with Chuck and all of this, and especially in our website and marketing update. I think I'll start with Chuck and Chuck. I'll let you pass that around to whomever you're ready to as the chair of the communications committee. I'll have you start off. For another month anyway. I will start by asking. Or whether she would like me to start for this month and then have a gentle ask to her to take this over going forward. What do you think, Maggie? You want to take a stab at it? Well, I'm not going to lie to you. I was answering RDS question and I can't listen and type at the same time because I've trained myself to ignore four sons. So can you repeat the question? Website progress status update. Website status progress update. Well, I can tell you that thanks to you and Linda. We have made enormous progress in the last two weeks and we did a test on Monday. And from what I understand and I'm going to pass the wand here to Linda in just a second. From what I understand, compared to the first test, there's absolutely no comparison to what people had to say. It's so close to being the live launch. And I'm really, really excited for everyone to see it. So, Linda, would you like to share the good news? We did two rounds of testing so far. Round one was computers and laptops. And round two was mobile devices, phones, tablets. In between the two, we took the input from the round one and we incorporated it in. Maggie and I incorporated it into round two. And the difference was amazing. Just listening to the feedback from round one. And now we went through for round two. And we didn't find any bugs that we knew bugs that we didn't already know about in round two. And this is really encouraging the way you decide when you're ready for launch is you are minimizing the number of new bugs that you find. I think we have three outstanding bugs at the moment, which is very good. Chuck says yes. That would get us to launch. The next round of testing is called crash testing. We are going to ask for volunteers to come and try to crash our app. It's better that we crash it than having our customers crash it. So please give your names to me or Janiel because we really need eight or 10 volunteers. And I hate to keep asking the same people to be volunteers. So please volunteer for the next round of crash testing. Thank you. I would just like to add on to what Linda said there with a quick explanation of crash testing. It's not nearly as scary as watching one of those dummies careening into a wall as it sounds. What you try to do is you actually put on your crazy hat and try to enter the most bizarre information you can think of as you're going through the flow to see what happens. Email addresses that don't look like email addresses. Phone numbers from China. Whatever you can think of that might possibly cause our application to shut down, you go ahead and you try it. You do it and you see what happens. I will tell you one thing we know for a fact doesn't work very well is the back button. Unfortunately that's something that's not in our control and that's holy and crowd fibers control. You will break the application if you do a whole lot of forward and back. So just warning you right off the bat that that is the case. But aside from that, see what you can find. It's kind of fun to put on the creative hat and see what you can do to make things not work the way you would expect. I'm going to go ahead and get back to you, Linda. I just wanted to clarify. Linda, you said app. Do you mean like a phone app that's downloaded? Or do you mean the web application? The web. The website. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. And I see Henry. Yeah. I just wanted to know folks that want to volunteer for this. Who do they contact? Okay. Okay. And then I'll, I'll get back to you, Linda. Go ahead, John. And I see Henry's hand is up. Go ahead, Henry. Right. So in the category of crash testing. A big part of my career was in performance testing. So when you announce something. And then all of a sudden, you know, 100 people are at the website. Does it. Is it scalable? So that's something I'd like to throw out there. I no longer have access to my performance testing tools. So I can't do it for you, but you know, what we did. You know, when we didn't, when we couldn't use performance testing tools was to arrange a time when everyone would go on the website at the same time and try to break it that way. So we could, you know, have a performance testing process and then crash party and all sync up at the same time to hit the website and see what happens. Thanks. I want to speak to that a moment just to clarify for you, Henry, because this is a third party hosted application, they are responsible for performance and availability and uptime. And I will tell you, they have customers who are much, much bigger than we are already on their platform that today. So I, I, it's always possible that, you know, there's something different about our instance that, that makes it less performance than other instances, particularly since we've customized the theme of great deal at this point in time. But I will say that even if we did find an issue there, there's not anything we could do about it. So, you know, the focus will really be on kind of breaking the, the interactivity and, and breaking the theme that we've put together, not so much on the performance and scalability because that is managed by crowdfiber. But, you know, certainly open to ideas if you have. Linda, before I go to you, let me ask John if he has a follow up because I see his hand is still up. John, do you have, do you want to follow up? Sorry, no, I thought I had put my hand down. Oh, okay. No problem. Thank you. All yours. I am more worried about people with very slow internet who cannot load our pages to sign up. Okay. That is to me, to me more of a worry. We spend quite a bit of time at the beginning trying to optimize our code to make it so that it would be a lot faster and a lot easier for people to just load the pages. But that, that's more of a worry than having too many people on the site at once. That's a problem I'd love to have to tell you the truth. Okay. And also, Linda, maybe you can speak to the webinar that we had discussed that would be very specific for our, our delegates and it would be open to the public, but it would very much be for the delegates to be able to see the website, how it works, what it's doing and kind of to walk everybody through how the website works just so that you have a better understanding whenever you speak to someone in your hometown or anywhere else that's interested in CV fiber. We're looking to do this sometime in towards the end of the month, where we would have this webinar and get everybody or as many delegates as are interested to be up to speed to understand what our website is doing and its capabilities. Linda, do you want to add to that? Just that it's really important that you be able to understand the website enough to talk with your constituents. So alternate delegates, you know, whoever is interested in the way I've seen the website, how it works, I think that's really important. So thank you for offering this webinar. Thank you. Any other discussion about our website marketing update? This for me, this flows right into the next item, the services or fees. Yeah, go ahead, Chuck. Somehow an ask about outlook was added into the next agenda item, but I don't know why. Maybe you can elaborate on that. Absolutely. The same as with the construction, where we plan on going in the next few weeks. My sense was that we were talking about that, where we're going in the next few weeks with having the webinar ready, additional testing. So just kind of looking forward what's happening between now and our next meeting, June 16th or 12th or whatever it is. Thank you. In my mind, I got that conflated with outlook, the application. So thank you. Oh my gosh. No, we're not even going to go there. Thank you very much. Okay. So. Again, everything. Everything is coming together here very quickly. And when you're, when, when, as, as I've come to understand, because this is nowhere my field of expertise in the slightest, but, but what I've come to understand is that as we're pulling everything together and especially as we're pulling the website. Together where we need to make information available. We've been finding that there are bits of information that we don't have. And that there are decisions that need to be made that we haven't made. And, and that as we're moving forward, we're going to have to make some decisions on the edge. If you will. It's going to keep popping up for us. And certainly it's going to come up in the next. Three weeks, let's say four weeks where we're really getting ready to go live. And then as we learn. In future where we may need to tweak things on the website. Those decisions again are going to have to be made. And what we've, what we've. Been doing is we've always asked. For authority to make decisions at the various levels that, that we operate. And what, what, what we have now is we have the authority with the, the, the, the governing board and the executive committee. We've established our rate structure and, you know, our basic service plan and our rate structure. But we, we haven't really finalized some of the things along the edge that, that, that we're, we're still working out like with weights field. So for example, if somebody wants telephone service. Or, and they need wiring in the house. You know, how does that, how does that get addressed on the website? You know, what's the, what's the fee for that? What's the, you know, what, how does that, how is that going to work? These, these kinds of items that we don't want to keep coming back to the governing board to decide. We, we, the finance committee in their, in their most recent meeting recommended that these kinds of things come to the executive committee instead of the governing board because the executive committee meets every couple of weeks. The, the executive committee is a smaller quorum. If we need to make a decision, because the things on our website, we don't want it to be wrong or blank, you know, as, as, as, as we, as we learn these items where we need to fill the gaps. So I've put together a motion that is in, in, it's a, it's a pelleteer-esque motion that basically lays out where the authority has come from and is, is requesting that the authority to make these decisions rest with the executive committee so that we can be, we can be fluid enough and that the, the governing board is notified of these decisions. And of course the governing board can always say, hey, wait, we didn't like that. But the idea is, is that we, we get the fluidity and we're able to go back and forth with Watesfield and, and whoever else we may need to talk with about making these decisions without having to come all the way back to the governing board and certainly do not have special, special meetings. I don't think these decisions necessarily need to be at the governing board level, which is why I'm going to bring forward this, this motion. I'm going to put it in the chat. So bear with me because I am, I'm not going to type it. I am a one finger typist, but I, I, I have it here in the chat. Bear with me a second. Second. That's very good. That's, that's, that's very good. Okay. So I'm just doing select all. Okay. And now I'm going back to the chat. Please excuse me as I fumble through this. It's how you paste, right? It didn't go. Why not? You have to hit enter. Hit enter. No, I am looking for. You have to copy the selection. I did. Well, I did select all. Oh, now control C. I'm sorry. Oh my goodness. Don't embarrass yourself. You know, I'm beyond, beyond embarrassment. Let me tell you. All right. Let me read this. Please. So whereas on the 9th of November, 2022, the executive committee approved the CV fiber subscription rate plan dated 9 November, 2022. And recommended that the governing board ratify the CV fiber subscription rate plan dated 9 November, 2022. Whereas on 11 November, 2022, the governing board ratified the CV fiber subscription rate plan dated 9 November, 2022 and authorized the executive committee to oversee the publication of the plan at such time and in such manner as it determines to be appropriate. Whereas the CV fiber subscription rate plan dated 9 November, 2022 was available to the public in the webinar dated 16 November, 2022 and is currently available on the CV fiber website. Whereas the executive committee approved the outline of subscription terms and conditions dated 22 November, 2022 and notified the board of the same on 13 December, 2023. Whereas during the development of the CV fiber website and in consultation with Watesfield telecom and other CUDs, the need to determine ancillary services and associated fees has become apparent. Whereas the finance committee on the 4th of May, 2023 recommended that the governing board be made aware that determination of ancillary services and associated fees is necessary and that exploration of such services and fees is being performed as a component of the website development. It is moved that the governing board authorize the executive committee to set and publicize such ancillary services and fees as may be required after consultation with the finance committee, Watesfield telecom and others and to notify the governing board after determinations have been made. Second. I think that was Jeremy underneath Chauvin's exuberance. He's closer so the electrons didn't have to go as far. Seconded by Jeremy, is there any discussion on this? I tried to make it transparent. The whole point here is to be transparent and accountable and make sure as I had discussed earlier with some folks, we have two types of trust that we rely on here. One type of trust is internal. Vertically through the association, through the governing board and the committees and the executive committee, there's a trust among all of us there. There's also a trust with the public that the public knows that we're transparent and that the public trusts that what we say we're doing, we're doing and what we've done, we've actually done. So I think it's important to be transparent and have this kind of authority very specifically be allowed for the governing board. Is there, Alan, please. I'm having just a little bit of a problem with understanding what the very end of this motion is asking. And what I'm confused about is what after determinations have been made. I don't know what that means. It makes sense, the beginning of this last paragraph makes sense. People are notified about what we're doing. But I don't know what it is to notify the governing. What is the determination? The determination that this service is going to be available and the fee will be so much after having worked this through with weights field to make sure it fits in with what we're doing and consultation with typically other CUDs to make sure that we're all on the same page and understand what each other is doing. So that the determination would be to say that we're going to do these services at this fee and publicize it. We're going to put it on the website. That's the determination. And that the governing board needs to be notified. Okay. So it's not a system of how we're going to set these fees or whatever. It's every time that we do engage in setting a fee for something that's come up, the governing board is going to be notified. Is that correct? That was my intention in this, yes. And I apologize for not making that clear. Okay. I think we have Maggie and then I believe Tom also has a stand-up. And I'm kind of with Alan. I'm slightly confused by the wording at the end. I'm just curious as to, I do understand, given we're talking about finances, why the finance committee would have involvement with this, but we're talking, as you said, about trust both within this organization and with the public. And so I'm curious why consultation with the communications committee wouldn't be able to bring this to the executive committee's attention. And then at that point, if the executive committee felt that it was important enough to take forward, they could do so. I don't think the communications committee would do anything untoward that was going to hurt the organization any more than the financial finance committee would. And please, talk amongst yourselves and explain to me. It's not about doing anything untoward or hurt. The idea is really anything that has to do with fees really should have the finance committee's consultation. The finance committee needs to know that. That's all that was intended there. We're talking about fees. The finance committee needs to know and be consulted. And Tom Fisher. So first, I have no problem with the way this is written. I think the key verbs there are set with the executive committee is free to set the ancillary service and fees. Also that it mentions finance committee, WCVT and others. I think others is possibly including other committees. It probably depends on the particular topic that is at, you know, executive committees at their table. I did want to ask if at that finance committee, we had not long ago, Thursday, that the major debate at the time was whether or not minor like dollar, single dollar changes to rates could be, could that alteration be made by the executive committee in order to better potentially outreach with marketing and so forth. So I just wanted to make sure that this motion is covering that need or if there's been discussion at the executive committee and this is where we've landed on fine with that. Just want to make sure we didn't miss anything. Well, it was not missed. Actually, it's, it's purposefully not a part of this, this motion to, to be able to change the rate, the rates that we already have that are, that are, that are out to the public. That, that is something that still goes through the executive committee and ratified that, that our rate structure, our main rate structure that, that is, comes from our business plan and is, is, you know, works towards the, the, the bulk of the fees that we're going to be collecting that is, that hasn't, that's the authorization for that has not changed and is not addressed in this. Chuck, give me one second. Okay. Tom, do you want to, do you need, do you want to respond to that? Nope, I'm all set. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Chuck and then Linda, please. Question, which is, if there were a determination made in the communications committee and or by Maggie and or in partnership with a marketing firm, something like that, that it would behoove us to introduce like short-term discounting or, you know, limited time discounts or, or, you know, promotional pricing and periods and things of that nature. Do you perceive that sort of thing as falling under the jurisdiction of this as well? I do. I do. Thank you. I think that's, that's, that's probably a good example. David supports the motion, but he has to leave. Jeremy, are we going to still have quorum? Yeah, we had, we have 12 people on. So now we're down to 11 with David leaving. And if we lose one more, then we cannot conduct any business. Okay. Linda, go ahead, please. So last, we had Crawford giving us some advice, but not necessarily on pricing. And now, so we, we haven't had a good marketing plant, I'm going to say, to the prices that we chose to begin with. I think it's really important in the future that we take the marketing research and the marketing opinion into consideration on pricing, not only on descriptions of our price, of our product, but also on pricing because the way people perceive us through the pricing is very important. We are trying to build trust with our customers. And if the pricing looks sleazy, then the customers are going to think that we are not trustworthy. So I think it's really important to keep these kind of aspects in view even with the previous voting that we had last, last year where we didn't have marketing consultation on these issues. Point taken. I think that's an important point. We are, we are certainly learning as we move, as we move forward. Additional discussion. Shall we go to a vote on this before we lose anybody else? Hearing no additional discussion. Are there any opposed to the motion? I would just suggest that instead of specifying a committee, why can't we say, I mean, we're being so broad, right? We're saying and others. So maybe with the appropriate committee or committees, we're talking about services and fees, right? We're not just talking about fees. So it's silly to say one committee versus a committee or committees or, or even just leave out committees and because we have weights field and others. Well, I had finance committee in there. As I said, because I don't know why this would mess, I could foresee where the communications committee would be as important to a decision about services and fees. Right. We're talking about services and fees. Right. We're not just talking about fees. I said, because we specifically talk about fees, I can say with, with CV five with the appropriate CV five or committees, plural. I can do that better because it, we have, we, we shouldn't assume that services and fees would take out policy committee or planning and, you know, operations and planning committee or communications committee. I think all of the committees are equally important in deciding on services and fees. I'll go with that. I will take that as a friendly. Amendment. So I've, I've changed. Um, I have, I have changed the, the, the wording now to say after consultation with the appropriate CV fiber committees. That's some parentheses. Um, and then it continues. And so no longer mentions the finance committee. It includes all committees and I like that better. Yes. Does, uh, who seconded this? Did that, does this. Make a motion. I just. Does it change the second for you, Linda? No, I like the, I like the amendment. Okay. I like the amendment. Very good. So any other discussion. So let's vote on the. Um, let's, let's vote on the motion. With the, including the friendly amendment. Are there any opposed. To the motion. Are there any abstain abstentions? The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Um, I will. I think I'll, I can, I can copy this and put it back in the. Put it back in the chat. Um, with the, with the change. Um, Um, Okay. Where are we now? Financial services support. Okay. So I think this one, this one is, is, is for me to, uh, just provide some information. There's no action. Required here. The CUDA. Has. Um, Come to terms and, and hired a firm. P F M. That is a. Financial advisor in a fiduciary sense. They are the folks that would. Provide information and support. To anyone that any, any, um, CUD that wants to go to the bond market. Or maybe wants to go to the bank. Or maybe he's looking for any other vehicle. Where, um, We could get some funds. That would be a loan of some type, a note of some type. Um, and V CUDA has hired these folks. They, I use the term fiduciary because they definitely would work for the CUD in the CUD's interest. They're not an underwriter. Who is just basically, You know, You know, They're not a middleman that pulls everybody together and makes it happen. These folks work in our, Would work in our interest if they were working for us. Um, The CUDA has, um, Has a, uh, A task order with them and we have started talking with them about what the possibilities are. What information we need to provide. What, what, what would they need to help steer us in the right direction to look at the market for funds that would be available to us. Um, Exploratory at the moment where we're learning about what we need. Um, in order to enter this market. And, you know, Part of this, of course, Is to fill the funding gap that we need. But the VCBB is also working on the funding gap. So, you know, We don't know how that gap is going to be closed, But we're moving forward on multiple fronts. Um, Including alternative grants to do that. Um, And. The alternative grants. We are also looking at alternative grant application support. We are also looking at, um, We are also looking at alternative grant application support. We are also looking at the possibility of having a contract that that could would be done at the executive committee level. But we are looking at the possibility of having a contract to support us in fulfilling our grant applications that, that we additional grants that we're looking for from the federal government. Um, So, We are looking at our information intensive time intensive. We just don't have the wherewith. We really don't have the wherewithal to do this in a timely manner. And if, if, uh, well, I won't speak for him, but. But David knows what it takes to pull together all the information for a federal grant. And it's a lot. So we are, we are looking at. Uh, A colleague team. Uh, Another, uh, Consultant that they work with. That focuses on getting getting applications into these federal grants in a timely manner. We are talking about that with them. We're still identifying grants where we're talking about options. Um, We came close at one time to pulling the trigger. Um, And then we found out that there was some preliminary information and found that. It just, it, it, we, we, it wasn't going to fly. We couldn't, we couldn't meet the criteria that were needed for the grant. Uh, Jeanille, do you have anything that you'd like to add to, to the couple of things that I just, I just listed here. Yeah. So in, in, in looking at long-term viability, um, and how to, how to get a better take rate and, uh, we're, we're talking with weights field about strategy for how we sell the, um, services to the consumer and looking at competition and thinking about the top line as well as, um, grants. So we're taking a more, um, we're taking a broader look at all of the funding options, including grants and going to the bond market and other creative, um, charity type, um, situations as well as, um, leveraging local organizations, um, and, and top line marketing and increasing revenue. Um, so we're, we're looking broadly at this and discussing this with, with the, with the CUDA as well. Um, and among other CUDs. So we're taking a quite a broad perspective of long-term sustainability. If, if anybody is wondering my, my 30,000 foot perspective on this is, is quite simple. The less we need to borrow to complete our universal service obligation, the lower our fees will be to our subscribers. And the more folks that we have the higher our take rate, the, the, the better opportunity to lower our fees or to have funds that we can use in other ways for the benefit of our subscribers. So those are the, those are the, the, the two things that we're, we're working on. And, you know, now that we have Maggie on board, it's, it's, uh, it's something that doesn't all, you know, we're, we're, we're spreading the load with folks with expertise in these, in these areas. So, um, my, I, I really would like to see our fees lowered in the, in the long-term. But that's, that's, that's just so you know where I am. If there's any, any question about that, there shouldn't be any additional discussion on, on this in general. Happy five years. Well, hearing none, I recommend that we adjourn at 715. Siobhan, you're in control of the, uh, recording. Could you, could you please email the recording to, um, Sybil in the morning and Jeremy Matt, please. All right. The meeting is adjourned at 715. Thank you, everybody. And I'm going to add the, the change in the chat right now.