 We're now live, so I'm gonna call the meeting to order. Before we start on the agenda, there's been one addition under 431, but I wanted to let the committee know I received a request from DFR on our insurance market bill, all 20 lines of it. And in there, it says that the new forms will be reviewed by, rates and forms will be reviewed by the Green Mountain Care Board and DFR. Well, I guess Blue Cross has said they are not going to use new forms. Therefore, DFR doesn't have to review them. The request was that we just strike DFR. I got, by the time I got to my emails, it was five o'clock last night and I knew I wasn't gonna get a draft or get it done for the day. I've put in a request for a draft. If that doesn't happen, and I will put this in, I just wanted you to know. If I don't get the draft back, because I'm sure Jen Carby is up to her eyeballs drafting. I will let it pass. I did suggest the DFR contact, the House Health Committee, to my understanding, they are putting their version of this bill on to S88, so it will be coming back to us. So just wanted to let you know that's where we are. And without objection, that's where I will continue. Okay, we're going back to 360 broadband, our favorite topic next to PPP payments. And we had a couple of requests and one was from Molly Duggan. Duggan wanted to talk about broadband and housing. And this is so Molly, I'm gonna open it to you. And then we have Kathy Byer that is also on. And tell us what you're thinking and what we might do to this bill to help. Wonderful, first of all, thank you so much, Madam Chair and the rest of the committee for getting us in today. My name is Molly Duggan for the record. I am the Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Cathedral Square. This is a new position within Cathedral Square for me, but I've been at Cathedral Square for over a decade and before this new position was Director of the statewide SASH program, which stands for Support and Services at Home. So I know some of you through my role with SASH. And my partner in crime here today is Kathy Byer, who I'm gonna go ahead and let her introduce herself and then she's actually gonna kick it off. So we're gonna kind of tag T. Okay, this is your Dog and Pony show, so. Wonderful, thank you so much. Go ahead, Kathy. Thanks, Molly. Yes, I'm Kathy Byer, I'm Vice President for Real Estate Development at Ever North and some of you may remember my company was formerly called Housing Vermont. We in the last year merged with a sister organization, sister nonprofit based out of Portland, Maine. And we now work in the three Northern New England states. So we needed a name change. We couldn't be Housing Vermont anymore. So we are Ever North. And in Vermont, we partner with nonprofit housing developers and public housing authorities across the state. We have developed over 6,000 units of affordable rental housing in our 30-plus year history. And that's why we wanted to talk with you today. I'm gonna attempt to share my screen. We'd like to talk with you on behalf of the owners of all affordable rental housing across the state. And that are, those are nonprofits, those are public housing authorities and they represent over 10,000 rental apartments. And of course that's more than 10,000 people. And as you no doubt know, our residents have a high, a high percent of our residents are very low income below 30% of median income, meaning they earn less than $19,000 a year and in fact, many of them are also below 60% of median. So they very much meet the HUD definition of low and moderate income households. Our residents are also more diverse than the average statewide population and we house several folks with disability. So with that little brief overview, I'm gonna turn it back to Molly. Great, thanks Kathy. So we wanted to take this opportunity. We know that your committee has been spending a lot of time on the broadband bills, H360 in particular. And I've been able to listen in to some of the testimony and know that it is very important to your committee the issues around affordability of broadband as well as the need for a delivery mechanism to increase the access for all Vermonters to this essential service. And what we wanted to bring forward today is to make sure that you understand that we have through the affordable housing network in our state, a ready-made built platform to provide or at least be part of that delivery mechanism for you all to consider. And what I'm sharing with you now is the SASH model, which I know a lot of you know about. It's been around now for over a decade and the state has invested in it as well as the federal all payer model funds. But this is an example of how we have used the affordable housing network in the state to improve health equity across the state. And what this map is showing is we have 22 separate nonprofit and all the public housing authorities that are part of the SASH network. And all of the yellow stars that you see on the map are actual buildings that are owned managed by the 22 different affordable housing organizations. And they operate the SASH program out of those buildings. And what that means is we have embedded healthcare staff in those buildings as well as care coordinators. And we partner formally with community organizations as well. So all of the housing organizations are providing the service and we're doing it as a cohesive unit. And we are ready and able to take on other ways to improve equity throughout our state. Why don't you give this committee? Because even being on health and welfare you've come a long way since we first started you. And I'm not sure how much familiarity the other members have. So maybe a little more detail on what SASH is and what it does. And when I remember you, we were having somebody in the building visit to make sure people took their meds over the weekend when other services weren't available. It started very basic. And it sounds like it's grown a long way from there. Yes, thank you, Senator. We've come a long way and thank you for giving me the opportunity to describe a little bit more about SASH. I've done it long enough. I have a pretty good elevator speech I think. But basically, as I said, we use the affordable housing network around the state to provide for a embedded registered nurse in all of the buildings where you see these stars, the gold stars, as well as a full-time care coordinator. We call them a SASH coordinator. So they work out of the building as part of a team with community provider agency staff. And who I'm talking about there is primarily area agencies on aging, local home health agencies, as well as mental health designated agencies and primary care. And honestly, the federally qualified health centers we partner with formally as well. And so what we have established is a team of support and healthcare as well as wellness and care coordination in all of these housing sites so that we are able to work with our residents on a whole host of things that they determine for themselves what they wanna work on. So it's absolutely person-centered, person-directed. So we have residents and participants with myriad of chronic conditions. This is the SASH program primarily serves older adults and adults with disabilities. It's funded through the all-payer model but with Medicare funds. So we focus on helping our participants manage their chronic disease. We focus on mental health challenges on accessing the benefits that they're eligible for which that they often don't understand that they're eligible for. And so it's really driven by the needs of the participants that we serve. And as the chair mentioned, it doesn't matter how big or small the housing site is, they have access to this SASH team. The hours are gonna depend on the needs so how many people are in the building but it is the same team. They build relationships and they're able to help connect the dots for our residents. One thing that I would add that we've done recently that's very much connected to the broadband work you all are working on now is of course the pandemic has caused some challenges for our delivery system because we had to pull our staff out of the buildings initially and for some period of time. But that said, we were able to retain contact with our residents by phone and through things like these meetings, Zoom meetings but we realized very quickly, not surprising that our residents either did not have the equipment to do these kind of meetings or did not have the broadband at all. And so one of the things we did in the fall was utilize the program through the Vermont program for healthcare quality, VPQHC to get almost 300 iPads distributed through this SASH network to have established lending libraries of five iPads per SASH site so that we could ensure to the greatest extent possible the ability for our residents and participants to get to their healthcare appointments to get to socialization with their family. But and so while we've had success with that we also learned the challenges that exist around broadband access and affordability. So, are there any questions about the SASH before we? Maybe I can only see two of you. So if you any questions about SASH? Not hearing any, so we can keep moving. And we do have five, and so Chair Cummins we have grown a lot, we have 5,000 participants across the state and since 2010 when we started we've served over 9,000 Vermonters with the SASH program. So it has grown like you said. So the point here is that we have a network, we have a group of willing housing providers that are looking to not just identify that there is a challenge around broadband for our residents but we want to be part of the solution. So in your housing is there Wi-Fi in your housing or? That's got a perfect segue. Right, where we want to go. So both Cadence Garwood Corporation and Ever North have successfully installed free building-wide Wi-Fi in over in 30 buildings. And what, you know, in some ways the concept's pretty simple, right? You, you know, you have a lot of people you, whether it's fiber optic or existing cable in the street, we take that, run it to our building and we establish one business account owned by the building owner. And then we put radios throughout the building to extend the Wi-Fi. So, and the building owner pays for the monthly cost of that internet service. Now, I want to be clear, every apartment is hardwired. So every resident, if they choose, can sign up to have their individual residential account. That's absolutely the case in every one of our apartment buildings. But I mean, you all know this, that individual residential account can cost anywhere from $60 to $100 a month. And we had a resident who had three children who were, you know, remote learning and she needed the higher speed bandwidth and she was paying $110 a month. So, by taking this approach where the building owner establishes a platform that residents, if they choose, can give up their individual account and have free access. And our data has shown where we've done this is that about 50% of the residents choose to use the building-wide Wi-Fi for whatever reasons they some decide to keep their own. And that we have had positive reports on the bandwidth availability. And like, you know, people aren't competing for bandwidth within the building. But the amazing thing are just the stories we're hearing from residents who have a woman moved in to Regents Community Housing with their child. And she said, I just, I no longer have to pay $80 a month and $80 is really meaningful for her. So, what we, we both could, ever North and Cathedral Square kind of just stumbled upon this like, oh, what if we tried this and it's working? And we realized like, we've done it in 30 buildings and we have like, we, as Molly showed with the SASH model we can reach so many more properties. And that's what we wanted to present to you what we think is a tool for really getting at the equitable access, particularly for the renter population. I assume that this only works if there is high speed or, you know, adequate broadband in your area. Can I also assume that a lot, not most or all of your housing is in more built up areas? Yeah, yeah. So we tend to not come across some of the difficulties of the communities that are really challenged on broadband and certainly in many of the communities the fiber optic is available. But our approach is neutral. Whether it's fiber optic or existing cable, our approach once we get in the building works to get free internet to our residents. Right, Molly. Mary. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, Senator Brock. I'm just wondering of the various providers around the state that you use to provide you with service. Can you give me an idea of who the providers are and what it might cost you for building? Sure. We frequently work with Comcast. So then instead of being on the residential side of Comcast, we're on the commercial side of Comcast. So we set up a commercial account. And honestly, it's like $150 a month. It's not, I'm almost afraid to say that, but it's not that bad. And now it's sort of how many people for apartments? So the largest building we have it in is in Burlington now that Cambrian Rise at 76 units. So that's with the Berlin, that's not Comcast, but. Burlington Tower, Tom. Yeah. Yeah, and we have, this is Molly again from Cathedral Square. We have, I think, I believe we're using Burlington Telecom in our large flagship building in downtown Burlington, the high rise, and that's over a hundred units. And I will say that we do have, even when you're in the urban areas where you have the really strong internet coming to the buildings, you can still be challenged to deliver the high quality access to all of the apartments because of things like the building materials that some of the older buildings are made of like our flagship building, three cathedral square. It was made with like concrete or whenever it was built way back when, I'm not a developer, but yeah. So we have been challenged by that. So we've put in kind of hot spot wifi extenders to improve the quality because again, we want there to be equitable access. So no matter what apartment you're in, you should have just as good access. So, and I think that's something that, I can speak broadly for the nonprofit and public housing sector that that's the kind of thinking we're always doing is around how to make sure that we're focused on those issues. And are you finding that there's sufficient bandwidth in some of your larger projects so that people who work at home can do so so we can get telemedicine so that kids can go to school and so on and what sort of internet speed, download and upload speeds are you seeing? You're gonna, Molly and I are not the technical people. So if we need to bring in a technical person, I can tell you that but we are able to monitor where we've installed it and we've surveyed our residents and we've had adequate bandwidth for their uses. I will say that if you're a gamer, I'm not sure that this would be adequate. So, but doing your homework and telehealth, yeah. Great, thank you. Yeah, and that's the same with Cathedral Square and we serve, Cathedral Square are kind of niche is older adults and adults with disabilities. We don't tend to have as many, young children in our buildings unless we do have some grandparents that are caring for their children but we have not had complaints about the speed of the service with our residents. Good, great, thank you. Yeah, so we just have- Okay, there you go. Yeah, we have this final slide and what we are hoping you all will consider as you're working through the broadband bills is just really, again, investing in equitable access and thinking about using the housing that the state and the federal government has already invested in and we have more value to add. And we believe that what we just talked through which Kathy just described is a really effective way to get at that issue where if there could be an investment in forehousing organizations such as Cathedral Square and Ever North to install the building-wide Wi-Fi that the cost that is approximately $10,000 in building could really make a huge difference in providing equitable access and saving really important funds to our residents who are extremely low income. So we hope that's something that you can consider. We want to make sure that you know we are here to be a resource and happy to do so. So happy to take any questions or have any further discussion. You're asked from us, how many buildings do you have that don't have Wi-Fi right now? Do you know? If we talk about the whole, not just the Ever North or Cathedral Square- Yeah, the whole. Right, so we've installed in 30 buildings and there's probably, you know, I guess another 300 buildings easily, may probably, yeah. So we've got 250 to 300, it might be even more. I mean, obviously we bring on new buildings every year and hope to be. We keep building more housing. All right, and your request is then that these buildings be made eligible for grants under the Wi-Fi bill that these kinds of projects? Absolutely. That this is a really cost-effective and efficient way to meet some of the goals. We know that you all are considering in our priority. So if you can invest in a network like the affordable housing one, we think that would be a really, really good use of the funds. Senator Hardy, you have a question? Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Molly and Kathy for the presentation. My one question is, so if the installation of the hardware and the wiring throughout the building regardless of whether it's fiber or cable is 10,000 or on average 10,000, does that include the equipment like the hotspot things or the extenders and does it include any other equipment that would be in each unit? It includes the equipment, the extenders and then there's no equipment in the units because it's just like when you go to the coffee shop and say, what's your password? So I can use your... Okay. And then you're not making an ask for the monthly fee that would be sort of included in the cost of running the building for the owner, right? Exactly. Okay. Is that upfront kind of capital investment if you will that we need? And your buildings are, I think Senator Cummings asked or maybe Senator Brock mostly in places that already have access to high speed internet. So it's not a matter of extending to where your buildings are. It's just a matter of getting your buildings wired. Yeah. I think I would say that that's definitely true for the organizations that Kathy and I are representing. So Cathedral Square, which is primarily in Chittenden County and Franklin County. But there are other housing organizations certainly that participate in the SASH program. So we're represented in that map that I think do have challenges in that regard. So I just wanna be clear that it's not in totality every affordable housing organization doesn't have an issue with high speed coming to their building. So cause I know there are issues. Right. I saw you had a few yellow dots in like Essex County and the Northeast Kingdom. I'm just gonna say, yeah. Harder, yeah. Bingo. Bingo. Got it. Thank you. There is an old school house that's been turned into senior housing in Plainfield. I don't know who owns that. I think it might be publicly owned but there are congregate housing for people with lower incomes that are frequently funded by smaller groups. So. Absolutely. And they may have more trouble getting the actual wifi. Okay. So any other questions? Senator Sorotkin. Thank you, Kathy and Molly. So you have wired Cathedral Square in Burlington and Cambria Heights in Burlington. Did, who did the job? Is it Burlington Telecom? We actually found, right now, one person that we use over and over again that we bring in as a sub, he's not an electrician but he knows this. So I, again, I'm not a technical expert. Private contractor. Private contractor. All right. I'm trying to understand, I mean, those are big buildings. Does the wiring have to go to just one spot in the building or is the wires have to go to sort of radio stations throughout in each apartment? That's a good question. You definitely have the point of access to the building and usually to the utility room in the building. It's, it works best if you can actually run wires to your extenders around the building. So when we're doing new construction, we can plan for this and like we run the wire and it's pretty straightforward. It's a little harder to retrofit buildings because you have to manage that piece, but you're not running wire to every apartment. Exactly, right. Oh, is it, is there a big variable in terms of a big building versus a congregate housing site of eight units? Is the cost a lot less for the smaller unit or are they comparable whether you have a high rise or you have a small building? The cost, honestly, it's on a per unit basis. It's higher for the small unit, small buildings. And what's the, what's most complicated is if we have kind of like a scattered, say you have eight duplexes, that's probably the most expensive because every year you're gonna have to touch every building and it's more economical to do the larger buildings. Okay. But you've got, this is a pretty, you can demonstrate that on average, it's gonna cost you $10,000 per building. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm curious, is this sort of in the retrofit bucket and part of the question I guess is in a brand new build or is this already standard equipment that is baked into the building costs or because the reason I ask is there's sort of buckets of money and one of the buckets of money that is in front of the legislature is helping people retrofit and upgrade housing. So I'm curious, I guess just for my thinking, if you're building a brand new building that hasn't been gone yet, is this baked into that cost? We try to plan for it, but honestly, this is fairly new what we're doing and it's like, it's that one more investment when we get to the end of the project and like, do I have enough money for it? And I've got an example of a building I'm working on that I really wanna install this but my contingency is not holding out. So I'm hoping I'm gonna be able to install it. So we definitely are planning for it in new construction. We can't always write that last $10,000 check and then in retrofits, we just, this is not something we did 10 years ago. Even Molly, when did you start doing this five years ago? Like five years ago, yeah. So I agree with Kathy, it's not a given that it can be available in every new property just because you're constantly looking at your budget, you're constantly looking for, do you have to cut costs because material prices have gone up and it's a trade-off, is it, are you giving up something else to do this? So I think it's really both. It's retrofitting and for new is what we're looking for. Other questions? I'm not seeing any, up, Senator Bray. Thank you. So a quick question on new construction. Even if you can't afford the full installation, do you run fiber around or conduit around or something that facilitates a later installation? While things are still open and easy to get to or sometimes you just, there's no money even for that. That's a good question. And we do, we do try to do that but like, if that's the minimum we can do, just be clear, fiber optic comes to the building and you don't bring fiber into the building, right? Cause it's like someone described it to me, fiber optics like the interstate and you don't bring the interstate into your building to service each apartment. But the, if we can plan for it, which I think we're gonna be doing more and more in new construction to at least leave the option available so we can do this in the future. Thank you. One more question. Sandra Sirachan, yep. So can you guys provide us sort of with some proformas as to why this makes sense in terms of much outlay? I mean, we're gonna work really hard to subsidize these people's monthly bills. I'd just like to see how long of a timeframe it is before we get a payback on that that we'd rather put the money upfront and alleviate that subsidy or remove that subsidy. So, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Kathy, thank you for the good work. And you've given us something to think about, something new. So I, it's very interesting. Let's see where we go with it. Okay. Thank you so much for your time everyone. Thanks. And continuing on 360. Madam chair. Yes. You had asked us to think about this whole kitten caboodle over the weekend. And so I did and I wrote down some things and I don't know the best way to share them with the committee. Okay. We are going to, because chairs got canceled today, we're going to have a committee discussion at the end. Okay. Can this wait till then? Absolutely. And if you want them shared with the committee, if you send them to faith, she can get the thoughts out. I'll be there right now. Before the discussion. Okay. We have next is Irv Tomei and he is the former chair of BC Fiber. I understand you're now head of government relations. So welcome to government. But we had been talking and I know Irv, you talked to us a lot about issues with poll ready. We've also heard a lot about poll harvesting. We did some things. We have gotten some emails from FX and other folks about especially the make ready work, which seemed to be the big issue. Once you knew where you wanted to go was just getting those polls ready for your fiber. So that would give you a chance to kind of fill us in on what is happening. Is this something that we need to be worried about now or is it improved enough so we can let it run its course? We can't hear you, Irv. I don't know what you've got, but it's, you try adjusting your microphone down a little bit because we can't. Problem is it's, it was better. Nope. Can't hear you at all. When you reach down and you touch something and we heard you for a couple of seconds there. I didn't hear you, but it's kind of like a very distant pilot on the radio to the tower. Can you try adjusting your microphone down a little lower? I think a lot of those are, nope, we're not hearing you at all. Can you hear me now? Yes. All right. Okay. This is the only microphone that's reliable and I hadn't plugged it into the computer. Oh, that helps. Yes, it certainly does. I apologize. Now, actually I have a range of things I hope to discuss with you folks today, but in response first to your question, Make Ready has been going much better for us. Green Mountain Power has been very cooperative. CCI, not quite so much. It used to be when they were co-owners of poles that they would go along on the so-called write out. The write out is where a technical person from each of the entities that have something on the poles, they all go out together in a pickup truck and look at each pole and agree on what needs to be done. CCI no longer does that. But then they send somebody out a few days later who then says, oh, this ought to be done too. If they can spare the time. CCI is who? Is that consolidated? Yes. Okay. The phone company. The big... Solidated communications, all right. If they can spare somebody two or three days or a week later to go look, why can't they spare somebody to cooperate with the write out process that leads to a coherent picture of what needs to be done? I don't know what you can do to get them to cooperate, although this is a phone issue and you may have some regulatory... The state has some regulatory authority when it comes to telephone service. It's the plan line we do. Yeah. So... But generally, I think MakeReady is working much better. FX will speak later in the week with you about the poll data collection issue. I have some prepared slides, which I've provided to Faith. And I could... We could try to share my screen or I can try to talk from them. What is... So if you've given them to Faith, they're up on our website. Can you share your screen? I believe that could be done. Okay. Is Faith prepared to share the slides? I just made her co-host. I'm trying to schedule Senate Health and Welfare. It would be great if she could share her screen. Okay. I'm now simply trying to find a way to get the slideshow less than full. Okay, I'm going to do it this way so that I can also see the meeting and see any questions. Well, no, we're pretty good at this. Okay. All right. Well, first... This is a small committee. They're good at hollering. I know. Okay. To identify myself, I'm a Norwich resident, long since retired. I had a career partly as a college professor, partly as an independent software developer. And I've been a community activist for a very long time as well. Longstanding members of the committee may remember my involvement in school funding topics. I have been, I have represented my own town of Norwich on the governing board of EC Fiber since it first came together formally in April of 2008. I ended up first on the executive committee a couple of years later and then as vice chair and then when the chair decided that his day job was overwhelming him, I became chair in, well, he stepped down in November of 2012 and I was elected in my own right in December of 2012. And then reelected every May until last May, I decided that since I would be turning 80 last fall, it was time to step back a little bit and rest a bit. Whereupon the next was elected and immediately asked me to continue as quote, government relations officer, which is a nice way of saying that I enjoy talking with you folks and he decided that I should go on trying to do that. Anyway, you know, when I wrote individually members of the committee last Friday, I misstated, I said that I had served until May of 2019. I was thinking last May, 2019. That's, you know, that's another effect of the past COVID year. We have all lost a year. Haven't we though? All right. Okay, so let me try. Okay, I think these are the major goals. And I listened to your proceedings. I've listened to many of your meetings, especially your discussion last Friday. I was really heartened to hear strong agreement. We need full strength broadband any place that's inhabited and on the grid. If we fund more money, if we fund more of 25-3, we're creating another digital divide because sooner or later that will be inadequate and we will find a group of people that are still behind. 100, 100 practically speaking means fiber and it means something that can easily be upgraded as the speed requirements expand. Chris, Senator Bray was quite right to point out last Friday that as time goes on, 100 and 100 is going to become passe and there will be needs for much higher speeds. I think it is absolutely essential that any public money that's distributed for broadband build out in any way should require full geographic coverage. I heard the phone company folks say, well, there will be locations for which a business case cannot be made. So we won't go there. That's more of the same. That is what they have been doing. That's why EC fiber came into existence way back then in 2008. That's why CUDs have become a statewide movement because the corporate sector is beholden to stockholders and must achieve a certain level of profitability. CUDs, anybody that gets funds should be publicly accountable for building and operating networks that deliver the advertised capabilities. Some of you may remember John Roy who was our treasurer for many years and still serves on the board of Valley Net. He and his wife moved from Versher back to Boston a few years ago. But he used to say, the providers advertise up to such and such a speed. Well, you don't go into the supermarket and buy up to a pound of butter. And why should we accept that? Why do we accept that from broadband providers? Okay, I will try to move faster here. I want to review very quickly. Can you take over? I have to check on something for a minute. Okay. I want to review our early history very quickly. We came together first as an interlocal contract voted by town meetings ratified by select boards. There were one or two select boards whose towns had voted for it, but the select board refused. Later, we didn't qualify for the stimulus relief money back in the great financial meltdown of 2008 and nine. Late in 2010, three individuals who wanted to see, wanted to prove that rural broadband could be effective lent $250,000 each for a demonstration project so that we could build a hub and about 25 miles of fiber optic cable. Those were long-term loans with no payments at the outset and high interest which would accrue and be capitalized. So that was a long-term liability of significant size but not one hanging over us immediately. As soon as we started building people on roads adjacent to the thoroughfare we built along it was down into the town of Barnard and back from our hub in Royalton out through Bethel and down I think it's route 12 into Barnard and back. Said what about us? And so we started offering unsecured promissory notes in multiples of $2,500. Initially the interest was high, no payments for the first 18 months because the money would be used to build the infrastructure whose revenue would pay them back. Ultimately over the next few years we raised $6 million and the median investment was 5,000. In other words, more than half of those, about half of those investors put in $2,500. That's crowdfunding. We came to the legislature as some of you also will recall and I recall with gratitude. We came to you in 2015 with draft legislation to create the communication union district structure which is a municipal district akin to a water district or sewer district but not funded from local taxes, which is the key difference. With when that law was passed in May of 2015 we began to set up a parallel structure, the new district and on the 1st of January, 2016 we transferred all assets and liabilities to the new structure. With that municipal standing and by now we had three years of audit results, we used should $9 million of bonds. I need to correct a slight misstatement by FX. We didn't pay off all of our bonds that first year. We paid off the half or so on which a payment was due within that year. Some of the bonds were longer term or zero coupon, I'll pay off at the end. And we used about half of the, roughly half of that bonded money to pay off high costs, short-term debt. The other half to prepare for full-town bills border to border town bills in 2017. In the next year, we raised a lot more money through bonds. We paid off all of our remaining high cost debt including those long-term open end high very high interest bonds. We built the towns we designed. We designed another 250 miles for the next year. And as the cliche has it, we then rinsed and repeated and we've continued on that pattern. We've been building instead of the 250 miles we'd achieved in our first three or four years, we've been building 300 or more miles a year. But we are still reworking some parts of the network that we originally designed ad hoc and that we built on a shoestring. And I want you to keep that in mind because that's one of the lessons, one of the drawbacks of the slow local funding by shoestring and crowd-fiber funding. In our 2021 budget, 40% of customer revenue is allocated to debt service. Most of that's interest, some of it's principle. We have at this point about $54 million in outstanding bonds last year we made. We've started principle repayments but some of our bonds are 25 years, some are 20, sorry, 23, 25 and 28 year. In successive years, we've been able to qualify for longer-term bonding and lower interest rates. But you can see a huge part of our revenue is going to debt service. It's a much lower cashflow impact because it's spread over a much longer period of time. I think there was another point I was going to make and I lost track of it and I'm sure we can get along without it. I want to push back against Leslie Nalti's assertion that loans are the only way to assure financial accountability. I think our history shows that startup loans can take many years. I think the fact that we've been raised able to grow much more rapidly since becoming a CUD shows the strength of the CUD structure, both as a mechanism for borrowing and a mechanism for executing. I don't think our history proves that grants lead to less responsible behavior. We have received numerous grants, most of them relatively small over the years, through successive programs administered in the Department of Public Service, maybe a very few before that through the VTA while it was active. The VTA did build the dark fiber connect infrastructure that we lease parts of and that was a tremendous benefit to us. Had it been a grant to us directly, it was probably worth a million dollars or more. And in the most recent calendar year, 2020, we've received more than, I think, among the order of $1.4 million in various grants to connect people more rapidly and so on. But Miss Nalti misstates when she says that the Naltis took us to a CUD status. They left EC fiber two or three years before that. I'll just say that her recollections of there, we could not have gotten going without the work they did, but her recollections overlooks some problems. And I think the egregious examples of grant money that has been showered in this state without accountability have not come through the state's hands at all. They have come through federal agencies. I don't think I need to say more than that. Yeah, I think that's probably, we know where you are. You're right. Okay. Now, House 360 provides a pre-construction grants and I want to emphasize the value of this. And I want to, I apologize for my confusion a month or so back on the subject of, and this was before the federal money was clear. I misunderstood what was being said about supplementing an appropriation, which was then out of leftover CARES money, I believe mostly. But I want to emphasize that what we've learned through EC fibers experience is that you need to design the full network covering your entire service territory at the outset. That's the way you plan for reliability, the necessary redundancy. Those are the link from here to there, goes down. You don't cut people off. And that's how you see what you're going to have to borrow money to build. It is false economy to engineer just a little bit of it. That's a big, that's not a huge piece, but it's a significant expense. And it's one that it's extremely difficult to borrow money for at the outset. This is a very sensible use of government, of government grants, whether the source is state budget or federal budget channel through the state. The pre-construction grant language in House 360 also applies for make ready, allows for make ready expense. And I support that, but I do want to point out nobody in the legislature or in state government should misconstrue that as suggesting that all of the make ready for a given CUD should be done at once. The reason is you can't build it all at once. And when you pay for a poll license, you have two years to use it, or you have to reapply. So you plan your whole design, then you pick a subset of it, which can produce an economically sustainable subunit and get you to positive cashflow. That will enable you to build out in a rational, staged fashion and eventually cover your whole territory. And it's appropriate that pre-construction grants fund the make ready work that's needed for that first unit. It's not appropriate to use pre-construction grants to fund all the make ready for the entire project because that money will have to be spent again. Okay, so what I'm hearing so far is rather than a CUD's progress that they should do the engineering studies for their entire district or maybe for an entire town, but not for route, you know, not for three miles on route 12. Right, that is what I'm saying. Because then, and I think that's what we'd probably consider a plan. This is how you're gonna do it. We're gonna do stage one, we're gonna do stage two, but you know in advance, if there's gonna be a little engineering glitch in stage three that you could have avoided if you've done stage one differently, is that? If you've planned, if you've done the comprehensive engineering work at the outset, and by the way, that does require a comprehensive inventory of the pole situation in the whole territory. But if you've got the pole data and the engineering design for the whole network, then you can see what those rational subunits and stages will be. That's the point. But don't go out and get your pole. Don't get all of your poles. Don't get them all ready, because you're gonna have to do them over. You take more than two years. Right. Or the status of the pole could change. Right, that's possible too. That happens more slowly, but that can happen. Now, one of the strongest, one of the ideas in house 360 that I strongly support and EC5 is strongly supports is the community broadband authority. The word authority may be a slightly misleading term. I think it's appropriate for the degree of clout that that entity ought to have. But if the word authority invokes top-down control, that's not what this is about. If you read the legislation, if you talk with the drafters, if you talk with all of us who support it, it's a central clearinghouse. It's a central resource so that each CUD will not need to reinvent the wheel. The engineering resources, the financial resources, even much of the legal expertise and a central sharing point for best practices between CUDs, all of that can occur through the VCBA. All the CUDs are going to need all of these services, but they don't all have to find their separate experts to do it. That's one of the major strong points of the VCBA approach. Who should get funding? The key test of any public funding should be full commitment to full coverage of all inhabited on-grid premises within the full service territory, nothing less. That's the CUD's mission and it's the mission of the independent telcos. Some large corporations say they want to, quote, work with towns or work with CUDs. And then they say, however, we're going to build out only so far because there are locations for which a business case cannot be made. Well, that's the whole point. That's why CUDs have come into existence. So if they're serious about helping, will they build excess capacity in the form of transport fibers to the edges of what they feel they can justify and let the CUDs take it the rest of the way? Otherwise, the CUDs must take on the high cost of building through the same territory and expecting very low take rates. This is not helping. This is not working with. This is not serving rural Vermont and sparsely populated areas. I want to point to a few things that the house didn't have time to wrap up before crossover date. First, you've already alluded to the fact that you need to clarify the relationship between CUDs and independence. I don't think that's impossible. I think that it is non-trivial because you will want to assure, I agree with your planning in your discussion on Friday. If an entity that you have funded that the state and federal government have funded fails, you want to be sure that what the federal money has funded or the state money has funded remains a public asset and not a private one. And so you're gonna have some details to work out with independence. You need to encourage the independence to serve to meet the same service standards, minimum of 100, 100, and advertise it. No, not everybody, not every customer, as you've heard, for example, from Franklin Telephone. They aren't actually marketing the benefits of upstream. They're marketing it as if it's just a faster DSL. Why would recommend encouraging them to push it a little bit harder? I haven't said this already this time, but you've heard me say this before. Emphasis on download speed is an emphasis on entertainment delivery. And a lot of people want broadband for entertainment, but entertainment delivery enhances the revenues of large conglomerates, corporations that are based outside of this state with very, very few, very small exceptions. Serious work involves upload. Serious working from home involves upload. Serious educational work, serious telemedicine requires upload. Don't settle for anything less. Okay, I digressed. Second point, utility line easements. PUC rules specify that poll owners, poll owning utilities can rent space on their polls to third-party attaching entities, such as a telephone company or a broadband provider. But the law is a little bit fuzzy on this as to whether that easement, whether when the power line poll owning entity, which is typically a power company, but not always, when it grants, when it has an easement across private property and it rents space on its polls, does the right to access those polls convey to the tenant on the poll? There may be, there probably are a few easement agreements on record as contracts between poll owners and landowners that specifically exclude that access except by separate negotiation between the new entity and the landowner. Where that's not in place in an existing contract to facilitate broadband indeed, modern telecom rollout across the state, the law needs to stipulate that utility line easements unless already to step provide against by the contract do extend to the poll owners tenants on those same polls. So that's a little detail that I hope to see added. A little detail that I hope to see, we all of us in the CUDs hope to see modified. Section 15 of the bill as passed by the house allows CUDs to keep secret trade secrets and confidential business information. And then it says, such records should be available for public inspection after project completion. CUDs budgets and their meetings and their proceedings are already public. That's not true of the private providers who already are allowed to ask the PUC or the PSD when they submit data in support of a rate finding or something like that. They can say, this can't be disclosed to the public. That playing field needs to be level. We are not saying that you shouldn't know what we're paying, but we're saying that the private entity that doesn't have to divulge the details of its contract with the upstream provider for broadband bandwidth, things like that. Those are trade secrets. Those are proprietary information for the CUD and they should be protected just as a private entity's data would be protected. Okay. You've heard a lot in the past week or two about availability and affordability. Please don't entangle them. Please bear in mind, EC fiber, we had an advantage in getting, an intrinsic advantage in some ways in getting started. Our original 23 towns include some, I'll call them pockets of prosperity. We often hear about pockets of poverty, but frankly, in EC fiber territory, we have some pockets of prosperity. Most CUDs can't say that. Senator Sorotkin, you pointed out in an earlier discussion that there is some cross-cust subsidy in electric rates. Electric rates extend across a much broader customer base and the impact on the individual customer's rate of the subsidized rate is probably on the order of one or 2%. But for CUD, we're talking about addressing the 20% of the territory that was too sparsely populated for the commercial entity to bother with. We may be talking about a territory in which 30 to 50% of customers would qualify for a subsidized rate. Requiring the CUD to carry that cost would make the economics impossible. It would also make it impossible to borrow in the municipal bond market. We have coverage contacts, our bond conditions stipulate that our net revenue after expenses and amortization, a term called everything but interest, taxes, debt and amortization, EBITDA, exceed our revenue by at least 125%. We are now at the point where we are generating excess revenue beyond that requirement. Last year, we contributed $100,000 of our excess revenue to help create equal access to broadband, the nonprofit 501C3 that is headed by Holly Groeschner. She has been working for nine months to set that up and to develop the necessary machinery, including the social service functions to get the people that need those services in touch with them and help them understand what they need. That kind of, the 501C3 can accept private contributions and public contributions. I believe that's the right way to go. I do not think it is right to put a burden on to say as either the excellence would say or as the governor's proposal has said that any entity that gets state funds ought to have to provide a $20 or $22 or $25 a month rate at its own cost. Instead, set aside some of the money that you're getting from the Advanced Recovery Projects Act, specifically for this kind of purpose. That's the right thing to do in my opinion. I wanna review the reddest herrings. This is my last slide, I'm summarizing. Okay, yeah, because we're over time. Maybe I should stop here. I will stop here. No, you said red herring, so I think you wanna fill us in on that. I read the testimony from the New England Cable Telephone Association over building. They don't think that should be any over building. Well, how in the world are we supposed to get to the outskirts of a town without passing through the in-skirts? Our objective is not to compete with the public, the private provider, but the private provider, the corporate interests, we can't expect them, they have proven what they're not going to do. And if we give them more money, they won't do it. I mean, we'll get, it's insanity. Repeating what you've done before and expect a new result. I've already mentioned to subsidize rates paid for from CUD revenue. The last red herring I've highlighted on the slide is corporate help. Okay, if they're serious, I know I'm talking about the phone company. If they really want to help, if they mean that, they could in the cable they run to the edge of the territory they want to serve, they could include transport fiber that the CUDs can use to go on from there, put a hub at the outset, put a CUD facility at the edge there that they can serve those outskirts with. Otherwise, you're dooming the CUD to replicate the cost of getting through a territory where CUD has announced its intention of offering fiber service that will compete with the CUD. We're talking here about level playing fields. We're also talking about the donut. We're talking about the fact that where the corporate interest takes a larger chunk of the dense populated area and moderately dense populated area around the center, the business case, the opportunity to average higher density and lower density together to make an affordable average cost gets harder. Okay, I know you haven't got a lot of direct authority over the phone company when it lashes fiber onto its existing phone wires. But I wonder if that door is as closed as they would have you believe. And I hope that you will look at that now, I'm done. Thank you for my presentation. Okay, thank you. That has been very helpful. Committee, I have a 15 minute break booked in about now. So if you have any quick questions, Senator Pearson. I hate to stall the break, but we have... Oh, you're just cutting into it. It's a lot to unpack. Let me try to just ask two questions. Sure. The incumbent carriers, it concerns me, they seem to be a little bit more ready to build out fiber finally. I'm not eager to have them get these public dollars that we're talking about. And I'm not hearing a lot of pressure that way. So the question is, is that sort of handled? I mean, I don't see a way where we prevent them from cherry picking because it's free world in that sense. But do you have any... I mean, other than, I like your idea that is sort of the spirit of the house bill. It says, yeah, this could actually go to anybody that's gonna cover 100% of the territory, et cetera. Anything beyond that we need to do to protect from this dynamic? It is obviously difficult. You can't keep them from going where they decide to spend the money to go. You can turn a deaf ear to their outraged cries of unfair competition. I'm sorry, what? You can turn... Get it, get it, get it. Okay, yes. I don't think we've been overly receptive to that. Right, no, you folks have not. I have to say, as a citizen of this state, I have tremendously enjoyed listening to the work of your committee and the House Energy and Technology Committee. I am proud to be a Vermonda, a Vermonda by adoption, but I've lived here since 1975. So that counts quite a bit. So if I could just follow up, we're all proud to be on the Senate Finance Committee. We're getting t-shirts printed soon. So one of the things that strikes me as part of our project here is in fact to speed up the lessons learned from EC fiber. Exactly. Right, and not have everyone go through the growing pains. Right, we want to avoid that too. Yeah, let them make new mistakes. Don't make the same ones we did. Ideally, so we've talked about, some people have said, well, they will enter into bad contracts. Well, it seems to me that the authority or the department or whoever we invest with some expertise should be able to help that. They don't know what they're doing in terms of engineering. Well, again, a lot of that will be contracted out, but we should be ready to help them make those with some central expertise. Are we on the right track? You are, I believe you are. And you know, Ms. Nalti's case boils down to this. It's very easy, she says, to build a cost-effective, profitable fiber network in rural areas, if your name is Nalti. Well, all right. And if it's not, it's beyond your capability. Don't even try it. Come on. So are there gaps, though, so far in the logic of, because I am worried about some of the things she brings up, but I think they're surmountable. And I wanna ask, you know, basically the house draft, it deals with expertise in finance, expertise in engineering, and maybe in some planning. Are those the right places where we could centralize some expertise and then the community can take advantage of them? I think so. I think going forward, expertise in marketing will be appropriate as well. That's not an early stage need. In EC-Fiber, we're just now beginning to face up to, we are getting to this level of maturity, where we need that. But we look around and we can see, well, I mentioned Franklin Telephone, they are doing an amazing job of building. They could use some help in marketing. Doubt that they even have a marketing budget. I doubt that they do. I mean, that one lady whose great-grandfather started the company is doing almost everything. I am also a buyer. It is a Vermont business. Yeah. And we should be supporting Vermont, genuine small businesses. We don't see ourselves in competition with entities like that at all. Thank you. I appreciate the time. Thank you. Folks, I can't extend your, I've already moved the witnesses back 15 minutes. So I'm going to keep this going, but you'll have to take individual breaks. Okay. Senator Bray. And then I've got Sandra McDonald. So I have a quick question while you're still with us. Thank you again for coming in, Mr. tonight. So I wanted to check out in terms of, I wanted to check out in terms of criterion that we could use for designing the program or principles for it. And one was bringing a utility mindset to the work, as opposed to sort of a, I don't know, citizens volunteering to create a new program in town. You know, sometimes citizens are graded saying, we're going to build a new playground and they, they get money together. The people show up. They build the thing and it happens, but. I'm thinking. That this really has to be utility grade construction. I mean, that seems like everything I've been hearing. It does. That's true. And so the things I'm thinking about that I want to check with you is one that sort of a long-term. And I think that's, you know, you know, you know, you know, the durability piece that you're thinking of the infrastructure is lasting 30 or 40 years with upgrades and stuff like that. But. And that it uses industry standards so that. We don't end up with islands of a broadband, but just like the grid is connected place to place to place to place. You know, you know, you know, you know, eventually some of these things may merge or be acquired, but there won't be huge growing pains because people built to a different standard. I think that. Okay. I haven't thought about. One aspect of what you've just asked, Senator, and that is the standards issue. But let me address first. You know, you have, for example, from. You know, I am now 80 and a half. And sometimes I blank on a name of somebody I know very well, Christine Hall's question. But let me also point to another positive from his EC fibers history. We have from the beginning worked with an implementation partner in partner in Valley net. An entity that has the expertise, the ability to maintain. To conduct operations, maintain operations and repairs and upgrades. And process our customer payments and so on. I think each CUD. Is being encouraged to look for part one or more partners to carry out that kind of work. And I think that. That's a place where the VCBA or before it's fully functional. The department. Of public service will be able to help ensure some. Sound choices are made. I do want to point out too. This is something I left out of my slides by mid summer. Everybody in this state over the age of 16. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That wants to be vaccinated should have been. The short term pandemic emergency is falling behind us. Don't. I hope we all hope. Don't fall to. Claims that we need to act with such urgency that we should build short-term solutions that we'll have to replace later. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. To receive funding. They'd have to build to the same engineering standard. Is there a defined standard that we can say that's a requirement of receiving state money. I'm embarrassed to say I don't know the answer. I will make sure that I take it back to. My colleagues and that FX will have an answer for you to that question on Thursday. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So sort of hand in hand with it. An engineering standard in order to qualify for money and then. Open access. So that we haven't talked about open access today. That depends on what one means. How one defines open access, certainly. Valinat. On our behalf. Operates as an ISP. We provide broadband connectivity and telephone service to our customers. Another entity could rent. Capability to transmit their service through our fiber. To our customers. That is a form of open access. We also, in some parts of our territory, we have dark fiber. That is portions of our network cable. Where somebody rents. A lot of people do that. We have a lot of different types of fiber. For example, GW plastics, for example, leases from us, a fiber. One end is in Royalton near a plant of theirs. The others in Bethel. They put their electronics on the two ends of that fiber. They pay us rent for that piece of glass fiber. That's another form of open access. Well, I think mine was more like the former. Kind of build the interstate. We don't only let UPS on the interstate. But we also. There's a lot of time. On the interstate. So do you have a yes-no question, because at this point you're going to get a five minute break. Well, be here when we come back. I can be. Okay. When we come back, Senator, we're going to. Six other witnesses. We move back. Okay. who gave an opinion on the granting of money to build out from Danville up to the North and had some criticism of that arrangement. Can you share with us, yes or no, the criticisms that you have, even if you can't do it at this moment? I have forgotten what we're talking about here, Senator McDonald. I don't think that came out of the day, so. We need to go no further at this time. Okay. I could return. I could return after you are the 6th. I will email you back. Okay. I could come back after you are the 6th and 4th. Okay, no, that's fine, because then we've got other things we've got. But I will be listening evidently to you. Okay. And Senator McDonald can explain what he was looking for and then you can let us know. Yep. Okay. Committee, you got a five. Thank you very much. Back at three. Thank you, Irv. This was definitely very helpful and informing. It's always good to have someone to learn from that's been there. So thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay. Your overnight success, Irv. Going off live. Hmm?