 and get this party started here. Okay, the recording is started. So let's call the CV Fiber Governing Board meeting for October the 11th to order at 6.01. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? There we go, sorry. Are there any public comments? Alan, go, sir. Yeah, am I on? You can hear me okay? Oh yeah, just fine, Alan. Okay, great. So I had a note from a legislator today saying he had seen the article in the Times Arcus about CV Fiber and noted that it had a list of member towns which includes Elmore. And he asked me, I don't know whether Elmore didn't let CV Fiber know or not, but they are no longer on the list because they are with lamoille fiber. And he wanted me to pass this information on to whoever needs to know. He says their name should be taken off our list of towns. I wrote him back, and this was one of my two representatives, Avram Pat, and interestingly our district is a large one. It covers not only Worcester, but also it covers Elmore and now a bit of Stowe and Morrisville as well. I wrote Avram that you can't just walk away from this. There's actually withdrawal procedure in the CUD statute, which is fairly complex. And it takes a bit of time and it involves some meetings. And I said, I don't even know if Elmore contacted us even in somewhat a formal way, but it's my understanding that they just sort of left and their representatives haven't been at our meetings forever, so I'm not quite sure what to do. So... Give me a second here. I'll move on to Chuck in a second. Alan, they've never contacted me about leaving. And you're right, there is a process. And nobody's had informal contact with them because I'm not, and my town borders it. So you would think that maybe they would have approached somebody like me. I haven't seen any emails from them. And as Clark, I might be one of the people that they would contact. That's right. It's on Janille's list to talk to the select board. Go ahead, Chuck, let's hear from you, sir. Yeah, Janille and I actually exchanged a couple of emails about this today because I was asking whether we should be removing them, their delegates from our Microsoft domain and leaving their names on our website. So I will hold on that until this matter comes to a little bit more resolution. Yeah, I'll tell you what I'll do. Just so people know, I'll copy this section of the statute. It's called withdrawal of a member of municipality. And I'll send it around to people just so you have it. It really is quite involved. So I'm not quite sure what's gonna happen next. R.D., I see your hand is up, sir. Yeah, I just wanna note that this could affect our ability to get a quorum if we have an inactive town that's still formerly a part of the district. That's correct. That's something we've been talking about for a number of months now that they're affecting our ability to have a quorum because they never show up. But we've been getting much better attendance recently. I do believe. So that was, what was that? Was that a public comment? What was it? Yes, it was. It was a public comment. Okay. Are there any additional public comments? Okay, I have two residual hands raised. No, I'm trying to get mine down. From Alan. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm trying to get mine down. And let's go to the meeting minutes, please. Jeremy. A motion to approve the governing board meeting minutes from September 13th, 2022 as drafted. Second. Who do you hear first, Jerry? I gotta put someone down. You're muted though. You're muted, Jerry. You're muted. I hit the button too many times. I'm sorry. Are there any opposed to the motion? Now who is second? He needs to know who is second. Siobhan. Siobhan was second. Any opposed to the motion? Hearing none, any abstentions? Hearing none, unanimous. Thank you very much everybody for the meeting minutes. I'm going to go to our chair of the finance committee to kick off the treasurer's report. Yeah, thank you. I thought that Lori Beth was going to be here. And you may have noticed in your inbox today that you got an email from her. And I am going to... What is that? Okay, boom. She was the other one here. Yeah, sorry. Let me just gather her material here. There are days, you know? Yeah, Lori Beth usually shows up. So I'm a little surprised she's not here. Is this the Tuesday of the month that somehow she has her EMT thingy? So I will share my screen here for a second and we'll do a couple of these things. And so here we have the balance sheet as of September 30th. So I asked her to produce that today. And you see that our total assets are $3.3 million. Total current liabilities are $9.6 million. Then what else is of views here? The bank account, we have $802.3 million in the bank account and accounts receivable for another $803,000. That's my question. That's your question? Yeah. The accounts receivable? Yeah, if you look at her list, there's a bunch of them that I believe we received the checks. She has the seven sheet on accounts receivable, but that's the one that seems to be a little odd. It has the accounts receivable here. And this would look to me to be the $833,000 of opera money, right? Yep. But haven't we received checks already? And basically we, this looks like we might have received. Where's the, I don't see orange in here. This is aging. This is they haven't paid us. I was just going to say, I didn't see orange in there at all. Yeah. So anyway, so it's only the ones who haven't paid? Yeah. So we'll try to get an answer from her on that, okay? And what was the other one? And here are the expenses that were passed out to you as well. And there were about $290,000 in expenses for this month. Questions, comments, observations? Tell you what you got. I just have one comment before I go to RD and that is we have four more checks waiting at CV at Central Vermont Regional Planning for me to go get. I don't remember exactly which towns they were, but there's four checks I'm going to pick up on Thursday and drop into the bank. And RD, I see that your hand is up or is that residual? No, no, it refers to what Ray was talking about, the bottom line on this aging summary, 803,000. Those are our ARPA commitments. And over on the profit and loss, we have a town ARPA of 833,000. Now is the 833,000 cash in hand? And if so, why isn't the additional 30,000 in the aging summary? Because they paid us. 30,000 came in after the summary was compiled? Aging is if they haven't paid us. So my guess is orange paid us in September. So wouldn't be- Oh, orange paid us in like July. Yeah, orange paid a long time ago. That's in the account. So aging is just things that we haven't been paid for yet. Well, David did. Cabot remitted its 50,000. And Calisthenic too, that's why I was questioning the table. Right, I don't know what this table means, but the bottom line is 30,000 less than the profit and loss shows that we have received an income as of September. I presume the 30th of September. So profit and loss, you actually include aging with the current tally. So that's why it's different. I would guess that this quicken needs to be updated. The quick books need to be updated. Yeah, I think that's correct. Let me go to Ted Barnett who has his hand up and you're also a mute Ted. Yes, I'm gonna, can you all hear me? Yeah, you're on the phone here. Great. So it's also possible this was run on September 30th. If those checks got cashed in between September 30th and today, it would still show on aging. So if it's, you know, there's a little bit of lags with this. Yep. Wanted to point that out. That's a good point. I can't, I did bring half a dozen or maybe eight, a large number of checks I brought to the bank, but by the time they cleared, that well could be, they cleared, you know, October 2nd. And one other thing to note is that, Lori Beth is producing these reports from the quick books records that are being maintained by the accountant. Okay, she's not maintaining these books separately. So I don't want you to, you know, think that perhaps the sheets failed to do something in particular. There could be a lag in the time here for stuff to be put in, but the information is being put in by Bathchildren Associates. I understood. Ted, your hand is up or is that left over? That is a residual hand. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Actually it looks like Lori Beth is on now. I see her as a connected person. Lori Beth, are you on the call? We're talking about the treasurer's report. Maybe not. I know she's an invited person. James is dumb. Well, I just see her in the list. You're muted, Lori. I see her. We didn't want to unmute. So there was a question, Lori Beth, about this aging report, and it just seems like it's out of date. It's the one that came off of their QuickBooks. We'll have to ask Bachelder about what the difference is. That's okay. Thank you. Yeah, that's what we came to understand, Lori Beth. Thank you very much. Much appreciated. Ray or Lori Beth, do you want to continue through the treasurer's report? Or I see a handout from Chuck Berth before we go any further. Let's go to Chuck. Chuck, he must be on mute, sir. I forgot who we were using for a bank, but I would like to point out that I have had horrific issues over the years with QuickBooks syncing transactions through VSCU. So if we're using VSCU, then it could just be that the connection dropped again and they have to go re-import the transactions and they're a little behind on that. Happens to me all the time. Yes, sir, we're using them. Yeah, I'm not sure whether they do use the sync function or not, it's one thing I don't know if Bachelder's using it. Yeah, worth checking into, I think, Lori Beth. Yes. Chuck, do you want to follow up on that or are you good? Great, any additional discussion on the treasurer's report? All right, then let's move to our executive director and where are we these days? Well, there's a lot going on. As you know, I think Jerry sent out a business as usual update that goes through a few things that we're doing that are going on. We got our first three poll licenses which is a huge milestone, it's about 20 miles. Just, what do we have? 1,180 to go for the network, but every journey of 1,200 miles starts with 20 miles so that's amazing. They came from Washington Electric Co-op who is continuing to do the tree trimming between spans and even though there has been a shortage of polls in the world, they've been able to set some polls for us on some applications that we submitted, materials roll in every day. We have a warehouse manager in Montpelier receiving those materials and we are working on truing up the bomb with NRTC. It looks like following a conversation we had with them today that our bomb, if anything, needs to be trued up downward which means that we may have ordered extra materials so far, that's what it looks like. This is good news, if there are any inconsistencies we'll notice them and order them, but it looks as of right now like any inconsistencies would be in a direction that benefits us and in other words, we may have ordered too many materials and have extras. This is good because materials are increasing extremely quickly, both in terms of how quickly it takes to, the time it takes for them to get here as well as the pricing. Design status, we got our first approval from the independent review that the state is doing the CTC for our first portion of our design and are finalizing more of the design, segments of the design of the network. So that continues the finalizing of the designs and licensing of the OLTs or the cabinet sites is something that Kotecki is working on, NRTC is working on, we're working on as well collaborating with Washington Electric Co-op, Green Mountain Power toward locations where we can place our cabinets, the hub sites. So that's the big stuff on the construction and we're looking to finalize contracts for reaching out public engagement to marketing, first public engagement and implementing crowd fiber to reach out and get subscribers for when we actually launch the network. We're continuing to work with Weitzfield closely toward launching the network into operational and that consists of things like specs for undergrounding and responsibility of what materials are ordered when and how to place personnel on the installs, what the capacity is. So there are a lot of pieces moving toward this construction start but also looking forward toward the operations launch. Thanks, Janiel. I wanna point out one thing that I've been witnessing here that is extremely valuable and I just wanna point it out for everybody that's on the governing board attending the meeting today and that is local area knowledge of what's really happening on the ground. NRTC is great and they come out here and they look and they have a local presence now and they're out here and they're actually looking for a place to set up shop where they can have a long-term office but the knowledge of being on the ground and to be able to look at a map and have somebody point out, oh, I know that area that is X, Y and Z and here's the situation out there. That is incredibly valuable. It saves a tremendous amount of effort and the folks that bring that to the team, I just wanna say thank you for that because it really makes a big difference in what we're doing and all of that happening at the design end will save a whole lot of heartache at the construction end. So I just wanted to put that out there. Any comments on what Janiel has presented here? Things are moving, it may not seem like they're moving fast but I promise you things are moving extremely fast and moving forward. No questions or comments, I'll move on. The middle mile grant, and this is my bad, I had action expected there, there really is no action on this middle mile grant. This is informational that the state and the VCBB is chasing some funds that are available for middle miles. So that's not the stuff that goes to the residents, it's the loop that supports all the distribution to the residents, the backbone. There's funding for that. It's a little bit convoluted on how that funding is gonna be made available. We signed on saying we would be interested in finding out more information and there's phases to it. So if we get to a second phase, we may have to kind of just, we have to make a decision whether or not we wanna be a part of how this is going to move forward or not. But at this stage where it's just phase one, I kind of made the decision, we made the decision in a small group and really I made the decision to say, yeah, keep us in this, but let's see where it goes because we don't need to make a long-term commitment. It's informational still on how this is gonna play out. The state is really running it. VCBB is in the van for making this happen and you may have seen they had a public service announcement or a press release and that's really why I brought it up because there's nothing ripe here for a decision at all, but it's just informational. If you've seen this press release, yes, we're a part of it. If money becomes available and it really becomes available, then we'll have to decide whether or not we really wanna be a part of this. But this is just purely informational in case you've seen the press release. If there are questions, I'm happy to answer them. RD. Why would we not wanna be a part of this? Because it is extremely convoluted. It's a public-private partnership that has lots of bells and whistles and hanging chads that all need to be lined up and the dollar value to us by the time we get moving may not be all that large. And for, to be honest, if somebody wants to take this on as their personal thing to do full-time RD, that would be great. But we just don't have the bandwidth to chase a lot of these things. But let me go to Jeremy Hansen, whose I saw went up. Go ahead, Jeremy. Yeah, so I read over the press release that I looked at this and I think one of the reasons that we might not want to choose to do this is exactly because of this public-private partnership. We are potentially not giving away but offering a portion of our network to Consolidated, to First Light, to VTEL, to other entities who have here to fore not been on board in terms of getting all of Vermont connected and who have been actual active obstacles to getting Vermont connected. So what Jerry said about the, so I mean, the way I put it is the juice worth the squeeze. I mean, we may not actually end up with, it's not a windfall for sure. So that's all. No, that's great, Jeremy. Thank you. You know, my gut reaction was no and we didn't have to make a decision. We're just moving forward with the rest of the CUDs. We'll see how this plays out. Siobhan, I see that your hand is up. RD was before me, I think. No, I had it. No, RD already had his say. It's your turn, Siobhan. Oh, okay. No, time's up. You're done. Go ahead, please. No, I'm done. Thanks. I just wanted to say that one thing, and this is a genuine question I don't know the answer to, could we be perceived as something negative by the state by failing to participate in this kind of endeavor? I just wanted to have said that and ask the question. That's it. No, I don't think so. I think that in my conversations with ECBB and the other CUDs, there's a tremendous amount of respect that goes in every direction. We understand that this needs to be a well intelligently thought out deal if it's gonna happen between the public and private. And we ultimately, we're not being seen negatively or positively by our decision. We're being respected in that we're asking questions and we will continue to ask those questions right up to the very end. And if we are gonna be part of it, we're gonna parse out the details. And if at the end of the day it doesn't work in our favor, we're not gonna agree to it. And the state understands our positions and every CUD might have a slightly different position on this, but we're going to try to make this a mutually beneficial agreement if we can. And if we can't, we'll walk away and that's okay. And also I'd like to point out that this is something that it is a board decision. I mean, the day-to-day decision is, do we wanna continue looking at this? That's one thing. But whether or not we sign on to this is a board decision. So that will be up to y'all, as they say. Any additional discussion on this Middle Mile Grant? Oh, Tom, hey, Tom, go ahead, sir, please. I'm not sure I fully understand what is involved with the Middle Mile Grant, but in hearing that potentially allow the Comcast or Consolidated to be able to use our fiber for their purposes, is the reverse also true? Would we be able to use their Middle Mile so that we could potentially go for areas that we can't go otherwise? That so far has not been a part of what's been presented. No, this is all for the new stuff being built. Good question. Ray, go ahead, sir. So the grants being put in for $100 million, pick a number, there's a huge number, it's like $100 million. It has to have some matching funds in it. That's why there's a private partnership involved with that. And so First Light, CCI and others are contributing money to be part of this. There's going to be formed a, what they call a special purpose vehicle, which would be the group that actually controls this infrastructure. It'll be the number of people, the number of entities that are on there will have more CUDs than will have private entities. So the public sector actually will be able to control the thing. There's going, we're building out what 288, 144 strand, whatever it's going to be, for example, and that First Light will have access to so many strands and we will have the rest, et cetera. So it's, to what extent, to how that number is divided, it could be 25, 75, whatever the percentage match was, had to be, and if they get 25%, if they get 25% of the strands, we get the rest of the thing. We control it because we outnumber the folks on the board and it's going to be public infrastructure. First Light will use it for its backbone and enterprise work. They're not building additional fiber for the private interest. So it would be the fiber that we're designing, part of that would be for the private, as it seems right now, there's a lot to be determined that is unknown and we basically said we're willing to take a look at what comes out of the next bit. Now, Jeremy, Matt, your hand is up. Go ahead, sir. So what it kind of sounds like is when we're building in sort of backbone-type areas, we would get money to sort of build extra capacity that would then be shared with other people, First Light, et cetera. That is not the way it's been presented, sir. That is not the way it's been presented. It's been presented that we are designing to our standard and a portion of what we're designing to our standard would be shared with the private interest. So aren't we designing to what we need? Wouldn't we need to build, if part of our network is gonna be used by First Light, if they're gonna get 25% of our strands, wouldn't we need to add more strands in? The state has required us, the state has already required us to build and have a lot of dark fiber. Our backbone has a lot of dark fiber in it set aside for future use, and this is part of that future use. Right, that would be, but we're already designing for that. Let me go to Jeremy because his hand is up. Go ahead, Jeremy, please. So this is not, so Jeremy, this is not sharing per se. This is contractually reserving by an indefeasible right of use. So it's effectively permanently allocating the space, a number of strands for this purpose, which would no longer be available to us. So it's not flexible, at least in the language that was described in the press release in their application. Oh, what's my payout? Just leasing the First Light? We could lease the First Light later, but with this, they would essentially have an indefeasible right of use or someone would have an indefeasible right of use for a certain number of the strands. Without us building additional strands for that purpose. Allen, go ahead, sir, please. You have me. Sorry. Whose idea is this? Who's making the proposal? State. The state is, the VCBB is making this proposal. It's a, excuse me, it is a federal request for grant proposals for this grant. So this is a federal grant that's going out to the nation and the VCBB is trying to figure out whether or not they can leverage $100 million or not. I mean, it's reasonable to ask and that's what they're trying to do. This is from the infrastructure bill, Infrastructure Act. So it's the companies that got this put into the Infrastructure Act with their lobbyists and their congressmen and now they're shifting it downstream. That may well be the case, I don't know. In her conspiracy brain. Ray, is that residual or do you want to add, sir? No, the only other point is that the relationship that we're talking about is very similar to the relationship we were going to have with WEC. We were going to build out this backbone and WEC was going to get part of it and we were getting an IRU or they were getting an IRU, blah, blah, blah. It's a similar kind of relationship. It's not necessarily a bad thing. We're going to wind up getting millions of dollars out of it. And frankly, we're going to need those millions of dollars if it happens. Indeed, if it happens. So let's see, let's go to Tom, Siobhan and R.D., is your hand up? No, I'll lower it. Okay, Tom, Siobhan and Jeremy Matt. Just wondering, thinking beyond the traditional ground telecommunications companies, could this potentially be something we would be working with Verizon or AT&T to help build out cellular coverage in our area, which might be something we want to go after anyways. And this would be a way to help fund that. Just wondering if there are other ways of looking at this beyond our competition with our immediate surrounding codes. That's a good point. I would say right now, we really don't have enough information. And the only thing we said we would do would be to follow along to find out if there's additional information. When more information comes, we can make a real informed decision. At this point, it's a little bit open-ended and we said we would go along so that we can learn more before we make any kind of decision. So there was Siobhan and Jeremy, please. So I just wanted to say that it's different from with WEC because WEC isn't a for-profit entity. WEC is a cooperative. And so that hits me very differently than consolidated. I kind of, I chafe at the idea that we offered to work with these companies when we started up and they told us to hit the road and that they wouldn't even talk to us. And now that there's some money in the offering and the possibility that we're gonna build what they refuse to build for the last 25 years, that they're gonna piggyback on what we're doing and force, not force us, we have to agree to it. I express that. But what, I can't remember how Jeremy said it, an indivisible, we're committing this, giving it to them for this amount of money. It's basically a one-time payment of this. So they can leverage the footwork we've put in that they wouldn't do before. And the whole thing just, I agree, we need more information and I'm jumping to conclusions, but it stinks to high heaven to me. I'm done. Well, yeah, concur. Sorry, but that's how I walked away from the series of emails. Any other discussion on this? I thought this was gonna be just a couple of minute discussion. Anyone else need to vent? Okay. So let's go to our inventory management contract. There is no action expected here, but Janiel, would you like to give us an update? I can do it, you can do it. I'm happy to. So Wild Blyander has been retained as our warehouse manager and we are getting ready to put in place an inventory management system, which is extremely important because materials come and pretty soon materials will be going into the fields, kidding by the construction contractors, replenishing of supplies. So inventory management is a very important part of warehousing and Wild Blyander is going to be taking on that very complex task with us, as well as with whoever we hire as construction contractors and our construction management at NRTC. So I would just add that the negotiations that we are in, they are there now and we're kind of going on a month to month until we get this, totally smoothed out. We are almost there, almost there. So it's a good thing. And Janiel, did you mention that they're using the same software that's used by NRTC so that tracking, that tracking inventory will be able to work with the designers and the construction managers and our warehouse all using the same software. So that's a good thing. This software is called Finale. It is an industry favorite, yes, NRTC uses it. And it allows, it actually reads intelligently what you've burned through and what you are likely to burn through based on previous burn rates. It lets you alerts you if your projections are off. It allows you to share materials with other, say for instance, we decided to do a sharing with another CUD or other CUDs. It allows you to do that. So it is a comprehensive inventory management swapping. It allows you to invoice and bill and do a number of different things with inventory, with materials as they come and go. Thank you. That's great. Any questions on our inventory management? So I'd like to switch into the next thing, our construction contracting. There's no action expected here. We are coordinating our, certainly the MSA, the master service agreement where we wanna make sure that we have that finalized before we get into very specific scopes of work. We have meetings coming up in the very near future with our construction contractors that we believe we're going to contract with. And those discussions are gonna be all about getting into the field this fall and making sure that that happens. We're really close with our master service agreement. We're not there, but we're really close. And we're having preemptive, what's the word I'm looking for here? We're having these meetings in advance so that when the ink dries on that, which in Acrobat is instantaneous, that they'll be able to move into the field for us because they know exactly where we're working. They've seen the designs that we're bringing into the field and we're doing all the pre-coordination that we possibly can so that we can get actual construction done this fall. And we have a very important meeting tomorrow morning with them about this. But Ray, I'll ask you, do you wanna add anything on the contracting aspect to this? Well, I guess what I would say is that we've requested feedback on a master services agreement that we've sent to them, that information is dribbling back in again, would like to synchronize all of the contracts with all of our construction firms to be the same. Each of them thereafter will wind up with the statements of work, scopes of work rights, work orders that we will execute for individual OLTs. And as Jerry just said, where we have some conversations coming up with those contractors over the next two weeks. So I'm hoping that we're going to have these contracts in hand by the end of the month and that work will proceed shortly thereafter. Any questions on that? It's a little bit like pushing a string, but once you get past that threshold of signed contracts, we wanna make sure the folks are in the field. And those are the discussions where those are exactly the discussions we're having. If there are no more questions or a need for discussion about this, I'm gonna pass it over to Ray again for the 2023 budget. This one, we actually do need action because this budget by the end of the week needs to go to the towns and this budget's been in the works since July, I would say, maybe June, I don't remember exactly, but I'm gonna pass it over to Ray to move forward with the budget, please. Yeah, so let me remind you what the process is. And in December, we're actually going to adopt the budget. Tonight, the goal is to approve a budget and we approve a budget and off it goes to our 20 member towns, right? For them to give us feedback. We hold a public hearing at our next board meeting in November, taking input from the public or whomever wants to give comments. And then again, like I said, we adopt the budget in December. If we approve the budget tonight, which I hope we will, then the treasurer actually sends that budget out to the towns. And so what I'd like to do now is kinda walk you through what changes have been made since the last time I talked to you about the budget because, and there aren't that many changes. So let's go with that. And so hopefully you can see my screen and let's see if I can pump it up here a little bit more. And so what I wanna reference here is the was column, okay? This is what this number was and this is what that number is now, right? So the town ARPA budget was $750,000 and now it's $833,000. And I'm expecting that number may change in just by December for a couple of reasons. One is that we're going to get matching funds from the state in a different fashion than previously the plan was. And the second thing is that the program is going to be extended for a period of time. Both of those things require action by the VCBB and that hasn't taken place yet. Hopefully it will take place before December. So that's the change here is just that modest change there. Let me move this screen out of the, move this thing out of the way. Can I move it out of the way? Yeah, there we go, okay. Number two, the only change here, now we're talking about administration expenses, the only change here is a change in line 10 here, licensing fees and dues. It was 35, it was bumped up to $50,000. And the reason for that is that I'm expecting that we're going to expend more dues this year than last year for Vicuda, for example. And there are going to be some more licensing costs coming up. Third, pre-construction and construction, no change. No changes there. Operations is a change in number nine here or affordability fund. It was 10,000, it's 50,000. And this represents a clear understanding of what our relationship might be with the equal access to broadband that this number may go up for that. And Jeremy, did you have a question about this particular item or this section? You're on mute. So just in general, so the was, is that comparing 2022 to 2023? Or is that comparing? The last time we spoke. Okay. Okay, that's the only thing that's been changed. I'm sorry, I didn't make that clear. And then we get into the reserves. The reserves just reflect the Delta right for from what happened before. So the reserves, it was 175,000 and now it's 178,000. The total expenses have gone up slightly and the total income has gone up slightly as well. Reflecting the difference in those opera funds, for example. So not a lot has changed. I think you need to shift your, there you go, thank you, Ray. Not a lot has changed from the first time we went through this, just those three, four, five items before. And I see somebody with their hand up. Henry's got his hand up. Go ahead, Henry, please. Yeah, under the pre-construction tab that you showed, did we, the make ready costs, we've been finding those to be higher than expected. That's already been addressed here in that 2023 number there. Yeah, it's, I would say so far from our early numbers, the short answer is yes. Between now and December, we're gonna learn more. And so maybe some additional adjustments gonna be made there. Thanks. Thanks, Henry. And your hand is still up. There we go. Thanks, Henry. So this budget has been through multiple iterations for sure. It's been approved by the finance committee. It's been approved by the executive committee. It is now being brought to the governing board. And you'll see that it's an adventurous budget because we plan on spending most of the money that's being given to us. And we hope to get additional funds to continue construction throughout calendar year 23. So this is a, this budget is built on as many hard numbers as we could come up with. Of course, our construction is all estimates, but we're learning what pre-construction is. We're learning what materials cost. We're learning what it takes to get a pole license and all of that is reflected in this budget. And we will learn a lot about construction as we move into it in the coming year. At this point in time, it's a $25 million budget and I'm ready to make a motion when you're ready. Well, I'd like to take Alan's, Alan put his hand up first. So let's get Alan's comment, please. So I wanna make sure I understand the budget, our budget year is January 1 to December 31. It's not July 1 to, okay, we're not like to state. So under income, the B-section service subscriptions, we have estimated income from subscriptions providing internet service of $470,000. Can you explain right what that really means? How many people that expects we're connecting for how many months in that fiscal year? Yeah, I had another spreadsheet for that that I thought I showed you. But what I could tell you is this, what that represents is an estimation of this number here. Can you see that 1,190 subscribers? Yep. So 1,200 subscriptions during the course of the year. Of course, they don't all come in January. They come out over a period of time as the installations are taking place, right? And so so many each month. You may recall in an earlier spreadsheet that I showed you that November and December showed something like 190 subscriptions each month, which was, that's a lot per day, right? There's 20 working days, that's 10 a working day, right? Which WC, which Twatesfield Telecom said they could handle. And so that's where that number came from. It came from our estimated construction over the course of the year, including the construction work they're gonna complete this year with installations actually starting in January. And I'll add to that Ray that it's also based on the low end of the ramp up take rate. So this was starting out with like a 24% take rate or something on the really low end for the first few months, first year, first couple of years. So it's the low end take rate. And I very specifically remember seeing the spreadsheet where it was actually month by month where we were adding folks in to get to that 1,200 number or 1190. And I guess I do remember the spreadsheet, but somehow when I saw this number tonight I thought half a million dollars starting in January, that's like three months away. And it's a little bit scary, that's all. It sounds aggressive because obviously the months of January, February, March and even up here, April and in my part of the district, because there's no way that anybody's gonna be working up here simply because of the weather conditions. So we're left with eight months where this revenue has got to be generated and it just sort of shakes me a bit. Yeah, when I'm talking about construction, installations can continue to take place in January, February, March, April. Watesfield Telecom does installations all year round. Now obviously the underground conduits might be a little tough. Yeah, that's one thing I'm thinking about. Yeah, what aerial, which is the makes up the majority of the drops will be, can be done. Yeah, the other thing is, I'm sure some of you who live on dirt roads remember this year, we had a mud season that lasted about four weeks. When, I mean, literally there were, it wasn't just the roads in one or two towns, it was roads throughout all of Northern Vermont. If it was dirt, you couldn't get construction trucks on the very easily and cars were hard to get around to. So I just, I'm obviously imagining the worst things. So I feel better about the number. Well, the worst things aren't unlikely not to happen. I mean, it's very possible. What I would say to you too is this, in January, 11 installations, 11 is what the, is what the chart showed, 11. Yeah, Helen, you're exactly right. I mean, when you look at the area that's going to be in our first two DAs, it's almost all dirt roads. I mean, CV fiber is all dirt roads. I mean, except for route 12, route two, route 14, everything else is dirt road at 302. Otherwise, we're all dirt roads. And your point is well taken. It could be less, it could be more. So much of this is weather dependent. But we've had discussions with Weitzfield. We've had discussions with construction contractors. We really haven't made this up. We've tried to make it as realistic as possible, but at some point, the weather's going to clear, the roads are going to be good and we're going to be going like, full speed at some point. But let me go to Jeremy Matt. Go ahead, Jeremy. I was just going to say that, yeah, it's all dirt roads, but also forest. Yeah, that's us. We have the construction folks telling us, remind me now, was it a mile a week? A gang goes a mile a week? No, a mile a day. A mile a day. Gang goes a mile a day. So they're hitting five poles in a day. That's all they're going to do. This isn't some flat land in Texas where they can do 30 poles a day. They're going to do five poles a day. And that's already blended into the analysis. But let me go to RD here. Go ahead, RD. Just very briefly, during the nightmare mud season last year, our maple syrup makers managed to get over the back roads in the worst possible, under the worst possible conditions. So it's not inconceivable that mud season would not be a terrible impediment. Yeah, but you're bringing religion into it now when you talk about the syrup. And any other comments to keep the discussion going on our budget? I mean, it's been through all of the procedures to quote Ray here. The procedure is the process. The process is the procedure, we've done that and we've landed here. And I'm hoping to hear a motion that we would actually move forward with this budget. So I moved to the governing board to approve the CV fiber 2023 budget. And I call attention to Chuck Burt's all models are wrong, but some are useful. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Second. Second. Okay, R.D., would you like to add to the discussion, sir? Nope. Nope. Thank you. Nope, okay, I see a hand up. Any other discussion on the motion on the budget? Very well then. We have a motion on the floor. We have a second by, I heard Siobhan again. I heard Siobhan too. Yeah, I bet you did. Jeremy, you just got to get quicker. I don't know what to tell you, man. I've said it well before Siobhan, but it just, I... You may have said it before Siobhan, but because you've got five down and one up, we didn't hear it until tomorrow. Why don't we just make Siobhan the default second? I've offered. You can just assume every motion will be seconded. Yeah. Let's bring this to a vote, folks. Is there anyone opposed to the motion? Are there any abstentions? All right, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you, everybody. Very much appreciated. Chuck, go ahead, sir. I see your hands up. I would just like to send a heartfelt thank you to Ray and the rest of the finance committee. It's a lot of hard work to put together as complicated a budget as something like this is. You have to check your assumptions again and again and think through realities in an ever-changing landscape. Great work, everyone. Thank you. Yeah, you know, that's wonderful. And I would like to add one thing here that I've noticed since I've been chair. I mean, I've always noticed that this hasn't changed. And that is this is not a rubber stamp community here. If you're going to bring it, you better bring it and don't expect everybody to say yes, just because you brought something to the table. And I really appreciate that. We need that. We really do need that. So thank you to everybody on that count. Let's move to the construction schedule. There's a lot going on here. At some point during this discussion, we may want to go into a executive session. Ray, I'm going to ask you to start the discussion and see how far you can get before we're talking about things that need to be an executive session. Go ahead, sir. Going into executive session requires two motions. I'm going to make the first one. You can't hardly get anywhere with the things that we really need to share on this particular topic. So I think, Jerry, we need to go in executive session. So there's two motions. It's premature public knowledge. The first one is that there's agreement that it would put us a competitive disadvantage. And the next one is to move into executive session. And we can also invite people into the executive session when we make the motion. I don't know who's here. I see an awful lot of folks. I'm not sure. My view of the world is all delegates and alternates. The treasurer, obviously. And, but I'm not sure who else is. And also vice chairs, committee chairs and committee vice chairs as well. I see John with his hand up. Yeah, let's bring John Walters in because he's our outlet to the outside world to a large degree. Is that the last person you want to be executive session? Well, Janiel, of course, is our executive director without... No, I know what I'm saying. Who are not delegates or alternates. So the only person that we would need to remove is Orca. And they're used to that. So move the pursuant to one VSA section 313, alpha one, alpha, we find that premature public knowledge of the discussion related to CD5 reconstruction schedule will put CD5 we're at a competitive disadvantage. Second. That second goes to Jeremy. I'm just going to ask, as for... Is there any discussion on going into executive session on this motion, Tom? It just feels like we should provide a reason why discussing our construction schedule would be something that needs to be kept out of the public view. I think the answer to that is that this is about deployment of resources. This is about our relationship with contractors, multiple contractors, actually. And this is about letting folks know where and when we're going to start building, which is very competitive information. That's the definition of competitive disadvantage. Tom, does that satisfy you, sir? It does. I just felt like it should be stated. Okay. Thank you. Again, the next... Oh, you have to take a vote. Yes. So are there any opposed to the motion? Are there any abstentions? Okay. Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you all. Go ahead, Ray. Second motion is to move the re-enter executive session to discuss the CD5 reconstruction schedule that we invite all delegates, alternates, chairs, vice-chairs, the treasurer, obviously the executive director. Are we leaving anybody out? Do we want John Walters in? He's a vice-chair. You're a vice-chair, aren't you, John? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. As they may add additional information pursuant to one VSA, section 313, alpha 3. Second. Second goes to Siobhan. Are there any opposed to the motion? Any abstentions? The motion passes. Thank you. Give me a moment to stop recording and then we'll pick this up back again when we come out of executive session. So it's 703 and we are stopping recording to go into executive session. Okay. It appears that the recording has stopped. Excellent. Thank you. So I think our discussion starts here and we've talked a little bit about this before. I see Chuck with his hand up. I just want to give everyone a friendly reminder that during executive session, we should refrain from chats that Jeremy said the same thing. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you.