 Well we do have a quorum now so I'll open the meeting and to remind everybody it is a fully remote meeting that means when you speak you need to say your name and and if you're on the board just repeat that that you're on the board and or where you live and that we are going to try to stay focused on topic and keep the conversation focused and ask everybody to keep mindful of the time two three minutes particularly in the public comment time but when we're talking about topics try not to repeat ourselves so we can be done on time if not early so the meeting is opened and I'd like to have approval of the agenda are there any additions to it if not by unanimous consent we'll accept the agenda and move forward any public comment oh good Kim I see Kim coming on board great and Brian Chief Pete so we're now going to go on to the minutes of the May 12th meeting any additions corrections to the draft presented entertain a motion to accept the minutes Doug is making a motion as soon as I find the right button yes move for proof is there a second to that motion second good milk and hit the right button any further discussion all in favor say I improve in the minutes hi any opposition Kim I see you talking but I can't hear you I still can't hear you yeah your screen says you're muted Kim oh there it is there we go I'm I'm standing I wasn't at the meeting okay you're you're you're green all right motions pass any opposed any opposed motions pass as presented thank you Justin next is uh Televates report on their RFP and Dom is here as so is Rick proceed gentlemen okay I'll uh go ahead if I may I do have let me share the screen with you yes I would like to share a screen I believe you have to enable that yes well it says you've started screen share no no okay okay I the right button came up I think I hit it try it again yes yeah I've got the approval to share so here we go hopefully you can see a PowerPoint yeah we also can see your screen perhaps you couldn't you can also see what sorry the whole screen could you turn it into a slideshow so we just see the slide itself how's that it's slideshow on my end um right under the design right above the design the top it'll go in the mode we don't see it yet it's coming out looks like so you're seeing something different than what I'm seeing I guess uh let me uh we're seeing the sidebar okay no that's not good presentation but actually it looks like it's frozen because there's a yeah the middle's got that dot going doesn't it okay um yeah I was getting my extended display so I'm changing what do you got now yeah we're seeing we're seeing what the presenter normally sees we're not seeing the there you go got it beautiful okay all right I don't see it but that's okay all right I can see my my presenter screen okay so I've just got a brief overview of where we stand with the RFP I'll take you through that and encourage you to ask questions along the way whenever you have them so very high level uh go through our development process so you know we had developed a system concept that we described in our report from last year so we had a meeting with the twin cities team to confirm that system concept and to develop it to further detail that included developing coverage requirements as well as confirming the radio sites to be used and we did evaluate a few additional sites throughout that process to see if they might be beneficial for the design where we're pretty much finalizing on the sites we had discussed in the report but we did evaluate a few others one of the big items that we're trying to detail is the site interconnectivity of course there are uh a number of sites about I think there's 12 in total throughout the network and we must be able to communicate of course with each of those especially in a simulcast design it's very important to have specific timing to each site and be able to communicate directly with the site so we'll have a we'll show a little bit more in detail there we'll have variety actually of different ways of connecting to the sites in the most efficient manner and then the sites will need to be developed we can you know there are various ways to do that we believe it's most efficient for the twin cities to take on some of the responsibilities there we don't really want to have the vendor do everything that would be probably cost prohibitive in this case and would probably lengthen the schedule as well so so we're recommending certain actions be done by the twin cities and a few for the vendor to handle so moving on the system design this is what was described in the report and this is what we are describing in our RFP that we would want interested vendors to quote implementation of this type of design it's a dual simulcast cell if you will two different simulcast cells one within the city areas covering city of Montpelier and berry city and also a corridor that runs kind of between the two and then we have a broader system that covers all of the towns supported by either the cities or capital fire we will have a separate frequency pair for each of these systems to allow for separate communications so to reduce congestion between the two networks so the different or different portions of the network will have different frequency pairs and we have identified specific interference free frequencies that have been licensed in many of the sites and we'll need to we'll need to finish the licensing of those we will be calling for support of what many people refer to as a mixed mode system it will support both analog voice and digital p25 capability and digital p25 is important as it's the digital standard being implemented by public safety throughout the us and many other countries as well and it's generally key to support that when pursuing you know outside funding or pursuing grants the system although it'll have two separate simulcast cells will have a common switching center or common core to ensure that there's connectivity throughout both the cells and both dispatch centers and also as a most efficient design i'll pause here for a second see if there's any questions i got one don but i think you may have answered it yes go ahead the uh the separate frequencies can either location either dispatch center operate one of the other yes i think you just said that i guess they'll be able to operate uh either frequency for either network that's both for reasons of you know depending on what jurisdiction needs to be supported by which dispatch center and also to support for redundancy for instance if for some reason berry city had to evacuate their dispatch center for one reason or another uh all um the system could still be supported uh from the Montpelier dispatch location so no uh no functionality would be lost there and vice versa that's the intent thank you okay we are defining the coverage areas and i do have a graphic of the predicted coverage after this but what we're identifying here this is just in text but we will have a graphic also to show for the what we call the city system as i mentioned we'll have the city of berry and city of Montpelier and we're recommending a corridor between the two that runs along route 302 so we would suggest a mile either side of that uh connecting so we would ask for uh coverage within that area and we're asked we're going to ask the vendors to respond to give us a coverage commitment within that area so they will perform their design as part of their response to the rfp and we'll ask them to indicate the coverage percentage at a certain level of voice quality they can provide from a mobile radio operating within that area also from a portable radio operating within that area and then we identify two levels of in building coverage one what we refer to as suburban coverage so coverage within a light type of building light to medium building and then urban coverage would be a more robust in building coverage to provide coverage within a more substantial medium buildings so two levels there for the in building coverage so in each of these cases so this is a table that the vendor will fill out the vendor will tell us what their commitment is in each of these so you know somewhere 95 percent for for certain levels maybe a little less in the urban building coverage but they'll provide a coverage guarantee and then we will test to that once the system is installed and they will be required for contract to meet that commitment or else fix the system such that it does so that covers the city area we're doing a similar thing in the town area and we list all of the towns here that are included that are supported by capital fire we have the addition here of chelsea i think this needs to be i'm just looking at this sorry needs to be updated as chelsea has been added in here as tentative so we will update that and similarly we'll ask for mobile coverage portable coverage and for the broader system throughout the towns we're going to ask for suburban level coverage for that type of system so if i could add to that basically how that's achieved is based on signal strength so the commitment is going to be that that they will deliver a certain signal level to ensure that there is sufficient signal level to penetrate particular types of building so every building is a unique personality of course and and the amount of signal loss or attenuation that it experiences is all relative to that building i mean we we already know that we have some pretty challenging buildings to get radio signals into so you know we we're i'm not real optimistic that they're going to get cover everything but but this this approach allows them to provide us a design and a guarantee to that design of how much signal level they will deliver outside of the building and and basically that that is how you determine you know the the level of in building signal that they're going to get thanks right right and and of course you know we expect multiple bids from different vendors so this will be a key area that we compare between the two vendors as to what they can commit to so this is their you know their opportunity to go one up or one better on their on their competition as far as what we have shown predicted coverage so we we have done an analysis based on the sites and the antenna heights etc so i've got three pictures here one is for the city area and this is shown at the most robust coverage level this is the what we call the urban coverage level here or equates to a medium in building for vhf so this is the most challenging type of coverage if if we went for example portable on street then you would see pretty much this whole area greened out but this is specifically for the in building and you can see it covers essentially the entire portion of the city of berry it covers the corridor between the city of berry city and montpelier and then it covers the vast majority of the city of montpelier as well with the with the sites that we will be using for the system so similarly we took a look at the coverage across the the towns and we we can we can overlay each of the different towns and the specific coverage or a service area in here but this shows the pretty much close to ubiquitous coverage throughout the service area for capital fire here throughout all the all the towns this is shown at mobile coverage there is substantial of course portable and in building coverage here as well throughout this entire area using these nine sites and finally one other item that was recommended in the study and we are including in the rfp is for the vendor to include additional receivers for the what's called the vmed channel or the medical channel that's used for ambulance to hospital communications right now the only receiver for that exists at the the medical center which which is here in this area here so they have very limited coverage and one of the items certainly that we found during our needs assessment was they had great difficulty hearing the ambulance as they're transporting patients to the hospital so we found that with the addition of just three additional receivers at specific sites woodbury waterbury and new site we're calling norwich university they can greatly improve that ambulance to hospital coverage within the service area so if i could add to that don't please yes go ahead for those of you who are are not familiar with radio communications i'll just give you a quick education here the transmit power from the base station relative to the transmit power of the mobile or portable is very different and and so what we do and particularly in vhf and uhf what we do is is we use receive remote received locations to allow the lower power from the portable and and mobile radio to be received so you know you've got a high power typically a small antenna transmit so we call that the the talk talk outpath and in order to ensure that the receive that it can receive the signals coming back from the mobile and portable which is the talk back path we incorporate remote receive locations in order to facilitate the you know reset reception for you know both the portable and mobile radio back to the base station and so this is a much less expensive than building a full blown site here you have a receiver and you've got a comparator and you've got to have a backhaul connection so that you know you can get the signal back to the to the controller but this is a this is a very effective and efficient and cost effective way to ensure that the signal is being received and can be heard on both ends i'll be happy to explain it more if i didn't and that wasn't clear but that's the reason why you take this approach exactly great thanks right pleasure i mentioned one of the most challenging parts is the connectivity between the sites and we looked at that for the two different proposed somalcast cells this is a concept for the city cell which uses proposed to use three sites three antenna transmit receive sites the berry auditorium the medical center and then the national life building here these three but obviously we also need to have the dispatch facilities connected to these sites so that they can communicate and this is what we're proposing here so there would be a total of i believe this is five links one from the medical center to the auditorium auditorium to berry dispatch from berry dispatch to montpellier dispatch that connection of course already exists today and then we're recommending from montpellier dispatch the national life and then from national life back to the medical center so this is designed purposely in a loop configuration so that there's connections to each of these and this adds redundancy when you have a loop design so for example if the circuit between national life and the medical center were to were to go out you couldn't go you know one direction around the loop but you could go the other direction and you could still contact and communicate with all of the sites in this loop here so that's what's recommended we're recommending this be done with circuits generally referred to as an elan or an ethernet land again some of these connections are already in place some would be added we do have costs for these that joe has worked on getting through consolidated to provide this connectivity and again just to follow up the you know this is a very robust design what will happen is that the circuitry will route in an opposite direction on the loop in the event that anyone connection is lost and this gives you five nines or higher reliability and this is really fundamental you don't really have this today you have a single connection which is great and you need that but this approach gives you the redundancy that is desired so this is a this approach this design is a greatly a tremendous improvement upon what is currently there exactly and you'll see that the town system as we're going to is a bit more challenging because of the terrain and we've evaluated this so here we're showing the nine sites you'll see the push pins here are the nine sites for the proposed town system there's an additional site here push pin here for very auditorium which is in the city system we want connectivity to that because that's our means of getting back to the dispatch facilities as well as there is up here with Montpelier dispatch but here to to be the most cost effective our approach here is to use a variety of different connection options so we evaluated what we refer to as the paths between these sites so for example there could be a path from Norwich University to Beacon Hill we evaluated that we looked at the terrain using a terrain database and found out that there are at least one probably several large hills or mountain peaks in between those two those two points so since microwave requires line of sight connectivity a path between those two was not feasible on the other hand we looked at the path between Mount Pleasant and Beacon Hill we can see that that is a clear view so we can get line of sight so we would be this red link is anticipated to be a new microwave link as part of the new system so we're asking the vendor to propose this microwave link which would they would need to do the design they would mount microwave antenna on Mount Pleasant and Beacon Hill and do that connectivity we also see microwave links between Mount Pleasant Mount Irish and also to the berry auditorium we're also proposing that the vendor give us some these are potential links we've we've seen these that look right now to be somewhat marginal we'll want the vendor to evaluate them so they will be instructed to evaluate if they can do a microwave link from Woodbury to Walden and also from Lincoln Peak to Watesfield if they can't then there'll be a we'll look at a an e-line circuit between those connections the other major cost cutting move here in partnership move is where we've been talking with with Velco who has a network in this area and has substantial microwave connections currently they appear amenable to allowing the Twin Cities to utilize their microwave network so essentially utilize a portion of that a a slot if you will to to carry the required traffic for this system between a couple of points so they currently have a microwave link between Lincoln Peak and Mount Irish and also from Mount Irish to Woodbury so those are connections that we need so they would you know we're still working on the terms for that but they appear agreeable to offer that connectivity that of course would not require the vendor to do anything other than connect to that it would not need to add any additional microwave antennas since they're already there so that would be a great you know a great opportunity to take advantage of also they have connectivity from Waterbury or no I'm sorry there what they call it a Duxbury site which is close to the Waterbury tower that we plan to use so we would connect into the Velco network there which would be a short microwave hop and then we could connect into their network again and utilize that where we right now anticipate using an Elan circuit is from the Norwich University to Montpelier dispatch we have looked at all potential microwave links to Norwich University have not found an effective one right now so that's why we would be using an Elan circuit there so that may be a bit I'm sorry just one more thing Rick but that may be a bit technical a bit complex but that's we're trying to look at the most advantageous and efficient means of connecting these sites here and for this system to make this feasible go ahead Rick sorry okay so Dom I know you and Joe I sat in a meeting or two and for with Velco and and you know you you indicated that they were likely to do it but they were very very positive about yes about providing us access to piggyback on to their microwave network and of course that's going to save us hundreds of thousands of dollars because these links you know that's what they wind up costing so you know we're really in a great position here but I have a question for you who would they enter into the agreement with in order to in order to provide this access would that would be with the which which group will have to find the agreement because we'll have to have an agreement and so I'm just curious who do we have lined up that would you know that would sign I guess I'm not going to answer that I don't know if Joe or Donna have an opinion on that I would think one of the entities potentially one of the cities yeah one of the cities that's what I would think yeah discussion is part we need to have with the capital reaching group yes but that's why I actually brought that up so that you would catch on to that because you know we've taken it you know as far as we could from a technical perspective so technically it'll work we've included into the into the design we would a little bit remove the cost of the of the equipment I mean there's obviously the connection fees but but we removed it from the budget but in order for us to solidify that someone's going to have to sign off on it and I think just want to put that that that important administrative activity has to be done sure one other point you will notice that the previous slide had a slide had a nice loop connectivity this one lacks that due to the difficult terrain and the lack of line of sight in many of these areas but we will recommend and we will ask the vendor to quote as options we will recommend some additional links potentially as eland circuits to help create some at least partial loops within this network for redundancy for example a connection from weightsfield to to ducksbury would be one potential connection that would give us a little loop here or from walden back to very auditorium would also give us a loop here that would give us some redundancy so we are looking into that as well we assuming we have budget for we could also do hot standby I mean you're keeping there's two ways of you don't lose a microwave one you could have a I mean you could have a fade the signal could fade due to temp you know due to weather and that you know these hops aren't that long so that may not be a problem but you could lose you know you could use the transmitter so in a hot standby you would always have a backup in the event that you lost one module so that that's another way that you can you can back you know you can ensure the higher probability of service here you'd always prefer to have a ring or a loop as indicated you know that's ideal that's that's public safety grade but in this situation here in order to get that you'd have to have a number of sites that would you know would would be that would be relay sites and and that that's a typically way you do it to get a ring here but that that becomes very expensive all right it adds additional infrastructure that has to be maintained and and very expensive Donna Donna I have a question yes sir uh and maybe it's for Joe um with Velco being involved in this they would be a non-government organization that's involved in a government organization yes no yes okay with with that in mind you know and in the hospital and the ambulance service do we have some HIPAA issues with the transmission of that kind of confidential information on a public network I don't believe any of the vmed sites are utilizing Velco microwave so I don't think that's an issue it's a standalone receiver the vmed yes all right vmed is yes that's correct even though they're carrying our traffic that doesn't mean they can hear our traffic right right and and it would not it would not be accessible unless they had a some form of console connectivity with that uh you know with our specific frequency and that's not intended certainly yep but Doug you raised a good point but that's they we don't give them the the ability to listen to our traffic right I know Velco Velco never they never are interested in that portion this public private cooperation follows what the state has has set forward before we started this project so they they would just lend us or put into an agreement allowing us access to the microwave bandwidth and we did ask about uh fogging and and stuff like that and we're still waiting there they're analyzing it now so yeah we do want to understand what their reliability uh put the reliability of these links are to make sure that they're sufficient for a public safety system no I think there there to be congratulated and appreciated for stepping forward and and offering that ability to do that so it's again they've been very cooperative and very helpful so far very very pleased with their support all right thanks thanks for answering that uh chief Brent do I see uh you've joined do you have a question welcome uh can you hear me now Dom yeah yeah the only thing I was gonna just uh say for Doug's benefit was that remember all the v-med stuff can be picked up on a radio shack scanner anyways I kind of thought so but yeah yeah so not even even if it is a violation of HIPAA on some level everybody in the world can listen to it okay all right uh I mentioned uh site uh there'll be some site facility work required uh to make sure these sites are prepared for uh the equipment that we plan to install so of course we'll need uh lease agreements uh mo use or lease agreements for each of the sites uh certainly the sites uh not owned by uh either the cities or capital fire uh so those we recommend that the twin cities uh continue to pursue those lease agreements uh so that of course gives you permission to mount equipment uh on the tower uh have equipment either in a shelter uh or in a building uh at that location and to operate that equipment we also recommend twin cities uh handle tower analyses and upgrades where necessary so where there are towers uh there will be additional uh potentially additional antennas additional equipment added to the tower uh which means we need to make sure the tower is structurally sound and can handle that equipment so an analysis has to be done beforehand before the construction uh is attempted uh we recommend twin cities uh team pursue that as well as opposed to making that a uh a vendor task also uh the shelters uh we've identified that we will not need to purchase any shelters for the system there are existing shelters or buildings uh where the equipment can be housed uh but again that needs to be part of the lease agreement and we also need to be able to uh make sure we can describe the uh the amount of space required for the equipment to be installed the power and the uh HVAC the the heating AC capability necessary uh to uh to operate that equipment so we'll be asking the vendor to specify their power requirements for space requirements and HVAC requirements as well so that'll be incorporated into the lease agreements may may add a comment yeah please do on the tower loading analysis uh this is a very important aspect because we're you know we're going to add a new antenna and a new transmission locker or move the old so there's going to be you know add new take down the old on where where we're appropriate um and we're necessary now on a tower loading analysis for a tower that we don't own and most of these we don't but they're typically there's the the owner of the tower already has retained a vendor that does loading analysis for them because you the ideal way of doing it and I'm hoping that all the owners are disciplined about this but the way you do it is is that you map your tower you do a loading analysis and anytime you modify that add to it or take away from what's on that tower you you know you run the study again and so the study should be already loaded they should be easy to do um if they've already been run and they should be anyone who runs a tower it's just like it's just like running a you know multi a housing unit you know you you've got tenants coming in and coming out you clean them and you keep them keep them fresh and you change this that and the other the tower is the same way so you know the well if we ask the vendor to do it they're just going to wind up interacting with the the tower owner so how we do this is just work directly with the tower owners and and they'll have the vendors that they already rely on and not that'll reduce costs and that'll make the tower owner happy okay and finally I have one slide left on next steps so the excuse me dumb I see Doug Brent's hand up is that just from previously or do you have a question Doug thanks nope that was from previously I'm sorry Donna no that's okay it's just hard to keep track of on screen okay I thought I was giving me the high five here high five so next steps so the RFP that we have developed has multiple components to it so the primary document is which is very detailed in terms of equipment specifications and requirements for the vendor to respond to is the requirement spec and that's you know substantial document that many of you have seen or had the chance to review so that is that is in substantially complete I guess I'll call it drag form I've gotten quite a bit of comments and enhancement suggestions which have been incorporated appreciate all those so I think that is in very good shape we have created a confidential addendum to keep it you know keep limited access to the specifics in terms of the sites to be used and the specific information about those sites for instance you know the types of facilities they are building tower where the equipment will be housed we're keeping that in a confidential addendum to limit access so the interested vendors would need to sign an NDA and then have access to that and they will need that of course to provide their response we have developed a compliance matrix which has a section for each paragraph in the requirements spec the spec is developed such that each requirement is a specific line item or paragraph and the compliance matrix refers to each of those the vendor will need to go through every one of those line items several hundred and identify if they comply or have some alternate suggestion so that makes our review of their response you know easy and accurate and then finally there's a course cost submission spreadsheet which we will be providing as well so that the vendors will have common capabilities or a common template to provide their costs and that will indicate the baseline system there'll be several options that will be priced separately so that we can decide which options if any to include based on their costs so that all these these four items are all part of the RFP that we've developed and are all currently in draft form essentially you know ready for for development for and the the final RFP so we do we need to address any additional comments Joe you had a couple to me this week I haven't given you the the updates to that but that those have been incorporated I'll be giving you a copy of that tomorrow so those have been addressed so we just need to determine what the time frame should be to release this to the vendor community so that's that's all we we have right now Donna happy to answer any additional questions or entertain further discussion as to next steps and moving forward and I just say excellent job you guys thank you sir thank you for all your help very it's been invaluable so obviously working with you folks it's been a pleasure as always but I also want to point out that you know that there's been a you know in the past there has been discussions from some folks and they're they haven't joined us yet so maybe they won't join us but you have a full design right now I mean basically what we've what we've done is that we have identified the sites they we've validated that they will provide us the coverage we need they have been visited we have documented what's there what's not there we we know there is sufficient space we what we don't know is tower loading and that's not our forte we understand how that's done and we explain that to you but everything else is is ready to go all we need now is the funding so you know we've got an RFP that's ready to get released obviously it needs to be customized for the jurisdiction that will release it and when that that time comes but you you have a you know we're an agreed you know the stakeholders support of this and and Joe and Doug and others have worked very hard on this and you know so we've got a package ready for you to begin circulating around dumb how much how much more effort is it to put to turn us into you know the final product we can within days I would think huh yes oh yeah minimal minimal effort remaining yeah I mean we we've edited a number of times uh internally externally had number of sessions and and received great input from the stakeholders so you you will have you know a and a RFQ ready to go um now it has to be as I was I was going to say or beginning to say the jurisdiction that releases it which maybe Montpelier maybe not but their procurement department obviously will have some specific requirements for it but right now I don't think I don't think we're ready for that because we ought to be funding but we do have is a ready made you know package ready to go that that positions you for funding discussions with you know who met you know whatever agency is has got some funds for us I would like to interject for a moment here for everybody that's still with us Donna has run into a problem with zoom and because she has you know she's like left the meeting and tried to come back in but zoom won't let her and it appears oh no it appears that we all may have to leave and then we all may have to go back in but she's texting to me and I'll let you know okay I just I want to give you a heads up sure okay something happens crazy with zoom we're all gone I don't know it used to be simple oh good I'd like to ask a question yes can go ahead please have you reviewed the grant application filed by the city of Montpelier with an apartment of public safety to see whether that application is consistent with your recommendations uh Joe may need to help help me out here I know we have had discussions regarding that I don't know if we've reviewed the latest version or not so I I will tell you that the application period for state funding has not been released yet and neither Barry or Montpelier has tended a application for those funds request so we have discussed and provided some material to that could be used in support of that well I thought that there was a three and a half million request to DPS no no no official request or application has been tendered by either cities or capital fire mutual aid the the application period has not been opened up yet so it was only as a placeholder Kim it was only only as a placeholder and they asked what a rough idea would be what it would cost they also asked other other areas of the state what their projected costs would be so we're not the only one they asked they asked you in the county they asked Essex they asked Rutland county they were asking multiple people on what what numbers they would need sure I understand there's a lot of people competing for us when turn will turn out to be a small amount of money like six million dollars and I just wonder how we get from here to there that I don't think number I heard three and a half million would mean that Montpelier would get half the allocation for the whole state and that seems seems like a problem so Donna if I might yes I can you hear me yes I can hear you now and I was just going to add a little to what Joe just said that application period has not opened up yet and in Kim is right we're all kind of trying to figure out what that allocation is going to be by the state but the other thing is too there were a lot of parties that the state was talking to however there were only a few parties that were felt to be in a position to be shovel ready and one of those so it's not like we're competing against I don't believe 10 or 12 different parties for this money that they've initially allocated that number is a lot smaller based on the committee's recommendation of who is shovel ready and who is not we're shovel ready because of all the work that CVPSA and the money that CVPSA has spent and the hard work that Dom and Rick have done to get us to this position that we are shovel ready. I have one follow-up question for Rick and Dom. Yes sir. Assuming there's money available how many providers can you name providers that might possibly bid on this project? Yes certainly there will be you know we we normally expect Motorola and Al-3 Harris. Tate is another provider that we would expect to respond as well and Ken would be a fourth that we would expect. Well I've just had some competition if that were true. There's another vendor Kodan. Kodan actually is the president of Kodan is a longtime friend of mine they are a New Zealand company and they have a US base and they have a very pretty robust and less expensive option than the major manufacturers for Sonalcast network. One of the things we need to be sure of is that whomever we do business with that they have a local presence you know because you you need to be sure that you've got someone within you know a couple of stones through a way that can be available to provide maintenance on the network. So that you know I think while that's not we haven't indicated that yet into the proposal in the end what you're going to do is you're going to ask that that you know for them to validate how they're going to maintain it and it'll be in there because you you really you could do business with a company that provides you a very cost effective network design that you're happy with but you might you might not give them good scores on their ability to maintain it because they don't have a local presence. So let me refine my question then how many people are there with effective local presence? Three to four. Three to four vendor. Okay I'm going to steer the conversation away from vendors specific or even general. I'm really sorry it's totally frozen on my computer so but I would like us to talk about the RFP itself if it does what we intended to do everything that we've heard from Joe and Doug Brent and Doug Hoyt says yes. So do we need to approve this draft and then put it aside until we actually hear what money we get and then go back and work and reduce it to match the funding available? Is that the next step? Yes. I think we have to identify a funding source for sure. Yes. Oh yeah we have one funding source we just don't know the amount okay so I would entertain a motion to accept this RFP draft until further editing due to funding changes. I'll second I'll make that motion with a clear understanding that it is a draft and if there needs to be additional work done within the next week two weeks three weeks two months whatever that can be done. I would assume that okay Rick and Dom how long out are you available to do further editing? I mean I want to recap to that and and you know I mean absolutely I mean it it's not I know the editing is not endless and so if there's a charge just give me the real picture. Well you know I think we could bring it to closure as is now and then my opinion is you know we bring it to closure you now have it available you use it as part of your outreach with your whomever you're you're going to communicate with about it and and when it's ready for releasing you know then you know when we when we so you can't release it until you secure some funding so then we have to go back and work with whomever the the procurement department is releasing it and that's a future task. Okay Donna with all of that in mind I guess I'd like to modify my motion go right ahead to go ahead and accept the report as a draft report and wait until we find some money. I mean we can do anything we want with it in the future but it's just a matter accepting it where it is now. Yep. Oh second. Justin I I'm sorry I don't remember a second to the first motion so is it okay if we just do a motion here in a second. There wasn't there wasn't a second. I didn't think so but I'm not hearing everything so good. I guess correct there was no second to the first so we're just going to do this. Yep. Okay. So I'm really not going to modify my motion I'm just gonna move. All right. Any further discussion? Right okay all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposition? No I can't hear or see you you may be having the same troubles. Oh I'm sorry I was on mute yeah I'm an aye. Okay thank you. All right that was unanimous and likewise then we should I would entertain a motion to approve final payment. We've finished RFP which is a 14,807 due. I'm a little approval. Okay any further discussion? Seems to me there may be all in favor say aye. Oh oops I'm sorry Kim you want to say something? Seems to me there's going to be further work required hopefully in the not too distant future. Well that may be for this particular work. Well have we gotten what we contracted for that I don't know. It appears to be well we allowed within the contract right now we don't know. Can you hear me? Yes I can. They have completed the work within the contract. Within the contract there is a provision to do an extension for more work right. I don't know what your video off that me. Completed as directed within. Okay well that may okay this. So may I chime in a second? Yes go ahead. We have not delivered to you to the board we have delivered to members on this call and some that may be members of the board the final draft of the RFP. So I mean we it has been circulated it has been reviewed by those who have been working on it and they have they have given thumbs up that it's ready. Your board has not seen it yet. This is the board tonight they're seeing it tonight. I sent it out with the agenda. Yeah all right okay good. I didn't I didn't see that piece okay that's good well then there you have it. Not only did I do that but you two did a great job of hitting the major highlights because it's a very dense document for people who aren't you know need deep and expertise I mean so that was also very appreciated. Well you know you gave us good guidance and so Dom and I put together it was supposed to be a 20 minute presentation a little longer but it was a lot of good dialogue. No yeah it was good dialogue. Justin has his hand up. Yes I just wanted to know a few things who seconded that motion to approve the final funding. Kim did. No I didn't. Kim seconded the last one. He seconded the one about accepting the draft report not about approving the funding. Okay he ended up with a question when we were about to ask. I will second Doug's motion to approve final payment and then I need the exact number. It's $14,500. Can you type it in the chat because you're going in and out. Just type it in the chat and I'll copy it from there. Okay thanks. Any further discussion on that? All in favor of the motion to make the payment say aye. Wave your hand. Aye. Any opposition? Great unanimous thank you very much. Justin I'll probably send it to you later. I'm just too many things right now. That's fine. That's fine. My computer's not responding. Okay great. We've already sort of gotten the update on the next. So Rick and Dom you're welcome to stay with us but your time is precious. We're going to go on with our agenda and so the next one is the capital region update and I think Bleed Joe and Doug Brent did that. Thank you all. Have a good evening. Zoom. My understanding is it's sort of in limbo. We'll be back. Yes we'll be back next meeting. Don't please invite us. Okay we'll do it. Take care everyone. Now Justin is your hand up still or it's another one. So there's so we're nowhere in limbo there and they're waiting to hear. Then next on our agenda is the open meeting law. We have a discussion about a Justin maybe you in a frame part of discussion is dealing with the open meeting law violation that we received but it's also to clarify legal advice. Sure are we going to go into executive session first or we want to say it out in the open and then go into executive session. Don't know this is Kim did I miss something did we decide to pass number five. The world here we ate has not perceived ours they know about the capital region but they haven't yet moved on it. So answer your questions sir. So that item was passed. It was discussed while I was gone with questions you can ask them. Well I missed any discussion on item five so I just if it was had I missed it. Perhaps somebody has been connections and I do maybe Doug Grant wants to report or Joe we want to say again what you sort of said before. So we are currently waiting for the commissioner to release the application period so that we could submit it. We were told that it was going to be done very shortly but we at this point in time we have not received word that the application period is open. Okay thank you. All right so due to the technicalities here I was can you still if you can't hear me Doug put your hand up if I stop being audio fully understandable. We were going to go the board was going to leave this session and go into an executive zoom session. I sent the link out to all the board members. I would like to close this community session and then reopen it let's say in 30 minutes so that means I will lose the public and Orca and Doug, Brent, Joe they can come back. Does that sound a reasonable way to deal with it? I'm open to suggestions. I think it's a good idea Donna but the 30 minutes is way too long. We don't need 30 minutes to discuss this. 10. 15? Okay. 10, 15 at the most. Perfect. I'm all for it. It's great. So may I clarify? Yes Mel. So what you're saying is that we're all going to close out of this one for about 10 minutes and then re-enter this one as the executive session. The same link. No no I set a separate link for the executive session just to the board. I don't think I got that. Okay. I can forward it. I can forward it. Okay thank you. Great. Mel you're on the list so I'm going to re-forward it to you. I'm just doing what we do at council. At council we always go out of the community zoom totally believe it. Then we go to our executive leave it and then go back and re-enter the zoom link. Okay. Mel it was sent to you. I just sent it to your Barry City email. Okay. I'm looking for it but I assume it'll show up in a minute. Cool. Meanwhile I'm just going to read all this language Mel that's needed for the this is one of those motions that needs two motions. So the first one is your general public knowledge of the discussion of our legal council advice will clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage by enclosing what that legal advice is. This is a motion justifying why we have to go into executive session. Someone second it? I second it. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye or wave your hand. Aye. Great. Passes unanimously. I move that we enter into executive session to discuss the legal advice under the provision of title one section 313A1 of the Vermont statute. I need a second. Second. All right. All opposed. I take your hand for the motion to go into discussion. Do you not want to go into executive session? Yes. Can you hear me? We can't hear you Donna. We can't hear you. Yes. Executive session. Okay. Yes. Okay. Anybody opposed going into executive session? Pass unanimously. We're now going to leave this meeting. We'll come back in so it's 812. We'll try to be back at 822. I'll restart it. Everybody will have to re-enter. I do apologize. Yeah. Okay. So go to the executive session. Thank you. Thank you.