 The idea of of rectangles or diamonds being respected as as members, you know, maybe geography is important to think about, and it is a good idea to divide between neighboring CUDs. It's just interesting that it's never come up before and so I, you know, I don't know if it's a policy thing that we want to talk about. But that's not the kind of situation where we divide that's not a geography issue. That's all I just so I'm wondering about Roxbury in the context of the discussion of Washington. And whether or any other town that sort of kind of belongs and more than one CUD, we should think about them that way. So a couple updates in that respect I have sort of informally heard from EC fiber that they they may be interested in building in Roxbury as well, which again, you know, as long as somebody's building fiber, and they're actually serving the people there then our mission is achieved. And that's kind of what I was saying to the folks in Washington that you know, they're, they're going to be fine whoever they go with or just have a different board to deal with. Montpelier City Council has it on their agenda in August to leave EC fiber and and stay with just us. Northeast Kingdom Community Broadband has talked about the possibility of Elmore, particularly to service that far northwestern corner that's not really, you can't get there from here. So, yeah, I think that's probably going to happen more and more as we end up and with, you know, Vermont towns across the state that have a ridge going right through the middle. And if you happen to be, you know, contiguous with another CUD that can serve that better. Yeah, I'm personally personally I say why not. You had your hand up. I was just going to say that that would make us 20 right and we had said 22. What we were thinking. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted so on on that other stuff it makes sense to me to divide towns up if they're willing to do it, and they're willing to be served in that way. And I mean, fire departments build on both sides of the ridge there's some little town I was just, I'm doing some stuff for fire gear ordering. And I'm like, this town's big enough for two fire departments and the guy said well it's because there's this ridge right in the middle so they've got one on both sides. It's the same kind of idea that it kind of makes sense to do it like that I think. And so one of the other things that I that I thought about was, well we have a feasibility study for 18 towns, we don't have a feasibility study for 20 towns. And I asked Fred, I said so what would it take for you to go back and sort of retroactively look back update the feasibility study and business plan to incorporate Washington and Duxbury. And he could probably do that for $5,000 so we could. We could approve the spending of that money as part of the, you know, the $100,000 that we're looking at and go from there. Alternatively, so on a unrelated note, the Vermont Community Foundation is writing checks to all the CUDs with grants. $10,000 dollars here, here you go. Didn't, there's no reporting requirement. I didn't apply for it. They said here fill fill this out and I was like well wait what is this about and then I heard more from the public service department but they're literally just writing $10,000 checks to all the CDs. They were considering that when I spoke to them a few months ago and they said, you know you guys are pretty far along so we haven't decided if we would include everybody but you know it's obviously going to more help the early stage folks but the fact they're buying it across the board is great. Jeremy, this is Henry. I wanted to mention that when I got rejected with for my big grant. I said, so how would I have gotten that approved. And he basically he said, well if you had applied to join CV fiber. And then he went on to say that CV fiber should provide a big grant to cover the feasibility and business plan part of Duxbury, and that that would likely be funded, because they had, they couldn't get rid of all the money is left over money and you know that's not good. So, I, you know, if you could take my feasibility, my, my application with all my data, and then adapt that I, and I sent that to you. So it wouldn't be like you'd have to start from scratch. And, you know, just an idea, they have an issued the new RFP yet but if you wanted to do that, that's an option. What was that organization again, Henry, I'm sorry I missed it. The broadband innovation grant program from the Department of Public Service. So, the thing that would be that I would want to know about this is, it would be the timing. So when is the next, you know, when is the next block of funds available from the PSD, because like I meant just mentioned Henry we just got a $10,000 grant that we didn't have, our consultant is asking for $5,000 to add Washington and Duxbury. I think, I mean, I think we could probably go back and apply for another one later, if we had a reason to. Honestly, I think we're good. I'm personally, I know it's required for what we're doing here but I'm allergic to paperwork. And it appears that we have dodged a bullet in that respect. And then with you on that having been recently been through the pain. One question does, does this run a foul does this discussion of splitting up towns run a foul in any way of art off. I don't we need to be very careful about those discussions while bidding is going on. I mean, I mean, it would depend on what we're talking about. I mean, we're not talking about, you know, bidding areas or anything like that we're just talking about how we're going to, you know, how we're going to manage, you know, a town being a part of both districts so in the interest of moving things forward maybe let's let's answer some of the early questions first. So we approve Washington and Duxbury's application to join CD fiber. Second second. Looks like I got it. I got it. I heard Chuck first. Stupid Internet. Chuck's a cheater. All right, just got pretty slow internet too. All right, so, so it's been moved and seconded any further discussion about whether we should accept Washington Duxbury into the district. We wanted them to, and they agree. It's wonderful. Agreed. Andy Gilbert has a question, which CD is Walden in I think that's in Northeast is that Northeast Kingdom. Do you know, they have not joined a CD. That's right. They're considering, they're considering us they're considering the Northeast Kingdom. Okay. So Andy, if you have any sort of inside peak into that, whatever, you know, let us let us know. Yeah, I just wouldn't want him to be left out as we're starting to, you know, you're starting to fill out the map and then whatever. So I'll ping somebody I know who's there and see what, yeah, I'll ping Laura. Okay. On that. Michael, there's a white board member who lives in Walden is keen to make it a good decision. And so that will be moved them to figure it out soon in terms of what what wants to do. Yeah, I'm happy. Andy, I'm happy to go to that select board meeting. If they have any questions or if they want to be talked into it or talked out of it, whatever, I can, I can do that. I would just say, mention to them that time sensitivity of this, that if they don't get in on this we're going to be building and we're we really can't can't stop that train once once we get going and they're going to be what almost certainly be last. But the one other thing. Yeah, okay. There's a wax substation in Walden, which may key in very well into our network design, which Fred recognized when he was planning. Interesting. Okay, so any further discussion about Washington and Duxbury. Okay, I'm not hearing any sort of agony over this so if we can do the, you know, we're going to, I'm going to assume that we have consensus unless anyone would object we can, we can certainly do a roll call. If you like, otherwise I'm going to assume that if I don't hear any protest that this motion is going to pass unanimously, give everybody a chance to unmute if they want to protest. Okay, and I will declare the motion passed unanimously. And so Washington and Duxbury welcome. So, like I said, our Duxbury representative now a voting member as of now, Henry, I'm a study welcome Henry. Excuse me, if we could do maybe a quick set of introductions, we can, we can all let Henry know who we are Henry can let us know who he is and I'm just going to go around my screen so Henry I'm not going to introduce myself because I think we've talked enough and you've certainly heard enough of my voice in the last week or two. Phil. Hi Henry, welcome aboard. Phil Hayek, I'm the delegate from Middlesex and vice chair of the board. Rama. Yeah, hi I'm Rama Schneider I'm not sure I think I might still be an alternate from Williams town but it's been a while mostly I just want to sit and listen and catch up on what you guys are doing. Well, nobody's told me otherwise Rama so in my heart at least you're still the alternate. I'm still chair of the finance committee. There's that. All right, Jeremy. Yeah, I'm Jeremy, Jeremy Matt I'm the alternate from Plainfield and the clerk. Yeah, this is Andy sorry for the like impromptu video and everything and welcome and I'm a delegate from Cabot. Welcome. I'm Jerry DM and TDs I'm the alternate from Berlin and also on the business development committee. Hi Henry, I'm Alan Gilbert. I live in Worcester and I'm the representative. Ray from Northfield and I'm the delegate and my dermatologist most happy to learn being from Williams town that she was part of CV fiber and can't wait. I'm Chuck. Henry I'm Chuck bird I'm your neighbor in more town and I'm the delegate and chair of the communications committee. David. David Healy delegate from the town of Calis and co chair of the business development committee. Welcome aboard. Michael. I'm Dan Baum somewhere in the yellow shirt. Plainfield delegate Tom went to school at Goddard. School at Goddard. Tom Fisher delegate for East Montpelier and used to live in Duxbury before this so glad to have back on board. John Rustle. I see you unmuted John but I can't hear you. John is our alternate from Worcester. I'm John Morris. I'm John Morris. Welcome aboard. Frank. Deligate from Williamstown chief information officer at Norwich University. Good. Hi, I'm from Orange and I'm a delegate. I'm also on the business development committee and the finance committee, which hasn't met for a while. All right. And Henry. So I'm, I'm Henry. I'm a study. I recently retired from the MITRE Corporation, which is a research lab for the federal government. I've been in IT for six weeks. I see a few nodding heads. Been in IT there for 16 years. And in software my whole life. And kind of analytics and optimization. And performance engineering. So in particular to this area, I've done a lot of performance testing of network systems network appliances. Power walls proxy servers. Dark fiber. A lot of different things like that in minor head of 43 node network and engineering. Expansion of that network and testing of that. My company is operations monitoring and analytics. So I'd be very interested in the operational monitoring for this whole network. And, you know, from a performance standpoint, and from an end user monitoring standpoint. What kind of latencies we have and what the bandwidth actually is in these different locations, et cetera. But that's that's in the future. I'm sure. But I just want to give you a little bit of my background. So basically, if you have data. I can gobble it up and love to analyze data. So if you guys have needs like that, I can. I can do that kind of stuff really well. Excuse me. See, I don't know if you and I need to talk. Oh yeah, that would be fun. Yeah, when I heard that I thought that too. Also on Vermont Vermont. Artificial intelligence task force. And have made comments there and know some of those people. You and I are going to have lunch. Okay. Not that far. Just announced it at four o'clock today. They have it ready. All right. So, okay. Yeah. Just so you know, Frank, your, your, your mic is pretty, pretty bad. So if, if you do want to pop on again, I would recommend that headset that you were talking about before. So, okay, so welcome Henry. I think we all, you know, we'll all appreciate you joining us and helping us with this fairly heavy lift, although we are getting some momentum now thankfully. I just want to mention one, one other thing is that I have. A lot of census information that we can use for feasibility studies if you don't already have it. And some of that's in my report. The census for American. American community survey. Yeah, yeah, that one. Yeah. Yeah, it's okay. Anyhow, go ahead. To get to data gates. Thanks about that. Any, any thoughts about having having bread go back and update for Washington and Duxbury. Is there any reason why why we shouldn't mean $5,000 seems like a reasonable. cost. Jeremy, this is any better. It's much better, Frank. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I would say go for it. And by the way, I'd like Henry's contact information if I can get it. We all do. Sure. Yeah, that's right. Jeremy, one thing about that. One thing about having an or I'll go back and add the two towns. I just wouldn't want to make that a step backward for our submittals to PSD and everything that we're already moving forward on so this would be post submittal this would be for us. Correct. Correct. Yeah, and that's what and that's what Fred said, and that's kind of what I said to him to I said, we're not going to pump the brakes on the, on the wireless project just, you know, there's no reason to do that right now so he's going to finish. He's going to finish that and then when he has some bandwidth, you know, drum roll will be able to. Well, you can move on to that but you know if but if we're looking when we're going to apply for the Vita loan, you know, if we are looking at, you know, maybe changing the scope or changing, you know, one of the possible, you know, deployment areas or something like that. We might want to have that kind of bigger picture completed by then. Very good thanks. Sure, so I'm going to move that we approve the expenditure of $5,000. I'm going to ask Fred, update the feasibility study and business plan to incorporate Duxbury and Washington. Oh, second. Okay, I heard David first this time. All right. Any, any further discussion. Not hearing any further discussion. Yes, I'm also. Oh, Michael. Yeah. I was just wondering, is there a chance we're going to be picking up more towns after these two. And if so, do we want to charge bread with expanding the plan more than one more time. We might want to think about getting efficient about that. What does that look like then, like an open ended. Yeah, sure. So we can make a friendly amendment that that we approve the expenditure of $5,000 to interiled group. To, to include expanded towns, including Duxbury and Washington and perhaps in one or two towns to be named later, something like that. So we're not going to go bigger than what 22 or so we think, based on our geography. So there are only a couple of towns we're considering. In addition, Walden being one. Waterbury, maybe. I don't know. Right. Jeremy, you got a proposal of $5,000 for the two towns. We'll get at that and move forward. If there are other towns, we'll deal with that later. Any other thoughts about this? Is there a rush to get the information now about these two parents? I guess I think I hear Michael's idea seems reasonable to me if there's no left to get this information. Because Walden, for example, might come back next month and say that they don't have the answer. I would say at the end of August, that's best to do the work and then the only answer is what you want. Yeah, I would say the only kind of timely item that this is going to matter for is going to be the Vita application, which we're looking at September at the earliest. So if they come back in August, we could, it's not likely that Fred's even going to be working on this until August anyways. So no, I don't know that there is a rush. On the other hand, we have another meeting in August also, we can also, you know, modify the number to, you know, to accommodate any additional towns that seem to be coming down the pike. Jeremy, you had your hand up. I was just wondering if you thought that there would actually be savings for having him do it all at once, or if the towns are just too separate, and there really wouldn't be much savings in which case we may as well just approve this now and approve the other later. So I have not run it by Fred about, you know, what would this look like if it was four towns, what would it look like if it was three or whatever. So I asked him specifically for these two and he came back for with 5000 and that was that. So, but I'm happy to communicate the will of the board so any, any other thoughts. I'm not hearing kind of overwhelming Chuck. I agree with Ray, I think we should should just pull the trigger on this and move forward and take other towns as they come. All right, Alan. I agree with that sentiment too. So, any any further discussion on this I'm going to, we'll take a vote because this is not unanimous I'm up we'll do a real roll call and we'll figure it out. So, any further discussion anybody else want to weigh on this before we before we vote. Okay, I'm not going to question. Okay, well, let's just vote. Okay. All right, well let's let's not do that then. So if anybody would like to do a roll call vote if you would like to vote against this I'm happy to happy to help you do that. Otherwise, we're going to assume this is that this is everyone is on board with it. So unmute if you want to protest. Okay, I don't see any protests so that we're going to say the motion passes unanimously. And I will communicate that to Fred, but that in his pipeline, which is seemingly ever expanding. The consultant stream right is not is not how that's supposed to work. Okay, financial status and audit update I have to admit. I did not I was going to send you printouts of the bank account and this donations account I'm still waiting for tech support from the donations account about how I can get switched to be the primary admin and get some of the other folks removed from that. Nothing is really changed, aside from the USDA reimbursement landed in the account. Yeah, two weeks ago probably Fred's been paid. Everything's been paid. I'm expecting to see a $4,500 invoice from an RTC coming soon. That's I think that's about it. I was hoping Greg would be here because he was going to be. He's been talking to the person who did the municipal audit for the fire department. And he had, he was getting quotes and trying to try to find out what that was I was hoping to approve that tonight so that we can get them rolling on that so we have that in our pocket when we go to Vita but we will circle back around to this later. Okay. Yeah, David. I think we're starting to see something that's going to happen this month. How many people are making automatic monthly contributions to CV fiber. Okay. Yeah. You love them when you meet them, but you're. Yeah, but you are all welcome to do so if you would, if you would like to, I can, I can send you the link if you'd like to become a. I mean, I'll make you a tote bag. I don't have bags and stores anymore you might as well be carrying all your stuff in a CV fiber swag bag right Chuck. On the topic of donations, did you ever work out a process to ensure that we were getting tax letters out to people who did donate. Nope, I've not done that that was something I was going to hand off to the the treasurer which is another thing that I still have people to pin down with that and try to get them to be our treasure because that would be something that I yeah I something I don't want to really have to do anymore. You know, it's not as important as it used to be what they since they've changed the tax laws. Everybody's taken standard deduction unless you give away a whole lot of money. Yeah, I don't think we got any of those. I guess the other question there, we need more candidates for the treasurer position should we consider trying to do a little bit more of a push out into the community with with job posts again or do you have enough candidates that you feel comfortable right now one of them will stick. Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable I just need to do, I just need to, you know, talk to them. I just need to go through and do that step I've not not gotten that far yet. And that's totally my dropping the ball on that. That's sort of a unfortunately it's a self inflicted wound because I'm that's I'm doing the treasure stuff anyways, but it would be really good to have somebody on board that can, they can manage some of that stuff. Any questions about the financial status or audit or anything like that before we move on. Okay. Business Development Committee report back. Okay. This is David and we have not met since our last meeting. So, there's no, the committee has not met, but in the interim. Yeah, some of the committee members have been doing a couple of things one. It's an routing around the job description for somebody to be a project manager, but the other one is we did get in Fred's business plan this last week. And it's been circulated in the project team to be approved and sent back and now I know Jeremy sent it to public service yet or not, but that's sort of in. And Jeremy, do you want to distribute it to the whole board or how do you want to handle that. I can. I am waiting to hear from Michael about some of his concerns about that before we, before I pull the trigger and send it to public service department. I've looked at it, I've played with the numbers. It's, it's pretty interesting. And, yeah, I mean, Michael, do you want to put your commentary in here so I don't have to read your email. But most of the board members haven't seen it. Is that right? Correct, correct. So the comments are going to be sort of in a vacuum and maybe not fair to Fred in the report. I mean, I'm willing to talk about it, but then we can't have a full discussion because most people wouldn't have read it yet. So I'm wondering if that's appropriate. So, so I guess, because a lot of this stuff is also going to be sensitive that we will probably not want to talk about the actual, you know, the actual contents that are in there. Could you maybe summarize your, you know, the concerns that you have about it on a high level. I know you I know something that you said I remember reading that, you know, this isn't ready for Vita. And I guess what I would want to know is what maybe sort of larger kind of larger brushstrokes is it going to take to be ready for Vita. Okay, so it's got a lot of really good work in it. The narrative lays out a lot of choices, a lot of structures, a lot of ways to organize the ultimate progeny of our work, including who owns what and who manages what and it gives many permutations as to how that would happen. It doesn't make a clear recommendation. There are some hints as to what Fred and his co authors favor but it's not explicit. It leaves out some models that I think might maybe belong in there. But I can't say that we can ask Fred to share some of the things that he and his team haven't thought of. The purpose of it is twofold one is to inform us so that we can make good decisions of what we're going to do next and into the future and guide us well into the future if it's a good business plan. And secondly, it's supposed to be a report to take to a bank and say on the basis of this and you can ask us questions but on the basis of this plan and model, would you loan us a bunch of money. And I don't think that it's formatted or conclusive enough or clear enough to be successful that way. I don't think it needs more work. And yet I don't want to ask the team to do more work. I'm thinking maybe what we want to do is take the work that Interisle has produced and then we do more work on it. I'm not sure if that's appropriate or whether we hand it back to them and say, here's some aspects of it we think you should refine. So I'm speaking really generally. But to me it isn't a prospectus. It isn't something a bank would loan money based on. And that's really important. And it's not conclusive enough. It leaves us to think about, well, should we do it this way? Should we do it that way? And we have to reach those decisions before we go to Vita and say, this is what we're going to do. We can't say, well, maybe we'll do this and maybe we'll do that. So those are my high level general concerns. And I have lots of detailed ones too. But that takes a lot of work to document and spell out for people even in an email. So I just don't think it's done. And I recognize all the work that's gone into it, but I don't think it's done. And I may be the only one who thinks that way. I'm not sure on the board, but you know, I'm expressing what I think. And I have a new partner. Well, he's not quite a partner, but will be. And under NDA, I've been sharing it with him so that he could, and he had independently reached some of the same conclusions that I had and spoke to him and we both were saying, gee, I agree that I agree, I agree. So we were both kind of on the same page about that point of view. Was that Jeremy, can I address some of that? Hold on one second Jerry, Ray's been raising his hand for a bit. So Ray then Jerry. So I guess I'd like to understand the process and where we are in the process. What I think I'm hearing is that Fred has submitted a report. We've accepted the report. We've not agreed to pay for the report. We've accepted the report that the business committee is reviewing the report and providing feedback to Fred on the report. And we're getting, we're getting from Fred information that we need that we can make an informed decision. And that before that report is sent off to anybody to be the PSD anybody that we're going to accept the report. And this board will have reviewed the report, but the main interface is the business committee, and they're going to do the, you know, deep dive into the details to get the information we need. Is that right? I think so. That's right to me. And so, if that's where we're at in the process, it sounds like we're still a few weeks away, perhaps. There's at least a round trip in here. And so. All right, so, so, David, do you want to, it looks like you're like a one thing you want to address about Ray, then I want to give Jerry the opportunity Jerry was first, I'll let Jerry go first because he's look at it. All right, go ahead Jerry. All right. Yeah, thank you, David. So there's a couple of things going on here. With this, with this very good report and very helpful report. And I think I'm very much agree with Michael on most points. They basically left us with a decision tree with no decisions made. And it's not up to them to make those decisions that's up to us. And many of those decisions aren't ripe for the making yet. They're not going to be made all at one time. They're going to be made incrementally as we move forward. So on the one hand, I agree that this is not something you can just turn and hand over to the bank. On the other hand, there are other things that we can do with it as it exists for one we have decisions to make. So we're going to have to share this with with with folks so that the board can make votes on some very important decisions. But there's there's also been discussions about sharing this with the public service department to be able to show how far along we have progressed. And where we are so that we can be available to also get funding which is different from going to the bank and saying we want to take out a loan on this. So there's quite a lot going on with this report and it serves multiple purposes. And I don't think anything that I've said so far disagrees with Michael. But I think it's it's very important that all of the board get to understand the decisions that need to be made. And I mean David has lined out part of this in the timing of the timing of decisions as well. So this is this is something that I think we will have to share because there will be. I believe a number of votes that the board's going to have to make on some very important decisions. My two cents and a half. All right. Okay. So Jerry, Jerry covered pretty much what I was going to say which I mean the report was quite a bit of an eye opener and about the decisions that we're going to have to make in terms of operations and management and relationships and partnerships and. And it really is a lot of things that we're going to have to do in the next, you know, three to six months in terms of a business. And the financial part of it I, you know, they gave us a model and they gave us their best estimate of. I think everybody saw the move the draft model I think that was a spreadsheet that had. No, okay. Anyway, here's the bottle that you can vary the assumptions and I played with it and I was pretty happy to break it and run it you can run it down to where nobody subscribes. And you can see what happens and so that's what I did. So from that standpoint, you're using that information in that model. And they made their estimate of what it would take and why it was financially feasible. And so from that standpoint, I think we do have something to take to the bank and probably not in the format that would go to the bank. But so the plan anyway, Jerry is right, we were thinking we should probably get a copy of this and either draft form or whatever to the department, just so they know where we are relative to what we said we were doing as well as to what we want to do with $100,000 we're going to get in the next two weeks. So that was the sort of thought process behind that right now it's the project review team that has the project has the report not the whole business development committee. And so it's similar to the feasibility study so at this point everybody in the project team has looked at it. And it's given them their two cents except for Michael is the working on written comments. And then we were going to at least send it out to the whole board I think I mean I'm going to let Jerry decide on this, Jeremy decide on at what point does it go to the board. And what time is I mean, the project committee is only really waiting for Michael. And that'll probably be soon. Any other. Yeah, Michael. I forgot what I was about to say. So I guess, if we could submit. So we, we don't get paid by the department until we submit it to them. Fred doesn't get paid until we get paid. So that's one reason we want to move along. We could ask the department. I'm just thinking out loud. We could ask the department, can we submit it, but we expect to refine this a little further but we'd like to show you that basically it's complete. And we'd like to be able to get paid and pass it on. I think that's a little iffy. In terms of impressing them with how far we've gotten in order to enable them to feel good about giving us other grants. I'm not worried about them being impressed with us they are impressed with us and we should be proud of that. And I think we're going to get grants if we ask for them and write them up properly. So I guess I'm arguing for buying a little bit of time. And the other, I do remember now the first thought that I wanted to make, and that is that it's slipping away again. But you know what I do in those situations is you just presented to them, like over over zoom or whatever. You can't take it away and they, but they see the progress that you've made. And that way you're not giving them an actual deliverable you're just giving them an update that shows that you've done a lot of work, you know, so that's that's another way to do it is just brief them and don't give them anything. That's possible. Or we can, I mean, we can send it to them and say this is not our finals deliverable and we just ask for their feedback. The problem I mean I would say the only problem with this is PST right now, they are up above their they're underwater right now in terms of the amount of work that they have with all the stuff the legislature through at them. So, I don't know that we could get Rob fish to just do us a favor like that. Chuck, my perspective is, we asked in trial to produce a business plan that is ready to deliver for certain key purposes. And if the project team doesn't feel it's formatted in a way that correctly lays out the potential, then I think we do push them to try to refine it a bit. And I say that fully acknowledging that there's still going to be burden of choice on us. I think it would be completely unrealistic to have zero choice coming out of what what the project plan dictates that you know even even with the feasibility study there was choices we made about potential build paths and and what we saw as the most viable options for for sequencing. And so I you know I think Michael that you your expectation to not push back on that is perhaps something you should set aside and and be willing to give them the feedback and you know I obviously there's give and take there and and we can only expect them to go so far for a fixed price. And and if it's representative a lot of work, we should acknowledge that and be thankful for that but we should also push for the deliverable we need one quick point on that deliverable please if I may, we did not ask them unless I'm mistaken on the scope of work. We did not ask them for a document that would be presented to a bank for a loan. We asked them to evaluate over the nebulous concept of cash flow positive. What was the exact term cash flow positive over third three years and evaluate that for us. We didn't ask them for a bank ready loan document. So just just to put that out there. I could be mistaken but I'm pretty sure the scope of work does not mention taking their business plan and presenting it as evidence for a loan. Yeah, so I think you I think you're right but I'm I'm going to be I'm going to be that guy. I'm going to I'm going to make a big mess. I think so really we've been sitting on our hands avoiding making the decisions. If we if we make the decision and we say hey Fred this is what we are planning on doing, then Fred knows exactly what that report needs to look like we know exactly what we're going to put in front of Vita. But what I think what we keep not wanting to do is make those decisions, those decisions have to be made before we do any work on the Vita application. We are going to spin up our own in our own office and staff it and build our own, you know, back office and everything like that. Then we need to decide that quite soon, maybe next meeting, maybe before next meeting. And if we're going to contract out with an operator, we need to say we're going to contract out with an operator Fred did an incredible and incredible amount of work, creating two separate models, one model where we are the owners of the of the infrastructure of the capital and then another one where we we lease it from an entity like Washington Electric co op. There are an infinite number of permutations of different models. I'm not talking about the numbers that you can tweak and break and play with those are those are awesome. But, you know, if we are. If we can sort of decide, and there's not ever going to be a point where we're going to have perfect information, but I think there's enough people who are informed enough and intelligent enough around this board that are going to be able to make an intelligent decision about how to proceed from here and I think really what we're doing is we're asking Fred to make decisions for us to he can't make. So, we need to say, are we going to build a fiber. Okay, great. We're building the fiber. Are we going to rely on what to build a fiber great then let's do that. But then we need to say who's operating it. We need to choose, we need to choose now or we need to choose in August or sometime between that I there's there's there's no more kicking the can we just need to move. I saw Philly had your hand up and then Michael. I totally agree. And I think that then we need to see that draft as a board, relatively soon. You know, understanding that the project committee may still be tweaking some stuff with with Fred. So we just have to be able to start digesting that. And as you said, looking forward to making certain decisions. And then maybe the plan needs to be tweaked again and even again, we didn't ask for a loan ready business plan then maybe we need to invest some more money in making that final tweak but I, I'd like to see the plan. I really remember what I was going to say and I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. Number one, I think this business plan has less sensitive information in it than the feasibility study did. It doesn't describe locations it doesn't describe strategies that are competitive, particularly. So I would be comfortable with this circulating more freely than the feasibility study which really had a lot of competitive information in it. So that's one point. The other point is that. So, so now I'm going to be the bad boy. This this is difficult. We're all we've been this board has been together for more than two years. And we really want to get something done we're, we're tired of being impatient. We don't even want to be impatient anymore. We just want it done now we want progress we want something to happen. And yet, I'm going to say, we're not ready to make those decisions. And the reason we're not ready to make those decisions is because we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen with pandemic relief money that's going to come from Congress if it flips. We, it very well may be that multiple parties are going to end up owning bits and pieces of what we want to build in our 20 towns. And we don't know how to organize that without knowing some of those results, or we could set up some contingencies and we could plan that way we can game it out. But we really don't. Let's just pause it that WEC. Green Mountain Power wins some other art off. A couple of other part, you know, this can be, and so there's going to be multiple bidders and not necessarily will it all be one and one block by one entity. And then let's say a different entity ends up getting the competitive grant that Congress sets up. How are we going to organize who the owner is and who's leasing from who, if we don't know that the pieces we have to work with. And so that now that's going to play out over quite a few months and we can't wait another year, we have to come up with some real strategy to act on. But that's one reason we shouldn't rush to judgment on the questions that are raised in that plan. I think we should say, you know, this one really looks distasteful we don't want to do it and eliminate a couple, but we may have to leave some flexibility in our future. Alright, thank you Michael and this is this is the point where I have to step away unfortunately and I want to give Siobhan the next word hand the meeting off to Phil Jerry you're now the Berlin vote. So, my final comment before I just disconnect here is, you know, we want to, we want to go after that Vita money and whatever the overall big picture of CV fiber looks like. And that's a project that we will go forward with, that we'll go forward with without our funding that's will we will go forward without federal stimulus funds or whatever. So, let's scope out the decisions that we need to make and choose what that project looks like so that we can move forward with that. That's the timeline that David put together and I think it's pretty clear about those decisions but I think in order to get something to Vita. September, which is I think what the what the timeline says, we need to make some of those decisions so I'm going to shut up and I will talk to you all later. Thank you. Okay, go ahead, Siobhan. So, I was going to say a very similar thing that we have now 20 towns that we're planning on providing service to an art off isn't all of them. You know, without specifics about where we might start or where we might go from there, we still have, we've still we're still committing to providing the service. We have, we're formally in the WEC agreement now. Is that the true thing David I see you nodding. So we're formally we're, we're partnering with WEC. WEC is committing to building out lines. We have to make a decision on how that's going to play out. We don't know yet. We're part of this, the statewide CUD thing. All of this is completely aside from art off. And all of this is going to continue happening and continue swirling aside from that. And the decisions that we have to make are fundamental. We have to decide, are we going to do business as us, or are we going to contract this whole thing as a caboodle to some operator and just be their board. We have to make that decision. And that decision. Is it something that is going to matter about art off, or partnering with WEC, or any of that because that's, that's a foundational decision that we have to make as an organization. And I don't, I still don't understand why we keep delaying that we don't seem interested in actually making a decision on this point. Are we going to operate this, are we going to hire somebody to operate this, if we're going to hire somebody to operate this, and we're not going to hire employees and we're not going to be a provider which is frankly where I want us to go. Then we got to start looking at people we've got to figure out who's going to be our operator who's going to be putting these lines out we have to make that decision, and we keep putting it off and I'm two years at this and I'm a little frustrated a little tired of we keep saying we got to make a decision but then we keep saying we don't have enough information to make a decision. What information do we need to make this decision. That's what I don't understand. I don't know what we're missing, because I, I feel like I've been ready to analyze and look at things and figure this out. But I don't know what we're waiting for. So, I'll stop now. All those in favor of hiring Valley net say aye, all those opposed they abstain. Are you ready to hire Valley net to on. Oh, come on, come on right here. My only reluctance with Valley net is the wireless thing that is my only reluctance to go. Exactly. And my only reluctance about the wireless thing is because Michael says it's a bad thing and I don't know enough about it to gain say him. Who's the backup. It's a bad thing bill take charge. This was not one does an action item, and we don't have a motion on the floor except for raise motion and second of his own motion. We do have to come to some conclusion in order to give some feedback to in a while and make some decisions about how we want progress. Do we want to have the report as it is circulated and have some discussion at the meeting. Yes. For what it's worth the report as it currently exists is already now circulated to the CV board mailing list. Henry you are not on that yet so I will make sure you get a copy as well. And, and, and yeah, get that piece. I'm not getting any of these emails. Frank, I'm going to, I'm going to ping you through chat to make sure you get on the list. Thank you. Okay. So we have. We need to read it. And I'm assuming I'll talk to Jeremy that we have an item on the agenda for next time, whether it's executive session, or not, we can make that decision once we've read it. Maybe it was my understanding if I heard you right that the project committee is still going to be communicating and tweaking the report within our aisles that correct. Correct. So, even though we have this draft you may have more information to add. By the time we come around to the next meeting. Yes. Okay. Is that acceptable to everyone. Yes. Okay. I'm hearing no objections. Got the thumbs up for, for me to hand signals it's, it's great when you check. Okay, so we'll do that we'll move on from this item unless there's any more discussion. None. What are we at business now communications communications committee report track. I'm going to finish something really quick. For. Oh my God, Chuck, you've had an hour. Okay, so communications committee hasn't actually officially met in some time because we, we have been sort of on a holding pattern waiting for some other things to happen. However, this week something did happen in a little breakout group that I want to talk about instead is and just I want to preface this with this is not an official recommendation of the entire communications committee, but I think it's a good and so I think the board should consider it. And that is Ray and David and I and Jeremy have paired a press release to go off announcing our our planned participation in art off, as well as the beta loan program a little bit later. In particular the art off portion of the announcement gives us a great opportunity to caveat that we are going to have to be making these conversations in executive session, and have potentially having redacted documents starting as of tomorrow, because we are forbidden to talk about the terms of bid strategies and so forth. And so we have this press release written, and I will distribute it among the board to use in your own communities as you see fit. I would like to go ahead and make a motion to also submit this to VT diggers press release section, which I understand may now come with a $25 fee to post although when you go on their website it doesn't seem to have it so it's unclear to me. So I'd like to word the motion as follows, motion to submit this press release to VT digger for submission with up to a $25 fee approved to do so. You got it. It's a second. Great idea. Do we have the latest copies. One at a time please. Listen. If we have the lips copy. Yeah, go ahead Michael. We do. No, the entire board does not have a copy but I will distribute that right now. Okay. No, I don't want to vote on it. I put my email in there. So here's, here's my concern. Please. No, that you want to speak. Okay. Frank, you're next. What about seven days. I mean, you could consider that I was looking on their website and I didn't find as clear a submission path granted I've never tried with seven days. And so it may just be my lack of knowledge in that, in that space so I'd be happy to try seven days as well does anybody know if they carry a fee for press releases as well. I could just email it to them and if they decide to run it or not it's sort of up to them. Alan. Alan Gilbert, can you hear me? He looks frozen to me. Yeah. We'll go to Tom first. I was going to ask if we can postpone voting on the motion until later in the meeting so we have a chance to quickly glance over the document. Sure. Not have had is that fine with everyone. We'll go through the next. And then take this up before we close out. I just want to make sure that we stay within the confines of prohibited communications, the FCC rules of prohibited communications. We are not bidding an art off. We are an advisor in a consortium for art off. I love the idea of a press release, by the way, I think we should be putting out press release and getting the word out of all the things we're doing. And I'm, I assume Chuck paid attention to that but I would like to look anyhow, and, and make sure that we define things clearly. We are not bitters. And that's important but we're in a consortium that is bidding, and therefore we're confined by the rules. And I'm just quickly going back to something Siobhan said before. We do not have an agreement with WEC. We don't have any agreement with WEC at this time. We do have some understandings with WEC, and WEC is in the same bidding consort, same art off consortium with us, and we will be reaching, hopefully consensus with all of our bidding, all of our partners in the consortium later. But we are as far along as you described and that's all. Okay. Okay, to address your first question. I do believe we did a good job skirting around the items were prohibited to talk about. Although, again, the period actually doesn't start till tomorrow but still we skirted around them anyway to be on the safe side. Michael absolutely would love your feedback since you are really kind of the resident art off expert I think. So if we miss something it's worth noting Jeremy did did also weigh in on this heavily and he's he's pretty well versed in that. So I think I think that part's good. The other thing is we specifically wrote CV fiber will be part of a consortium spearheaded by the National Rural Telecommunications Council and RTC joining Washington Electric Cooperative Cloud Alliance, whatever Vermont Electric Cooperative, etc. So, you know Michael you also need to decide if you want cloud alliance mentioned there or not. And we should decide if if we are comfortable listing those other agencies, generally speaking. Right. The text of the draft is in the chat room. You can all read it take you 30 seconds. Thank you. At the top right of your screen. There's a little chat bubble and if there's anything on red. I got it. Thank you. Any other questions or comments. I think we need to take a look at the post in chat from Rama about BT digger and being free. We don't have a huge checkbook. Yeah, I would push to try to get this categorized under government if if I can and hopefully they'll abide by that. Good. I would think that they would but yeah they only give you three options to select for they give you current VT digger underwriter government or other. And so I would attempt to submit it under government first and and see where that goes. Yeah, we are legal legally we're a municipal entity. Yes. Right. And we're all listed on Vermont digger or at least most of us I think at this point listed on Vermont digger as I'm sorry not for my digger. I don't think it's going to be a good start for them as as miss one of these yeah right okay sorry. Everyone get a chance to just quickly look at the press release. Jerry brought up. Actually Jerry if you want to bring it up yourself if you'd like. I just pointed out that I don't think we're actually community owned. I'm not exactly sure about ownership here. If you, you could just drop that statement and say that we are a communications union district. Right without saying that we're community owned. I that I find that a little troublesome. But I agree. I think that's correct. Okay, I can. So maybe I've been I was gone a little bit but the fact that we decided to apply for a $4 million loan. No. Because we will apply for a $4 million loan in September. And I don't think we've agreed to apply for $4 million loan. Right. Interesting. It's a good point. No. May. Would you be comfortable with me. Just remove it. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. We've been doing this for three months. I don't know why we're changing it now is considering is strongly considering. Yeah. Yeah, it's considering. I'd say it's considering. If we don't borrow the money, we're not building anything. I think we're, we're considering availing ourselves of of up to $4 million from Vita as, as from acne 79 past last year, something to that effect. So the only thing I would add is that cloud alliance is no longer a member of that consortium. And has been substituted by pair networks. So cloud alliance with drew and pair network supplied and joined. Are we comfortable as a board calling out these other organizations. They are the only they're all Vermont organizations, but you don't need to. Strength of the group. Yeah. Okay. Before there was a suggestion that we defer on this until a couple of other reports. So we still want to do that. No. Okay. So Jeremy Matt. A quick question for Michael that that organization that replaces cloud alliance. Is that also your organization as well. And what was the name of that again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess like the fruit pair. Pair networks. Okay. Thanks. That, that is a kingdom fiber is the DBA of pair networks. So the fiber project in the Northeast kingdom. That's king. Okay. Pair networks is the real name of the company. So you can put, if you want to, you can put pair networks doing businesses, kingdom fiber. And so I don't think you could do that. No, I'm just noting it for the notes or for the minutes. Okay. Thanks. Okay. So. Are we okay. So just one more thing I did post. I did post the updates. We've all just discussed. In, in the chat again. So if you want to re-review. The points you've all made. Feel free to do so. Okay. Let's take a minute and look at that. Go for it. Yeah, I have to tell you that thanks, David. Having a board. Review or press release and massage it. It's probably. A sign we shouldn't be doing this. It is really dangerous. It is really, really dangerous to do. And I also want to say. The connection has been breaking up terribly. So I've been missing some of the comments and I apologize for that, but I can't do anything about it. I worry about things like in the paragraph that begins in addition to support its construction plans will be applying for the loan. A decision is expected within a month of application. And once approved, the loan proceeds will allow CV fiber to commence design. We can't say that. I mean, we have to have an if in there. So we know already what Vita is going to do. They're going to give us the money. I mean, it's that's a pretty sensitive issue, I think. And we really want to be careful with this. And I'm, I'm not sure that. I'm not sure that review by board is the, is the best way to prepare this for release. You know, this is going to be a public statement. So we've got to make absolutely sure this is accurate and sensitive to the interests and the needs of the people who are going to be reading it. And I'm, you know, the, the other thing I wanted to ask Chuck, who is the press release intended for who, who are we trying to reach? What's, what's the message we want to get to who? Yep. So the initial intent was for a post to front porch forum, but we did see an opportunity to word it more like a more formal press release in order to go out to VT digger as well. Now we could also decide that what we really need to do is break it out into two communicates since they're very different audiences. Yeah, they are different audiences. And I, I, I think, I think they probably should be worded differently. I'm just worried that we're doing something for which we don't have an approval process established. And I think we're floundering around right now, not knowing how we make a decision about what the proper content voice, whatever of the release should be. And I don't know how that decision is going to get made. And part of that I admit is the fact that this kind of, this came together just since the last meeting and we didn't have time to put together a communications committee meeting. But to your point, you know, I think this speaks to a matter of authority, which is the participants in writing this so far were largely Ray Jeremy Hansen and myself with a little bit of involvement from David. And, you know, we didn't catch the concerns that have been raised by the board. I admittedly, I think David was in job post land. So he probably didn't give it nearly as much attention as, as he does other things. And so, you know, I just think it does fundamentally speak to what does the board feel comfortable for who is participating into this kind of approval process. And if it's the communications committee as it stands today, then then we should make sure the communications committee is able to do that. If there are other people that need to be involved in that approval process, maybe it's communications committee plus executive committee, and we should determine who that is and what that process is. Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah, I lost a lot. I lost the last 20 seconds of that. I don't want Chuck to repeat it for everybody, but Alan, if you turn off, I feel uncomfortable about this. If you turn off your video, you might have more bandwidth available to hear the audio. I've been trying that and it's it's work sometimes not other times. It's really frustrating for me. I'm sorry. It's nobody's fault, but it's a problem. There might be a way to turn off incoming video as well. I know there is in teams, but I don't know how to do it here. Yeah. So. So, Michael. Alan asked a really key question and that is, who is the audience? Who is the targeted audience? If the targeted audience is government officials. Legislators. We say it one way. If the audience is the general public. The intelligentsia that reads Vermont digger. We might say it another way. And I can't tell from this. Release. Who we're trying to impress. So, I guess I'm not sure. So when I prepared the initial draft. And Senator Chuck. It was the purpose was to let people know through front porch forum. What was happening, what we were doing that we were making progress. And that's what I still intend to do. So I get the part about the, my view of the world is we've been talking about Peter and a $4 million loan for two years. We're going to do it. We're not not going to do that. We are going to do that. However, comma, I still intend to send something up front porch forum. You're welcome to do so or not. Okay. I think Alan has a good point that, I mean, for a public release, there's probably me, most companies handle this in a certain formal fashion of, you know, it has to go through a legal review. It has to go through, you know, the various steps in order to actually make sure nobody's making any mistakes before we send something to the public. And if we don't already have that policy in place, then perhaps we should whether we require somebody on the communications board has our communications committee has to be a member of the policy team or something like that. But we should probably have that sorted out before we get too much further down the road here. I agree. And that's, that's exactly what I was asking for as well, Alan. Okay. I think it's a policy committee deal with this. Where we get a chance to get together. However, we spent quite a bit of time on this. I'm wondering, do we in fact even need. A motion and a vote on this or. Allow individual delegates from towns to use this. Text. As they please. To inform. People in each of our own towns as to what's going on. Jeremy. I don't, I mean. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have any concerns that have been raised by people, you know, especially by Alan. Personally, I would feel uncomfortable sending something out. Like this. Without. Having some sort of a legal review or some sort of an opinion. That's just. You know, I mean. My point of view. I don't know how other people feel about that. I don't think it rises to the level of needing a legal opinion. I think it really has more to do with voice and audio. Alan was suggesting. So. Let's do something here. I would just say that. Considering the timing. That we might want to consider focusing on the legislature. So that we sustain their good graces and, and that that's more. That's pretty important. Frank. I would really rather have board approval before I post this to front porch forum for Williams town. I want the board behind me before I do it. Okay. Does anybody think we're ready to vote on this? Or should we defer this? We defer it to the executive committee. So we don't have to do this again. Please. Okay. I think it should be. There's somebody, the full board. I have a concern. Okay. I'm concerned. Yep. I'm going to, I have to, like. It's some, yeah, this, there's a lot of layers to this, but I have to communicate to the community somehow. And much of what we're discussing right now is public anyways. And the fact that we've even debated it all as public. I think we're over engineering this a little bit. I do think. You know, some of us have to use judgment. I'm going to, I'm going to write an article tonight for the local newspaper. And I'm not going to get board approval to do it. But it's just going to be based on our public notes in our meeting notes. I'm not going to reveal anything that's not publicly already available. I'm not going to reveal anything that's not publicly available. And I'm going to be careful in how I represent it, but. You know, I don't know that. I think we're probably being a little too, again, this is like, we get too hung up on competitiveness. And we're getting too hung up on this. We're here to represent our communities and a need. For broadband. And we meet publicly. We're under the public meeting and open meeting laws. We kind of just have to accept that. You know, that's what we are. We're not really an operating entity until we get a partner that doesn't know what to do. We're not really an operating entity until we get a partner that doesn't know what to do. We're not really worried about these things in a more kind of legalistic or competitive sense. We're overthinking it. Okay. And then Tom. Yeah, I'm good with everything except the $4 million alone because we just have received the first draft of the business plan. And as Michael's noted, there are a lot of decisions. Necessary for us to. To. To have a viable. Four million dollar bill. I. I, that, that paragraph is premature from my perspective. Everything else I'd, I'd, I'd move it along because I do agree. We need to communicate to the public that we are moving forward. And I'm proud of the progress we've made, but that $4 million alone. Paragraph gives me pause because we need to talk about it. We need to talk about it. What, what, what if it says is considering participating in. A million dollar loan. A decision is expected within a month of application. And if approved, the loan proceeds would allow. I softened it in the chat. You can see it. You still have September on there. No, that's gone. I'm looking at it. Yeah. Tom, do you want to go ahead? Yeah. I agree with Andy. I mean, I think that's the kind of organization I want this to be. I'm just, I mean, those of us who are a little longer in the truth on this have, have seen issues come up with previous delegates who, you know, would try to use things in a way we wouldn't expect. And I just don't want to run us afoul of that. Well, we're asked again, so yeah. One out. Jeremy. Is there possibly. Would it be an idea to have some distinction between. Like official. Communications from CV fiber as an organization. Versus communications from delegates. Does that solve any of these. Issues. You know, something like where, you know, if I put out a notification, I say, you know, as CV fibers, plain field, delicate, I'm posting this information. And then it's, it doesn't. At least in my mind, it might. You know, be like, you know, I'm just trying to sort of insulate CV fiber from me making a mistake and saying something that's wrong. In the post. Just to thought. I think there's some truth to that. Alan, you have any comments on that? Unfortunately. I should be there. Am I there? Yes, you are. Can you hear me? Yeah. You can hear me. Yes. This is really awful. I think it would make sense for a clean redraft to be sent around to the board. In the next one to two days. And, and for Chuck to ask for approval. That. For the language that he's used. We're, we're in a really difficult area. You know, for most boards, you know, you're not going to be talking about the board itself. You're not going to be talking about the board itself about an issue that is really an organizational issue. There's supposed to be agreement among either an executive committee or the whole board or communications committee. About in this case, some sort of a public release of information. About really critical issues because you want it. You want to be presenting yourself as a unified body. And you run into problems when you have board members saying that they're really interested in finding a good news story. If they see a difference between the way I talk about something and the way Phil talks about something, that's where the story is. So I, I just think we want to be careful. To have a consistency in what we're putting out as news about our efforts going forward. And that's why I think it's worth a couple more days for maybe Chuck to do a redraft. And Chuck, you're welcome to call me or we can set up a time to do that and see if we can smooth some of the language out and just make sure there aren't any pitfalls in there that I think could cause some attention. We don't want to get. Second. Who is that? That was, that was me. Let me just raise one other question. If we're sending around. A document that. As a press release. And we're essentially voting or approving yet. Outside of a meeting as an unmarried agenda item. It seems like we're almost more hot water. And. The individual who is not representing the board's point of view, but representing only themselves. It says, Hey, I just wanted to give you, you know, community members and update. Well, I would say this. I would say the Gilbert is saying you're really overthinking this one, Phil. I'm looking at, you know, I would like to make an opinion that Alan and Chuck look it over and that we pre-approved the sending of the release after they have worked it out. We have a motion. Top ticket as a motion. I'm not sure Alan actually made the, did you actually make a motion? I will make it now. To be the content that you expressed when, when you repeated what I was thinking. Second. Jeremy, you can say that I move that Chuck and I work on this release, have it sent around the board for final approval before it's distributed. How's that? Well, we can't. We can't email. We, we, we, I'm a man to that motion. That we authorized Chuck and Alan to. Reach the final language and send it out. Seconded. Okay. Oh, okay. There's a second on the amendment. We're going to vote on the amendment. Wait. I've been on five boards and the only one on all five boards who can speak for the board is the chair. This is a different board. Let me tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Technically right. But I think with a press release, if it's voted on by the board, it's, um, It can be issued. So we have an amendment. We have a second. All those in favor of the amendment. Wait, so, sorry. Just I'm like way confused about the notes. So is this the motion that Alan made to have Chuck. And Alan make the language or is it the motion that Michael made to have Chuck and Alan reach the final language and then send it out. Um, This started with a motion from Chuck. Michael's is an amendment to Alan's motion. So first we're going to vote and we're going to vote on the amendment. And if that passes, then we're going to vote on the amended motion. Get back here. David just left. David, just left. All. Okay. Yeah. All those. Passes me honestly. Right onto the motion. All those in favor of the amended motion. All those in favor of the amendment. Hi. Hi. Those. Passes me honestly. Passes unanimously. I'm gonna move right on to the motion. All those in favor of the amended motion, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? There's none, pass unanimously. We're done with this item. Just one last thing, Jeremy, if you could just put me in as abstaining from both of those, because I wasn't in the whole conversation, so I cannot. All right. Contracting with a project manager. Manager, who's item is this? David, please. Thank you. So I drafted a job description for project manager that's been circulating and I think it's, I don't know which committee has gotten circulated. I've gotten comments back from a few people, but not a lot. They're all good comments to simplify it and to clarify that we're really, we don't know what we're gonna be. This is really for the six month period, a five month period, and to help us get through all the things that the bill requires us to do and to help us deal with all those things in the business plan that we're talking about. So from that standpoint, that's where we're at. I haven't circulated it to the whole board. I will do that tomorrow. And the idea is, if people wanna post it on Front Porch Forum, they could do that. Or if they know somebody who is interested in the position to let us know, they should send us a resume. That's at the bottom of the job description. And I have one person who's already somebody interested in it. So that's good. Somebody's pretty qualified. But we're gonna get money August 1st and we should probably try to get somebody here August 1st. I don't think we're gonna find the perfect person for a four, five month contract, but you never know. And take any questions. Alan? David, can you please in the fourth line change this will be the first employee of CV Fiber? Yes. Otherwise we're gonna have the Department of Labor coming after us. No, no, that's gonna be the contract. Yep. So maybe something like this will be CV Fiber's first hire or something like that. Something that gets rid of an employee. Don't use hire again, because it implies first now. Contract. First contractor or whatever I know about. Yeah. Any other comments, questions? Josh? Yeah, I just wanted to just reiterate that if we do any such language that even references employee or hire or anything like that, then we do have to go back to insurance as well. Yep. Got it. Good. Anyone else? Moving on. Phil, Phil, can I just say, David, in number eight, the project manager will be responsible for, I think where it says central Vermont supervisory unions, that's no longer the proper term to describe what's been happening out. I think if you change that to central Vermont school districts, lower case school districts, it's gonna be clearer to people what you're really after. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Not really, I'm moving on. Ardoff responsibility. Is that yours too, David? Ooh, Ardoff. It's a delegation of Ardoff responsibilities. Well, I mean, it could be anybody. I mean, it could be you or me, I guess. We left the last meeting without somebody who's gonna be representing us, the board on the Ardoff process with WEC and our NRTC. There are people, you know, right now already working with WEC. I mean, it's Michael and Greg and I would like to be on that group. So there's three. I don't know if anybody else would like to be part of the Ardoff process, but the more the merrier. Well, maybe not. How many can we have before we've run a foul of meeting laws, Alan? It's not a number. Anything plus one that's designated as a committee, that's a sub whatever is technically subject. Well, no, you have to have a majority of the members meeting for it to be a meeting. You can have, if you have a committee of five and you only have two people who are talking to each other, that's not a meeting. You still might be subject to disclosure of the record of what you talk about if there are notes and stuff, but you don't have a meeting if you're not a, if you're not a, whatever the quorum is. The quorum is usually a majority of the members of the committee or the board. So I don't think that's a problem in terms of being a meeting. You can communicate on business related to something you're dealing with. Okay, so I- We just have to be careful for the business development committee here because you may end up with a quorum of business development committee folks. That's- If you have too many. I'm gonna make a motion. Okay. And I can't second it. So somebody else is gonna have to. No, I can't. I'm lacking. I'll second it. I move that the board appoint David Healy, Michael Birnbaum and Greg Kelly as presiding members pertaining to RDOF responsibilities who have the authority to make decisions or representations in the consortium. Consortium. That's the word consortium that we are a member of for the purposes of advancing our interests in this endeavor. And that this is a subgroup of the board, not a subgroup of the business development committee. So they can add other people if they need to without running a fowl of the committee rules for public, what you call it. Thank you for that. Do I have a second? Chuck? No, sorry, I'm waiting for discussion. Okay, I'm gonna second it then. Is there any discussion? Chuck? Yes. So my only concern with that is a three-member committee hits quorum with two of them chatting, right? It's not a committee. It's a subgroup. They're representatives. They're representing the board. Okay, okay, I see. I'll just add that last meeting we got the possibility of this and we decided that there would be some mechanism for feedback to the board as to what the representatives are doing on behalf of the board. Because we don't want the board to be in the dark. We just don't wanna run a fowl of the ARDOF prohibited communications rules. So let's just assume that in that already long-winded motion, it includes that there will also be some form of reporting back to the board by the representatives. Which makes it a subcommittee. Essentially, it all practical purposes. It really does. So I mean, I guess the question I'm having is why do we need more than one person? Because I think it's a little cleaner just to delegate a person to take this responsibility. It is an administrative function on for us and you're not nearly into this kind of gray area of... Bedge strength. Cross-training. Somebody gets hit by a bus. And then you point their back up. David, will you just take over chairing for me for a minute? I'll be right back. Okay. Michael, you're gonna tell us that you're gonna withdraw from the committee because you don't need to be on it. It's not a committee. I don't need to be on it. That's fine, but I do think it's important. All right, I have to disagree with Andy. One person is not sufficient representative because there are gonna be some difficult decisions to make and one person shouldn't be making them for the board. There should be some discussion. So hopefully... Right, but if they're... Yeah, I'm poof. Boy, not on board with any of this. We gotta think about this. Like, it's a lot more straightforward to say, okay, here we're gonna take one or two individuals and delegate an administrative responsibility. The minute you say it's multiple members and then they have to report up and everything, it's a subcommittee. And then I don't want... The delegation thing always is a little... That's a great fine line too. You do want people doing work and then how do you distinguish between a policy decision and what's just kind of executive or operational? So this is just one of the struggles we always have, but this is tough. I would be much more comfortable with saying, here's two people, just go do your best and come back and tell us before you do anything that's important, right? There's gonna be some really delicate decisions to make. I'm friendly to a motion to amend. So David and Michael, instead of including Greg, and then we've got two people delegated for cross-training purposes. Well, in fact, I'm already a member of... My company's a member of the consortium, so I don't need to be... I mean, I will be representing CB-Fiber's interests for sure, but I don't need to be officially at representing CB-Fiber in that capacity. How does this even... Michael, how does this work? Like what... I guess you've got a multiple entities in front of... Yeah, this is really getting into a nebulous area. It's hard for me to see where I am to have any vision of what I'm doing to it. Well, it's... Phil, could I... Or David, are you... Yeah, of course, yes, I am. Yeah. So there are 59 members of the consortium, and we are the four, five Vermont members of the consortium, and there's only one bidder, and that's NRTC. And NRTC is gonna bid on behalf members of the consortium as they are guided by the members of the consortium. The five Vermont members, ideally, will reach consensus on what they think is best for all of us. There may be some discussion, there may be some dissension, but probably consensus will be reached. And it's important that enough people are knowledgeable enough of what the board wants to represent the board when discussing it with the other Vermont members of the consortium. I wouldn't trust me, I wouldn't trust David, I wouldn't trust Greg alone. We need to have more than at least two, I would think more, making those decisions on behalf of the board, because there are gonna be some questions. We wanna bid here, no, we wanna bid here. Oh, well, how are we gonna divide this up? Or maybe we shouldn't bid at all, maybe things like that are gonna come up and do you want only one or two people to have the power to make that decision for the board? I don't think so. I don't think we were saying that. No, I wasn't saying that, I was actually, yeah. Keep going. Go ahead, David. I think that's a problem. I mean, if we have to make a decision that's major like that, we gotta come back to the board. Yeah, exactly, yep. Henry, was that, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to relay that I've been in quite involved and actually met with the director of the RDOF program last week regarding Duxbury and our eligibility and the mismatch of their data with our data. And I've been attending the FCC meetings and the data meeting is pretty important because that's for the next round of bidding and we need to get them on E911 data instead of 2010 census data and other things like that. So I just like to contribute to the RDOF effort because I've been doing a lot of work in that area. Did Jeremy Hansen express any interest in being a liaison to this group? Not that I have heard and nothing, David, he hasn't expressed anything to you. I am. Michael, okay. So, Michael. I agree that the representatives should come back to the board for guidance on major policy decisions in regards to the RDOF auction. They are not gonna be able to come back to the board when decisions have to be made during the bidding process when there may be an hour or two in which to make decisions. And so the people who are representing us who we are not even gonna be, we're not even taking CB5, we're not taking a position to be an ultimate winner. We're taking an advisory position but we want to advise the other Vermont members of the consortium to choose certain census blocks to bid at certain levels, to withdraw from certain ones within the timeframe of the auction, which has long strokes and then really short ones. And so on a policy level, of course, the board should approve a general position but I don't think one or two people should be making those big decisions of we're bailing from this group of blocks because the price got too low or we're going for all of them no matter what it goes to. That kind of decision should be made by more than one person. Right. Make a substitute motion that David Healy, Greg Kelly and Jeremy Hansen be appointed representatives to the NRTC consortium as our representatives. End of motion. Second. Seconded, David. Michael. Michael. Okay. Any more discussion? I thought I heard Henry kind of volunteering or expressing a desire to be involved with this because of his experience. Is that true, Henry? Sure, but I think what I was heard Michael saying is I was thinking it really boils down to two groups. One is the initial group between now and October and then there's a group in October that's sitting there like in the stock market going, yes, no, yes, up, more, lower, south and I don't need to be in that group. I just want to be in the first group that's coming up with that strategy. And so maybe if we broke it into a kind of study group and a bidding group under RDOF then there would be two different sets of skills that could be used and authorities that could be granted or responsibilities that would be had in each group. Okay. Anyone want to comment? I don't think this is Jerry. I don't think there's anything in the motion that stands that stops Henry from providing input. I think there's lots of ways that you can provide input without necessarily being identified as part of that triumvirate. Yeah, it's fine with me. I don't care. The only thing that we decided last week was that in order to protect ourselves and other members of the consortium from an accusation of violating prohibited communications is that we wanted to keep the number of people narrow and only have them be able to report to the board in a general fashion. And so an informal addition to the group might be awkward. Why don't we just add Henry to the list? So, hey, are you willing to amend your motion to add Henry to that list? Does anyone else want to be on the board? I'll need to. Are we sure? Okay, then I'll add Henry to the list as a friendly amendment. I think I had the second, didn't I, Jerry? I was gonna ask that because my fingers are getting a little sore from all this time. Yeah, I think I had the second. So I'm willing to make that change to any other discussion. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Close. Passes unanimously. Any abstentions? I'm sorry, I forgot to ask. Henry's abstaining, okay. Okay. Well, we're coming down to the second part of the meeting. This is for, that was for the amendment, correct? We haven't actually voted on. No, it was a friendly amendment. So it was all. It was a friendly amendment. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Approval of July 7th meeting. Wait, no, no, no, we added another thing to this agenda item. What was that? And that was a quick discussion of our current knowledge of who's participating in ARDOF and the state. You're right. And also a discussion, and we might want to table this discussion of appointing someone to respond again, because of short notice issues to line extension proposals in our territory. Yeah. That's a long table to that. That's going to come up in the next week or so. It is. Yeah. This is already doing line extensions and sooner or later, we're going to be asked. Okay. So, now I forgot. What was the first part of this? Oh, what's going on as far as, yeah, raise the laugh again. What's going on as far as ARDOF? I can take a stab at it. And I think Jeremy knew something I didn't know, but he's gone. So we know about our own consortium. There's EC fiber, CV fiber, Washington Electric, Vermont Electric, and my company, Pear Networks. Those are the Vermont members of this 59 member consortium. We were under the impression until yesterday that under the leadership of Philson in Maine, another consortium was being formed with Green Mountain Power Belko and the municipal utilities under VIPSA, DGPSA. And yesterday, we found out that in fact, there is no consortium. That in fact, Tilson is going to bid on its own or is filling out, you can't say they're going to bid. We don't know who's going to bid, but they're submitting a short form on their own and they're filing agreement statements with those other parties. Oh, and I left out some Southern Vermont CUD joined with them. And any case, Community Broadband CUD is in negotiations as of today, still in negotiations with Tilson for another side agreement. We don't really know, now I'm going to editorialize. We don't really know if the FCC will accept this kind of structure from Tilson, but it'll be interesting to see what happens. But they have decided not to act as a consortium. Now I don't know about any other entities in Vermont. I'm sure there are other these that will be bidding, but I don't have any direct knowledge of any of them. A lot of the national companies might be, there are some out of state companies that might be bidding in Vermont. And I can name a whole bunch of them that I think will be, but I won't because I don't know it. And I don't know if anyone else has anything to add. Nothing. Okay. Okay, that's that. That's that. So now we need to designate someone to respond regarding long extension requests. Is that what you're saying may come up in the next week? Yeah. Well, nine extensions and any kinds of broadband projects funded under the CARES Act Coronavirus Relief Fund money. This Department of Public Service is obligated to let us know and ask our opinion. They are not obligated to follow our opinion. It's the commissioner will make the determination. But if we feel that something is going to hurt the future business case of our CUD, we're within our rights to say we prefer that that extension not be granted or that project not be funded. So we have to have some people representing us on short notice when the department gives, there will be only seven days I think to respond. So it will be between meetings. So we have to have somebody or several people. Okay, David. I volunteer. Okay. That sounds good. Anyone else interested? What are the thoughts of just one person or two or three or? I'll work with you, David. Thank you, Jerry. Okay. I count two if you want me or if you need three. You want at least two because someone might be sick or out of town or whatever. All right. Okay. Would this also possibly require an emergency meeting of the board sometimes? I mean, if the representative seemed it's really threatening, yes, but if it's kind of a no brainer, no, right? Right, right. Okay. Okay. So I'm trying to put my interview not in motion but we're accepting your volunteerism for the three folks that are going to do this work on our behalf. Oh, no, that has to be a motion. That has to be a motion. I would object to that. If you're delegating authority to people, like you've got to make that a motion. Okay. Go ahead and make it. I'm not interested in making it. I think so. But I mean, you can't just, you can't say, okay, these people are going to make decisions about, which is kind of they're performing a delegated regulatory function without it being a motion of the board. So I mean, so if you want it. So who's willing to do the work? Is that something David or David? Yeah, well, all we have to do is make a motion that says those three are going to do it. That's easy. You can make the motion, Sean. You'll do it. Yeah, I'll do it. Go for it. So, the way it's like. Yeah. David. I could volunteer as well if you want to add me or not. I don't know how many people we want in this. Right. Jeremy, Matt, David, Healy, Reg, it was Greg. Jeremy. And Jerry. Jerry, Daniel. Yeah, Jerry. And Jerry. Do you respond to in a timely matter? No, promptly respond properly to requests from the state regarding line extensions. For other projects funded under the coronavirus relief fund. That. Got it. Okay. Is there a second? I can't. Seconds. I will. Okay. Who's raised second to that? Okay. Any further discussion? How will these requests come into them to be able to make that decision? Henry, did you ever? So, when you say other, that also includes the connectivity initiative. Yes. Objects as well. Yes. Specific, I guess. Okay. And to Henry's question, I believe that it would, the information goes to the chair. Is my guess is how that would work. The information would go to the chair and then the chair could pass that information along. That would be my guess. Or the department could be informed of who the representatives are and the department could directly respond to the representatives. That could be good too. Yes. All right. Any other comments? Discussion, questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any abstentions? I'll abstain. Who's abstaining? Tom Fisher. Okay. Tom, did you get all that, Jeremy? I think so. So it was unanimous with Tom Fisher abstaining. Right. Okay. We'll move on to approval of July 7th meeting minutes. Do I hear a motion? I move to approve the July 7th meeting minutes. I'll second. Are there any questions or corrections? I think that they came around with a set of corrections already. Any, no other discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? I'll abstain. I wasn't able to attend. Okay. Motion passes. Round table. Let's see. Let's start with you, Andy. With who? You, Andy Gilbert. Yes, so, yeah, Sud. Yeah. Well, thanks everybody and thanks for the patience. And I do think I look forward to reading the business development plan. And I do think we need to think hard about what we really are as an organization. Let me put it that way. Jeremy? Nothing bad, thank you. Nothing, okay. David? I don't have much, I agree with Andy. Okay. Chuck? Up and at it, thank you. Great, great. Yeah. Alan Gilbert. Yeah, this was a really difficult meeting for me to attend just in terms of my connection. So we got to build high speed internet in rural areas of Vermont. Yeah. Second. You're all in favor. Move to it, man. Michael. Thank you, everybody. Tom. I'm good, thanks everybody. John. Josh, you're muted. Yeah, you're muted by, I think he said pass. Josh? Nothing more to add, just thanks. Okay. Henry? Henry? Oh, sorry. Yeah, thanks for inviting me or letting me join as a member. And I look forward to working with so many like-minded people and helping to move this effort along. Thank you. Shiran? I just really appreciate you all as a group of people to be working with and I am having a wonderful time and I appreciate your patience with me. So y'all stay safe, really. Jerry? I think I'm on there twice. Not sure why. Oh, oh, you are, right. Okay. Oh, actually for Alan, you know, I call in on the phone line. I don't use the computer for my phone connection. So that might help, Alan. Okay, thanks. That's a good suggestion, Jerry. It's good. Thanks. Because my internet's not very good. You can only ask. I just wanted to say welcome, Henry. And on that note, Chuck, have you added Henry to the board list for when I send out the draft minutes? Okay, perfect. I have nothing more to add. And thank you all. This was a long, this was a bit of a slog for us. It's not always like this, Henry. But thanks everybody for all the work and we're getting somewhere. And are you just waving at me? Shmami, you want to say something? I'm saying goodbye. Would you say goodbye, Gracie? Bye, Gracie. Good night, everyone. Good night. Bye, Gracie. Goodnight.