 People are still coming on board. Okay, it's 6.01, we have just started the recording of the governing CV5 or regular governing board meeting 10 May, 2022. So let's call the meeting to order. Jeremy, let me know when you come up with a quorum. Okay, do I remember? I think we've got 13. I think we've got 13. Very good. Let's call that a quorum then. So are there any additions or changes to the agenda? I actually have one, but I'll do that after I do public comments. So are there any public comments? Oh, wait, five. Okay, somebody has a hand up, Alan. Yes, sir. This pertains to the agenda. So you're doing public comments now. No, go ahead, Alan. What do you wanna add? I just wondered if we were going to maybe have time to just make sure that we all know the subsidy program that the Biden administration announced today for private telecoms, for-profit telecoms to provide services to low-income people. It's a good program for people receiving it and also for the telecoms. And it strikes me as it's a real problem for us because I don't think we qualify, but that's what I would like to know. Okay, Jeremy, do you have something to add to that or something else on that line? Yeah, at some point in the meeting, I'd like to introduce the alternate from, or the alternate, the new alternate from Plainfield, Barry Ivey, who's on the call and he's been to a couple of meetings, but not a very important meeting. So I would like to introduce him more. Yeah, that's exactly my addition to the agenda. So, Siobhan, go ahead, please. I was gonna say the same thing. I think Jim Guest is my alternate. Okay, so let me do this then in the spirit of what both of you are coming to. Is there anybody here that this is their first meeting as a delegate or an alternate? Can you raise your hand electronically and I'll call on you just to introduce yourself quickly? And then I would also like to add, ask each of you to please send me an email so that we can arrange a time where we can chat for a while and I can let you know what's going on and we can just talk. I don't wanna take that time now from the meeting, but we can do that offline if you'll send me an email. So I'm gonna go down the list here. Jim, I don't have a last name. Jim, do you wanna introduce yourself? Are you a delegate or a new alternate? Jim, you're muted. Okay, Jim, we'll give you an opportunity. There you go. Okay, go ahead, sir. I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was muted. I apologize for being late. I went to join and then I found out I needed to have teams which I didn't have on my iPad, so I'm all set to go here. I'm Jim, I'm an alternate. I live in the reservoir road, just a ways beyond Dix Reservoir and Orange and I was asked to be an alternate and very pleased to do it. I served as an educator for 50 years and now I'm pretending to be retired. Excellent, excellent. Thank you, Jim. Please follow up and send me an email so we can talk. Got it. And also, would you be able to put the spelling of your last name in the chat so we can include that in the minutes properly? Okay, I can do that. All right, I'll call on Barry Ivey. Good evening, everyone. I'm Barry Ivey. I'm an alternate for Plainfield. I've been a resident of Plainfield almost 40 years now. My background was IT. I worked for both National Life and Blue Cross Blue Shield in their IT departments and last February retired. So I was looking forward to getting into and being the delegate for Plainfield with CV Fiber, which interests me immensely. Fantastic. Like I said, please send me an email. We'll talk offline and you're hired. So, Jerry, do we wanna run around the room real quick so that new people can get a sense of who we are as well or is that too much time out of the meeting? That's a lot of time. We're already an hour and a half scheduled, but I'm happy to be overruled on this if folks feel otherwise. Okay. So we have a meeting. We went through public comment, meeting minutes. Have folks had an opportunity to go through the minutes? I sent them out incorrectly like 15 minutes ago and then only sent out the revised. So, I mean, I'm fine with voting off as it is, but perhaps if there may be a way to do it is if there are any objections, maybe we'll defer it to the next meeting or we can vote on it now if there are no questions. Yeah, let's defer to the next meeting because I doubt that folks have had the opportunity to go through it and that's fine. I'll also ask that everybody, please put yourself on mute if you're not talking. Thank you. I'm gonna shift gears now and hand it over to Alan because this is our annual meeting where we appoint officers and I believe with the exception of Treasurer and with that, I wanna say thank you Phil for all the excellent work you've done over the past. I don't know how long it's been, but you have really helped turn this organization around. The previous Treasurer was terrible, I'm telling you. So you did a phenomenal job, thank you so much. So with the exception of Treasurer, we have the other officers are all willing to continue in their position. So that's Jeremy as the clerk, Siobhan as the vice chair and myself as the chair just to put that information out, but I'll turn it over to Alan now and go on mute. Okay, can everybody hear me okay? Yep. Okay, good. So the floor is now open for nominations for chair of the CV Fiber Board. Are there any nominations? I nominate Jerry DMT's. Siobhan has nominated Jerry DMT's. Are there any other nomination? Second, who's the second? Tim's all, I don't think we second. I don't think we have to, but I don't think you have to, but sometimes nice to get them. If necessary, seconded by Tim Sullivan. Are there any other nominations? No other nominations. If not, I declare the nominations closed and we will now vote on the nomination. Is there anybody opposed to the single candidate we have? Otherwise we'll have a unanimous vote. Everybody is okay with the unanimous vote for chair Jerry DMT's. So be it. Jerry, you have been elected chair of the CV Fiber Board for their current year. Thank you. Thank you Jerry. I appreciate it. Thank you all. Good job. You can get back to work and do the other officers. Back to work to the other officers. Oh, you, all right. Okay, okay. So, for vice chair, do we have any nominations for vice chair? The nomination on her home for vice chair. Okay, that was Jeremy. Tom, was that a second? Yes. Okay, excellent. Are there any other nominations? I hear none. I see none. Okay, well, let's take the vote. All in favor of Siobhan continuing on as vice chair. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, Siobhan, thank you very much for continuing as vice chair. Let's move on to clerk. Do I hear any nominations for the clerk? I nominate Jeremy Mack. Second. Okay, that was RD that nominated Jeremy with Siobhan as second. Are there any other nominations for clerk? If anyone else wants the clerk position, I would not be sad about that. But I will continue if there are no other candidates. Okay, let me ask that again. Any other nominations for clerk? Hearing none, let's take a vote. So all in favor of Jeremy Mack continuing as clerk. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Okay, we have three officers moving forward as planned. We, go ahead, Chuck, please. We have a question that is a clerk appropriate question in the chat. John Morris is asking, I'm at the Marshfield Town Hall because the select board is running a meeting about Marshfield ARPA funds. Unfortunately, the connection here seems to be even worse than at my house. And he wants to know if that will impact quorum. Jeremy, what do you think? I don't believe so at this point. I think, yeah, at this point, we've got enough. I will do a better count on more of... Okay, John, and your second question, it looks like Ray followed up in chat with you. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, John. Thank you, John. Thanks, John. Good luck at the meeting. Good luck at the meeting. Thank you. Okay, so I just wanted to make one more statement since we're here about the treasurer. We have a posting out on front porch forum for a treasurer to replace Phil. We also have a... We already have a candidate that we have been talking to. So I'm hoping that we will be able to fill the position for our next board meeting to make the appointment. So we'll keep our fingers crossed on that and one more time, thank Phil for all of his work. Oh, wait, Phil, before you're done, how about giving us a treasurer's report? Question. Oh, go ahead, Linda. What is the deadline for people to apply for a treasurer? Do we have a hard deadline? That's a question. Yeah, we kind of do the... We're planning to make an appointment at the next board meeting. So that's June 12th or June 14th. Anybody have the second Tuesday of June? I think it might be the 14th. So if we have more than one candidate... We will go through a process to select and make a recommendation. Yeah, similar to what we've done. We have a process in vision that's similar to what we did for the executive director. Well, we're not expecting as many folks to be interested. You have a committee? Yes. Thank you. Chris, go ahead, sir. I just wanted to mention that we did document the process sort of generically, the recruiting process for a CV fiber. So we did that when we recruited for the executive director position. So we could just reuse that process as our standard. But just so everybody's informed, we're not doing a LinkedIn, we're not doing a nationwide search. We're keeping this local front porch form and for the most part within the CV fiber, certainly within Vermont. Okay, a treasurer's report. Phil, please. Okay, I'm going to share my screen. I think you see my screen. I don't think you do. Not yet, sir. Huh, wonder why. Nope. Okay, I'm not sharing my screen. I could share my screen for you if that would help. Sure. And I think I have the treasurer's report here. Hold on a second. Yeah, I was going to share the summary. The bottom of the page, is it? Oh, yeah, actually hold it. I think it's coming back here. Let's try this. I think I got it. Now you have it, keep going. There it is. Yeah, just that, if you could make that larger. Well, probably, you know, something up here, that's too large. Okay, well, we'll just go with this. This is the summary financial reports. It's a grant, it's the cash summary by funding source. On the left-hand side, you have all the different funding sources, the different grants. The amount of the grant funds available to draw down and then spending by year and under the 2022 column, the right-hand column, last column in that section is the checking account balance for those funds. They are all in one account. We currently have 641,665 in the checking account. And you can see all the different funding sources where the funds are from. As we move to the right, there are a couple new columns. We have a drawdown in transit. We've requested the funds, we haven't received it. That's $806,000. It wasn't in two seconds before the meeting and I haven't seen it come in since. So any moment now, I'm sure. The next column are transactions pending. Now, the transactions pending is an interesting grouping. There are several types of transactions pending. The first is a invoice the amount of 620,650 for planning services with NRTC. It's a large, that's been approved by the executive committee with a caveat. I get held until we have the money in the account to pay for it, which seems like a good thing to do. The line above it, 129,432 and the 96,352, those are two amounts for basically for poll inventory. Those invoices aren't in the vendors. Elwis has some more details, so they have not been approved by David until he finishes dotting the guys from crossing the T's, make sure they've done what they need to do. So those are the pending transactions. The last column are the funds remaining in the grants. As you can see, we have 2.1,2,185,000 available to spend, and I imagine those will be spent down fairly quickly. So that's the quick nickel overview of what's happening. Any questions on this report? I have a question, Phil. Yeah. It's R.D. The matching grants that are being made available to us for to match the grant, the Arthur grants from town does that some appear anywhere in your spreadsheet yet? Not yet. It doesn't appear, where will it appear? Where can we look for that? That's a great question. And I guess the next person will figure that out. No. It really depends on how, I think, how they're going to be used. My guess is they'll be under a special section called matching. Ray, what are your thoughts? R.D., what I'm thinking is that in the balance sheets here, when we have MOUs executed? Yeah. Then we have a firm commitment. What the letters of commitment are doing is that they're satisfactory enough for the broadband board to make a decision that will match them. And we subsequently have to do a contract and MOU with the towns that binds both of us with regard to that and also will result in the funds coming forward from the broadband board at some date. But they'll be reflected in the balance sheets going forward after that point. Is this a pass-through? Will those sums be reflected in our accounts or is it all coming out of the VCBD? Yeah. All the funds will reside with CV Fiber and they... Oh, they will reside with CV Fiber. They will reside with CV Fiber. Okay. But that's not before 1.5. No, it's not. Only that's matched. So thus far, we have $153,000 that have been, we have letters of commitment for. That'll be matched by an additional $153,000. And we will wind up having a separate accounting for, not necessarily an account, but an accounting for each community because we're obligated to spend all of that money, the matching funds and the commitment in that town. Okay. So that's going to put another couple of lines in this, that would put another couple of lines in this spreadsheet. Another couple of grows. Got it. Thank you. I expect that'll be the duty of the next treasurer to figure that part out. I would envision somebody should rose. I mean, this spreadsheet that was actually created before we had Bonnie doing the work. And she maintains the books in QuickBooks. And this is really sort of duplicative. The next treasurer may decide to, you present reports for it out of QuickBooks. But R.D., let me assure you and everybody else that there will be full transparency and we will be able to follow the town money and the town match as to where it came from and where it goes for each town. So there will be full accountability for that, for every town that shares their ARPA funds with us. We just haven't figured out how to do it yet, but we will when the time comes. Okay. It should be pretty straightforward. Any other questions on the financial portion of the report? Hearing none, just a couple of the comments. Payrolls up and running. First parallel went through without a hitch. It's under control, all the other details, taxes, benefits, et cetera, all seem to be up and running. I haven't heard any complaints. I'm not seeing anybody shaking their head. The compilation report, another round of questions went to the accountant earlier today and I imagine you should look at those turned around fairly quickly. So the compilation report should be out. And if there are no other questions, I'll wrap up right there. Any other questions for Phil? Phil, thank you again, as always. Let me move on. I just wanted to make a brief update on the Waitsfield Telecom contract that had been approved pending negotiations by the governing board, negotiations to be performed by the executive committee and approved by the executive committee. We are expecting to be able to make that approval on Thursday. There's a final document, a final final document that we are expecting to see and as soon as we see that document, we expect to be able to bring that to the executive committee. The only hitch is that the person with document control at Waitsfield seems to be on vacation until next week. But we're trying to get it out of them this week so that we can take care of that on Thursday. So we will have a Waitsfield Telecom on board, hopefully after our next executive committee meeting. Any questions about that one? Jeremy? Jeremy, Matt, your hand is up there. Yeah, not a question about that, but I did have a question. If no one else has questions, I'll ask it. Well, I see John Walters has his hand up. Yeah, we were going to, for those who need reminding, we are doing two front porch forum posts per month. We're supposed to be doing the first one in the next several days. And the two topics in that update are the WCV, the Waitsfield contract and the search for a treasurer. Is there any reason, should we pull the Waitsfield announcement from front porch forum? Because that will probably go out, that may go out before, in fact, the current plan is for it to go out before the Thursday night executive committee meeting. We don't like to post things on Fridays. Yeah, go ahead, Ray. Yeah, so my suggestion was, and I got back to John after Chuck inspired that particular move. And that was that we announced the ARPA commitments that we have in order to inspire other, motivate other towns to take action and put in the, and also announce the treasurer position opening. And so that's the direction I'd like to see us go in. And hopefully by the executive committee's meeting, we can have that all sorted out. But of course that's Thursday, too, right? We certainly don't want to announce in advance of the executive committee making the final decision. So we definitely don't want to do that. Sorry about the timing for that, John, but that's the way it seems to be rolling. Siobhan had her hand up. Go ahead, Siobhan. I just wanted to mention when you talk about the ARPA funds, be sure to mention about the matching funds and that there's a time limit and it's done, there's a set amount. And once it's gone, it's gone. It's first come, first serve. When I set a lot of fire under them. It's in the first few paragraphs. Well said, Chuck. Yeah, I'll just call out that while it's not ideal to post on a Friday, it's also not a deal breaker. It just means that in traditional email marketing, you don't typically see as much engagement on Fridays. I don't know if that holds true for Front Porch Forum. We have no data points on that that are reliably statistically significant to assess it one way or the other. It could be that in Vermont, we're Vermonters and we do things a little bit differently than everyone else. And maybe we do check our Front Porch forums on Fridays. I don't know. So we can make the choice in the executive committee if it turns out that we are going to have that signed and ready to go, whether we want it to go out on Friday or maybe wait till Monday or Tuesday to get it out. Okay, and John, we'll get to the information you're requesting right away. If you haven't already gotten it in the chat. Siobhan, I see your hand is still up. You have something? No, okay. I'd like to move on to the executive director's report. Is Janil, Janil, are you on? I sure am. Can you see me, Jerry? I cannot see. Oh, there you go. Yes, I see you now. Yeah, go ahead, Jeremy. I just wanted to ask, there's a person named Ted as guest who is on the call. And I didn't know if you were associated with one of the towns or if you're a member of the public and if you are, if you'd like to identify yourself for inclusion in the minutes or if you'd rather remain as you are, that's fine as well. Ted's a member of the public. I actually invited him to this meeting. I see, okay. But he can speak for himself. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that I had everyone listed properly for the minutes. Okay, Janil. As I'm here, I just recently moved to Williamstown and I am following the activities of CV Viber very interestingly, because I have DSL. I see, well welcome, Ted. Thanks, yes. Thank you, Ted. Janil, the floor is yours. Hi, so we have signed agreements with very key vendors who are doing Make Ready. That's Karen Kotecki and Mission Broadband for Poll work. The applications are in the process of being submitted now to VTrans for right of way work and about a thousand polls to WEC. So this is going to be the summer of Make Ready because of material lead times and certain limitations on cabinets that we might not get as quickly as we imagined. We're going to focus on Make Ready work, a right of way work, easement work and get everything that we can get built, built when we can get it built. So the push has been in the past few weeks, we've signed notices to proceed and started on those scopes of work. So that's a huge focus and moving forward beautifully. The second focus that I'm looking at is a marketing plan and Chuck and I have calls tomorrow actually with Weitzfield's partners and we're also talking to other CUDs about what their marketing plans look like. So we have to get subscribers, that's important. So that is a very important focus as well as Make Ready this summer, building up the marketing plan, building up communications with the community. So those things are the big ticket items as far as I can tell, that's where a lot of focus is going to be. We have a materials RFP out in the world and comments, questions were closed at five o'clock today, answers are due at the end of the 12th. So we have a couple of days to get our answers out and then we propose, we're going to subject to successful negotiations have the bids awarded and I say bids because we expect that there are going to be several scopes within this materials RFP. It includes transportation and warehousing and supply chain as well. So that RFP will proceed, we'll get materials, we're also working on a construction RFP so that we can get bids for construction scopes of work because construction will begin if all goes as planned this year. So those are the RFPs. And we're expecting to have our high level design from NRTC by next week. We're shifting a few things, adding some cabinets and that might impact sequence. So that is happening as we speak, the finalizing of a business plan as well, financial plan with NRTC. So those are the big things, everybody's mentioned this, it's great news. Yes, we have only until September 15th our towns have only until September 15th to get funding and we can get up to $1.5 million matched from the CBB. So that's, we already have $306,000 extra dollars when you look at the money that's come in from the three towns plus the matching funds. So RD, Allen, Linda, the delegates for those towns, Cabot, Waterbury, Worcester have done great work and we are very lucky to have this matching fund. So that's what I had in mind for sharing. If there's anything else anyone would like to address or ask, I'm happy to. Let me add one thing, Janiel, and that is sometimes I forget which meeting I've been in. Our construction eligibility application has been approved. So we are eligible to receive construction funds. Should we be able to jump through the remainder of the hoops that they've lined up for us? Yes. So that's actually a good thing. That's an important first step. Absolutely. And now we can be eligible to submit our full application to get the money. So this is great progress, yes. Questions for Janiel? Okay, excellent. I have a question, Jerry, I'm sorry, I'm trying to raise my hand here. Sorry, Arty, go ahead, sir. I don't see it on my icon. Janiel, once again, very briefly, I don't know if it's too big an accounting problem or a reporting problem to supply the towns with some detail about what activities actually taking place in their towns, I don't know, month by month or every couple of months that would certainly be useful and if activity is taking place in a town that hasn't made an ARPA kick in, I think that would also add to the incentive. If people knew there was actually something going on in their town that gives them a ray of hope in dark times. Yeah. That's my comment, thank you. Yes, absolutely. So here's what I'm thinking and there could be other ways of addressing this as well, town by town but we've been in discussions and by we, I mean, Jerry and Ray and Christopher and David and myself about doing a district webinar every say couple of months. The first date we're looking at is maybe around June 22nd where we will give updates to the community about what's happening, what they can expect. So do you think that a district webinar where towns were all invited to that district webinar would be a good approach? We can also take this offline, you're welcome to contact me directly if you have other specific ideas so that we don't take up meeting time but that's what we had in mind. Let me add one thing to that, Janiel to address RD. Get back over here. On the phone. Go ahead, RD, I'm sorry. Okay, somebody's got horrible internet. I wonder who that might be. Could be me. One of the things that's happening here and this is for everybody to understand is that as we move through this design process, things begin to gel a little bit more about what's gonna happen, where and when, even though it's still fuzzy because there are many unknowns, especially delivery times on materials, availability of materials. We still don't know what the construction teams are gonna look like and how available they're gonna be but things are starting to gel more where we can at least talk with a little bit more clarity about what's gonna move forward and how things are gonna unfold. And we're only starting to see this with some clarity. It was all quite dark prior to this because we simply didn't have the information and we didn't have any answers. And now we're starting to accumulate some answers with a lot of caveats. But just to let everybody know that we're not with holy anything, it's just that there hasn't been anything gelled yet but we are starting to see that happen. Linda, please go ahead. The select board and Waterbury is interested in knowing what the process is that they need to go through to move, to get funds appropriated and given to whoever. So it'd be really good to have kind of a outline or timeline or process description of where we go from here now that I've got a commitment letter so that I could contact them. They are sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to find out what the next steps are. I told them the MOU was next but there's no timeline on it or anything as far as I can tell. Thank you. Yeah, understood. I think that's something that we should have standardized, make it available and post it even on the website so that we have it, we know it, we can refer to it. I think that's a very good idea. Sounds like finance committee work to me. So we'll get that on a single piece of paper so that it's available. But please understand, Linda, the difference between the ARPA funding and the actual lighting of fiber and being able to get one gig to your house, there's a timeline in between there. But the ARPA funding is certainly an important step that we can take advantage of in the very near future. I'm ready to go to the communications committee report unless anybody has anything else for our executive director. Chuck, please. I'm sorry, my internet just cut out for a second. What is the question? You're up. I put you on for a communications committee report without having any specific items because you're always enlightening us with the things that are going on. So it would be great to hear. Sure, and hopefully we'll be stable here. I'm just watching the graph of my Starlink and it's doing this. So we are now transitioned to doing two postings a month. And so we have seen a great deal of engagement by adding that second post. We see a lot more people coming to our website as a result and so that's great. I would say, Linda continues to be our champion in terms of getting website updates onto the website. Thank you, Linda. John continues to be our champion in terms of writing all the content we put out. Thank you, John. Beyond that, if there are any questions, I'd be happy to field them. Well, I just wanna put one thing out there. Thank you, Linda, for getting that RFP out and in the timeframe that we did, that was much appreciated. Thank you for that. Anything else for Chuck and the communications committee? Because I know that Alan has some grant policy discussion and possible action that we're geared up for. Alan, please. Oh, RD, go ahead, sir. Just very briefly, Jerry, just to remind you that I have stepped down from the communications committee. So you might wanna look around for another new board member who to replace me. If the communications committee feels it needs another member, just wanted to remind you. That's my comment. Okay, thank you. And thanks for putting that out there for everybody. Go ahead, Chuck. I will say we will, of course, entertain anybody else who wants to come help us on our journey with the one caveat that we were starting to find it a little bit difficult to maintain quorum. And so, please, if you're going to join us, be ready to join us. Okay. Alan, sir, I'm gonna pass it over to you. Go ahead. Okay, so this is all about the grant policy that came up at the last board meeting. And I had to apologize for not getting the actual old policy and new policy out to the board for everybody to take a look at to see what's happening. So I did send copies of both of those, the old policy and the new policy, the end of last week, I think, and I hope you all got them, had a chance to look at it and had in questions that you can bring them up. Let me just give you a general overview of the process of this policy. If you'll look at the current policy, you'll see it was adopted on July 9th, 2019. And that was indeed a time when we really didn't know what we were doing. And if we got a grant or a contribution from $50, or $50, we were really happy and we just put it in the bank. And it didn't seem necessary to come up with a very complicated policy at all, or one that was more specific. So what we did back in 2019 was come up with six points that tried to create some structure for how we could receive grants and actually try to, I don't think we had a bank account then, how we could deposit them and how we could spend the money and how all that would happen. And if you read that current policy, I'm gonna guess you laugh because it is pretty funny for me to read it now. It just doesn't tell you much. So what Ray did was to come up with a revised policy which is the one that we'll be voting on tonight that as you can see, it's shorter, it's much more succinct. And it kind of gets to the point of how, excuse me, I have a cold. It gets to the point of how we're now operating generally through an executive committee that's involved in a lot of the nitty gritty stuff from day to day and that involves grants as well. So let me turn it over to Ray. Ray, do you wanna give a general explanation of how you see this policy working or do you think it's self-explanatory? Well, I think it might be fairly self-explanatory. I think you gave a great overview of that. And that is that this is this kind of activities that would fall kind of naturally under the executive committee with all the stated a detailed work and it also aligns with processes by which we can follow the accounting and auditing of these particular activities. And we're gonna get more into that in the next bit when we take up the financial control guidelines, which is the next thing on the agenda. But what you see here is the executive committee approves the submitter, who is actually gonna do the writing and drafting of this, who's gonna apply for it and approves the submission of all grants. So people don't roguely go off and do this and also the execution of the grant awards. And it says that the governing board chair will be the one who actually signs the grant award. There's a documentation that goes back and forth typically between the state and us, for example. And then there's a part here that talks about the acceptance of the work and the approval of an invoice under the grant. And you heard earlier, for example, when Phil was giving his report and he talked about poll inventories and people and we had invoices pending, but yet David Healy hadn't yet accepted the work, okay? And so we're not gonna pay somebody unless we've accepted the work. And so he's reviewing whatever they've given us before we'll do that. So he signs off on that. So that's what this is about. The third bit is identify a grant agreement activity supervisor for each grant. So David is for polls, for example, and somebody else will be for other things. And then they're responsible for accepting the work and sending it to the executive committee for their approval. And when we get to the next implementation guidelines, you'll see there's a whole set of more detailed instructions with regard to the processing of accounts payable, for example. So that's what I have here. And I guess I'd make a motion that we approve the policy as reflected on the screen. And there's probably a date to it too, but I don't have that. The policy I'm seeing on the screen is from July 9th, 2019. No. March 24th. That was that one. That is this one. Oh, there that is, okay. Yeah, so it's the one that was approved by the policy committee on March 24th, 2022. Now I will move that we accept the proposed revised policy on grant submissions dated March 24, 2022. Second. Second. Very good. I think I heard Siobhan get that in. So that was a motion by RD, seconded by Siobhan. Any discussion on this issue? Okay. Oh, wait, let's see. Tom, go ahead, Tom. It's nitpicky, but I was gonna say on the first item there, instead of shall approve, should it just reflect the rest of the document and say, shall be responsible for approving? There's just a matter of thinking about the term, making the document clear for the reader that it's not that all grants shall be approved, but rather the executive committee should be responsible for approving. Alan, what do you think about that as a friendly amendment? I think it's a good idea actually, because I can see where somebody will scratch their head when they read that sentence. It might be clear to us, but I think what Tom's suggesting sort of points out that the committee has a responsibility to look at, review, and approve certain aspects and processes about the grant. And I think that's an important thing to try to get across. So I would accept it as a friendly amendment. I think I have to accept it as a friendly amendment since I moved the motion. Oh, yes, you're right. Yes, I accept it as the second. Very, okay, very good. I guess I meant to ask Alan as the chair of the policy committee that brought this up if he accepts the change and then the friendly amendment is accepted by RD making the motion by Siobhan being seconded. Any other additional comment on this issue or discussion? All right then, let's vote on the motion. All in favor with aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. The motion passes. Thank you for this clarifying document. This is extremely helpful in a part of our maturation process, right? As we grow up here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yep. Sure. Thank great. I thank you both. But I am going to actually pass this over to Ray to discuss the financial controls guidelines that in part rolled out of this and have rolled out of some previous work that we've been doing over the past months. Go ahead, Ray. Yeah, so I have a motion that talks about the procurement policy the board has adopted, the millions of dollars in grant funds that we're going to be obtaining and an audit that's going to be performed on this year's activity, for example, and the responsibility for us to make sure that we can audit the process and each payment is assigned to its appropriate grant, okay? And so went through and after watching all of us and David Healy and others that where we're trying to annotate our documentation such that it properly kind of reflects the acceptance of the work, the authorization for the payment, the process by which their accountant gets this, the role of the treasurer, et cetera, et cetera. I went through and working with the treasurer, working with our accountant, working with people in the finance committee and others, for example, in assembling this that went to the executive committee and is also recommended by the executive committee. There's five parts to this, invoices, fixed expenses, credit cards, debit cards and reimbursements. And so you saw this part a moment ago about the activity supervisor who has to accept the work. Well, that's incorporated in here. Invoices are approved by the executive committee, the activity supervisor accepts the work and they actually annotate the invoice that the work, the date, the work has been accepted, the grant, the amount in the grant to which it's to be assigned to, right? And then signs the thing. It eventually winds up going to the treasurer who makes sure it gets before the executive committee, executive committee approves it. That is also, that's also annotated that it has been approved for payment. Okay, so that is kind of a process thing, right? We wanna make sure we're, all of our accounts payable are accounted for. And there's also another category called fixed expenses. You know, we have fixed and regular and budgeted accounts payable, let's say, okay, for example, for example, the treasurer's stipend, for example, the executive director's stipend, right? And the accountant, I mean, there's a fixed expense, it's budget expense, et cetera, et cetera. And for that, the requirement is only that the activities supervisor sign off. It doesn't have to go through the regular process of coming through the executive committee, for example, because it's a regular fixed expense, right? And there's a process for doing that and also identifies who's doing that for those particular ones, but also provides that if the executive committee identifies other fixed regular expenses that are budgeted, that they can identify those and identify those as fixed expenses and who's responsible for doing that. There is, and for example, there's also another little bit here about, so just for the executive director, for example, you know that basically payment is authorized unless I stop it, right? Unless I tell you no, right? You don't have to go through on a monthly basis. You can kind of give that blanket approval in the front end and then it should somebody leave or if something else happened, you can make a change to it. Or if you have a reason to say, no, you can do that. Okay, so credit cards, we have a need for the use of credit cards from time to time. And here it sets up a process by which all of that information is documented, okay? And only certain people have the ability to use credit cards and what the process is. Debit cards, we've eliminated debit cards. Not going to use debit cards. The accountant in particular, you know, you have a debit card, your account is exposed. Somebody gets that number, whatever is in your checking account, they can just drain the time thing once they have that debit card information, right? So debit cards are no longer authorized. And of course, there are occasions when there are expenses. Well, the executive director has expenses. There may be other people who have expenses and there's a process by which people can be reimbursed for expenses and that's laid out here as well. And so that's the totality of this. And somewhere in here, I have a motion. So let me read you the motion then if I'm happy to discuss it, okay? So where is the governing board adopted procurement policy on November 9th, 2021? Whereas CV5 will be the recipient of approximately $30 million in grants for which there are strict accounting requirements. Whereas CV5 will experience its first audit for the 2022 fiscal year. Whereas the members of the district and residents expect CV5 to manage its funds in accordance with laws, regulations and accounting principles. Whereas the executive committee recommends the governing board adopt the internal financial controls implementation guidelines dated April 25th, 2022. It is moved that the governing board adopt the internal financial controls implementation guidelines dated April 25th, 2022. Discussion questions, happy to entertain. I heard a second, but I couldn't tell if that was Jeremy or Tom. Who was that seconded? I seconded, Tom. I think Tom got there before I did. Okay, thank you. Seconded by Tom. Ray, did you post that in the chat for Christian? So we conclude that in a minute, it's easier. Certainly. Please and thank you. Okay, we have a number of hands raised, so I'm going to go through them one at a time here. Tom, go ahead, please. In subsection B4, it just calls out the payment for the executive director. And I was wondering if we want to leave that in such a state that if ever we had another staff member we'd have to come back and find this document and fix it. Or do we want to just generalize it to CV Fiber staff? Good question. And what I would say to you is that under the guidelines here, the executive committee has the ability to identify other fixed expenses. And I don't think that we would necessarily have to come back and revise these for that purpose. Tom, do you want to follow up on that or? You're comfortable. Well, it does call out the executive director specifically in the text. So I just curious if we wanted to generalize it, but I'm happy to go with whatever the board wants. R.D., you're next, sir. I presume, thank you. I presume that section A pertains only to grants that we either have, which I haven't seen, or we're going to have to design a different internal financial control protocol once we actually start receiving income for our services. I'm wondering, it's in the form of a question. So let me see if I understand what you're saying. We have a hundred subscribers and they're paying their $50 a month. So we're getting $5,000 a month. If I did the math right now, $50,000 a month, boy. And actually that's collected by Waysfield Telecom and deposit in our bank account. I'm not sure I understand them. Allow me to add a little bit to that, Ray. I think for as far into the future as we can see right now, it appears that this is going to be consistent with what we're gonna do when we have subscribers. Because as Ray said, the Waysfield Telecom will be collecting all of our subscriber subscription fees and handing them to us, at which point we decide where and how to disperse those fees, probably in a manner very similar to deciding how we're dispersing our grant monies. That's a little bit in the future at the moment. So there may be revisions at that time. But anybody else wanna follow up on this thread? I would. And I would say is that we're certainly gonna get invoices. We're gonna get invoices from Waysfield Telecom, for example. And those invoices are gonna come from operating revenues, right? And so we get all those subscriptions and then we get an invoice from Waysfield Telecom and it has to go through the process of being accepted and being approved by the executive committee for that. Is there a grant to be charged against? The answer is no. It'll come from operating revenue. It's not gonna come from grants. So here we have a counselor grant to be charged, right? Yes. I hope that helps. Yeah, I just, I was wondering whether the Agreement Activity Supervisor designation applies to dealing with operating revenue in the same way that it applies to dealing with grants. Yeah, the short answer would be yes, because Janiele is the contract manager. And so those things will come through, come to her. Yeah, absolutely. We intend on maintaining controls through the Executive Director, through the Executive Committee and through the Governing Board. So we're setting up the procedures for moving forward with all those controls in place. I see David has had- Contractors, even paying subcontractors, we're not gonna, we're, you know, even no matter what, no matter whether we're paying with grant funds or with subscriber funds, we're not gonna pay them if they haven't produced the work to our satisfaction. So that's not gonna change regardless of where the money's coming from. That's correct. Let me go to David. When has his hands up? Yeah, just on the salary, the ED salary costs and payments. Will the ED ever charge their time as a direct cost to grants or is it always built into overheads and indirects? And the reason I ask is because in, from my organization working with federal grants, when we charge people's time as a direct cost on a project, it requires us then to keep a timesheet. Where it shows and demonstrates how much of their time and what time specifically they spent working on that particular project or that was funded by that grant. And that requires somebody to sign off on their timesheet on a regular basis. I don't know if for the executive director, it might not apply, but maybe for future employees it would apply, I'm not sure. Well, it comes close because we have right now the executive director's position is a hundred percent funded by a single grant and we'll probably keep it like that for a few more years until we transition into operating revenues. Okay, sounds good. Yeah, but in the future, I think that would be a consideration is if they do need to charge their time on different projects, then they might need a timesheet which then needs oversight and sign off from somebody else. Understood, understood that. And that may well happen in future as well. It's, but we do have the flexibility I believe in this policy to accommodate such an occurrence. Yeah, just to weigh in a little on that, he's exactly right, Dave is exactly right. Even though there's one grant to be charged, the timesheet needs to reflect or some type of time log needs to reflect and be signed off that it's done that way. It doesn't have to be a formal detailed timesheet just needs to be some type of a log. We could talk offline about that. Very good, thank you, Phil. If we have some kind of reporting gap to be filled there that would be good to know. But there is, I will add that there is a line item in our reporting up to the VCBB for that grant that includes the executive director. So there is a line item for that in the grant reporting but we can certainly continue offline. Thank you, Phil. Any other discussion on this item? I don't believe we've had the vote yet. So let's take a vote here. All in favor of the motion, aye. Aye, aye, aye, aye. Any opposed to the motion? I hear none, the motion passes. Thank you very much and thank you all for the good work on this. Again, these are such important steps that we're taking in advance of being told we should have done this. This is a very important part of the process, thank you. One note here that we have about the June governing board meeting for our committee chair, for our committees to remind everybody that we're going to be appointing committee chairs at our next governing board meeting. So if there's a committee membership that needs to be followed through on and if the committees can do their work to be ready to discuss positions within the committee that would be excellent for our June governing board meeting. It's something that we have to do with positions within the statute. Ray, go ahead, please. Yeah, I just want to make sure that people understand the process and that is that committees elect their chair. The board ratifies the election. Okay, so the board has the final authority with regard to that. And the board also has the authority for appointing committee members, people to the committees, which includes delegates, alts and its members of the community. And so this is also another time if there are folks who want to join committees, this is another time for that to take place. Frankly, it could happen at any meeting, but for the next meeting and the next board meeting, the committees during this month should go through the process of electing a chair. Vice chairs aren't ratified, but chairs are. Thanks, Ray. Jeremy, I see your hand is up. Yeah, I just want to point out that that is specific to all committees except the executive committee because the membership in the executive committee is fixed by our governing documents. That's correct. Well, we have run through the agenda 30 minutes early. What a shame. Thank you, everybody, for all your good work. I'm looking forward to having offline discussions with the new delegates and the new alternates that we have. I'm looking forward to that. There was a question about some trouble with the audio in the beginning of this, so I'm going to get the recording of this to Orca. And Christian, I'll also send the recording of this to you so that it will be helpful for you. Chuck, would you like to do a start-off around table, sir? I'm not going to add anything else except thank you, everyone, as always. Okay, I'll take additional round table or a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Wait, I think Alan had put up that Biden announced incumbents for the bill cost access plan. I'm really interested in that discussion. Thank you, Lynn. I forgot all about that. If I might, I can't find my hand signal quick enough. There it is, there it is, it's my signal. Reactions. Go ahead, Alan, you've got the floor anyway. Right, there we go. So what I did was I sent out to everybody by email a copy of the Washington Post story from this morning that talks about the plan that Biden and I think was a total, what would it say, 37 or something incumbents have agreed to. And what it is is a plan where the private for-profit companies have agreed to provide a $30 a month plan that will offer 100 megabits per second speed. It doesn't say whether that's symmetrical or not. And it points out that with the subsidies, the low income subsidies that are currently available through the FCC program that came about earlier this year, that for a low income family, the bill would eventually turn out to be nothing for the cost of service. So there's apparently already a lot of pushback from people who think that the incumbent telecommunication providers have been making it very difficult for the FCC to do meaningful changes and to also have the chairman appointed that Biden would like to. So people are very surprised that Biden has made this deal with the communication companies. Obviously for us, this could be a big deal. Comcast is one of the companies that has agreed to offer these $30 a month plans. And then if you can get a subsidy because of your income, it'll cost you nothing. So it's just one more thing I think we ought to be aware of as we think about how we're gonna talk about the selling of our plan and how we're gonna talk with individual possible customers who wanna know why they should think about working with us as opposed to an incumbent that's offering a deal like this. Well, and that's a big discussion but I just wanted to bring it up so that we all could begin to think about this. Well, let me go to Siobhan first and then David Healy. So are we certain that we can't take advantage of this fund? Well, that's a good question, Siobhan. I've been trying to find that out. I've been doing some Googling as we've been meeting actually. And A, I don't know who all the participants are from the incumbent side. I don't know if it is, for example, a Comcast or Fidian or whatever they're calling themselves these days. We do know it is, we do know it is, I'm sorry, if it's consolidated, we do know it is Comcast. But it doesn't say anything about whether nonprofit or municipal or whatever else kind of entities are part of the deal. I would assume not because what's happened is the entities have agreed to offer a $30 a month plan to low-income people. And nobody I don't think has approached us and asked us if we'd be willing to do the same as well. And I'm not sure we'd wanna do that, frankly, because I'm not sure we could. David, go ahead. But if they don't serve these areas then they can't provide that service. I mean, they aren't here. I gotta tell you, Siobhan, you're right about that. But we're seeing more activity in Worcester from some providers who look like they're about ready just to string some fiber our way. We know that people in our town have been contacted by Comcast because people had previously called Comcast with questions about getting a faster connection. So Comcast is getting back to them. How many of those people are low-income and will qualify for the plan? You have to qualify for the plan, the $30 plan. And then you also, if you want it to cost nothing, you have to apply and qualify for the subsidy that the FCC program provides. Okay, David's had his hand up for a while. Go ahead, David. You're still on mute, sir. Evidently, the legislature's making some adjustments to the universal service, not the universal service one, but the tax that goes on the phone bills and how it can be spent and used for low-income people. So I haven't seen a bill or how that works, but keep posted on what's happening out of the, is the legislature closes down if anything happens. The other one is the joint committee on the budget did approve $95 million for continued broadband subsidy. I mean, construction money, which was, they had asked $100 million and they got 95. So that's what it is. And then on Friday, the NTIA is putting out its guidance on how money, the next tranche of infrastructure money can be spent. So there's a lot of activity coming up. Very good, very good. Jeremy, and then we'll go to Ray, please. So one thing I wanted to point out here, you're 100% right, Siobhan, that if they don't have service, they can't take advantage of this in a way that is gonna compete with us. However, say we build first and then they come by later offering plans that don't cost anything, that's a really good way to get people off of our service and onto theirs. And then the money expires. Wouldn't they still need to string the wire? We wouldn't let them be on our wire, would we? If it's okay, well, we're not gonna give them access. We don't own the poles, Siobhan. They can attach to the poles just the same as we can. So they're in the same boat that they've been for the last 25 years where they have been refusing to string wire. So, I'm not unthreatened by this. I'm very threatened by this. I'm frustrated because I think we should have access to that funding as well. But I don't, and I agree, we do need to keep an eye on it. I'm just, they sure aren't coming to orange. So, I don't know what to say about that. Okay, let's move to Ray. Go ahead, Ray. Yeah, only to say that anyone that is in CB Fiber's district and to which we pass, that qualifies can also get the $30 discount, period. It's got nothing to do with the cable companies. That $30 is available. It's ACP comes out of some fund, blah, blah, blah. But the $30 applies, period. Where this has any value is that now the cable companies have access to that. And if they offer a plan for $30, they get the $30 from the federal government. They don't get it from the subscriber. Therefore, they're made whole at the $30 level. But Siobhan, you're right. If they don't go by your house, then they're not gonna get that customer. And we're not gonna let them use our wires. So, we have access to the same plan. Are we gonna be offering a $30 subscription rate? Stay tuned. But... Yeah. Yeah, $30 is pretty tough. Any other discussion here? But as Ray said, there is an existing program that folks in our district will be eligible for. And Waitsfield Telecom is already a part of that program and will be piggybacking onto what they're doing with that. I'm waiting for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Seconded by Siobhan. The meeting is adjourned at 7 to 16. I am going to stop recording after I thank everyone for everything you do for CP Fiber. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Good night everybody. Good night. Thanks all.