 Okay, we've begun recording at 6.02. We're gonna call the meeting to order. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? I do have one. Does anybody else have one? I have one. Chuck does, go ahead Chuck. We can do it under communications committee but I want to bring forward an appointment. And so I don't know if we wanna do a separate appointments section or whether we just wanna do it in the committee section. Oh, we can do it in the committees in your committee section. Ray, you have your hand up, sir. I have two appointees for the finance committee for the board to make. Okay, well then let's, let me scratch that. Let's add an appointments and let's do the appointments before we do it right after public comment. So we'll get that out of the way, get those committee appointments out of the way. My addition to the agenda is quite brief. I'm gonna do it right now. We were very successful on Monday and we were approved by the VCBB. Our 12.3 million dollar grant request was approved by the VCBB on Monday. So, that was it. That was quite an effort. I wanna thank everybody that was involved in making that happen. They showed a lot of confidence in CV fiber and we're very pleased that the board is behind us in moving forward. Jeremy, your hand is up. Yeah, I had a quick question on that. I got a question from a member of the public and realized I didn't know the answer. What is the estimated cost of our build out at this point? Total build out. That's a bill that all is underserved. Yeah. We've been, I mean, I think I can make that public, right? Ray, nod your head. Yeah, we're hovering in the $50 million range. We're not sure where it's gonna land in the 50s. Hopefully it doesn't inch up any farther than that. And so far, total grants that we've received towards construction are about. Well, so far total grants received are in the, if you include the 12.3, we're up to $20 million worth of grants. Okay. But we have yet to receive that and we haven't been awarded that, we have been approved. Okay, that's the first step. First and necessary step. Okay, public comment. Did I hear that Alan had a public comment to make? Yes, on front porch forum, Jerry, two days after you had your CV fiber getting ready to launch, a woman in Worcester wrote, now that CV fiber is getting closer to being up and running, I would like information on signing up for the service. I've been holding off. As I was worried, it would be only a pipe dream. I have been promised too many things in my life, only to have none of them come true. I was not inclined to jump in the bandwagon for worry it would become yet another one of the many things that didn't come to pass. If someone from CV fiber would post or repost, how to sign up, I would greatly appreciate it. So I posted the next day and I said, this woman's name is Iva, Iva Brown. I said, Iva, this is the first time anybody has asked me a question like this on front porch forum. And it's a terrific question. I'm so glad you asked. I'm sorry to say that we don't have any signups right now, but we're working on it. We have to develop our rate plans. And Iva, I'm going to start a list. You are at the top of the list. I will personally send you an email when we have service plans available for people to look at. And I said, anybody else who'd like an email like this, let me know within the next 36 hours, I had 16 more people who showed me emails and said, I want to know. Fantastic. Congratulations to the to the writing crew. The front porch forums are getting ready. That's great. We're there on our email list if they are not going to. I'm going to ask folks to go on mute if you're not speaking. Please, we've got some background sounds and somebody's on the phone elsewhere. OK, so I had some hands up. Siobhan, your hand was up and then I'll go to Tom. I just wanted to say that I went to a community gathering cookout potluck, I guess, kind of for orange that was hosted by the local church and talked to a lot of people about CV fiber and a lot of people that was primarily an older crowd. There were a few young families. There was bouncy houses, so there were a few young families. Some people had heard of it, but didn't know what we were doing. It didn't know any details. And several people had never heard of it. And I realized I should have brought materials with me and I didn't. And I was also there with Jeremy Hanson because we were kind of tag teaming there, introducing each other to the people because he's running for the Senate in our district. And also, so he was also talking up CV fiber as one of the board members, too. So there were people from a lot of different communities, not just orange. There was a lot of Southbury or Eastbury and people like that. And I said, well, you're in our district and all of that. And it's kind of, I don't know how to reach those people because they're not on the first floor. It's still a little early. We don't want folks thinking that they're going to get internet tomorrow because they're not. Yeah, but I would like them to know our name at least, though. Oh, yes. Do we want them to know our name? Yeah, absolutely. And Front Porch Forum is helping that. And you reaching out like that is helping that. But I always want a caution about over-promising folks that are going to get disappointed off the bat. So even the woman that responded to Al and she listened to my presentation, I guess, with a very hopeful ear because I was really trying to play it down. Tom, you have your hand up, sir. Yes, off mute. Wonderful. I just, last meeting was a remiss. I did not introduce the new alternate from East Montpellier. Fortunately, I don't think he's on today. But Marshall Cattrell is the new alternate for East Montpellier. And I think he's been attending some of the communications committee events. But just wanted to give him a shout out. And hopefully he'll watch the video later. Excellent. Thanks. John, your hand is up. Yeah, I wanted to piggyback on Shaban's comment. We have had some discussion in the communications committee about reaching the people who can't be reached through normal means. And we are working on that. For before the webinar, we put out a flyer that got at least some distribution. We did it a little bit too late to get really good distribution. But putting up flyers and libraries and community centers and any store with a bulletin board with the idea of reaching people who may not be on Front Porch Forum, may not have internet at all. So that is something we're talking about. And any suggestions, I would say, are welcome. That's a good point, John. Reaching out to folks in multiple ways is part of our plan. And it's something we're going to, we are definitely going to implement as we move forward. So I'd like to continue on into our meeting because we do try to make good use of this limited time. So we have the meeting minutes. Jeremy, do you want to run with that, please? Yes, sir. I thought I'm trying to multitask here a little bit. So motion to approve the April 12, May 10, June 14, 2022 governing board meeting minutes as drafted. Second. I heard Chuck. Chuck wins this time. Sorry, Sherpa. All right, Chuck won that, too. Are there any opposed to this motion? Any abstentions? All right, all that's left are yeas. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. The minutes are approved. Ray, are you going to introduce our new treasurer? Sure, I and Janelle, actually. Actually, beautiful. Please do. So with us tonight is Laurie Beth Putnam. And Laurie Beth is a lot of experience as a treasurer for a number of different organizations, among which is the fire community in the Washington district. And so she has grant experience. And we've had a little bit of a turnover with Phil. And we're still transitioning. We're still transitioning. Janelle, did you want to add some comments? Janelle. Janelle, I'm sorry. You're absolutely great. Yes, of course. Laurie Beth, welcome to CV Fiber. We're so happy to have you here. We're so grateful for you. And we're looking forward to working together. Laurie Beth goes by Laurie Beth. So if anybody reaches out to her, it's not Laurie. It's not Beth. It's Laurie Beth. And yeah, she brings with her so much experience working in profit and non-profit, running her own consulting practice. So we're just really grateful that you're here. Thank you and welcome. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. I'm finding this very interesting. And I'm looking forward to it getting progressive into the community and get this up and running. Well, I think you find us a good group to work with. Thank you so much for being willing to take on this rather enormous responsibility. As we were just discussing, you will be managing millions of dollars on a daily basis. And we very much appreciate your assistance. Thank you very much. And Ray, is there a treasurer's report that you're going to do as the finance committee chair? Well, what I would say to you is that you had mentioned that you wanted to take up the appointments right after public comments. So if you'd like to do that now, we could do that. And so I will introduce my, identify the people for the two folks who are interested in the finance committee. And then Chuck can do his communications committee. How's that? Sounds like a plan. OK, great. So I have two individuals, Ted Barnett of Williamstown. Ted is the CFO of a non-profit with management and grant management experience. And he recently moved to Williamstown. So get them when they first get here, right? And so the second one is also in newcomer, David Mannix. David Mannix has grant writing experience and project management experience and recently moved to Marshfield. And so I would be moving that the board appoint Ted Barnett of Williamstown and David Mannix of Marshfield to the finance committee. And I think Chuck has a follow-on. Are you going to add to that motion, Chuck, or would you like a separate motion? Why don't we break them up? OK. So I'm looking for a second. Second. Second. Seconded by Siobhan. Thank you. Any opposed? I seconded that. You seconded that, did you? Oh, yeah, slow, slow. We're waiting for. And anyone opposed to Ted Barnett and David Mannix being added to the finance committee? Any abstentions? Hearing none, it's unanimous. Thank you. Welcome, Ted. Welcome, David. All right. I'll proceed then. I am happy to announce that the same Marshall Cottrell that Tom Fisher introduced as our new alternate in East Montpelier has joined the, well, has expressed interest in joining the communications committee, has come to a few different sessions and would like to join us on our adventure. Now, Marshall has a background in doing strategy and operations, technical strategy and operations for a very large company called GitLab. They run one of the biggest developer operations firms in the world that are fully remote company. And just like with raised candidates is a recent addition to our Vermont community. But he's already shown a knack for the kinds of conversations we have in the communications committee and would be a great addition to the team. I was hoping he'd be here to introduce himself a little bit more, but it seems he was not able to make it tonight. So I go ahead and move that we appoint Marshall Cottrell to the communications committee. Second. How about if I give that one to Jeremy? I think I heard five voices at the same time. Harmony. OK, seconded by Jeremy. Any opposed to this motion? Any abstentions? Hearing none, then it's unanimous. The motion passes. Thank you, Chuck. And thank you, Marshall, for being part of a hopefully quite a successful team moving on. And Ray, I guess then we move back to the Treasurer's report if I may. Though I have a finance report to give to you. I sent out earlier today a statement of net position and also a statement of revenues and expenses. And the statement of net position gives a year over year comparison. And you can see that for the year 2021, at this point in time, we have $69,500 in the bank. Ray, can you possibly make that larger? It is micro font as a window within a window within a window. OK, let me get this back here. I think that's the wrong one. Here we are here. This isn't really that small, huh? Yep, there you go. Thank you. There we go. You can also hold down the control key and use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Who has everyone can do that? Don't confuse Ray, please. Who has a mouse? No, I'm not talking about Ray. I'm talking about everyone else. Yeah, everyone else can do that. Somebody knew Matt. OK, so what I'm looking at here is 2021, $69,000. And here we are in 2022 at $4.5 million. So that's a big difference. But as you heard, we just got our $12.3 million grant award. This particular report, the Statement of Revenues and Expenses, is now way too big to cover the whole screen. So the point here for this particular report is this. The Statement of Revenues and Expenses, January to June, reflects basically the income by grants. You can see the grants across the top. But the most important two are here, the Precon 2 and the Precon 2 materials. And here what you see is that the Precon 2 general was like $2.8 million. And Precon 2 materials shows kind of a first tranche of $2.2 million that we've received. And virtually nothing has been expended because Janneal is going to talk a little bit later about the orders that we've made in which we're going to spend all of this and much more very soon now. So this is an interesting report. Please take a look at it in your email. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to address them. I can tell you this that the next time we do this, it'll be Lori Beth, and it won't be me. So some relief. Any questions, comments? I just want to say, is this the handiwork of Phil? Which part? The reports? Yeah. No, actually, the reports come from Bonnie. And yeah, so the reports come from Bonnie and we'll be going to the executive committee real soon with regard to what reports we should have publicly on our website. So that's another topic for another time. A nice job. All right, thank you. Janneal, would you like to, if there's no more discussion on the treasurer's report, Janneal, would you like to move forward with the executive's director report? Absolutely. So a few things to report. Jerry mentioned the big one. We got the grant money. And we're also looking into other funding resources through VCBB, statewide funding resources for potentially more grant funding. And then RFPs, we have a couple live RFPs. One of them is the construction RFP. We've received three bids from construction firms and we're looking to award those bids soon. We're using NRTC to help us make some decisions. We're setting up calls with those bidders next week so that we can gather more information from them, clarify a few things, and then decide on which scopes to offer which firms or whether to go with all of them or one of them or some combination of scopes. The other RFP that we have in the public right now is our public engagement and marketing RFP, which was well received. We received three intents to bid today. We know that at least three folks will be bidding on our public engagement and marketing RFP. And this will be a scope for initial public engagement to reach some folks that haven't been reached before, previously invisible, as well as other members of the communities that are part of our communities. And it will include ongoing marketing as well. So we have bids due on that by August 1st. Then we have Make Ready. The Make Ready is happening. We're going on a ride-outs with WEC. We're doing our fifth ride-out with WEC tomorrow. Hope we've done four that have outlined specific things that need to be done in the polls or the poll spans, such as tree trimming and Make Ready work in both the electric and communication space so that we can get the polls and the route ready to build. This is an important part of construction. It is part of construction. And then materials procurement is a big one as well. We put in orders for 400 miles. Now that we have received, reviewed, and started working with our materials and warehousing folks, we are actively seeking out additional, we're seeking out warehousing space. We have some space where our fiber is currently being stored at WEC and we're in conversations with folks about warehouses. I'm looking at warehouses this week as well. And we have ordered materials from three different firms that include the first five cabinets of our materials and as well as all the hardware needed for the first 400 miles, electronics, and other materials that are required to build out the first third of our network. So those were huge purchases that were made and those materials will be arriving over the course of several months because several of them had very long lead times up to 40 weeks. So that's where we are. We've made a lot of, we've made a lot of progress. I'd like to add one thing to the materials procurement, Janiel. And that is following up on what Janiel had just mentioned about the long lead times. We are working with our providers, our materials providers and our warehousing folks, inventory management folks, so that we have enough materials to start. So we're not gonna get the 400, we're not waiting to accumulate 400 miles of materials before we start. And that's why we had the early order for the cabinets that we need and the early order for the electronics that go with those cabinets so that we can start building as soon as the materials are here for those small areas where we're starting, right? Because we can only do so many miles, so many miles at a time. So that's part of the plan is to be able to build as soon as we possibly can and to get folks lit as soon as possible. And I see a hand up from RD. RD, you must be on mute, sir. RD, you're still on mute. Okay. So let's move on to the communications. I just wanted to know for the, there you go ahead, please. I'm sorry, I'm having difficulty here. Jerry, I wanted to know for the record, I had been on the meeting since 6.05 on my phone, but I haven't been recognized. So I'm gonna mute now. Okay, thanks, RD. Glad you're here. Yeah, thank you. Since 6.05. Very good, thank you. Chuck, moving on to communications. Sorry, Jeremy, did you have something to add before we do? Oh, I was just letting RD know that I did get him in the attendance. I recognized his number ending in 7.05. Great. Great, well, it's been a busy time in the communications committee. Over the course of the last couple of months, we've transitioned to producing two front porch forum posts a month, rather than just one. And it has, in my humble opinion, been a wild success. We are seeing a ton more engagement on our website as a result. I did end up sharing a set of metrics back with the communications and executive committees on said website usage and how much of that was driven by front porch forum posts. We get a great deal of engagement on these posts. And so well worth the investment we put into subscribing to front porch forum. So thank you for all of you that make that possible and make that happen. The other big ongoing, as mentioned, we've put forth an RFP for a public engagement and marketing services partner. Now, I wanna call on attention to the fact the first words in this RFP are actually public engagement and not marketing. Marketing will be an important element of this, but we recognize that public engagement is the even more important element of this because we need to figure out as an organization how we embrace our communities and communicate them with regularity and with conciseness. And we need to be figuring out how to reach audiences that aren't traditionally online. So it's really going to involve a different shape than a traditional marketing services where marketing services have often moved to online marketing almost exclusively these days. And so we're gonna want somebody who can help us get into town halls and town offices and handing out flyers and senior centers and things of this nature. And so we're very, very keen to have a partner who understands this very unique need that we have so that we can truly engage with our communities and ensure that we're reaching the audience of people who really need our service and don't have options out there today. Because the assumption, of course, that we can reach all of the people who are likely to subscribe to us online is probably flat out wrong because so many people don't have those options today. And so a lot of work on doing that. I think if I recall correctly, the deadline for bid, interest to bid and questions is Friday. Is that right, Janelle? Oh, it's actually today. You're on mute though, if you want to add more. Yes, and answers are due on Thursday. So that's why I'm gonna spend some time working on answers. So we actually did receive some questions. So yeah. Yeah, so great, great news on that front. We've received both questions and intent to bid. By my count, we had at least four, maybe six even notices to bid. And so I don't know if maybe there's some people doubling up on that, that are actually representing the same firm that could be the case. In any case, great news on the communications front, always open to new feedback if you have it on what we're doing and how we're doing it. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you do. Oh, I did. Yes, I wanted to add two more things. We are also moving forward with contracting with two firms that will help augment our capabilities in this space. The first is called CrowdFiber. CrowdFiber is a software solution provider, very similar to COOS systems, if you happen to remember what they were, only a lot better. What they do is referred to as demand aggregation. They plug into our website, allow customers to search their address and will map their address to the regions we've defined for build out to allow customers to understand when we're likely to enter their market and go all the way down the path when we enable it to picking their package and purchasing and signing a contract if we wanna do contracts. It has a great deal of sophistication and capability around helping us tailor the package offering. Now the actual billing would then go downstream to Watesfield, Champlain, Telecom to service for us, but it gets us all the way through that checkout capability. So it's a very nice software package and it's pretty inexpensive for what we get. So we're moving forward with that. And then the other thing, although I have a motion on that that I'll get to in a moment, the other thing that we are moving forward with is a service called Cornerstone. Cornerstone produces telco materials or I should say marketing materials for telcos. Those marketing materials are designed to be for broadband companies that largely are rural broadband companies and those rural broadband companies are able to adopt them because they typically don't have overlapping regions. So you can leverage the same creative collateral in multiple different markets without the same people seeing multiple companies leveraging those materials. So they produce multiple sets of materials every month and with a very inexpensive about $300 a month subscription fee, you get access to both all of the existing materials they're producing as well as their full back library of historic materials they have produced. So it's a wonderful resource. So really help us offset and reduce the amount of spend that we have on developing our own from scratch creative assets which we'll still have to do some amount of but this will help defray that cost because I can tell you right off the bat that having a professionally produced piece of marketing collateral produced for you from scratch costs well above $300 just for one piece and we're gonna get access to multiple pieces. They do website ads, social media posts as well as email blasts, brochures, all sorts of things you name it, they produce it. Had you mentioned that you had something else that you were gonna bring up later? Yes, so later today. We have a motion we need to go through. Is that something you're going to do now? It is, just a moment. I've lost track of it. Yeah, give me just a moment. I've lost track of it on my screen and I just need to find it. While you're finding that I'm gonna check with RD. RD, you have your hand up. Is that a new hand raise or residual from before? I'm going to assume it's residual because you're still on mute and I don't hear you on seven, five phone number either. Okay, go ahead, Chuck. Okay, just need a moment more. I am so sorry for the wait. It'll be about 20 more seconds. For some reason, my text when I pasted it into the chat got all mangled, so I'm gonna give this a try here. Okay, so I'm gonna put it in here. Actually, it's still mangled. Give me a second more. I'm not quite as polished as Ray's gotten at this, so my apologies. All right, well, it came through huge, but it's at least legible now, so I'm gonna run with it. So the motion that we have ahead of us is whereas CVFiber will need to aggregate potential customers, understand addresses of interest, create and offer presubscription and or subscription bundles, and conduct regular email campaigns to engage those potential customers. In parentheses, that's all things this company does. And whereas CrowdFiber is an NRTC affiliate that provides such services, and the services have been deemed to be a better fit to our needs than our previous vendor COOS systems, and whereas the Communications Committee recommends CVFiber adopts and integrates CrowdFiber with our website, and whereas the Executive Committee recommends the same, it is moved, I carried forward an old one. I'm gonna say it and I'll correct it in chat after. It is moved that the CVFiber board approve a budget item of no more than $1,500 per annum to adopt and integrate the CrowdFiber advanced tier of service and also set aside funds for seamless integration purposes. He said 1,500 rather than 15,000. 15,000, thank you. 16. Do I hear 17? Okay, second, I'm seconding, I'm seconding. Okay, we have a second for the motion that's on the floor. R.D., do you have a comment here, sir? No, okay. Any other discussion on this issue? So it's been through the Communications Committee, it's been through the Executive Committee, which is now being brought to our attention that it's recommended for the governing board to approve. Alrighty, I did put the updated text in the chat there. It is moved that the CVFiber board approve a budget item of no more than 15,000 per annum to adopt and integrate the CrowdFiber advanced tier of service and also set aside funds for seamless integration purposes. Very good, Chuck, thank you. And these chats also get sent to the folks that pull the minutes together for us as well. Okay, no more discussion. Any opposed to this motion? Any abstentions? Hearing none, it's unanimous the motion passes. Thank you very much, Chuck, and the comms committee for the good work. This is really important stuff. These CrowdFiber folks are all-stars at doing what we're asking them to do, so it's gonna be really helpful to have these pros working with us on making this happen. So thank you much. Is there anything else, Chuck, from the kind of committee? I do just wanna clarify for the rest of the board for transparency purposes. We are proceeding with a contract with Cornerstone, but the expense level for Cornerstone, they're the people who do the marketing collateral, the expense level for them does not surpass our procurement policy need to come to the full board. Our procurement policy allows us to approve that at the executive committee level because it is a smaller expense. And so that is why you are not seeing a corresponding motion for Cornerstone here at the board today. Thanks, Chuck, excellent clarification. Thank you. We have a town ARPA update, and, Janil, is that you or is that going to be our finance committee that's going to move forward with that? I'm happy to give an update on that. So we have a deadline of September 15th for matching funds from VCVD, and we're in discussions with Waterbury to finalize their agreement, and we've received our first actual physical payment from Orange, and we're in the process of receiving monies and finalizing and talking about agreements with towns. And we have a couple of months before we have this expiration. So we are starting to reach out to the towns again, to do a re-reach out to see if there's any further interest or more interest that might have been overlooked in the couple of months in advance before the expiration for the matching funds. Now, the expiration of matching funds does not mean it's a deadline for towns to commit funds. It just means that their dollars aren't doubled by VCVD unless VCVD were to, for instance, extend that deadline. So that's where we're actively seeking funds. We've actively received funds and are continuing to work through those motions. Yeah, I was gonna double-check that you got the check from our treasurer. She wanted it offered as she wanted it. I want it out of the account. I want it gone. Yes, we have it, because it's a physical check, now we have to get to the bank. But that's a happy problem to have, right? RDI, go ahead, Janiel, please. I was gonna say also I'm in conversations with VCVD about how to actually get the matching funds, right? So this is a process that we're working through to make sure that the money has to be earmarked a certain way and it has to be processed a certain way to comply. So we're just going through all those motions and figuring it out. RDI, I see your hand is up, sir. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, sir. Thank you. Janiel, have you been in touch with Cabin at all? Is there gonna be an ammo? Cabin may have been one of the towns. It can't be. Yeah, so. I'm sorry, I didn't say, if I feel like I didn't get closure on that. Cabin was a yes, Cabin was a yes. But did they get in touch with Cabin? Yes. Good, okay. So let me know, I would like to know what your interactions with the town have been. Well, yes, they have a commitment letter. They've already, yeah. But we don't have an MOU with them yet. We don't know. That would be the next step, correct, Janiel? Well, it could be an MOU or it could go straight to a green in. So it could be either one. Okay, well, I think we need to figure out the way to make that decision and move that forward so that we can get Cabin's money in the bank as well since they're offering. All right, Chuck, I see your hand is raised, sir. Now just echo the same for more town. You know, we need to make sure we're proactively managing that and moving it forward, please. Yes, sir. And on the same discussion here, our next item is approval of the Worcester ARPA MOU. Oh, wait, Tom has a question before we move on. Tom, you're on mute, sir. We haven't heard a word yet. Sorry. Thank you. As the topic came up, I went and checked the select board meeting. There was a meeting last night in East Montpelier and the minutes reflect some confusion still around since they took the standard allocation, how can they use funds? And it sounds like a discussion might be warranted to kind of help move them along since they have committed at least through a single motion a while ago that they were interested in providing us with some funds. So we can move that forward. Thanks. Yeah, Tom, do you have a single point of contact for that? Because if you offline give me that information, I can directly be in touch with them. I can get that for you. It changed, but I have the new one, so I'll get that to you. That's great. Thanks. Excellent. Thank you. David, go ahead. Yeah, the new generic MOU references the standard service now. So it avoids the issue of the town having, will you having to report to the town if they've chosen that option? And I think almost all towns did choose that option. I think they all did. So it makes it a lot simpler for them and us. And the MOU now reflects that. And the generic MOU now reflects that. Right. Well, let's move to the Worcester MOU. And who's taking that conversation? Janiel, is that you again with this? Oh, it's Alan. Go ahead, Alan, please. You're muted. Alan, you're muted. I wanted to blame my internet connection. I'm sorry. I put a motion into the chat if people want to take a look. I'll move that the CV Fiber Governing Board approved the CV Fiber Town of Worcester Investment and Worcester Broadband Agreement, the official title of the MOU that we have. So second, okay. So I sent this around to folks and just tried to explain briefly the process that we've gone through and it's been a long and arduous one, but finally the select board on June the 6th of this year signed on, they're giving $53,000, which gets matched. So it comes out to $106,000. And all we have to do to get this into the bank is for the board to agree to the agreement that it proposed, which should be pretty easy to do. If anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to talk about what the process was like, some of the crazy questions I got asked by the board and things like that. So two things, Alan, I'm not seeing it show up in the chat. I don't know if anybody else is, but I'm not. And Ray, you have your hands up, sir, your hand up. Yeah, I have a friendly amendment to that. I don't know whether Alan wants to try again in the chat room. I've got a second paragraph or a second sentence. I can't, I don't know why I typed it in and I. And the second part of that in addition to the governing board approving the blah, blah, blah. Frankly, let me put the first paragraph in there because it's, let me put the whole thing in. Maybe this just subscripts to the whole thing. Can I just save mine again, Ray? So people are clear what I've said. I'm surprised it's not showing up in the chat. I don't understand why. Are you sending it to everyone, Alan? Sometimes messages only go to. It'll tell you who you're sending it to. It says I'm sending it to everybody. So I don't know what's up. I mean, it's a very simple motion. It's just that the governing board approved the agreement, the Worcester-Bauddin agreement, the title of that's at the top of the page of the document I sent around to everybody over the weekend. So I would modify that as a friendly amendment and add the language as it may be refined by the executive committee. The language be refined by the executive committee? It may still require some work. I don't know the answer to that. It hasn't been looked at. What is it? What does it mean, Ray? What's the antecedent for it? Is it the document that we're looking at now? Yeah, the document. Okay, so look, I'm really tired of how long and how much work I put into this effort. And CV-Fiber has put forward a proposal. How would draw it? The town has agreed to it. How would draw it? If we want to put any other, good, thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, but I had a second sentence. The governing board authorizes and listen up. The governing board authorizes the executive committee to approve such town opera MOUs as maybe negotiated and acceptable to the executive committee. And the reason is that we have two more governing board meetings between now and 15 September. And we're going to have a handful, five, 10 more of these possible things that the executive committee could dispose of between now and then, as opposed to waiting for a governing board meeting. And so I would just ask as a friendly amendment to add that second sentence. Okay, I'm going to reject the friendly amendment. I think we, I want to keep it straight for approval of the Worcester document. And then maybe you can move for a second, for a separate motion to do what you want to do. I just want to clean approval of this document and get the $106,000 in the bank for us. Yeah, we can do this in two motions. We can take Ray's friendly amendment for part two or sentence two and make that a separate motion as soon as we finish with Alan's motion. Is that, Ray, is that acceptable to you? Oh, sure. Okay. Yes. Let's do that. I'll second Alan's motion. Okay, Alan's motion is second. I only seconded it. Oh, okay. Okay, do we, do we have a second for that motion? Okay, any additional discussion on this motion? David. As my understanding is, the board has to approve these things, not the executive committee. And I agree with Alan. Once a town has signed an MOU, we do not want to go back to the town a second time. Okay, so that's, so we're moving forward then with this Worcester MOU and I think we're ready for a vote. Okay, are there any opposed to this motion? Any abstentions from this motion? Hearing none on both, it's unanimous, the motion passes. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. This has been a long time coming. Now, I'd like to slide over into the issue that Ray was bringing up because it's an important issue and we need to get this figured out and we need to make sure that we're following the appropriate processes here. We have potentially, as Ray said, another five, maybe 10 more MOUs to approve. We only have two more governing board meetings and we are not going to be able to call an emergency governing board meeting or an additional governing board meeting because it's really difficult to get a quorum. So the intention of the motion that Ray is going to put forward is that if we move this approval to the executive committee, if the governing board moves the approval of MOUs to the executive committee, we can be far more flexible with being able to get a quorum so that we can get this additional money that is coming towards us. Folks want to give it to us, but now with the September 15 deadline for the matching of the grants of the calendars against us and the number of meetings that we're going to have is against us. So that's the rationale behind Ray's motion, which he's going to make again in a minute, but Chuck, why don't you enter the discussion please? I see your hand is up. As I see it though right now, the authority to approve such things does rest at the board. The board can choose to delegate any such authority as it sees fit to another body if it wishes to do so. And I agree with or I would echo Jerry's sentiment. I do say this of course, as a member of the executive committee, so one of the people who would have to go into that quorum and make that vote, but I would hope that the board would give a certain level of trust to try to make sure that we can fast track these things and get a hold of that money and move things forward. But one person's opinion. R.D., is your hand up, sir? Yes, it is. If Ray is moving it, I will second it. Okay, well, we're not quite there yet, but we're getting there. Allen, go ahead, sir. You just want to be careful if there are any MOU agreements out there that already have language and the town has approved it, that the language, if it's like the language in the Worcester one, included approval by the board. It was specific that it had to be adopted by the board. So if you have any documents out there, you won't be able to apply it to them. Just change. Okay, I see here in the chat and I think that's a good idea. Ray, can you restate your motion, please, to make sure we're all talking about the same thing? Booth and the governing board authorizing, the executive committee to approve such town ARPA MOUs as may be negotiated and acceptable to the executive committee. Second. Is there additional discussion on this? And Tom, thank you for pointing that out. I really appreciate it. Yeah, go ahead, Tom. Intermuted. There we go. I was just going to point out that as a town ARPA, this is somewhat limited. It's not like all MOUs or something or all agreements. This is a fairly limited edition of permissions to executive committees. So I'm in favor of it. Thank you for that. Okay, let's take a vote then if we don't have any additional discussion. So are there any opposed to this motion? Any abstentions from this motion? Hearing none, it sounds to me that this motion passes unanimously. Thank you. This is really going to help move this along. I know it's, and if it takes as long as it has, where the deadline's going to pass us, but when it doesn't and we get tighter on this and it moves more quickly, the ability to get the executive committee to approve these is going to be well-founded. So thank you everybody for making this happen. I appreciate it. Our next item on the agenda are amendments to the 22 budget. So this is our existing fiscal year budget which has been amended a number of times and we've been working around some of these amendments and I'm going to go to Ray from the finance committee to bring this up with his screen and we can talk through the details. Thank you. And so I passed this out earlier today and we have as Jerry just mentioned, the board has made two changes to the budget previously and now we're asking that the budget, the finance committee and the executive committee are recommended the following changes. So the first one is change three, change three to administration budget line item and you can see the changes that are here. We're adding $30,000 to the insurance line and the reason for that is that we discovered that in order to ensure the materials that we're buying and the materials that we'll be hanging, that it costs money. And so offset that we're taking $12,000 out of the audit funding because there is no audit that takes place in 2022. It'll certainly take place in 2023 but there's no audit in 2022 and also $18,000 from the executive director budget. The executive director having started in April and not so the first three months were not expended. The second part of this has to do with the first change to the pre-construction and construction categories and the pre-construction categories, we've added $90,000 into poll services. This actually aligns with the administrative budget that was approved by the Vermont Community Broadband Board and it's for poll applications and services associated with polls. And the other part is the addition of this line item material warehouse supply chain and security of so $5 million. And that is offset by changes in the construction budget. The construction budget of fiber construction being reduced by $4,090,000 and the equipment spare parts budget being reduced by a million dollars for that's the change one. And so the motion, let me find the website again. I find the, I can't even see my, is it up here? Oh, there you are down there in the bottom right hand corner. So let me get rid of my share. And type in the motion. So move that the board approve administrative change three and change one to the pre-construction and construction budget categories as reflected on the 2022 budget changes, July 22, 2022 document. Second. All right, the seconded by Chuck, is that am I correct? Yep. So I just want to point out and maybe it's pointing out the obvious here but these changes to the budget are what I would consider internal reallocating of funds that we haven't changed the total budget. We've just moved money around from where we didn't realize we needed to expend funds or we didn't have the appropriate amounts and using funds that we know we're not going to spend or haven't spent to fill those gaps. So these are all internal changes and the underlying bottom line to our budget doesn't change. Is there additional discussion on this? Okay, excellent. So are there any opposed to this motion? Any abstentions? Hearing none to both, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you Ray for keeping that straight and the folks on the finance committee for following through on all of this. I see here that our last identified item as the construction contractors award with a note here that we may well be going into executive session. Is there any discussion about this that we can have prior to going into executive session? Is everything that we're going to say required to be set in executive session or can we do some of this that's open to the public? Ray, please. Yeah, so I think we can talk about a few things. And one is that, and my where as is to this so we'll fill that in. But we issued an RFP back on 31 May for construction contractors. We're looking for more than one construction contractor if we could to develop the community network. We have received proposals from three different contractors. We're looking to negotiate with those contractors. And so we can have a discussion about all of that in executive session. And I have motions to get us there talking about construction contractor proposals and negotiations. And any discussion that folks might like to have outside of executive session on this issue at the moment. All right, go ahead, Ray. Why don't you proceed, please? Yeah, so the executive session, there's two steps to this. The first one is a finding that we're actually premature public knowledge would put us in a competitive disadvantage. So let's see, move the pursuant to one VSA section 313 alpha one alpha. We find that premature public knowledge of our discussions relating to construction contractor proposals and negotiations will put CV fiber at competitive disadvantage. Second. I got a second from Siobhan. Do we need discussion on this item? Are any opposed? Any abstentions? Unanimously approved. Continue, please, Ray. The next one gets us into executive session. Move that we enter executive session discuss the construction contractor proposals and negotiations pursuant to one VSA section 313 alpha and that people be invited to the session in accordance with one VSA section 313B. And I'm not sure who else is on this list that we should perhaps include in the back room. But I know that we're going to executive session so that Christian, I guess that's a goodbye to our minute taker, right? And who else? Lori Beth. We have John Walters. We have Lori Beth as our treasurer. Janelle. Do we need to identify Janelle or is she always with us here? She's always with us so that it includes staff. So I guess who's leaving would be Orca media. We should include our treasurer as well as the, as well as our communications person, John Walters. Vice chair. Yeah, and vice chair. And also Jeremy Hansen who has additional information that'd be useful to us. Is there anybody else? Jeremy Hansen, you mean Jeremy Matt? No. Jeremy Hansen is on this call? He is. Isn't he the alternate from Raleigh? I do see him. I do see him. Okay, great. Hey Jeremy, didn't realize you were here. Yes, indeed. Thank you. Second. All right. Do we need additional discussion on this motion? I don't see anybody asking for additional discussion. Any opposed to the motion? Any abstentions? Right, did you post that second one for Christian for the meeting chat though? Actually, I think I did. They're both, they're both there. Didn't come through. No? Didn't come through? Didn't come through. Oh, there you go, sorry about that. You gotta hit send. Okay. I'm sorry, I was distracted now. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Seeing none, the motion passes. We're gonna move into executive session. I'm gonna stop recording at 7.02. And Christian, I will finish the, I'll take the rest of the minutes and then send those to you. The recording is stopped. We're now in executive session.