 Okay. All right. One, two, three. Let's wave Linda now. We definitely have a quorum. Okay. All right. We have a quorum. Then I am going to go ahead and where's the record, but oh, I can't record this. Orca's here. Orca is recording. All right. I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order or should we wait for Jeremy? What do you think? Call it the order. Let's move. Okay. All right. I'm calling the meeting to order at 6.06 PM. We have a quorum. We are currently waiting for Jeremy Hansen. He should be here soon. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Not hearing any additions or changes to the agenda. Okay. Public comment. Does anybody have any observations or comments that do not have to do with agenda items? Notices, observations. Okay. The consent agenda. I do not have the details of the consent agenda in front of me. What we'll do is we'll hold on that and we could go to the financial report. Since I have the people here for the financial report, does that sound reasonable? Sounds good. The finance report was sent out earlier. Just in summary, there's just under $375,000 in the bank, of which 322,500 are grant funds committed to pre-construction activity. The balance of about 50 to five is for administration, most of which is budgeted. There are two invoices totaling about $2,900, pending approval by the executive committee. For project management and administrator services. Does anybody have any questions for Phil about the financial report? Go Chuck. Not a question, but a comment. Phil, I was able to talk to CDW about the outstanding Microsoft charge. They had uncovered a billing error that was on their end. So they're just going to attempt to rerun it on our debit card. So you should see that transaction come through this week. Great. Thank you. Nice to have a theorist. Walter, did you have a question? Go ahead. Shimon, this is R.D. Can you? Am I participating in this meeting? I'm unclear. I can't see the rest of you and I want to make sure I can be heard. I can hear you, R.D. Excellent. Thank you. That's all I need to know. I can hear you. Good. Since we can't see you, if you would like some attention, you're going to need to make a noise. Go boing. I got it. And then we'll know that you want to say something. Thank you. Oh, there's Jeremy. There's me. Hi, Jeremy. So we've started the meeting. Recording is going on. We've done adjustments and changes. Public comment. We skipped a consent agenda because I didn't have the materials in front of me and we just did the financial report. So that's where we are. Yeah. All right. So why don't you keep going while I find my agenda because I just sat down. Berlin Elementary is closed. So we had to find alternative accommodations. OK. So is Jeremy Matt here? I don't see Jeremy Matt. He's not here yet either. So we can't do the clerk's report. Jeremy Antides, can you give the PM's report, please? Absolutely. I can give the PM report. So let's talk about contractors and where they're at. The poll inventory just passed the 50% milestone. So we've got half of the polls in our five towns have been at least some level of data recorded on them, not equally for all because some are more difficult to get to than others. But we certainly have a ton of data. And then we also have folks are in all five towns. Alan, including Worcester, you ought to see or hear or notice that there are folks out there monitoring polls. And then we have the high level design is at approximately 15% complete. That one's a little tricky to get a full percent complete on because the various tasks don't add equally to the percent complete. But that 15% is as of two weeks ago because we have our bi-weekly meetings on Thursday, which is when we get our update. So that number will definitely change. And we are on track to have that completed by the end of the year. So that looks good. And then we also have a similar amount complete for our Northfield Rocksbury. And we are also due for our bi-weekly update. So the information we have for that is a little bit stale. So we should be getting more information on that this week as to what our continued progress is on Northfield Rocksbury. And on Moortown, the CARES grant progress really has been zero. We have done poll inventories because they overlap with the poll inventory information that we've done with that we've just had to do for Moortown. So there happens to be an overlap there. But it's looking very unlikely that we're going to get progress suitable to capture the monies available for that grant. So that's, I mean, we haven't spent any money. So it's not a clawback situation. But it really does not look like we're going to get there at this point in time. Jerry, do you have a sense of when do you think we should cut bait then? I mean, because it sounds like if it's not likely to happen, I mean, if anybody else has any thoughts, I mean. Yeah, I think we're getting close to cutting bait time. But I'll let David chime in. He and I have been going back and forth on this. So I guess I'm not muted. The probability is 50-50, I would say, at this point. It really depends how quickly we can get a developer operator signed on board, because really it'd be up to getting them to do it. And from what I gather, it doesn't take a while. The poll make ready is probably a bigger problem than anything. And this week, we should be figuring out we have all the poll inventory done in Moortown. In every poll, we had the contractor decide rank level of make ready requirements, from none so low to medium to high. And so based on those numbers and looking at the Moortown cares route, we should be able to say yay and nay just on poll make ready. And if I just took a peek just before the meeting, it looks like most of those polls need work. Yeah, and a lot of that work is clearing, just to be able to get to the poll, clearing the brush that's grown over time. So that's a time-consuming process. But as David said, David says 50-50. OK, but we'll make that decision pretty soon, I believe, David, Jeremy. OK, that sounds good. Can I tap in here, Siobhan? OK, yeah, absolutely, it's not our meeting. Yeah, go ahead, Chuck. Question, would we proceed with any buildout in Moortown, even if we don't get the funds? Or would that put that Moortown pilot project basically back into the mix? Asking for a friend. Well, you guys are in area A. I mean, you're one of the first areas to get, so it may not get the kickstart that it would have gotten by the end of 31 December if we decide not to pursue it. But you're still right there in the mix. Thank you. Any questions for Jerry? OK, anything else, Jerry? Well, Phil, I see Phil raised his hand there. OK, a little late. Yeah, when will we see invoices for those? You know, that's a really good question. I've been thinking about that now that we're now that we're past the 50 percent on the poll inventory, that that's typically a point where you might want to send inventories in and and excuse me, send invoices in and let the state know that we've moved forward on that. At the rate they're going, I must say, they're going to be finished in the next few weeks. So I'm not sure what the decision would would be. I'm when to do, you know, do we do it once and pay them all? Or do we do it in two pieces? Nobody's asking for money yet because they're all interested in the next. They're all interested in the next 12 towns. So they're they're not asking for today's payment, hoping for tomorrow's. But I'm not I really don't know the politics well enough to know when the best time to do it is, but we are at the 50 percent point. It just be probably good to let the state know we're making progress. That's certainly a way to do that. Cool. Yeah, and we have regular progress reports to file anyways. But yes, and I think what did Rob say? We had the we had to have the invoices in by November or something earlier than what we thought. Right. There was there was some date that we had to have the documentation or the check. But it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't the final invoices. We had to start the invoice chain. We didn't have to have final invoices in, but we had to we had to be billing against it. So I mean, we're in a good spot as far as all of that goes. And and only with this, you know, past weeks of recording, did we pass the 50 percent mark? Fair enough. Jeremy, do you see Walker? His hand is raised. Yeah, I don't see any. I don't see hands raised for some reason. That's all good. You see chat because I'll put them in chat for you. OK. Yeah, no problem. So considering the just visual quality of some of the polls that I see around Vermont, if we have a poll that really needs to be replaced before it can even be made ready, is that a relationship or a workflow that we've already worked out with Washington Electric? Yeah, yeah, pretty much if if if if we get to a poll and the poll needs to be replaced based on Washington Electric standards without us, but we're just bringing it to their attention because we're saying, hey, we got to work this poll, then they're going to replace it. If it's if it's something that our adding to the poll is what tips the balance and makes the poll have to be replaced, then that that that cost is is is shifted over on on out on us. So we have this, you know, we have this working understanding not only with WEC. I mean, this is a common pretty much a common understanding, but a lot of those WEC polls have been out there a long time and neglected. And that's another I, you know, we're we're going into more and more flooding and more and more water damage and more and more problems going forward. So it's something that is probably going to be a long term hassle forever that we have to think about. Yeah, I don't know if I'd categorize it as a hassle as as much as a factor that we need to consider and incorporate into our plans. Yeah, to be honest, I mean, you know, if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Right. And it's it's built into the make ready costs that we're already forecasting anyways for X number of polls per mile that need to be replaced. And that's based on actual historical data from EC fiber and other contractors. So it's it's something that we have pretty well pretty well understood whether it actually hits those numbers or not. It's impossible to say again, once until we get folks out there and you get some analysis done. But yeah, we I think we have a pretty good sense of it. Awesome. Cool. Yeah. And let me just add to that, Walker, we it's actually a high number of polls being replaced that we're kind of conservative in that because we've seen some pretty high numbers from recent work that's been done with WEC. So we're incorporating that information. So yeah, it's expensive, but it needs to be done. It needs to be done. And I think it's something we can communicate to towns in our outreach that, you know, during this inspection, we're not only playing, you know, a plan for fiber, but we're also kind of upgrading the whole system. Or we're spurring it to be upgraded. That's a good point. Yeah, that's true. OK, Siobhan. I just wanted to comment that I have seen on Bissen Road, which is right down the road for me, Washington Electric was out clearing brush around the poles all along all along the the the route there. So I know that they're at least out doing some work someplace by the on their own because I had their sticker on the truck. Cool. So Siobhan, do they have their sticker or our sign? It had it had Washington Electric co-op on it on the side of the truck that was doing all of the chewing stuff up. Yeah, we don't we don't have any folks out in orange just yet. Yeah, OK. And they're doing regularly scheduled maintenance that really has nothing to do with us at this time. They're out there doing what they need to do on their schedule. All right. Any other questions for Jerry? OK. Not yet. All right, let's move along a pre-construction grant. So we submitted the pre-construction. I see you I see you giggling down there, David. We submitted the pre-construction grant last week, Thursday. And their timeline. I'll talk about their timeline before we we go back to the. Yeah, the issues they want to have it seven days in advance so that the board can review it before their meeting. They don't have a meeting this upcoming or they didn't have a meeting this week, but they were going to review it on Monday, this coming Monday, as I recall. Rob Fish has sent us some follow up questions, which some of the things that he was asking were you know, we might have anticipated some of them were not really part of the grant application. And I don't think that we were planning on responding with, but there's there's quite a bit of additional stuff that he's asking for. And he's asked us to essentially. And please, if I'm misunderstanding this, David or Jerry, or any or Ray, for that matter, if he wants us to essentially to resubmit the packet again. He wants us to rewrite it, add the new stuff and resubmit it. Is that is that jive with what you're understanding, David? Yes. Yeah, he also wants to see a red line so that he can look at the changes that we made based on their questions. And he wants it, oh, by the way, now. Yeah, well, so just realistically, I mean, so it's not going to be today. Maybe tomorrow, but I mean, so I don't know if that resets the the time clock to review it, but. But yeah, we will take another swing at it because there were some lingering questions, I guess. Anything else that we should be talking about with this? Yeah, the they're limiting us to less money than we need for pre-construction. So every CUD was given an allocation. CV Fibers was 2.8 million. And I believe our grant application was 4.4.5 or something. So we're having to revise our amount of ask, but we're going to tell them we still need this pre-construction money that hasn't, you know, that's not available. So that will delay our work just so that the board knows what's going on. It's very unfortunate. So yeah, so it may require us, hopefully it won't require us to shift the timetable too, too much. But just in terms of what we thought we were asking for, what we thought we were potentially getting is changed a bit. Any any questions about the pre-construction grant? All right. Moving along, annual report. Anything that we need to report about the annual report? Yeah, Jerry. Yeah, I apologize, because I started the annual report a couple of weeks ago. I laid it out in bulleted form. David's heard me say this five times already, but I just haven't gotten to it. So the annual report will be out for draft tomorrow or the next day for folks to review so that we can we can finalize it. I mean, it looks good. We've done a lot. Oh, my God, we've got so much going on. But I did manage because of the work that we had to do for these grant applications that had to get out. I pulled from the grant applications and created the annual report. But like I said, it's in bullet form. So now I just need to make it a little bit of text. It's only a couple of pages. So my intention is to get that out for folks to review tomorrow, the next day, no further than that. And then we can I think we have still two weeks to get it out. But yeah, the 28th, I think something. So, yeah, so if we can then up 20 second, 20 second, thank you, Ray. So I don't know if we need to to approve it. I mean, we're sending a draft. It's not really getting approved. We're taking the the draft budget that we've not not approved. We've accepted. We have we have that draft and that will be sending to the towns. We could we could put it on to the executive committee if it'll be done in the next two days. But Chuck, we also have communications committee next Thursday, where we would have one more opportunity to approve it. Do we want to authorize the communications committee to approve the language of the annual report? Thank you very much. So, so Siobhan seconded who moved that? Was that? It was it was RDP. OK, yeah. Thank you, RDP. So OK, so that sounds like we're delegating that over to communications committee. Any objections to that, Chuck? Does that seem okay? Okay any other thoughts on this? I'm gonna try to get this out to everybody tomorrow or the next day and then we can move it over to Chuck. And we have a we do have a discussion time set for in the executive committee if there's anything that we want to talk about then and then the communications committee can take it from there as well. Okay any any objections to this motion to assign this task to the communications committee and have them be the gatekeeper? Okay I'm gonna say that motion passes unanimously then. Let's see town outreach update. Do we have any updates related to ARPA funds, town updates, etc? Siobhan then Chuck. I met with my select board a couple weeks ago. So they were ostensibly talking about it was originally about the letter that we had that we had sent to them I don't know a month ago about saying we may need you to have a cabinet that we can put stuff in or I can't remember what we called the technical need letter that we sent to the all the towns and so they had questions about that but they had forgotten that they had questions about that by the time we finally managed to meet up so they weren't clear they couldn't remember exactly what they wanted to know so I kind of explained what that letter was saying and then they wanted an update on how everything is going and they're very excited about how everything is going they do have a committee that is working on how they're distributing their various funds that are coming into the town and we are high up on that list there's just that they seem a lot more excited and a lot more interested now than they were two years ago so I'm I'm really pleased we had a really good meeting and they're really looking forward to getting the report which they never cared that much about before so yay and that's my report back very good information thank thanks Siobhan so Chuck David then Alan I met with the more town select board last week again and sort of the same status quo as before where they remain very favorable about the project and very excited to hear that you know more town remains top of list however they are very much holding the Vermont League of City and Towns line of playing wait and see and are unwilling to commit funds just yet it sounds like when they're ready to decide we will get a portion of it however they're not really ready to decide about any of it just yet so you know the league yeah you know if you're not familiar the league has been advising towns to be very slow and deliberate and conservative about how they decide to use these funds as new information emerges over time that helps better clarify the different ways you can use it and and so they're they're definitely following that and of course in our community and in fact as our backup delegate we have a very influential member of the league and she definitely has the ear of the select board way better than I do so you know I did I did my best to answer all the questions they have but they're they're just not willing to move just yet okay David Healy Alan David Lawrence and then Jerry yeah I met with the callous luck board last night gave them an update of where we are and surprise me and I meet with them every two months but they seem to forget half of what we're doing but the more important thing out of four I mean we talked about serving the underserved and I had the map of the underserved and four of the five select board members are underserved but they didn't know they were underserved so that actually worked just to let you know pointing them out exactly that oops you get you don't have any service they are also in the wait and see they've they've drunk the Kool-Aid from the league of cities and towns and to that note today on a call or yesterday on a on the vikuta call which I didn't I watched the video today the vikuta administrative assistant person and the chair of vikuta is the chair of easy fiber I'm meeting with the head of the league of cities and towns tomorrow on top of that if you want to know we can put this out to everybody Christine hallquist the chair of the board put out I did a presentation to the league of cities and towns annual meeting last week and it's about a 12 point PowerPoint slide illustrating the history that what's what's going on what what they'd like to get from towns she did a pretty nice job I'm gonna send that to our town that's sort of my update I did I still made a big pitch for the money but they're certainly they're gonna form a committee so we're a little bit behind other other towns all right Alan David Lawrence and Jerry so two things I've run into in the last couple of weeks the first is somebody in my town asked whether pulling back up a second most of you know Worcester did allocate 50 000 for cv fiber somebody in my town asked me doesn't the town it doesn't the town itself through a town meeting or a town vote have to approve this expenditure or this allocation and I've heard that issue raised in at least one other town I think it came up in barry but it's something that that we all should be ready for and the second thing is I've been going through minutes and listening to some of the meeting tapes of the vermont community broadband board and I'm a little bit concerned about a line that's coming out that if you're in a town where aardolph grants were awarded your town is not going to be able to use ARPA funding to do a build out in your town this came up in the june the september 16th community broadband meeting and last last or saying yes we think this is something of concern and christine hallquist said that they probably need to have a legal opinion on this but that was really worrisome to me it seems it just seems impossible that most of us who who have our aardolph blocks in our towns seems impossible that we wouldn't be able to use some of the ARPA money to do to help pay for for part of the build out but it just seems like one of those questions it's now popped up it was clay pervis that brought this brought this up to september 16th meeting and it just seems like a little bit of a push sort of like the league of cities and towns slow down kind of thing so we've got to we've got to stay on top of of what's happening when and what's still possible so so that that's actually interesting allen because hearing from rob fish and i don't know if that this was like a realization that came at different times and i don't have the most up to date information um but i was under the impression from what he had told us that we could we could use these funds that we're you know that have been allocated that we've you know that we've requested to to build in these aardolph locations i mean i'm trying to think who else david were you on the call with me if i was i don't remember okay um i probably was i i seemed i seemed to remember him saying that so so yeah i guess that's something that we have to find out a bit more concretely then yeah clay gave a presentation at the september 16th uh board meeting so if anybody wants to go and look on the tape uh you can you can jump to that part pretty easily uh it's it's pretty interesting and i people obviously were quite concerned about this but some of the board members seemed to think there might really be something to this idea that uh those getting aardolph blocks those towns getting aardolph blocks are going to be blocked from using arpa funds seems crazy to me but it's out there what yeah the department let's us to fail all right uh so hold on no never mind okay i was just i can't i i'm finding it difficult to imagine what the connection between the aardolph blocks and and the and arpa funds might be well why should i i i i don't see it i'm not sure i see where this where the the line of logic connects these two the line of logic is the federal government doesn't want to spend twice for the same sorts of improvements on the same location so they're saying FCC got this aardolph is paid for it has this federal budget line and it's covering this i mean that's that's the logic that i imagine that they're following i don't know that the rules actually say that that's the case at all but i mean so this is i think where the where the legal opinion has to come in um art aardolph blocks only are only exist in places where there hasn't people haven't groups haven't availed themselves of previous rounds of federal grant money and assistance let's say all right so i've got uh david laurance jerry uh tom and jeremy so uh the david laurance from middle sex the select board by way of the town clerk contacted me to join their meeting uh a week from today on the 19th because grace vincent is going to be there to speak this to the select board about the arpa funds um if uh you know from the recombinant commission and um peter hood our our eminence selectman has asked specifically he has two questions about um how would the middle sex residents benefit by turning over some arpa funds to cb fiber and that's pretty straightforward um but the one question i wasn't quite sure about this second big question is whether there would be a provision for low income middle sex residents to get a discount on broadband if middle sex donates arpa funds to this project and i don't know that there they might be orthogonal issues like i i guess the overarching question is is there going to be a low income discount at all all right there you go better up jerry rather yeah i'll you i'll use this to answer that question somewhat and then also take my hand raise uh at the same time so one of the things that we've been thinking about as as to how to how to deal with these uh town arpa funds is to pay for the drops so and and pay for the drops means if if you're going to get a service and the service is going to cost 55 a month that's great but there's all of the um everybody that is in this business also has a cost for getting from the nearest pole to your house and that's called the drop so that cost can be 500 bucks it could be 200 bucks it could be a thousand bucks 600 1600 bucks it's it's it's it's you know it's not cheap it depends on where you are especially in vermont you could have three poles before you get to the guy's house right so what what we've been thinking about and i don't think a decision has been made so i'm not going to speak for the group but what we've been thinking about is using the local town arpa funds to pay for the drop and the drop is a barrier to entry using an you know an economics term because even though it's 55 a month if you have to pay for a 1500 drop you know that is going to spike your cost right so that you may be able to afford the 55 a month but 55 plus 1500 now puts puts you out so it kind of answers both questions in a in a in a fuzzy way uh in that it makes it more affordable if the towns are willing to pay for the drops and it's also extremely direct town benefit use of that money if they pay for the drops but we haven't made a decision yet as to how that money will be used i want to lay that out but this is one way that that it could be very beneficial and i'll stop there so yeah so if i could just add it really hinges on the structure of the agreements that we sign with the towns so hopefully we will be able to find something that's acceptable to everybody and but i i think that some of the criteria for the grant include that there is some feature of that we offer some sort of low income option one way or the other did did you get to weigh in on the thing that you wanted to talk about jerry well i had one last thing i did i'm done thank you okay go ahead david well then just the last thing about well i guess two quick things one is uh middle sex as a whole i is very enthusiastic about this and you know i've heard nothing about people that aren't really anxious to see it all happen so you know that's a good kind of good momentum from at least the town support and then the other thing is i'll just reconnect with you jeremy like on monday just to make sure that i'm staying on message for um you know what we want to communicate to the select board all right sounds great okay um i've got a tom fisher than jeremy met yeah i think most of things that have been said about the other towns also applies to use month failure um as far as wanting to have more public weigh in and concerns about um low income and so forth um one thing that has come up uh looking at the minutes i just sent you an email on this jeremy um maybe we just addressed it here or separately but uh there was a confusion back at their select boards uh september i think it's 13th meeting uh about that cash flow term that we were seeking funds to be used as cash flow i know there's been a few committee meetings since then where the topics come up i didn't know is this circled back and been addressed with the town board select board or is this still something that we need to clarify for them about what exactly we're asking for funds for so that's that's a good question i've not reached out to east montpelier in in particular i i think i think we originally heard this from what regional planning that we were at and so that the the thought was that we were using this for cash flow and and that was and maybe i phrased this wrong it was it's for a project i mean the mo u suggests a project but i said that this would allow us to have um the funds on hand and we wouldn't have cash flow issues while we're waiting for the state to cut us checks for these other grants so the phrasing probably got misinterpreted somewhere along the way and but it wasn't like no just give us some cash so it's easier for us that's really was really just so that we could kind of accelerate the project a bit the minutes they say they now have the funds in hand they were considering of you know handing out what they had already promised but that this issue of whether or not it is a a valid way of spending the money was a concern that held them back at this point so it might be worth us reaching back out to them so i would suspect that they're still waiting to hear definitively from the attorney so i think it's still in limbo in terms of rob helpert chewing on this and being comfortable with this but i think there's also the the double hang-up then of the the structure of the agreement obviously which i what christine's presentation i think offered several options for what that what the shape of that might look like christine hallquist that is from vcbb so but then there's actually going to have to be real legal review of an actual real mo you rather than just the structure that we're talking about so i'm optimistic that we can get there but i i don't think as as much as seth might want to just pull the trigger and go ahead i think that it's probably best if we wait for both of those hurdles to to be crossed first but i mean is it is it valuable if i you know send bruce an email or if i send seth an email or if i call them and just say um i think i misspoke is that valuable i think it'd be valuable for one of us too yeah and i'm happy to do that but um it might be better coming to you so you can clarify exactly you know what the intention is here sure and do you think it'd be better for me to talk to seth or better to talk to bruce um probably bruce okay okay i am adding it to my list call bruce in east montpelier all right i have a germy matt then uh shavon yeah so this is uh about the arpla thing that alan brought up is that for is that a prohibition presumably for towns that got art off money like through the art consortium or is that any town that got any art off money like for example i'm thinking about orange where it was consolidated that one would they then be ineligible for these arpla funds yeah jerry sorry two computers at one time somebody please correct me if i'm wrong but i believe the art off is by census block and not by town so if there's there there are multiple census blocks in each town so it doesn't it's it's more granular than that and somebody please correct me if i'm wrong on this that sounds like you got extremely confusing that right um does that answer your question germy ish ish i mean it's yeah okay shavon unmute myself i just wanted to add that the vcbb is taking affordability seriously they they've had a presentation from holly groeschner who um shared that with us in the policy committee we are working on baking affordability and keeping low income for monters high on our list and making sure that we're doing as much as we can to reach out to them but that is a a larger issue than just us but that so that's why vcbb is looking at this um but it's it's like on the radar it's there so when it comes up in your towns you can say that it's being looked at on a statewide level because it's not just orange it's not just i don't know wister it's it's we've all got issues and and so they're concerned you know like with with uptake and not just the installation but are they going to be able to even afford 55 a month or you know whatever there's a whole lot of issues that i didn't even really think about until i saw holly's presentation which i believe alan would be happy to send on to anybody who might be interested in it if uh if uh if they want it so um but it's a it's a good read and it's very interesting and so it it is being discussed we are very concerned about it and we do want it to be part of all of this because we do not want to perpetuate the gaps that exist and i'm done I agree and as as david put in the chat we're actually obliged to address this and talk about it in the grant application for the pre-construction funds and presumably for any future rounds of funding as well so that's not uh that's that that's not we're not missing that in terms of of how we're explaining how we're going to spend the money all right anything else about um town outreach arpa funds etc okay moving along to accounting auditor rfp i think ray this is yours yeah okay so the finance committee will be making a recommendation to the executive committee on thursday for an accounting firm and an auditing firm for them to take action on the finance committee is meeting tomorrow night to finalize its recommendation for the accounting firm which i'm confident that we'll reach some sort of a conclusion so um and it's to be noted that in the questions that we get back from rob fish concerning the uh pre-construction grant there was a question there is have you hired your accounting grant management management firm and uh we're able to say we will be hiring one this month we expect the executive committee is meeting on thursday so it's they realize it's important we know it's important um um so we expect to expect them to probably be engaged in november uh funding available where's phil uh presuming that we have funds available for that all right any questions for ray about the accounting auditor rfp okay thanks ray um the make ready rfp where's that at hope i see your hand up hold on sorry i did have a quick question for ray ray is this going to necessitate a a special meeting of the executive committee to approve a contract later in the month um possibly okay yeah i haven't worked out the the language of the motion yet for thursday night but uh possibly okay thank you all right make ready the make ready so back within the last 60 days the board approved us issuing an rfp for getting make ready contractors under retainer contracts um and after looking at the landscaping landscape of um how this these make ready contractors actually work there's a program called one touch make ready and this program requires that utility coal owners provide the puc with the list of pre-qualified contractors for doing make ready work in the event that they themselves can't do the work or won't do the work or willing to waive the 60 day period blah blah blah and such that we then could engage them so what this really requires that um this this would put us in a position frankly of doing sole source contracting with the with the contractors that wek and gmp have identified for those pre-qualified contracts as opposed to doing an rfp so um it's not a problem with gmp because they have posted their three contractors and however wek has not and um both jerry and david can comment on on the efforts that we've been making with wek to identify pre-qualified contractors and uh we're slowly getting there i think okay any questions for ray about this okay thanks for that ray um where did my agenda go there it is operator rfp where are we with that so we um you know the rfp went out i think last month i talked about where we were we got five proposals and we were sending out questions to the two top candidates we got those questions back this month and then we conducted interview the team it conducted interviews with both firms and this week we're doing some of us are doing site visits yesterday we did a site visit jerry and i did a site visit on one of them and tomorrow we have a site visit with the other one and hopefully from that sometime later this week the team will get together and come up with its recommendation for the planning and development committee meeting for next week and from there hopefully the planning and development committee will make its recommendation to hopefully a special meeting of the executive the board not the executive committee um and at that time i mean next as we go through this that we'll have to have you know the discussions have to be hold confidential for a while but we'll get there soon i just want to say for those who have not been able to participate in this it's um it's been a lot of work and rain dig 24 the firms have been all very cooperative and top-notch great yeah so we really can't have too detail of a discussion about it but uh yeah things things seem to be moving forward pretty smoothly i think i think we got some some good options the other the other point is the we are now behind three of the other cud's in the state dv5 has hired somebody nek broadband has hired somebody and maple broadband has hired somebody so we'll be next we'll be next okay oh and by the way the other thing both both these teams will be doing the engineering design and all the construction managing it so they they take this these both project the teams are going to be responsible for everything from development to construction to procurement to isp to marketing to everything so i think when you hear the whole proposals you'll be very happy i'll be very happy anyway i think you're right shavon so that when you said procurement that made me that reminded me that vcbb asked all of the c the cud's for how many miles do we have to cover across the whole state so we could do a big purchase so that just i'm sure that everybody's thinking about that but i just want to get that back out there in case it had been forgotten yeah there's and there's a lot of moving parts in terms of how how that's going to work with vcbb and vcuda and the individual cud's and the funders and the state so yeah it's um there's a lot of uh there's a lot of cogs and gears but yeah but it seems like it seems like that process is is moving forward you know with bulk purchasing and some other some other fun stuff yeah david yeah the the state has found a vendor who is willing to sell us a thousand miles of fiber of two different kinds and has it available and right now the backlog for five or six to eight months so we are hopeful this thing will work out positively um that anyway that's where it is at the moment but it's it's also one of the one of the really great effects of having a vcbb and vcuda that they can go and chase this down and vcbb anyways can sort of have the gravitas of the state of vermont like that they're part of government and they can go and sort of snap not that they snap their fingers and make it happen necessarily but that they they're taken seriously when they what they say we want to buy a thousand miles of fiber and that's not something that they've done and they don't have like an existing contract for it so yeah that is good news any other questions for david about this okay i think we got a short one tonight folks um um did we miss any agenda items that we need to go back to consent agenda the consent agenda okay so i move that we and the clerks report the clerks report okay so let's do the consent agenda first um i move that we approve the september 14th minutes in their most recently provided form second second second okay shivan got it first she got the first second um any further discussion any objections okay it passes unanimously uh jeremy matt anything to report no um i've been keeping up with the minutes but that's kind of been the bulk of what i've been working on so that's my report all right any questions for jeremy okay so let's go to um let's go to the round table i see uh let's see rd yeah i'm still here um i didn't raise my hand during the uh recounting of approaches to select boards but i've been in conversation with my select board three times and they are following the um league of cities and towns recommendation holding back on making any commitments but i think they're very favorably disposed to making a contribution that i think uh uh wooster has uh has become the benchmark so i'm very hopeful that they will be if if we're if we can that the cabinet will kick in some arpa funds wonderful that's great to hear rd thank you for that um alan uh this this was an interesting meeting because there's i think we're beginning to realize there's a lot of information out there but not all in one place and trying to put all this stuff together is getting more and more difficult and knowing what's really happening like with the ardaugh funds and and arpa flash and that kind of stuff one of the things i wondered about is is anybody monitoring the community broadband board on a regular basis for the cud's and issuing summaries of every meeting with bullet points for the most important items that came up um kind of i mean there is a there's a uh a hire for what's this position name for vikuta um is he is that kind of director i don't know what he is okay project coordinator okay so yeah so he's at all of those meetings uh we hear from rob fish from those meetings but is there something you know specifically organized so that the cud's get a kind of the lobbyists report like you might expect a lobbyist to provide to a client or something like that as they're sitting on a committee meetings um i not not as such i guess i i find it really valuable to sit and listen to the community broadband board meetings i mean a lot is being discussed that is going to have a big impact on what we do and what all the other cud's do it's everything from equity issues as joanne was talking about earlier to the to the r-dolph and and and our stuff and it just sort of it makes me feel nervous that we don't have almost like a journalistic ongoing reporting of what both the community broadband board and as as well as the vikuta board is doing it it just would help if we had a more centralized information bank i think fair enough jerry want to respond to that all right alan i heard you identify a problem i'm waiting for your solution i mean what what so what do we do about this i mean can we can we have somebody that is going to be at each meeting or do we do we talk to the the gentleman that's at vikuta and say hey this should be on your part of your job description that you do this for for all that i mean how what what you've identified is spot on i'm just not sure where in the volunteer world we're going to fill that gap yeah it's a good question i mean one idea i had was to get a team of people and each one of us over a period of six months would agree to rotate on who is reporting on say a community broadband board meeting so we won't have to be doing it every time um and i you know i'd be willing to try and give that a shot but maybe maybe john walters is is john on the call tonight i didn't i can't tell but you know maybe john would have some ideas about how we could now oh hi john uh maybe john would have some ideas about how we could do some closer monitoring of the community broadband board i mean as a former journalist i i have to tell you there are some terrific stories that somebody should be writing about some of the issues that are coming up in their meetings and i'm just amazed that the press is not making much of an effort to cover this that's really what we need we need press coverage and and there isn't that and so we've got to figure out a way to get that information ourselves i think i think the staffer for vikuta is a logical place a logical person to do this work because i mean vikuta needs to know what the broadband board is doing and vice versa so um he's he's in those meetings i don't i don't think it would be a big lift to ask to ask him to do uh to do a write-up a summary you know by the end of the week after the after that meeting happens uh walker i see of your hand up yeah i can take some of that um i've been planning on monitoring those meetings and uh although i do think that on a from a larger perspective at some point as as money really starts coming in and we start hitting the road i think to have lobbyists like an actual hired someone who has all the connections in the state government and and is in the and is in the region you know who could stand to benefit from the work that they do directly all right thanks for that walker uh before i get to you jeremy um john walters did you have any thoughts on this that you wanted to share um well well aside from the the uh the hairs on the back of my max neck standing up and i might be volunteering for contact um i mean if you're strange to me this isn't just a need for cb cb fiber this is something that probably all the cb's ought to have whether or not they recognize it um and i don't know if that's anything that's within the bandwidth of either the cuda or does the does the broadband board itself have any sort of communications person or or infrastructure um you know so uh because we don't yet it's except for me thanks for that john um let's see uh jeremy matt the coverage if we can get these you know out in public i mean i i think a lot you know the public agrees with us i think in a lot of you know i don't know maybe we can kind of get a court of public opinion on our side that could help with some of the issues that we're having in terms of getting what we need to get this bill so from from just what i see on social media and you know talking to people there's still very very little awareness of the whole world of the cb now uh the board you know the delegates on the board are are up to their necks in this stuff so they are aware of everything that's going on but it you know despite the little efforts that i make you know not a lot of it in general public and you know that that doesn't happen immediately that's something where you have to basically hammer them over the head with it um but um it's politely um but it's uh you know it is an issue uh you know i don't know how often i see people on twitter complaining about their their uh internet connection speeds and and and be moaning the fact that they don't have any alternatives um and i i'm always tempted to write back just wait a little while yeah there is a need for a doctor to see these uh jerry you still have your hand up did you have anything else you wanted to add on this no no i thought i uh lowered my hand i apologize okay all right um all right so i think that was that was alan's so let's go to christopher anything you'd like to like to add christopher is actually here here with me at the maple woods by the way um no i mean we have the waterberry uh presentation on monday um but uh other than that i think that's about that's about all i had to add okay not too much exciting christopher your your maple woods looks a lot nicer than jeremy's doesn't it yeah i have the view side yeah he has yes the filter side it's a big green screen behind him those are the shoot movies i i think that that's rivendell back there right all right uh let's see where are we here um chuck two things uh first just as a as an aside while i went to the select board to present one of my select board members was actually experiencing a multi-day internet outage uh was uh consolidated was just down in mortown for like four days straight five days straight and so he he was he was really pushing on it and uh uh so it was pretty funny to see that that happened um the other thing i'll say is uh david lorence when you go to the middle sex select board tell peter hood that if he does not act on this chuck vert will come after him he and i are our longtime friends fantastic that's great all right good good news vermont is a small place uh david heli i don't have anything to add all right thank you david david lorence i have nothing more now okay uh jeremy matt i'm not muted uh nothing to add just thanks for everyone's work and uh let's get this moving all right thanks jeremy uh jerry anything else nothing for me thank you all sure uh john walters anything else nope all right thanks john linda i have sent an email to representative teresa wood she is the vice chair on the house committee on human services asking her if she would like to come to speak to us about equity issues i have not heard back from her i think it was the finance committee that was interested in this topic so i'd like to know when the next finance committee meeting will be when she gets back to me i can present that date so what i could say to you is that the finance committee meeting is um tuesday after the pdc meeting so that would be uh october 26th but uh actually policy committee has taken this uh for action so their meeting is the 28th right the policy committee would be a place to do it linda okay sounds good thank you very much all right thank you very much linda uh phil i have uh nothing more to add just to uh just thanks for everybody for their hard work all right thanks philt ray so i'd like to know what people talked about uh the public keeping the public informed every and everything um how many of you posted anything in front porch forum about cv five were in the last month the last four weeks i see three hands four hands five hands i think i have a handful of hands you know we we should have we should have 21 hands at least you know all of our all of our communities right uh at least once twice a month just saying i have a i have a question about that actually um so i've been posting on behalf of waterberry just in the waterberry section um and at first i thought you know it'd be really me to hammer this and i did it twice a week for a week or two and i thought that's probably getting annoying and i backed it down to once a week and i'm wondering what what what's everybody's feeling you know um between like doing it enough to where everybody gets a chance to see it and and respond to it without being so annoying that people start getting irritated i would say a couple times a month um but you have you obviously recognize that some people will read it on monday and some people will read it on wednesday etc etc but at least a couple times a month they think we want to keep ourselves out there any other thoughts about frequency of communications i would say the irritation factor forms pretty minimal um you know most of i i don't read 90 percent of the postings on any given day i just scroll i just scan the the headlines um so um it doesn't take much effort to not read something that you don't want to read uh you know a couple times a month is a good good frequency that isn't too taxing on anyone but if you are if you are moved to post more than that i would say you know probably more than once a week might be getting a little swearing but um i wouldn't worry about once a week or anything anything uh beyond that chug christopher i would encourage you if you are motivated to post that much more frequently uh maybe come join us in the communications committee and and make the entire board be able to leverage the work that you're doing to be able to you know also send those updates with a little more copy paste sort of level of effort nice plug i can consider it right good swing chuck thank you for that uh anything else right no thanks all right thanks right uh shavon um that's it for me thanks everybody thanks shavon tim hey guys um i'm glad to see everything's moving along i don't get to join these as often as i'd like because i'm in two bands and uh full-time job and do shows on the weekends but sometimes when the meetings come up i'm just not able to get to this uh but i love seeing all the information and the updates when i do and i'd love to see the minutes of the meeting and i would say the uh front porch forum uh posts they have to be short and sweet uh maybe just with a link every time because if you've ever noticed front porch forums uh when people post long things your eyes just glaze over them and scroll on to the next one so you don't want to be that type of uh uh inputter coming on the front porch forum and me and ray share the same front porch forum for northfield roxbury doesn't have their own uh so whenever i see ray has stuff up there i try not to uh double it and uh clog the bandwidth or anything but uh i think shorter is better and if there's more to be said a link a link is uh the way to go to get something up all right thanks for that tim uh walker all right and here you sorry walker walker unfortunately you're uh try turning off um um try turning off the video because your audio came came out really really terribly we couldn't couldn't hear what you were saying can you hear me now yes yeah great i have horrible internet sorry um so i just wouldn't discount the power of of uh direct mail i know it sounds a little counterintuitive but sending just a card about who we are and what we're doing with a link or a or some kind of contact um would would reach some people that need reaching that might not be seeing this on front porch forum or any other online source all right we've done a limited amount of that in the past um direct outreach in terms of you know doing surveys and such but i think i think we will likely um do that when we're ready to actually actively reach out to folks who are along the route of where we have fiber going so i will i will take the the last one here um josh jarvis had something else come up he sends his he sends his regards that he couldn't make it um there was something else i was going to add but i am completely spacing out on on why on what it was but apologies for being late um the elementary school is not going to be an option for the foreseeable future apparently we were not actually supposed to be able to use the space based on district rules even though i had approval from the front office staff and whatnot so um likely that i will be setting things up here wi-fi is good food's good so we will uh keep going with that so with that i have 717 and i will declare us adjourned bye everybody bye everyone thanks