 I have six o'clock I would like to call the regular meeting of the C.V. Fiber Governing Board on November 9th 2021 to order. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda. Okay. Bring none. Wait a second. So we all several of us got e-mail from Will Anderson with regard to procuring fiber from through the CUDA. And my understanding was that David wanted to proceed with that this evening and that Will was going to be joining us although I don't see him at this point in time. So if we could just put a place. Right just for the record. Yeah okay so we just put a placeholder then there as well. Placeholder and the idea that we might be discussing a buy a fiber buy through the CUDA. Sure let me let me add an item in mind notes here. So fiber purchase it is on my list. I will get to that shortly. Is there anything else that we should we should add or change. Is there any public comment. Yeah go ahead Chuck. I would just like to bring up a very quick topic and it can totally be at the end if we don't get to it so be it but around open meetings and engaging in public discussions. Is there anything else. Is there any public comments any commentary about things that are not currently on the agenda. Not seeing any hands. Moving along. Consent agenda I move that we approve the consent agenda which consists of the October 12th minutes as presented. Second. Okay I think Siobhan won that one. Is there any any further discussion any edits to the minutes or anything. Hearing none are there any objections to adopting the motion. Still hearing none the motion is adopted unanimously. Thank you for that. Financial reports including an update on accounting. Phil and or Ray. Okay I'll give a quick snapshot of the numbers. There we had $4900 worth of bills that were approved since the last meeting. $2,400 for project management. $25 and another $2,500 for administrative services. Both of those cover a couple of months. The current cash balance is $372,000. $322,500 is restricted for grant pre-construction grants and and most that's committed. And we have about $50,000 worth of administrative fund available of the $50,000. We do have most that is budgeted to be spent and for the months coming up. There have been no new cash receipts no new grants and that's where the finances sit. All right and as far as the accountant I guess I'll let Ray speak to that since he negotiated the. So so before you go to that hey John Russell you are currently sharing your screen. Could you un-share your screen please. How do you un-share it I don't see that I've never used a screen before. It's the box with the X right next to the microphone right where you just clicked. How's that. Lovely thank you very much. So with the the question raised with regard to the account the contract with the account has been executed during the sign that and Bathchildren Associates is our accountant and she starts on 15 November. We have a preliminary meeting set up for Thursday I think it is the meetings are all running together with Jerry and Phil and kind of the startup mode and the money in the account to cover that and the pre-construction grant award that we see includes the $500,000 plus for administration which also includes accounting audit etc etc. So we're we're financially recovered and contractually recovered and soon we will have our internal controls in place that the board broadband board so insisted upon us getting which is a good thing I think anyway. Thanks for that Ray. Any questions for Jeremy or Ray. Very good. Let's let's move on. Clerk's report. Jeremy anything to report from the clerk's side. Let's see just am I muted. No I'm not. No I don't really have anything to share other than I've been keeping up with posting the minutes on the website and that's kind of the extent of my job at this point. And thank you very much for that it's great to have it's great to have that all those minutes go up so quickly if folks have questions about it they can immediately get it there and I even really have to request it which is great in my book. There was a request from from Christian in the chat. Ray if you could type in the name of the accountant the the firm in the chat. Thank you very much. You beat me to it didn't even finish my sentence. Super. Project managers report. Jerry take it away. So we we've got the three three firms are out there collecting poll data actually two of them are out there collecting poll data one is cleaning up their data that they've already collected. We have over 75 percent of area A covered and we expect to have all of area A done by the end of November the intention I believe for the two firms that have folks out in the field is to have them done so they can go home for Thanksgiving. So we we we're moving forward with covering all of area A. We have the high level design vantage point contract that's out. We have of course two two different grants that are funding that the three CUD grant and the CV fiber grant and we were going to have an update meeting on Thursday which we typically do every other Thursday. It looks like they want to change it because Thursday I suspect is Veterans Day. Didn't know that people still take that off. But so we would have we would have gotten an update on Thursday. We could maybe be a third complete on with their work maybe 30 percent overall. We're sliding a little bit where and we were going to find out tomorrow better. But I think we're maybe slid a week on our schedule. But that doesn't mean they can't they wouldn't be able to make it up. We're still supposed to be finished by the end of the year. And then the the other action that we have going on is Northfield Roxbury. The engineering and design is complete. The make ready is in progress. I did not get a response today from from Chris Rechia. Wondering whether or not they resolve their issue with TDS the the phone company there was a little bit of a hold up and actually doing the make ready because of that. But I didn't hear back from him yet on that. But the engineering and design is complete. They anticipate to do the construction very quickly and still believe that they're going to be finished by the end of the year as as we need to be. If I could just add to that. We've we've sent an invoice for the first part of their services back to the state and the state once they essentially once they cut us the check then we will cut the check back then to to Valley Net to to pay for the first or actually it's the entirety of it right. It's the entirety of it. So yeah I don't I don't think we'll go and pay them till they're done. Right. Any questions for Jerry. My question is is this 31 December money or is this money that we have extended. This is 31. This is 31 December money. So no we haven't had an extension on this yet beyond the end of this year. So we will be paying them in December. That's the expectation. Yes. OK. I mean provided that the work gets done right. Not necessarily. Well well we won't be paying them if the work doesn't get done is what I'm saying because we all of that grant money that we would have been sent will be clawed back. Right. And they're well aware of that. Right. We've had this discussion with them multiple times. Yeah. Any other questions for Jerry. R.D. did you have something. I do a brief one. I'm not sure this is I should save this for the round table but Jerry is it is it possible without overburdening you to get. Information about our. Our progress on a town by town basis. No that's not a pro. I have I have that I have that information. Which town which town are you in. I'm in Cabot Jerry. OK. Right. People are asking me how they haven't writing me and they say they haven't seen trucks with our our magnetic signs. Is pole inventory actually going on in Cabot. It would be helpful. And I don't know if it's as I say it was overburdening you to get a report on the town by town basis about the progress of our build out. Yeah. Well right now the there are five towns in area A that have pole inventories that are that are going and Cabot is an area B and we're not exactly sure when we're going to begin pole inventories in area B. We don't have the grant funds yet even though there's an agreement about to be signed. So we would expect that that would occur in the spring. Late maybe maybe maybe in the in the towards the end of the winter when folks can get back to work. It depends on how hard the winter is. So that that's that hasn't changed. Yeah that is that is a change. I'm sorry. That is a change. Okay. Yeah we were originally shooting for doing having all of the pole inventories for the whole district by the end of the year and the high level design by the end of the year. That was the the original plan and that's so. And to be clear I think I don't think Cabot is an area B. They're an area C. Right. We are an area C. We're doing area B and C at the same concurrently. Right. Yeah. Sorry about that. So that that is a change and I would be I don't know about the other towns in the area C but I would be grateful to to have a town by town update that I can share with with people in Cabot. You got it R.D. Thank you Jerry. The next big update that we'll have is when the when the first tranche of the next grant comes in and we can essentially send you know send the folks back out into the field when they're available when that's possible again. And they're very well made maybe you know poles that they can that they can do even with even in crummy weather but there's going to be some you know short of busting out the snowmobiles or just not going to be accessible until the snow clears by the mud season has passed. Got it. So blocking on the blocking on the grant money right now. Anything else for Jerry. OK I'm not seeing anything else. Let's see. Annual report budget hearing. We are obliged every year to invite our member towns the lawmakers the and the executives of our member towns to weigh in on the budget and the annual report and this is our statutory obligation to conduct this hearing now by November or by the end of the year I think I think at this point. So if there are any any town officials that would like to weigh in or provide feedback here at this hearing this would be the time to do so or for that matter if we have delegates that want to provide feedback from their towns this would be also the time to speak up. Do we have anybody looking to comment on our proposed budget and our proposed annual report. Ray. Yeah just to broaden that and that is that by the by the 15th and so we're before the 15th we're going to hold this public hearing important statute. And in addition to hearing from legislative bodies of district members to all other interested parties that have an interest in the public budget and it required us to give notice to the towns 15 at least 15 days advance. Our annual report itself was the invitation. We actually put in there the notice of the budget hearing. And so if anybody has something to say they should say it now. In addition to this on December on December 14th we would have our our board next board meeting and at that board meeting we are to adopt a budget. We approved a budget before on the 14th we're to adopt a budget. The budget that was approved will change between when we approved it and then because more information from available to us etc etc and so on the 14th of December you see something slightly different. The finance committee will be reviewing that in November and with the recommendation for the board in December. Thanks for that Ray. So we're not adopting the budget tonight we're just getting some feedback so even so if folks do get feedback from the towns and if it is after this meeting we can still take it into consideration but this is the the formality of putting it out there and making sure that there is a time dedicated to town officials or other interested folks to to weigh in. So I'll do another brief request for comments otherwise we will have a mighty short hearing. Okay so I will declare the hearing on the end of the budget annual report closed and we will move on to the pre-construction grant update. We have an agreement I have an agreement in my inbox right now required an iteration with some modifications and changes and it looks pretty clean now. I sent a copy I don't remember who I sent a copy to David and Ray and Jerry I think of the the newest version with the correct the corrections or maybe I didn't get it to everybody. Did I get it to you David. I might have missed you on that I'm sorry. It's my intention as soon as I get home once I've put the kids to bed I will I will sign that send it out. Christine signs it probably still tonight everybody works late nowadays and so that will be executed it will hit finance tomorrow and then we start whatever sort of sausage making process is involved in that bureaucratic digestive system. And we'll we I reset up the ACH so we should have direct deposit we shouldn't have to work you know wait for Montpelier to cut a check which then goes down to White River Junction which then comes back up to the Montpelier Post Office which then comes down to Berlin to me. So I'm hopeful that we that by filling in that paperwork the ACH stuff that means it will land in our bank account and it's a not insubstantial advance. I think it's a quarter of it's like seven seven hundred K roughly and we can we can really hit the ground sprinting. So anything else that anybody else wants to mention about the the pre-construction grant. The only thing I would add about that is that with the money in the bank we can give the notice to proceed for areas B and C. So R.D. what you were concerned about when that was starting if it will be starting probably by the end of this month and it will slip into the Q1 2022 but that is but it is what it is. And it also provides the money for a bunch of other things that we can do. So 740,000 or something like that nice chunk of change. Right. And just for for the record for our minutes whoever is calling in from the 813 area code which I think is what South Carolina if you could just identify yourself so we can put you in the minutes. It's Tampa. It's Christopher Shank. Oh Tampa. OK. Thanks Chris. OK. Anything else in the pre-construction. Any questions or other other thoughts. It's been hitting a lot of you know the new the press conference hit a lot of news news stories. There was an extended interview that Stu Ledbetter did with Christine Hallquist that included the New England Cable News coverage of me. They like positioned me so that the sun was directly in my eyes and I'm sort of doing my best not to squint and not to tear up but so you can see that. And me and the rare occasion of being in a suit so enjoy it while it lasts. Let's see. You look fine. Thanks Artie. I appreciate it. Wack update anything else different or new that we should mention about Wack. Sure. This is David Healy and it's we the the the three CUDs received and updated our draft first draft memorandum of agreement from Wack I think two weeks ago and we're in the process of reviewing it and trying to make it fit more with what we're looking for but it's progressing but ever slowly. The other news is that Velko and Wack ran the fiber line from East Montpelier substation to Maple Corner substation which will be it's 144 strands which Wack is going to have 72 and they'll lease to us 60. So that's in the ground and on the poles and the town of Calis approved $30,000 last night to extend that line to from Kent Corner to the town office. Calis town office is the only town office with DSL in the district. So this is a big big deal for this town. The town's been waiting for years. So that's sort of my Wack update. Jerry do you want to say anything about the progress with meeting with them on Tuesdays. Sure we have we have regular Thursday meetings with Wack a lot of socialization going on there understanding each other and and our needs and and making sure that we're going to be all on the same page trying to prepare for make ready and working working together to see what the best way to move forward with the big make ready load that's going to hit Wack in the not in the not too distant future so it's it's a it's a it's a regular meeting sometimes they're quite brief but I believe they're quite valuable in in getting the teams comfortable with each other. I think the only thing I'd add to that is that when we're talking about the Wack in relationship what we're talking about is the Wack network so-called Wack network which extends from C5 or EC5 or into any case CED and of that almost 859 miles we had 500 miles of that and the idea behind that is that Wack will get funding from RUS USDA at a low interest rate that would help finance the construction of those 859 miles. The an impediment to this that I surfaced is that Wack is the TSD is looking for some assurance that the CED is going to be able to make the payment on their operating lease for this fiber and that we're and that there's a process being engaged in right now with regard to identifying how that might be how that might be accomplished. We include members of the CCDB as well and we're not there yet. There are other parts of the Wack fiber agreement that Dave was talking about that we have to work our way through. But right now it's the major impediment might be the funding the backstopping of our payments to be continued. There was a question from Henry in the in the chat. What's the intersection of Wack CUDs so that's the kingdom and us and EC fiber and the NRTC CUDs and do you mean the those that have chosen to work with NRTC. I mean I think only only the kingdom. Okay. Okay. All right. Anything anything else regarding Wack. I have just a quick question on that. What's NRTC what's that about. I don't understand that. This is David Barnes from Middlesex. Hey David. So NRTC is the I have to look at up the National Rural Telecommunications Co-op. They're a large cooperative of all sorts of different organizations that is dedicated to building telecommunications infrastructure in rural America. They are they were the ones that that we worked with to be involved in the Ardolf Auction. They're also kind of the lead the lead player in the operator developer process that the Northeast Kingdom Community Broadband went through. So they will be the ones spearheading the construction project and all the rest of the stuff for N-E-K broadband. They are also they either have their hands on or have easy easier access to fiber which actually this is a nice segue into the next next agenda item. They have access to fiber and they're willing to sell it to to us and have with a shorter lead time than we would normally see from other vendors. So. That's great. So yeah. Where are they. Everywhere. Where is this fiber that they might that they would have access to or that we might have access to through NRTC. So if you could hold that until the next agenda item we actually have a presentation specifically about that coming up. Good. Thank you. Coming up imminently. So on that note. Thank you RD sort of paved the way for the next bit. So procurement of fiber. So we have this sort of inside track on this fiber and through an agreement with the Vermont Communications Union District Association through the broadband board state of Vermont and some sort of interconnected players essentially having the community broadband board pre-purchasing in a way an us pre-purchasing in a way a thousand miles across the entire state of Vermont for for next year. And so Will do you want to do you want to take it from here and introduce. Thanks Jeremy that was a that was a good introduction but maybe I'll just like kind of go through our thought process here and introduce where we're at now with this arrangement. For those of you that don't know my name is Will Anderson. I am in CB5 or Territory here in Montpelier but I represent the Communications Union District Association. So trying to work with all nine CUDs across the state to you know facilitate our our mission. What I've been working on right here is that so actually we're securing 2,000 miles of fiber for the entire state through NRTC. For reference NRTC yes it is a nationwide cooperative. It's headquartered in Washington D.C. just outside Washington D.C. And they have connections to a number of the key fiber manufacturers most of which are located in the state of Georgia actually. But anyway our plan is to secure 2,000 miles of fiber 1,000 of which is being secured separately by Northeast Kingdom. So yours and the other eight CUDs have the ability to commit to a certain amount of this other 1,000 miles that's in play here. How are we paying for it? The Vermont Community Foundation and other partners who I won't get into just for confidentiality reasons are backing us with a letter of credit to make this purchase. You know in theory we would have just tried to make this purchase straight through the state of Vermont because that's where the money is for broadband. But due to their procurement policies it would take far too long. The lead times that we're looking at here are going to increase soon. The prices are going to increase especially because of the new broadband funding that's coming down to every state as part of the infrastructure bill. So we're trying to move quickly on this and for that reason we've sought funding from different partners across the state. So that all is looking very good. The letter of credit is ready and we are moving in towards making this purchase from NRTC for 1,000 miles of fiber. What do we need from your CUD is a commitment to take on a part of this purchase because in order to obtain the letter of credit we need to be able to show that your CUD and the others will be willing to take this fiber and to use a portion of your grant funds to pay for it when it does arrive. And that pledge serves as the security for us to be able to make this purchase. So I've circu- Maybe I should take some questions now. If there are any. Can I see Phillip? Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Is this existing fiber that's there now? This is fiber that's yet to be manufactured. We actually have an opportunity here to get ahead of the line in terms of the next cycle of manufacturing for these suppliers. So it's not that we're not buying the backbone. We're just buying materials. Yes. This would be this would be a pre-purchase of materials. We would be ordering them to manufacture according to our specifications and deliver them right here to central Vermont. And that's actually closely related to my question, which is when we say it's the materials we're speaking specifically only of the fiber and necessary connectors, but not things like blades and racks of switching servers and so on, right? That's correct. Right now we're dealing exclusively with fiber cable. We're looking at three strand counts, 48, 72 and 144 strand counts. We are hoping that this, you know, partnership can be replicated for further purchases to fill in gaps with hardware. But for now we're exclusively dealing with fiber cable as that is the hottest commodity that we think, you know, we have a window to seize on here. So there was a, I'll go ahead Phil. Okay. This is following up. So are we ahead of the curve? Do we need our high level design in place first? So we know what kind of fiber we, I see some heads shaking left or right. So we don't, we don't need that in first. So we don't know what, we don't need that to know what kind of fiber we need. The strand counts. So again. Go for it David. Yeah. So we're going to get a mix of, we're going to order a mix of fiber based on some rule of thumbs for backbone, secondary backbone, and then regular going down the road fiber. So it'll be, you know, a mix of the 144, which is about 20 to 25%. And then at least in our first build, and then the rest will be a mix of the 72 and 48. Yeah. That's not holding inventory. Yeah. So it's, and it's also, it was based on a feasibility study that was done by, by WEC actually looking at WECs territory. That was the breakdown that worked out that their sort of pre-high level engineering did when they were looking at building out their entire territory. So that was what we were using. But the reality is the amount that we're looking at getting, which I think will, we've got what? Three CUDs roughly competing for the remaining thousand miles not in the kingdom. Is that right? Roughly speaking. Yeah. We're pretty certain that assuming your CUD does proceed, there'll be two others. But every CUD is eligible to pursue part of the allocation. So in theory, three CUDs are certainly going to go for it. So what's our dollar commitment? So hold that thought. I just want to say that we are, we will use this. This will all get used one way or the other. So the dollar commitment is forthcoming. Let me add you to the end of the list because we had some other folks queued up first. Henry, did that question get answered? How much can we get? It's going to be a thousand miles split. Probably three ways. Two would be 33. Go ahead. No, please Henry. Yeah, no, I'm just wondering, would it be 33% then? Maybe. So I've sent some of the documents along to some of your CUD leaders, Jeremy, David, Ray. You're eligible for a quest as much fiber as you want. We haven't established a firm policy for this. We're going off the idea that we're just barely going to have commitments to enough of it based on the numbers we've got from the CUDs. You can request as much fiber from the 1,000 miles as you'd like. When we see what other CUDs request, we may have to, you know, figure out who's going to get what. But if you were to request a third, that would be fully, fully reasonable for in terms of what we're dealing with here. All right, so Jeremy, Jeremy, then Phil, then Ray. Okay. My question was already basically answered. It was kind of, is it compatible with whatever developer operator we end up getting? And it sounds like the answer is yes. My next question though is I forget approximately how many miles do we have? Like what percentage of our network would this be? David. We have 1200 miles. Okay, so yeah, we're good. So this is roughly the amount that we're looking at building next year. The amount that was in the forecast for area A was about 300 miles. So Phil, then Ray. So my question was, you know, what's the, what's our commitment, the dollar commitment? Because that's fair to rack rates if it was available. So we do have the pricing from the final pricing for NRTC, which I've included in those documents. It's, let's see, it's a couple thousand dollars a mile for each of the fiber accounts. And as it compares to the rack rates, we think that these are the best prices based on the other suppliers that we talked to that we're going to get for a long, long time. So Ray or David, do you want to answer Phil's question concretely? Yes, and more generally. I can give you the real dollar. Yeah, and there are dollar figures, but what I would suggest to the board is that we let the executive committee work out the details, and obviously they have to stick them in the budget. And so the mileage, how many of 144, 48, blah, blah, blah. I don't think we have to worry about that. I think the important decision for the board is we want to engage in this group by, with these good rates, ensuring that we get something in the queue, so we might get it earlier than later. There are a lot of things to be worked out, like the insurance, where we're going to store it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We push all those decisions to the executive committee, but let's get to the point where should we do this, my view of the world of guests. I have confidence in the law firm to draft all of these documents that we should approve. And so that's where I'm at. David has more. Yeah. I was just going to say it. The crude estimate of 300 miles is about $900,000. And just to let you know, it comes out of our construction grant money that we would be getting from the board. So it's sort of an advantage. It's getting advances on, it's like getting advance on a construction grant. So whatever we buy for fiber is that amount of money from whatever dedicated amount of grant money we're going to get for construction. So does that answer your question, Phil? Is it your satisfaction? It does. And probably the bigger thing is we're sure of a supply so that we aren't held up waiting for the critical piece of our code. Yeah. And this is really kind of a, I don't want to say golden goose. Maybe that's overstating it. But in terms of everybody feeling frustrated and panicky about are we going to be able to get fiber when we're being told, well, there's an 18-month lead time. Yeah. We don't have that. And so we have the opportunity here to get a pretty good price, a bulk purchase with some of our friends and other CUDs. And to have that checkbox checked. And we're not blocking on that then when it comes to quarter two next year, quarter three next year, that's done. We have to worry about the other equipment and labor and make ready. But having the actual fiber, it's out of our hair. Jeremy and David, you still have your hand up by the way. So, yeah, I think this is a great idea. We should absolutely do it. And I'd like to make a motion that the governing board authorize the executive committee to work with the CUD to figure out how many miles we want to order and all those sorts of details. Second. Okay. Moved by Jeremy. Seconded by Siobhan. Is there any further discussion or does anybody have any questions? Is there anything else that we can clarify before we put this on the executive committee? Okay. Not all at once. Okay. So I'm going to take that as kind of general satisfaction. And if this is something that you would like to like more details on, you're obviously very, very welcome to join us in the executive committee to look into the more details of this. So are there any objections to the motion as presented? Okay. I will take that as unanimous approval. Thank you very much for that. Is there anything else that we want to talk about with the procurement of fiber? Will, our next executive committee meeting is on Thursday. Or Alan. Alan has his hand up. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see it. Go ahead, Alan. I just had a question for Will. Are there going to be opportunities to work with NRTC to help us find contractors for building once we are ready to build? Or is this simply a service that is looking at only goods and tangible items? So for this purchase, Alan, it's strictly limited to the manufacturer purchase and delivery of the fiber cable. However, I do know that NRTC is looking for any opportunity they can to work with CUDs in the state of Vermont. You'd have to talk to them about that, but I do know that they are very interested in exploring such opportunities with CUDs like yours. That would be great because two of the things I've been hearing from people who are skeptical that we're going to be able to succeed is, A, are you going to be able to get fiber and B, or are you going to be able to get contractors? So, I mean, one of the things that's kind of slipping from the table, which is good, is that are you going to be able to get money and with the grant starting to come in finally from state and federal sources, people are less skeptical on that. But on the products and also the labor, those are the two areas I've gotten some questions on. So thanks for your response. I appreciate that. Thanks for that, Alan. So, and as Phil noted in the chat, we still do need to follow our own purchasing policy. This is also something that is going to be required by the broadband board and by, you know, when the eventually the construction grants come out and we sign that. It's all, we're all going to have to follow that as well, which is likely to be probably more restrictive than our purchasing policy. Yeah, just to speak to that quickly. In the documents that our lawyers have prepared via which your CUD can pledge a portion of your grant funds for fiber, there are provisions in there as well that say, you know, to follow all relevant public procurement policy guidelines. So the idea is that the speed and price at which we'll be providing the fiber will supersede any other options for cable when you do when you do carry out the procurement policy. Sure. Our D then Jeremy. Is this fiber? Is this actually going to be delivered to us? And if it is, where are we going to put it? Well, to some extent, our D that is a question you will have to answer yourself. However, we my garage. Well, we do have some contingencies in place here. Vicuda, the association when we purchase it will be ensuring it from shipping until your CUD takes ownership. We're also working with the state to reserve two storage facilities. One of which is in Rutland and the other is, I think in Berlin, it's it's more in our neck of the woods. So we are making contingencies to ensure and store the fiber and deal it passes into your hands. But you're also very welcome to make your own arrangements for storage insurance as well, because that will probably be critical once the fiber once you decide once you're able to start building. Thank you. Thanks, our D Jeremy. Yeah, I mean, another thought already is that we're going to at some point hopefully soon have a developer operator on board and they very well may have the capacity to to store this for us and they're going to be the ones ultimately string it for us. So it might make sense to lean on them a little bit. But my question for Will is when do you need to know by when do we need to have this contract executed? Well, I so short answer as soon as possible. We've been putting this through for putting the working on this deal for like a number of weeks now trying to sort all the different moving parts out and we're very close. So definitely, you know, the sooner that your CD is able to commit an amount of your construction grants for the fiber, the better. However, you know, definitely, you know, you don't have to sign tonight and given amount tonight. But I would say you're able to produce that. You mentioned executive committee on Thursday that I'm that I'm very able to attend. That would be a really great time for us to have a, you know, 300 miles let's say of this fiber committed. We're I'm expecting to have a commitment from another CD tomorrow evening. And once we're over the 50 percent mark, which is the letter of credit will be in will be in good shape to proceed with the with the with the funding partner. I would just say, you know, if you so if you are able to assuming that that was an authorization for your executive committee to carry out this arrangement with the association Thursday would be excellent timeline. That was the intent of my motion. Okay. Great. Any other questions for will or anything else that if you want, like I said, if you want to join the executive committee, we can get a bit more into the weeds. Otherwise, if you, you know, you have thoughts about it now, I'm happy to hear them. I'm just going to I'm just going to say that these are expenses that are that are planned and budgeted for. These are going to be things that are in the construction grant. I mean, I'm just kind of seeing the same thing someone else did in just a slightly different way. You know, so when we go and ask for the next, you know, ARPA funds for the construction portion, this is something that we were already going to be asking for. But in order for us to beat the deadline and beat the lead, where we have to do this sort of out of order. So, there's a lot of motivation for us to get this going and sort of and not exactly we're not even really prepaying for it, sort of like a grant anticipation note, as I understand it, right, right. So this isn't surprising and this is kind of this is vetted fairly far up and down the chain all the way up through the state. So this is, there's not any surprises there. And Henry's question, do we have construction funds to buy more and the answer is probably, but maybe not immediately, not for next year. We would probably do the construction for next year and probably get the next purchase in the pipeline pending funding for the B and C construction the following year and then probably do that either in one or two more big bites of similar size I think. If I may just quickly add to that once detailed design is completed for more CUDs we're planning on initiating this process again to fill in the gaps for purchasing. So this is an initial purchase. We're trying to get the item that's in the highest demand and we're going to replicate this process once detailed design is complete for more CUDs. Great. Any other questions for Will? All right, great. Well, you are free to depart if you like, otherwise feel free to hang out. We're pretty cool and this meeting shouldn't take too long, but I understand. I'm a resident in Montpelier so I'll stick around with personal interest. All right, sounds wonderful. Thank you. All right, I have it written down here. So open meetings, public discussions. Chuck, did you want to say something about this quick? Yeah, I just want to have a quick call out. Those of you on the, sorry, can you hear me? For those of you who are on the governing board mailing list, which is most of you, you probably received an email from one of our constituents this evening asking about a potential open meeting law violation. The first thing I'd like to say is I would just like to ask and remind everyone to not engage in those kinds of things directly. We have a way that we need to respond to those sorts of requests from a legislated perspective and we will follow that process accordingly. Plus, I know that in this particular case it might be there might be some emotional charge to respond directly and just as board members hold ourselves to a high road and ensure that we are putting the face of our CUD first. Just a kind ask to please make sure we just follow the process for responding such things and this is a direct side effect of, of course the decision that we made a few board meetings ago to open up our governing board mailing list to anybody to allow them to email that list. So, you know, we will probably run into this again in the future. So thank you. And I should also point out that any time you feel like clicking reply all please don't which that could right there constitute a violation of open meetings also. So if you if you want to reply to me or forward it to me or one individual person that's that's okay but doing a reply all is generally generally not good etiquette we don't use that word anymore but it's also just not probably not super legal in our case as a public entity way we don't use that word anymore damn it I've got to cross it off my list I can't remember the last time I used that word in a lecture or saw it and I sort of like trade or industry magazine you're certainly way more in touch with the kids that I am that went out the door with Netscape navigator to that end I would like just to point out that here BCC is your friend so when you're sending messages to those bigger mailing lists it can often be a good idea to just make the to address to yourself and use the BCC liberally for all of those mailing lists and and that avoids all reply all capability so you can sort of you know get that one in the bud good advice Chuck thanks for that anything else on open meetings public records etc wonderful let's go on to let's go on to neighboring CUDs Elmore and Waterbury just wanted to give you an update on this Waterbury voted to join LaMoyle CUD so we will be sort of sharing Waterbury with them it's not super clear what the division what the division of Waterbury will be like because there are parts of it that parts of Waterbury that make more sense to come from stow and based on you know some funding that they're talking about they they may want to do Waterbury and their design instead or also or something so just wanted to put that out on everybody's radar and there have been conversations too about something happening similarly with Elmore because Elmore is kind of compared to CV Fiber it's sort of a you can't get there from here without long long stretches of absolutely nothing which would never make sense to run Fiber up Route 12 for example but coming in from the north or the west or elsewhere would make a lot more sense so it's quite likely slash possible that Elmore may also join the moille so right so I just want I just want to put that out there that this is something that's that we're looking at tag teaming in some ways these border towns in kind of a similar ways we're looking at Washington so any thoughts or questions about that okay moving along I'm just curious sorry how does that affect our high level design is that going to throw monkey wrench in things no we will still do our high level design it's still going to be part of it they may also have a slightly overlapping high level design we will almost certainly share notes the way that the poll inventories are being budgeted for are essentially by unserved addresses we are being allocated the unserved addresses in Waterbury or Elmore we will contract to do that work if the construction actually happens by one of the other CUDs we will hand the data over to them which because again we're all working towards the same goals it's there's not really going to be any sort of conflict there okay thanks anything else and the next one ever north grant amendment so I made the mistake of when we talked about this in the Executive Committee meeting of calling this Everbridge Everbridge is an utterly different company that I happen to have gotten some spam email from and I realized that's why I called it that at my Norwich account so I had Everbridge and I was doing the agenda Ever North is an organization a non-profit that was the a fusion of two different housing non-profits and one of them was an apartment complex in Barrie and they're looking to build this is something that I'm pretty sure we've talked about at the whole governing board before if I'm not mistaken they are hoping to essentially serve everyone in the entire complex I think there's three big buildings with Wi-Fi the CARES Act funds we did have Vermont did not spend all of the CARES Act funds because we couldn't we couldn't essentially build enough we couldn't build enough internet connectivity quick enough by the end of this year still has a lot of money in it so Rob Fish put us in touch and suggested that that we consider funding this project as it is within the footprint of CV Fiber it does get people service it does not burden us with any additional paperwork or overhead past the grant amendment and I did push back on Evernorth and asked them to do something that looked more like a competitive bidding process they did that they found competing bids to do the same work and they found that who they started with actually had had the better price we were looking to amend our CARES Act grant imminently to allow them to do this work and have it covered by the CARES Act funds that the state of Vermont already has and this is work that can be done that's not going to take too terribly long and it will be done by the end of the year they will be served and turned on and active by the end of the year Jeremy so would you be doing the grant amendment with the Executive Committee who would be taking that on so we've already talked about it at the Executive Committee I think we had a it was unanimous to support this but we felt that we didn't have the charter we didn't have the approval as a body to make that big of a change that's why we're coming back to the governing board I would actually ask because Rob essentially has all of this language already ready to go in the grant amendment so I would like if you could authorize me just to execute to review with anybody that I choose or anybody that wants to work on this to review that grant amendment and execute that and then get that project going so that those I think a couple hundred people can get their service so motion to approve okay we'll go ahead Ray yeah so the motion in the charter room says move the board approve amending our CARS CARES grant to effect construction of the Ever North project second okay moved by Ray seconded by Siobhan any further discussion yeah Jeremy I would like to propose a friendly amendment that Jeremy Hanson be authorized to do whatever it takes to make that happen I don't know exactly how to phrase it but basically to hand it off to Jerry to work with Rob to to go through the grant amendment process and execute it second okay it's a friendly amendment so it's up to Ray it's acceptable to me Jeremy I'll let you let you do the wording for that yeah but I'll accept the concept okay any other thoughts about this any objections to this okay motion passes as friendly amended unanimously thanks everybody let's go on to procurement policy Ray do you want to take this one yeah so I guess I'll start with the the big picture the big picture is that the Vermont community broadband board requires a stable procurement policy accordingly taking a look at what NEC community broadband had done went through the process of customizing it for CB fiber NEC broadband had based their model off of what the Vermont league of cities and towns had put together which was based upon what the federal and state requirements are and so I sent out an email to everyone with kind of the background for the procurement policy as well as sending out the procurement policy and I'd be happy to entertain any questions that anybody might have I would say this is the recommended by the policy committee and the executive committee any questions correct so just just to restate this is something that's been borrowed legally vetted vetted again by Ray looked at by policy looked at by executive committee required by our grants so I mean if there's objections not that I would want to overrule them but if there are objections they ought to be rather specific so that we can fix the body of the of the policy otherwise I think we have to do something and this is and this is pretty good what we have here Jeremy second I was going to move that we adopt the policy as presented okay I'll I'll take that as a backwards motion rd that that works for me any any further discussion questions or otherwise we're going to ask if we're allowed to make motions in the chat because not everybody is necessarily watching the chat it would be better to vocalize those motion is the government would approve and adopt the procurement policy dated October 25th 2021 I think that's what rd motioned my memory served me and Jeremy second that so we should be we should be good any further discussion or questions about this okay great any objections to adopting the policy from October 25th great that passes unanimously thanks everybody this is going so smoothly website updates there we were talking about potentially putting some material differently or reorganizing something I this isn't familiar to me so I raised this issue before and the we don't have a page in which we have our bylaws and policies that we've adopted such as the procurement policy for example and other documents and so it would be my intent to make this motion move to the board of crew establishing a public documents page on the cbfiber.net website for the publication of non confidential materials such as policies reports budgets and studies and such other documents as the executive committee may authorize second second I would note that this any K does this already and I haven't gone around the horn to find out what the cbfiber and others do but frankly it would certainly help me find documents later and and and I recognize that there's a body of work that we have to kind of catch up on we have a whole bunch of policies and Alan has gone through laboriously and identified all those policies and and we need to get though we should get those online and we have gone through a process by which we have redacted documents such as our feasibility studies and others as well as contracts where we have been required by the state to identify and mark confidential materials as well as having a legal opinion with regard to those legal and those those confidential materials though I feel like you have processes in place by which we can put these information online and keep it up to date once the first 30 to 60 days goes by and we get the the three years the four years of data collected and loaded up there Okay, Siobhan then Jeremy so I agree that this is a great idea I think that we do need to be more proactive and making our documents and policies and everything visible where I come in with this is who's going to do this who's going to be responsible for this who's going to design it because this isn't something that just if we're not careful it's going to accrete and be as unsearchable now as it ever has been and and so it needs to be carefully managed that's that's my only observation I think the design we'll turn to Chuck and he has his hand up for a reason but let's hear from Jeremy then go ahead sorry what was that Jeremy you're up then Chuck oh okay so I guess my question is for some things like budgets whatever that are just straight up public that's not an issue but would we then have to go back or go sort of proactively redact things like our high level design would we put that on there and if so would that sort of ahead of time redaction cause open meeting issues if we haven't I'm not sure how that would play out yeah I think this gets punted to the executive committee Chuck Chuck then I want to I want to add something then we'll come back to you Ray Chuck you're on mute you did thank you a couple questions to unpack here the first question would be around sort of the design and initial development of such a place as it stood last time I chatted with our web developer she was more than willing to continue doing work based on the retainer we paid her at the end of last year I don't know whether that still stands true as of right now because she has done some recent work for us so I will re-engage with her to find out if that is something that she'd be willing to take on knowing that we do have two other outstanding projects I've asked her to engage on prior to this one even coming up so note that there is a bit of a backlog of work here that we are actively managing and so we may need to make some prioritization decisions that you know she's burned through the amount of money we gave her the other facet here and by the way I sorry just to back up by the way I would point out that I don't see that as a big barrier and certainly should we need to give her some more money that's not that big a deal her rates are very very competitive and I think that would be a good use of money to build out something like that but I think Siobhan's point about who is going to keep such a thing up to date is much much more critical to this these kinds of things get out of date very very quickly and we need to have a well established process by which this is going to get updated and so a question I would have and I don't know who the best person to answer this is maybe Ray maybe someone else but is this something we could engage our PC to take on ownership of and what sort of expense would we be looking at doing that thanks Chuck so my comments were simpler we're simple too the keeping it up to date I think is going to be the hard part I think if we can put something like policies reports budgets those sorts of things that are already public documents that change with a fair amount of warning and policies are not going to change super often reports we're not going to probably get lots and lots of those budgets we get once a year I think we can put those up there and those because they don't change are probably not going to be that that big of a deal I would say extending it much beyond that is is going to be a pain so Ray you're up next and then Linda and then Jeremy yeah yeah so this is basically kind of a ministerial function in terms of things like as we talked about agendas and minutes and kind of the routine you know byproducts of our of our processes and everything and I've spoken with Chuck and I've spoken with our PC and our PC is of a mind and a willingness to participate with doing this work and I know that Chuck has been trying to set up a meeting with them in order to kind of go through what the what the thing might be frankly this is a wordpress website once you set up the page it's not rocket science with regard to maintaining documents and stuff and I see Chuck nodding his head I want you to notice that so it's a matter then of somebody approves something gets processed it goes off to somebody at our PC and they enter a few of things in and it's done and we get charged for it but you know this is kind of part of those critical infrastructure things that we do like maintaining our minutes on our agendas and all those kinds of things and being more being as transparent as we can not to be as a municipality so that's my comment Thanks Ray Linda then Jeremy then Chris Schenker Hi I'm a website developer I would like to volunteer some talents to work on this project can I be put into the loop sure if the motion eventually does get approved then I'm sure we will be tapping your capabilities Linda thank you for putting that out there I'm volunteering I am not charging I like that even better Jeremy then Chris Schenker I just want to say that in terms of putting policies reports budgets the stuff that doesn't happen very often that doesn't seem like that big a lift to me and I'm already posting the minutes and stuff to the website it really wouldn't be that big a deal obviously once the framework is set for me to do that posting I'm also happy to have the RPC do it instead if that makes more sense but I think that could also be at least while I'm clerk a clerk task Jeremy Christopher Apparently Linda and I are the Waterbury Web Developers Association I used to be a web developer I unfortunately can't volunteer time to build it but I'm happy to help wherever I can but I would say that if we go forward with this and I do think we should I think we it doesn't have to be this crazy complex beast where we have multiple layers of categories of documents and all this kind of stuff I mean we can simply properly label documents and upload them with a timestamp and make it searchable and that's it you know so you keep the full history there documents don't take a tremendous amount of space you can just you know every month upload a handful of documents and people can search through them assuming that those documents should legally be shared publicly like that but otherwise keep it simple Alright sounds good thanks Christopher any other thoughts on this we have a motion to create a public documents page that you may be able to see in the chat where we can put some of this material and we ended up with some volunteers and some folks that may be able to manage this even without our paid web developers time Chuck? Yeah Usually this is Alan's moment but I'm going to steal his thunder a little bit I do just want to remind everyone that by definition most of the documentation all of the documentation we create is public by nature and it's only when we have produced a document that there is a portion that we are we have a statutory allowance that we can vote as a body to redact can we make something private but even there you can't make the entire document private generally you can only make whatever portion of it is statutory allowed to be made private everything is public by default generally speaking So maybe we just call this page then policies reports and budgets instead rather than public documents so as not to have a misnomer but I see Jeremy then Alan I was going to say kind of the same thing that we definitely don't want to brand this as all of our public documents because then we'd have to be uploading every single email that we send There's that go ahead Alan Chuck that was great The only thing that we want to be clear on is the way that redactions are made is when somebody requests a record from the holder of records for the organization and I believe for us that's the clerk and it is the clerk's responsibility to either go through or work with somebody to go through the document if there is a desire to try to redact some information based on specific exemptions in the law in the public records law So this is not something that the whole board would have a discussion about whether we should reveal this information or not It's really one person the holder of the records may be consulting with other people whose information is important who makes the decision about what the redactions are I don't think we want to give this to the board A. there's really no mechanism in the law to say it says you should do that but I think generally a board of 21 trying to decide what should be redacted is not a good discussion Here here. Right? Yeah, not only that one is that the executive committee is going to be the gatekeeper with regard to when everything that's listed there is examples such as it's not kind of specific Secondly that much of the things that we're producing now with regard to our project winds up going to the Vermont community broadband board which requires that those documents if there are confident if there is confidential material in them it's going to be properly identified and if there's a legal opinion attached to it and so it's the executive committee that's going to sift through as things occur what's public what's not public what should be on there what shouldn't be on there and that's the point of this is to have let them decide a 21 member board it's not it's not the place to do that either thoughts about this the motion remains are there any objections to this motion would anybody like to vote against this seeing none Do we need to modify the motion specifically because the motion mentions the public documents page Would you take as a friendly amendment Ray if we called the page something different the policies reports and budgets The only reason it's listed in that way is that's the way the N.E.K. has it public documents page and I don't care one way or whatever we call it would like to make it clear as to what what it's going to be perhaps we can also punt that to the executive committee to the side or the communications committee I mean you could add at the discretion of to it how about how about if we change it so we just take a page on cvfabra.net for the publication so on and so on okay everybody accepted okay so with the board of proof establishing a page on the cvfabra.net website for the publication of non-confidential material such as policies reports budgets and studies and other such documents as the executive committee may authorize everybody but just restating that before we for everybody does not object I don't see any objections so that passes unanimously thanks to that appreciate the thumbs up there Christopher and we will move on the next item that we have is the developer operator selection which I think is probably a misnomer because I don't think we're actually we're still not quite ready to select the operator developer what not but I do believe we want to go into executive session for this for contracts is that is that right do you have that contracts language I don't have that on this PC super handy I can find that but so no I have it right here I have it right here I'll put it in the chat room we had to use it the other day for PDC so I think this is it you read that right would you verbalize that please move the pursuant to 1VSA section 313A1A we find that premature public knowledge or discussion to lead to operated contract negotiation contract negotiations we're at a competitive disadvantage second okay move by Ray seconded by Jeremy and I should clarify that this is a discussion of contracts the specific exemption that's in statute is this is contracts any further discussion about this motion remember this is going to be a two-parter so we will move to find this and then we will then go into executive session or not any objections then to this motion that we find that you get a second yep it's seconded we're about to vote by silence okay any objections to that we're going to move to the executive session to discuss the contracts the potential contracts potential operators second okay so that was moved by me seconded by RD and we so we should also friendly amend that to include our project manager that would be all do we also want to include alternates in this discussion as well yes I think that would make sense so alternates delegates and our project manager any further discussion any objections to this motion alright so we are now an executive session I would ask so no new chat comments please until we are executive question I'll take the rest of the minutes for this meeting and I will send it to you after the meeting is over alright so I am why don't you take it I'm going to mute close my screen there's someone here I'd like to chat with for a little bit please feel free to have the conversation David and Ray and anybody who is familiar with the discussion feel free to take over from here we're going to have to ask Christian and Orca and folks to leave maybe I should kick those folks or before before I go imagine Christian you could probably do that on your own so we'll still here so John Walters I'm going to say goodbye thanks John thank you for recording this