 RPC contracts. Anything else that we need to have? Jeremy? I just wanted to ask Zach to make sure that you're all set to take minutes and that all good to go. Okay. All set. Thanks Jeremy. Thanks Zach. Thanks Jeremy and Zach. All right. Anything else? Any other changes or additions to the agenda? Okay. Hearing none. Any public comments? Any items that you'd like to speak about that are not on the agenda? Hearing none. Moving along to the consent agenda, I move that we approve the consent agenda which consists of the approval of the March 9th minutes as previously distributed. Second. Okay. Seconded by Siobhan. Any further discussion? Okay. Hearing no discussion, please signify your approval by saying aye. Aye. Opposed abstentions or roll call requests? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Poll inventory work. Who's going to lead this one? David or Ray? Ray. Go for it Ray. Thank you. Jeremy, since we're going to be talking contract negotiations and contractor matters, can we deal with executive section please? Sure. I have a quick question about this. Have the contracts been distributed to the whole board so that we've seen these in advance? There are no, we're not talking about actually awarding the contracts. We're talking about the process and you may have seen the motion that I had in the email. Okay. I got a lot of emails Ray, as you might imagine. So if you maybe could post that motion just in advance because if we're not talking, I mean I understand if we're talking about contract negotiations, then we can go into executive session. But if we're talking about process, I'm not sure that that's suitable. Jeremy? So what we want to talk about is which contractors, which specific contractors were recommended to the board for student negotiations with. And I guess the feeling that we had was that that shouldn't be public because, you know, we're not in contracts with them yet. The other question that I had was, are we going to be able to get Orca back in if we go into executive session now? Well, someone will have to send Zach a message or something when we're done so that we can circle around and come back in. So my question is... Well, there's CVRPC, but then there's also Orca. Oh yeah, that's true. Probably not, honestly. Okay. So this is why we typically do these at the end. Are there any other items that are going to be that folks are going to expect to have executive session? No? Just the poll inventory stuff? Do you want to move this to the end? And just... I'm expecting that my select board might be 710 to 720, 715 to 730 somewhere in there. It looks like we're planning on going until eight o'clock. Perhaps we could postpone this until then. I think that would probably work smoother just in terms of the flow of the meeting. Why don't we do that then? Okay. I will put that at the end then. The project manager search extension? You could also do that at the end if you'd like. I mean, if that doesn't require an executive session, let's knock it out right now. Okay. So the short of all of that is that you may recall that we did the advertiser for... We did H1RP for the project manager position on 22 February until 15 March. We received one proposal. We did do some front porch forum promotion. However, we didn't do any more promotion than that, I think, just about. And so that having only received one proposal, and that proposal being valid for 180 days, I think it's appropriate for us to reopen the negotiations or reopen the position. And so there is a motion. And I'll stick that into the cat room here. Okay. Ray, just for the benefit of the folks who might be watching this or listening to this later, who don't have the video, would you actually read your motion please? Sure. The board moved that the board reopened the search for a project manager and advertiser position in accordance with the board's decision on January 26th who approved up to $2,500 for that purpose. Okay. Seconded by Siobhan. Thank you. Any further discussion on raise motion to extend this? Chuck? Since the money was earmarked in January and a little bit of time has passed, I just want to check in with someone from the finance committee or maybe Jerry, specifically that we are still in good shape to spend this money reporting. I suspect so, but wanted to do the due diligence there. Yes, we are. Anything else? Okay. Please signify your approval by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed abstentions or roll call requests? Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Good to go. Anything else on this, Ray? No, nothing further. I'm expecting the executive committee to take it up. Perfect. All right. Planning and Development Committee report back. David? So, we've been pretty busy and I would say in between the poll inventory and negotiating with the WECMOU. I'll give an update and since that's not on the agenda, but it's been something we've spent a bunch of time on. As you recall, at the last board meeting, we approved hiring Krista. Last name is skating me at the moment. Shoot to help us with this and she's been fantastic. So, we have had two sessions and WEC has now responded to our concerns or our version of the MOU and we have left the finalization with Krista and their lawyer, but we're pretty down close to having an agreement with them. There's a meeting tomorrow with the WEC and EC Fiber and Kingdom Fiber and N.E.K. Broadband to try to keep things moving along. The board, the intent of the WEC board is to approve an item next week to go ahead with borrowing up to 23 million from IUS and they will, pending that, they will build out the Fiber network in the Washington Electric Co-op District, a territory and with the three CUDs participating along with Kingdom Fiber and so that's been going pretty good, but it's been a lot of work and let's see what else. I've been working with the committee on drafting the scope of statement of work for design, engineering, construction and operations. We're realizing that if we don't keep everything moving at the same time, we're never going to get things done. So, hence, for those who remember from way back, I created a project spreadsheet Gantt chart for all the activities that CUD has going on. I've now updated that and I'll send that link in the Google Drive to everyone and you will see how crazy it is. I've now created separate spread, separate tabs for planning and development, communications, executive committee, and then meetings. I created a tab for all the meetings that we have, at least the regularly scheduled meetings. The dates in this spreadsheet are not quite perfect, so those people who are in charge of any of these items, I'd appreciate it if you, I mean, I'm always an optimist in terms of how quickly things can get done. I need to be tamed down on that, but for the most part, we're on a path that we're going to be, this is going to be a busy year and planning and development is up for the task and so I think that's the, besides the whole thing that's going on and the work negotiations and moving forward with that, we've also been following, and I think Jeremy has on the agenda, he's got the federal funding on there, the state funding we did, we did receive and Jeremy's signed today the Grantx amendment, this allows us to do the more amended Moortown project, so that's a go and then the Northfield Roxbury project with EC-Fiber Valley net, they are, we are developing an MOU with them for them to build that out by the end of the year. Now whether they can make that end of the year is questionable, but we're working on doing that, so there's, oh the other news that has maybe a little bit to do with it, there's another the East, Washington Electric has negotiated a deal with Velco to run a fiber line from the East Montpelier substation to the Maple Corner substation on distribution lines, so we will be able to use that fiber with pending some engineering and design work to connect to connect over a hundred properties on that on that particular route. This still needs some work worked out on terms of what are the arrangements between CV-Fiber, WEC and Velco or is it just going to be CV-Fiber and WEC, but that's another ongoing project. Can I ask a question? Sure, will that effort be consistent with the MOU with WEC, in other words is that kind of a test? Yeah, Ken that's a good question and the detail of who pays what for what on that line is unresolved at the moment, but it may be just part of the WEC network that we are participating in, but it's something that that Velco has agreed to construct this year, so it'll be built this year. The other thing that I haven't told the Planning and Development Committee, today I went through all the polls on all our routes to determine how many polls were in Green Mountain Territory that might be able to take advantage of Green Mountain Powers offer of a $2,000 credit on any poll make ready in this, we are not 1,800, that's a lot of money. Whether we can execute any of that in the timeframe that GMP is proposed, but those who didn't know GMP and Raman Electric Co-op agreed in order to get broadband going to the unserved populations of Raman decided that they would help out by giving a $2,000 credit for make ready on any poll that needs it for any location under 4 slash 1 speed. So it's basically still a lot of work for all of us to get this move in, but there's a lot of moving pieces and then the legislature keeps on you know whether the Senate and the House can come to terms on the broadband bill that they before them. Jeremy, do you have that on the agenda? No. The House is about to pass a bill that would provide $1.2 million immediately for engineering design make ready and the Senate bill is $1.7 million, so they have to come to terms on that, but besides that the two bills are so different in terms of approach, one wants to create a broadband authority and the other one wants to create, re-adopt the Vermont telecommunications authority which deals with not only broadband but deals with cell service. So there's a lot going on in the legislature that will affect us and then you add that and Jeremy has the thing on the funding later, but it's a crazy time and it's an exciting time. There's a lot of money coming down the pike and we are want to be in a position to have make be ready to use it. So anyway, that's my report from the committee. I'll take any questions. Any questions for David? Go ahead, Alan. David, is the work plan going to reflect work that is being done by entities other than CV fiber but with whom we're collaborating or cooperating? When you say that, you mean WEC? Well, yeah, WEC but also EC fiber, presumably. I'm just going to guess they're going to be more and more of these kinds of relationships and I'm wondering how we're going to just keep track of who's doing what and what our role is and all that kind of stuff. Alan, that's a great question and I should have answered it. So the current, we don't know the exact answer to the question but we do know that it'd be silly for us to do our engineering and design in the absence of working with the engineering and design for Washington Electric. So the notion is that we will do that tandem if possible to make sure that the design anyway is consistent for the kind of network that needs to be built for both us and for Washington Electric and its partners. So it's, yeah, Alan, you've got hit the nail right on the head. Okay, so you're on top of it. Well, trying to be as best we can. You know it's there. You're on top of it. Any other questions for David? All right. Thanks, David. I expect we're going to come back to some of this stuff in a little bit also. Communications committee, Chuck. Hi. Okay, so a couple of updates from the last communications committee meeting. We approved posting the call to volunteers that Ray drafted. Thank you, Ray, for doing that. It is now up on the website. We have been holding off on posting a community update because we were waiting for a couple of details to get finalized. However, those details, I got the final go ahead from David today. And so the communications committee had already pre-approved an update to go out as soon as that trigger happened. And so now I will be disseminating an update both on the website as well as to the rest of you on the board to modify and share out to your communities as you see fit. As usual, just to ask that if you do decide to modify it extensively, you just share it back with the communications committee so that we can kind of keep tabs on what messaging is going out there and understand in case questions come through on the website and things like that. The final detail just to update the group on is I checked in with our website developer. And she indicated that she is intending to continue to support us through the end of this calendar year based on the retainer we gave her at the end of last calendar year. Now, the amount that we paid her in that retainer won't get us extensive changes. But when it comes to tweaks here and there, she is willing to continue to support that. So just wanted to throw that out there that we do have some support and coverage on an ongoing basis in that capacity. And that is it. Any questions? I have a question and I hope it's I hope it's appropriate. So I'm in Montpelier and I'm told that in the end of April, I myself and 5,000 other households in Montpelier, East Montpelier, Middlesex are going to get a communication from Consolidate saying, do we want to sign up for Fiverr? And I know that being a Comcast customer, my decision is going to be different than when we go out to our CV Fiverr customers and ask if they want to be hooked to Fiverr, but still in part because I'm not sure what other role Montpelier has in CV Fiverr. But I don't know how to make the decision. And if we can work together to develop the communication materials to help people understand what it's like to be hooked to Fiverr and use I'll say Montpelier as a kind of a test around but also kind of a I'll say it's a responsibility because we're a CV Fiverr town. If CV Fiverr can communicate to my Montpelier residents something about this decision, it'll help with credibility. It'll help with us as an organization, but it'll also be this sort of practice and communication on helping people understand what the decision is. So I know that's not a trivial ask, but I think it's really important. And so I throw it out there for consideration. Ken, thank you. And I'd like to point out that Moortown, the northeast portion of Moortown that is right adjacent to Montpelier has already received communications from consolidated to the effects of that. So it is definitely top of mind for me. And I will bring that back to the committee to address on the sooner side so that we can we can figure out how to respond. Thank you. So there was also some some timing issues then on the way I think we need to consider as well as we're doing as we're looking at you know where we're going to be thinking about building their projects and such like that. So Berlin, my address was in that map and I have an unreasonably good authority that they're not going to get to me before fall of next year. So I don't know that Moortown is necessarily top of the top of the priority list for them. I think I think Montpelier definitely is. There's fiber outside my there's fiber outside my house right now. There you go. David, Michael, then back to Chuck. So I put out the inquiry about how many people on the void got postcards. I got very few and that tells me that our um well anyway pretty clear the majority of these consolidated build to date is on any line that has Comcast cable. And if you go out any road in Middlesex or you go to any road in East Montpelier that has cable you will see that Eustace has put up fiber. But anywhere else where there's no cable it seems to be missing. So if you didn't get a postcard I don't think you're on the list. But also it goes to credit Fred's design for the six routes. He chose almost all routes that were non-cabled. So I think we're good for the short term and then we'll have to decide how fast we want to try to beat consolidated at their game or even overtake consolidated. I think with the funding that's coming down the line we may be able to be cost competitive with them. But we'll soon find we'll find that out as we go forward. But I'm pretty excited. All right. Thanks David. Michael, then Chuck. I don't have a comment on the question. Based on what consolidated Boston said in the legislature and a couple of other places it sounds like that whole Montpelier exchange is not going to be covered. I think he said something like 1600 locations and there's five or 6000 locations in that wire center and that map. So he doesn't have to tell us everything they're going to do because that's part of the game. But it may be that they intend to cover everywhere a little at a time or all at once or never. It's not clear. And my question is anyone other than David's comment to where he's seen cable so far? Does anyone have any other intelligence? Do we think it's going to be 1600 locations? Like you said, where do we think it's going to be more? Has anyone seen Fiber? Where there is no Comcast in the Montpelier area? Calisthen Hill Road in East Montpelier. They seem to be making their way up towards Worcester along Route 12 as well. Yep. Isn't that all cable? It's all cable. And they're actually leaving on Quaker Road in East Montpelier center, which is all cable. Yeah. So I have some secondhand Scuttlebutt that they were going to be building where I live and there's not cable here. But it was within the map. But that wasn't going to happen until next year. So whether, you know, how true that was or not, I can't tell. This is Jerry. I'm also in the 223 exchange. And I went and filled out the application online to see what happens. And I got a robo response that basically said, we'll get back to you. I'm definitely not on their shortlist. All right. Chuck, I think we're back to you. Yeah. And I just wanted to clarify that while I have heard from some folks in Moortown that did receive these sort of communications, they do not live along the amended Moortown route we are talking about prioritizing or we are prioritizing build out on. So there it does not overlap. But what, you know, where exactly the boundaries are, I don't know. Moortown is a weird town that's very sort of geographically dispersed and we have a pocket over right next to Montpelier. But that is, you know, that is not the actual route we're plotting. Fair enough, Alan. Two things that I remember from the consolidated testimony before the House Energy and Technology Committee, when was that back in January? The first was that they said they really do have to go where the money is. I mean, that was testimony from the consolidated person. And it makes sense. I mean, they do. I mean, they're a for-profit operation. The other thing they said under repeated questions from at least one of the members of the committee, if they were going to go everywhere in a town, they said no. They were very, very straightforward about that. So I think what's going to happen is I think consolidated probably is very anxious to know what kind of take rights they're going to get in what kind of areas. So this might be some sort of a testing ground for how their build out is going to work. And they might find that they can get a lot more customers than they planned or they might find they can't get nearly as many. But I'm sort of guessing Comcast doesn't really know exactly what it's going to be doing a year from now either. Thanks, Alan. Tom. I don't know if this is looking for a direct response. There's general ponderance, but does it make more sense for us to, at some point, maybe not right away, but at some point broadcast where we plan to go because it informs those customers of what our intentions are compared to not letting CCI know where we might go. Is there an algebra to be done there? I mean, personally, I think we're going to end up doing that rather soon. Once we've, you know, settled on the route and some of the engineering, as soon as we do that, then I think that it'll be our obligation to reach out and advertise that. Is there a stage gate that makes sense on that? That's a good question. David, is that at all in your Gantt chart? Like when we pull the trigger on reaching out to potential customers and you're muted? David, you're muted. The first indication of that has been when we start doing the poll inventory, we're going to have to notify the people on that route that there may be people in a yard. And so it's going to happen really rather sooner than later on that first phase. I mean, it's my opinion we should be letting people know that there are people tromping around in the neighborhood. And so that'll be the first thing. And I gave Chuck a complete list of all our people's home, the name and their addresses from the state's property grant list. So we actually have the names of home owners. We don't have the renters by every address in our district. And so we could reach out by postcard mailing or whatever to get to everybody. And maybe that's a quiet way of doing it without tipping our hat to too many people. Yeah, that seems like the reasonable thing to do. So we both advertise that there's going to be people, like you said, tromping around in their yard and that they should expect that because our interest is focused there that they're likely to be able to sign up rather soon. Yep. So do we want to put postcards or potential customer communications in that pipeline of things to do? I see a thumbs up from Chuck. I will take that as a yes. Any other questions or commentary for communications committee? Michael? You've heard this from me before. I'm very cautious about how soon you advertise what we're going to do. Realize that insolidated does not have to do any poll inventory, does not have to apply for any poll attachment licenses, does not have to do any make ready. They just overlash on their cables they already have. And if they want to respond to something in an area that they were intending to go anyhow, we want to give them the least notice as possible, in my opinion. Are any of those polls that we're looking at consolidated only polls? No, but they're jointly owned. Oh, if they're whack, they're whack-owned polls, then consolidated doesn't own them, but they're on there and they can still overlash on their cables. No, no, no, but I understand, but if it was a consolidated owned poll, we would have to ask them for the poll attachment, whatever, and they would know that that's where we were going. That's true. Can I make a point there, Jeremy? Go for it. Yep, go ahead, Jerry. You know, regardless of them knowing where we're going to go, it doesn't change the fact that there's only 10 homes per mile with a 50% take rate that's five premises per mile. They're not going to race us to provide on my road. They're just not going to do it. It's not worth it to them. They'll let us have it, in this case. Now, there are other areas where it may not be, that may not be the case, but I don't see the big competition from consolidated. They could have done a lot of things here a long time ago. Jeremy? Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with that. I mean, yes, I agree that they're not going to be building out maybe necessarily to your house or my house or people a little bit more. But they can make it really difficult for us by picking up the places that are, you know, six houses per mile and leaving the ones that are 10, you know, if they want to be a pain in the neck. I think that our hand is going to be forced and we're in the, just in the spirit of being good neighbors and communicating to the folks whose yards are going to be trodden upon that we are going to have to do that anyways. I don't know that there's really a way around it. You know, we can hold off until we know, you know, more firm date for when people will be physically present. And but I'm not sure that we can delay any farther than that. And I know, Michael, we don't want to give them too much lead time, but that's at some point we have to, you know, we have to move our chess pieces. Sure. I'd say that it does end up going into a more public forum either intentionally or just by what happens. It goes beyond the postcards to individuals. We might want to come out with something public that doesn't specify where we're going, but that we are intending to go other locations relatively quickly as well, just so that we can manage those expectations. Yeah. So, so maybe part of the bigger communication that goes out, we'll, you know, we'll have a mention that you'll see postcards and that works, you know, expecting to be using some of this federal and state money to move aggressively throughout our member towns. And that, you know, as we're going into these places that the, that we will be communicating with folks directly. I mean, it's going to be more effective for us, I think, to go the postcard route than try to, you know, advertise in a newspaper, even in front porch forum. I think the very personal, like high touch, you know, communication with the prospective customers and the residents of our member communities are, I think that's the way that we should go. Okay. Anything else for communications? Okay. Thanks, Chuck. Moving on to incoming federal and state funding and submitting comments. I want to get what I think is the easier stuff out of the way. First, I sent out a letter that David and Ray had drafted. I edited a bit and I actually got a couple edits, kind of just grammatical and clarity edits from RD. I'd like to move that we, that we approve my sending out of that letter to the Department of the Treasury. Seconded. Okay. Seconded by David Healy. Thanks, David. Any further discussion about that letter or what, or the wisdom of sending out the commentary to Treasury about how the federal funds should be coming to municipalities and states? Ray? I'm not sure you saw my feedback, but one, obviously, I'm in favor of the letter. Second was make a suggestion that we do CCs to our delegation into the appropriate state authorities so that they put them on notice and perhaps they could help us during the rulemaking phase, or at least be sensitive to what it is we're trying to accomplish and perhaps they could do assistance. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Yeah, so I'll definitely send it to Representative Welch, Senator Sanders, Senator Leahy and DPS, so probably send it directly to the commissioner. The important bit there was to have the CC physically on the letter so the Treasury knows that Patrick Leahy is interested. No, it does carry weight, especially since he lives in our district and all, right? He's on our first route. All right. Anything else about the? I have a question on that topic. So hold on. On the letter or on the topic? On the letter. Okay, go ahead. And it's just a question. Is the intent of the letter to suggest that funds go directly to the CUD in lieu of member towns or in addition to member towns? The, because there's some confusion in the way that the federal law, that the law was written, it's not clear that CUDs would even be eligible to receive these funds. So we wanted to make sure that in their rulemaking process that they didn't sort of miss, that Vermont has this special structure and so when they go to do the drafting of those rules that it's, that we are able to be a part of that. Because I think as it stands right now, if nothing, if the rules are sort of just crafted around the old way of doing things, it's going to go to counties and towns and then the, because we don't have general purpose, what do they call it, county government, whatever, it would essentially get sliced by population back down to the towns, which is kind of the rest of the discussion in this item. So if I could follow up. So are you thinking it might be in lieu of county funding? Something like that. I mean where it might go to, so some of the discussion has been, is this going to go to an RPC instead of a county? Because Washington County exists, but not in any sort of sense like counties in other states. So RPCs though would fall under the HUD definition of where these funds could go. The purpose, and this came out of a discussion at Vicuda, that we need to make sure we sort of plant our flag in the soil and say, hey, we exist. And that we should be, CUDs should be considered to be legitimate recipients of these sorts of funds. How it gets divvied up, whatever, it's not, I don't think that's even completely finalized or completely understood yet. Anything else on the letter? Okay, so let's go to all those in favor. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, abstentions, roll call requests. Okay, motion passes unanimously. I will make the edits that RD suggested. I will add the CC, Pat Leahy, et cetera, at the bottom and send that out hopefully tomorrow. So like I was just saying, the incoming federal funding is, a lot of it is earmarked directly for towns. And I want to try to see if I can find the language. David, you sent something around that came through, I think that came through the RPC, didn't it? I just wanted to find the language. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I'm glad I give you presenter rights because you can actually do that. Just wondering if I can find the discussion from, was it from Bonnie? It was from Bonnie. So can you not have that on the screen right now, David? Yeah, I'll get two screens up and screen me up. All right, so I'll just read what Bonnie wrote and what the estimated amounts were. So the American Recovery Act appears to include funding for local governments, the exact amount per town. It's kind of up in the air. Oh, here you go. There's the numbers in front of you. So how the funds might be apportioned. And that says, appears the funds may have a three-year lifespan that is a 2024 expiration. Currently, the bill includes the following eligible uses and this could change. I'm going to copy this into the chat because I'm just going to burn through this. To respond to the public health emergency to COVID-19 or it's included in COVID-19, so hold straight. Jeremy, for me, at least you're breaking up to the point where I can't understand. I don't know if other people are struggling. Yeah, totally broken up. We're losing you. Probably small businesses and non-profits, industries such as on hospitality. So this could be things like rent as rent as tourists to let someone else not good. Okay, I don't think we got any of that, Jeremy. Okay, sorry. We can hear you now. You can hear me now. Okay, so I'm tethered to my phone. So everything, everything is sort of not great all the time. If you can hear me now. So yeah, so that first bullet could involve direct payments to residents. So there is a, is a little bit of competition to, for this funds, you know, do you, does the individual town actually spend money on broadband infrastructure or does it spend it on rent assistance, things like that. So the next one is for the provision of government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue of such state, whatever. So if they've lost funding from the state or to make necessary investments in water, sewer, broadband infrastructure. So I'm thinking like Montpelier would probably, probably be more likely to make investments in the first bullet, right, direct rent assistance or whatever, or updating water and sewer. So but Jeremy, if I may, the issue of rental assistance, the state has a huge amount of money, and it's actually a bit of a challenge for them to spend their money on mental assistance. So I'm not sure that the municipalities will take that on as a responsibility. There's a big chunk of money out of this restate big chunk of money that is intended for rental assistance at the state level. Okay, but this money that's going directly to the municipalities, if a municipality chose to do this, they could. I mean, yeah, it might be difficult, but it's it's here. I mean, I'm just imagining we're probably so the punchline to this that I'm hoping to get to is that we should be writing letters to select boards. And if that's, you know, me writing a letter to all of the select boards, that's totally reasonable and doable. And say, hey, if you want to allocate this money to broadband in your town, this is something that we can help with, you know, you know, help pitch into our larger or larger effort to build 100% coverage, you know, with fiber everywhere, they may choose to take us up on that. I guess I just want to put it on the table that because the another allowable use of this could be something like direct assistance to residents, we have to be aware that they may choose to do this instead. So I mean, I'm not sure how to proceed from here. Do we want to send emails to select board members? Do you want to, you know, each of the individual reps to call select boards and talk to them about this? Should I send one global message? I can't see anybody's camera now, by the way. Oh, okay. This is David. The select board chair of Calis reached out to me the day the bill was passed. And she said, David, do you guys need broadband money? So of course I wrote back to her and I said, of course. But I also know that the East Calis Water District is out of water. So I don't mind, I would love to get whatever money we can get from you. But I think writing a letter from the delegate from that town to their own select board saying would love to have some of this money would come to you and talk to you about what we're doing if you haven't been doing that and what you do with the money. So I think, you know, the message we need to provide to select boards is a little more than just say we'd like some of your money. We should be able to tell them what we're thinking about doing with their money if they gave it to us. And so if it makes the town, you know, more connections and more pass-throughs or more whatever, we should probably think about doing that but doing it soon. So that's my two cents. So if somebody who has cameras on can call on people from here, that would be helpful. I think Ray had his hand up, right? Yeah. So, Jeremy, I saw an offer that you made an email with regard to drafting a letter. And I would like to see that. The fact that you were on the Berlin select board gives you a kind of sensitivity to the how to deal with this kind of deathly. And I think that's an important thing. We don't want to lean on them. I think there's, you know, they all have their needs and we need them to be thoughtful about using their money to make things better in their own town. On the other hand, you're also able to give kind of the global picture of what we're trying to accomplish and how important this is for holding subscription fees down and how important it is to deliver this thing as quickly as possible. If we go individually, for example, to each town, there's going to be an expectation, well, when are you coming here? You know, it's like deliver this, I'm expecting you next month kind of a thing. So I guess I'd like to see your drafting first on that. And my view would be to come from the chair as opposed to individual delegates. Maybe we can sign on or do something else, but I'd like to see yours first. Okay. Yeah, I'm happy to do that. And I've started writing that, but those are good, good high points to hit. And I'm hoping for is one of the other things I'm hoping for is for you to sort, if we're going to go the route of me sending this out directly for you to essentially pre approve me to send that out with, you know, in communication with or in collaboration with the communications committee or the executive committee, what have you, or if you think that we should be sending this out delegate to select board, I'll draft it and then you can just adjust it as you like. Anybody else have thoughts? Yeah, I tend to, well, okay, first, so I just wanted to offer that while you're off camera, Jeremy, people can either chat me or I'll monitor the chat and I can call on people if that would help. Yeah, that would be helpful. Thank you. Okay. And then the other, the other thing that I wanted to say is I tend to agree with Ray that something from the chair, and, you know, again, being upfront about how we're going to spend the money. And one thing that we should look into is, you know, say we get, you know, $100,000 from Cabot, does that money need to go specifically to Cabot? Or is this more of a CUD wide bill? And, you know, if it doesn't, and it might be a harder sell to get money from say Montpelier, you know, if we're not going to be spending the money in Montpelier, I don't know how that works. But we need to be, I think we need to be really upfront about that and anticipate that question. Michael? I agree with that point. And that's what Jerry was saying in the chat. I'm pretty sure that callous money goes to callous and playing field money goes to playing field and so forth. And we do have a time when this is just like the CARES Act, except it's better because it's three years instead of one. But we have to make sure that it gets, that if we're offering something, we can deliver on it within the time where the money gets lost, the town will lose that money. So we may want to carefully look at our long term plans and figure out which towns we actually want to reach out to because we may not be able to deliver to all 20 of them within the three years. That's the other comment I had. Okay. Ken? I see you've mentioned something in chat. Yeah, I want to build on what David said because I think that maybe it's the way I approach decision making when I was an municipal official. I don't want to see the letter that says, generally, please support us. I want to see a very specific project, which means that each of these towns is going to, I think, is going to have to get a very specific proposal. And I realize that's not easy. Maybe in the outset, to say we will be working with, we are working to provide fiber service to your town and we will be developing a very specific proposal. But I don't, yeah, just where I am is I would much rather re-communicate very specifically, and it is related also to when the money is spent and that it's spent within the boundaries of that town. I just have trouble with the general letter to say, please support CV fiber. So one last thing, in terms of Montpelier, I have a hard time imagining what CV fiber is going to do for Montpelier. And so what the letter would look like is hard to imagine at this point. Right. So my idea as I was starting to write this would be an offer, essentially, to contract with each town. So if, let's say, Cabot decides that Cabot wants to invest $50,000 of these funds with us, then we can talk to them about what that looks like. But if we don't get, if the rest of the towns don't want to play, then we would not then try to negotiate it. But Montpelier is going to spend the money on the water and sewer infrastructure, probably, or whatever. That's their thing. But yeah, we're probably not going to be building fiber in Montpelier. It just doesn't really make sense. But if one of these other towns essentially wants to contract with us to do that, I think that's just what we can put on the table. Does that seem more reasonable, Ken? We can make that make there a part two? To be honest, if I were on City Council, or if I were on a select board, I'm not sure, I'm not sure it would. I mean, because he has no sense of scale. I mean, maybe, maybe even maybe to be, maybe it is to open the door and say, okay, let's sit down and work on it. But the bottom line is we're going to have to work on it to understand very specifically what it is we can do and what it costs to be so hard if I was on the Cabot Select Board to say, okay, I'm going to put 150,000 towards fiber because I wouldn't have the faintest idea what $150,000 would do. So I see David and then Jerry said that he wanted to speak in chat. So of course, I've thought about this. There are two things that towns have to purchase, residents and towns that have to purchase. They have to buy the inside the house equipment. So there we go. We could subsidize them. The other one is every town is probably going to need some sort of a hub unit. And so we pitched the two simple concrete things that a town can buy. Sorry, we can hear you, Jeremy. We lost Jeremy again. We lost Jeremy. Yeah. My connection is still garbage. Yeah, sorry, Jeremy. I know the feeling. So David, could you restate that because Jeremy kind of kept breaking in and Yeah, so the two ideas that I've thought about in terms of communicating, you know, with the town of Calis would be, you know, we got 900 residents and if, you know, if the city, the town wanted to help people purchase, you know, defray the cost of people signing up by buying the equipment that goes inside the house, that would be one item on a per unit basis. And the other one would be to each town is probably going to need some kind of hub to connect everybody. That's what I, my understanding is I'm not an expert on this, but that costs a chunk of money. So actually putting a, you know, a specific capital item into the request might work. I don't know the dollar amounts for those items or it doesn't include installation or what, you know, how we want to frame it. But that would actually put some concrete thought behind the request. So David, Jeremy asked in chat if you could take over chairing them. And I think Jerry has been waiting to speak as well. Okay, Jerry. Yeah, thank you. So I'd like to do a hybrid between Ken and David because I think we're heading in the right direction here. We need to be really focused. There's no point in going to the Berlin Select Board because we're not talking about laying fiber in Berlin until, you know, after I retire. So what we need to do is figure out exactly where we're going first and talk to those towns and then have a very specific proposal that, you know, we can totally, you know, use this money to subsidize the drops or whatever the specific thing is. But I think it needs to be extremely targeted one or two towns that we know we can, we can promise because we have to deliver on this. And I know it's a lot of money. It's $10 million. It sounds like a lot, you know, the 10 million is not for us. If we can get a tenth of this, if we can get a 20th of this, that would be fantastic. This isn't, this isn't the big money that we're chasing and it needs to be very targeted. That's it. Anyone else want to speak? Michael, is this hand up? Are you going to take over calling on people? Yeah, Michael. Sorry, I turned myself off. Michael. Okay. Okay. So we haven't quite got to the point where we've decided how we're dividing up the duties and the ownership of things between the CUD and the provider or providers that we work with. And it's quite typical but necessary that the providers are the ones that deal with the equipment, deal with the hub and deal with the equipment in the homes. So I just wanted to toss that out. We need to get working on those models and determining how we're going to partner before we make the pitch to the towns. So Tom had a comment in chat. Do you want to read that, Tom? Tom? Yep. Common. Okay. So I strongly back David's idea. I think defraying the costs for our residents would be fantastic. And to Michael's earlier point, there's that three-year limit, which could potentially be an issue. But what if we were to make an agreement with the towns that if we can use the money now in other locations so that it can get you within that three-year limit, then we would defray the costs on those towns, residents getting signed up when the time comes that they can sign up. Anybody else? I just want to say that Tom's idea is excellent. Okay. So, Jerry, have you gotten any of that, Jeremy? Yep. Yeah, I'm still hearing it. It's just not able to speak reliably. So my question is, do I need to draft this letter then? Or are we going to put this, or are we going to put this behind several other decisions that we still have to make? I mean, I'm just being Frank here. Jeremy, I guess the question is, is Tom's idea allowable under the rules? I mean, I think it's a great idea if we can do it. But I don't know if that's allowable under the rules of the funding. That's true. I think we can frame it though that would work. Who knows? We haven't seen the rules yet. Michael. So, I have an answer for Jeremy. I think a non Ken Jones letter is still okay. A general letter alerting the towns that they're, as they know, they're getting a bunch of money and they can spend it on sewers. They can spend it on a lot of different things. Please keep in mind that CV fiber would like to work something out with them to help the residents get more broadband. And we will work with them to come up with a practical plan. And I know that it would be better to show up at a specific one, but we're not ready. So, it doesn't hurt to say, hey, keep that in the back of your mind. Don't spend it all because we think we'll be able to come up with something for your citizens. And we'll get back to you within three weeks or whatever. Anybody else? Jeremy. Oh, I was just raising my thumb. That sounds like a great idea, Michael. But yeah, let's just move on getting on. I still think we should probably tell them more about what the potential uses of the money could be. So, David, could we get rid of the presentation mode because one is probably killing Jeremy's bandwidth and also makes it harder to see people. Who wants to see anybody, right? How are we going to raise our hands? Okay. I can, I may be able to pick back up here now. If I start dropping out then, David, just pick up where I disappear. All right. So, we talked about the federal money. We talked about some of the state funding that's coming down the pike. And I think David kind of summarized that in the PDC report back. Anything else that we should be talking about in terms of state or federal funds coming down the pike? Do we want to have a discussion of like the reconnect or any of the other stuff that's that we may be looking at in the near term? 400,000 that is supposed to be coming March. March was the last I heard it was coming in March. There's supposed to be an application that we need to fill out so that we can get $400,000. We really, really, really need that $400,000 now. And it still looks like it's April now. Is that what Rob said? Yep. I am sort of very frustrated with the Department of Public Service. Okay. All right. Well, let's, I don't know, just keep asking, I guess, right? And they'll move when they can move. Yep. Let's see. Moving on. The GMP and Vermont Electric Company or Vermont Electric Co-op make ready subsidies. I think David, you already talked about that as well. Let's do the RPC contract and then we can get to the poll inventory. So the RPC sent us a draft contract that we went through, the committee went through and made changes. And then Bonnie has sent us back to us with all the stuff that we put into it. There's one missing piece that Jeremy needs to probably attach to it, which is whatever the COVID grant money conditions we got last year should probably be part of the contract because some of that money is probably paying for the RPC. So that was the reason she asked for that. But other than that, I'd like to make a motion that the, that we sign the contract and move on. And we are, I think there's a separate topic about the process for working with the RPC that's been drafted that I will not lead, but we think we're pretty close to, you know, the administrator stuff being handled like we voted. Jeremy, Matt, doing all the administrator stuff and the planning and development committee doing the planning process stuff with the commission. Can I pause you for a second, David, so you can get a second and we can continue? Second. Okay, yeah, Siobhan, our reliable second from Orange. Do you need to define that a little better, the actual motion? The motion is to sign the contract with the RPC. So my question for you, David, is which funding bucket, which grant are you talking about? Because I have the one we got today and I got the one from last year that funded, for example, our PM last year. Yeah, that would be, isn't that the same one? It's the same extension. It's not. It's not. It would have been the one with the PM, whatever the conditions were on that. The one that we signed today was for the two smallish projects and the outreach stuff that we were doing, because what I signed today was an amendment to the second grant that we got. The first grant that we got ended up being $160,000. Whatever's in the second grant, Jeremy. Okay, so this is outreach then? Yeah. Okay, all right. So we will put that in there and go from there. Any other discussion? Yeah, just a question, Jeremy. The $70,000 was the last thing we got from the public service department. That was the last tranche, if you will. Did that money have the same restrictions on it or any restrictions on it? Okay, all of the money that we get from the public service department has restrictions on it and are supposed to be used for very specific things that are laid out in the grant agreements. So we do not have carte blanche ability to just spend this on whatever we choose. We have to be able to track it back and explain what we drew from which bucket and be able to essentially report back on that. I don't remember the reporting requirements, but it... Let me ask a pinpoint that question then. So the contract that we're looking to approve, would that fall into the requirement of that last $70,000 that we got from the public service department? I expected it would. Okay, then we're free and clear. All right, anything else on our contract with the RPC? Okay, so hearing no more commentary, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed abstentions or roll call requests? Motion passes unanimously. Thanks everybody. So let's go on then to the poll inventory work where we will be discussing contracting or potentially contracting with one or more entities for doing that poll inventory. Let me get to my executive session language. So I move that we... Okay, so before I make this motion, actually, you know, I'm going to make the motion then I want to have this discussion. And Alan, if I can give you a moment to say what you said in the email about going into executive sessions, I think that would be helpful. Or Tom, you have something before we start? Just noting Ray is still out because he's at his select board meeting. If we go into executive session, would he be able to get in? He won't be back in time before we're done. He handed us his motion and such via email. But thanks for calling that out. Okay, so I'm going to move that we find that premature general public knowledge of our contract negotiations would clearly place CV fiber at a substantial disadvantage. Second. Okay, seconded by Siobhan. Any discussion? Jeremy? No, not on this. Sorry, but after yes. Okay, so I think this is a reasonable time for us to talk about why we go into executive session and the importance of using this very sparingly. So in this case, because it's a contract negotiation, we wouldn't necessarily want the contractors to be able to use this to get unfair advantage against the other contractors. When we've discussed proprietary things in the past that we've declared to be trade secrets, these are things that we do because it would be putting us, CV fiber, the municipality at a disadvantage on a competitive level. Because in some ways we are a competitive entity as well as being a public entity. So there's been some commentary in the news lately about CUDs and CUDs not being maybe as careful or as clear about why executive session is important. Alan, did you want to add anything? Yeah, one thing that happens all the time, and I think it's actually happening now, is we all tend to conflate records issues and meeting issues into the same bucket. And for us right now, we don't really have to get into a discussion that the disadvantage we're being, we could be subjected to is because of certain plans we developed for the bill out of our routes. That's an exemption nine public records kind of question. All we have to do now, if we want to go into executive session, is to be able to say that we have found that premature general public knowledge about our discussion of warning contracts for the bill out of our system or pieces of the bill out of our system or whatever we want to say, would clearly place CV fiber at a substantial disadvantage. So we just have to say that we've had a finding by that, which we're kind of doing now, and we have to mention that it does deal with contracts because you have to be able to reference one of the specific exempt categories, potentially exempt categories, that's laid out in the public records law. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And you're right, I should have mentioned that that this would be contracts under one VSA section 313A1A. Right, that would be good. If I can, what I heard Jeremy phrase and it made sense is there is a difference between us having a discussion about potentially letting out a contract where the different contractors, if they were to hear the discussion, would put them at a different disadvantage. That is different than us talking about our roots or something that puts the future of CV fibers business at disadvantage. To me, they're different. And in this case, I thought we were doing it because we're going to be discussing contractual issues that competitors, not to CV fiber, but competitors to the proposals would gain from. And so is there a difference? Well, I mean, I think that by letting the contractors in, so imagine all the contractors got to join us for this private discussion about the contracts, they may not, they may be able to use that to take advantage of us as a public entity. So I think it's probably... Yeah, Ken's question is an interesting one, but I think that's why all you really have to do is to find that discussion that we might have about awarding contracts in a certain area of our buildout plans puts us at a substantial disadvantage. So you don't really have to go into the detail of what exactly it is you're going to be looking at the very specific bits of information that might give us harm. It's the fact that we want to enter into contracts and discuss with whom we want to make the contracts that triggers our ability to have an executive session. Jeremy? I mean, frankly, when you think about it, I'm sitting here saying, I don't know what we're going to be talking about. So how can I reasonably make a determination that we shouldn't be talking about this in a public session? And I think that's actually the reason why it simply says if you're going to be discussing contracts, you can go into executive session as long as you can say credibly that it could place you at a substantially disadvantage if the public knew about it ahead of when you would like them to know about it. You have reasons why the contract information or discussion about the contract should not be made public at this point. And I think we do. That's sort of in the nature of contracts, frankly. Jeremy was imminent in the Jeremy that David. Sorry, David. So real quick, Alan, just to make clear, though, it sounded like you were saying that it could be more general, but I thought that we need specifically the purpose for which we're going into executive and then while I'm executive, discuss nothing but that topic, right? Right. So we're going into executive session to discuss contracts, potential contracts, and that's all we're going to talk about. We can't talk about anything else. David, then Tom. Okay, so let me let's put this into context. So the background in this is we the polls review, polls, inventory proposed review committee of David, Jeremy, Tom and Ray reviewed 16 proposals that were submitted. That list was whittled down to nine, then five, now three, the subcommittee reviewed their cost methodology schedules, as well as the responses to questions that it submitted to five contractors. The subcommittee recommended to the planning and development committee that CV5 are entering to an IDIQ master service agreement with the three firms by the name of Apex, Eustace, and Tilson. So what I don't understand, Alan, is anything in that we're in executive sessions. We can see anything we want, but the question we're not in it. We're not in the discussion yet, David. Oh, God. See, there we go. I have a question and answer. This is ridiculous. David, I think it's why all it says is if you're going to talk about contracts, you can go into executive session. Let's do it. Okay. I'm sorry. I apologize. All those in favor of just doing it, please signify by saying aye. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So just to Ken's point, the type of contract we want to go into, we have not yet received final value marks that are offers. We have rough estimates and in the future we will be getting bids from the three award winners. And so there is the potential for them to change what they're going to offer based on anything we might say publicly. Correct. Okay. So we are not going to executive session yet. I want to make that abundantly clear. We are right now only finding that if we were to do that, if we were to do that, that we would be at a, you know, that we're doing this so that we're not at a disadvantage. Okay. All those in favor of making that finding, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed abstentions or roll call requests. Wonderful. So we have found this. Part two. Part two is I move that we go into executive session to discuss the contracts related to the poll inventory contractors. Seconded by Siobhan. Is there any further discussion? Jeremy? So question about this. Does Zach stay in or how does that work? Okay. There are, there's no minutes to be taken inside an executive session and we will not likely have much to record after that. If you wanted to record round table stuff after that, but I think we can safely let Zach off the hook for the evening, which is again why we try to put this towards the end. Okay. I'll send you the time that we exit executive session and then the time we close the meeting. And if there's anything else, we'll take notes on that. So I guess, thank you very much and good rest of your evening. Thank you all. Allen? So you can actually take minutes in an executive session, but what that means is anybody can ask for them and you have to turn them over. So it sort of goes against the idea of an executive session. If you say let's take minutes, that's why most times you don't take minutes in executive sessions. Right. And I will stop the recording at this point and we will kick Orca off and such. See you Zach. How about now? We got you now. Okay. So, okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Well, we're not in executive session yet. Oh, because we haven't voted yet. I'm sorry. Okay. Yep. No. Everybody's chomping at the bit to talk about contracts. I know. I know. Okay. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed abstentions or roll call requests. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. So Orca, I'm going to disconnect you and we will lock the meeting, stop recording, etc. So going to dismiss Orca.