 kind of the lay of the landscape of what's happening throughout really kind of throughout Vermont as well as kind of what the trends are in the country with things. So a lot of it's just been research but they're again look forward to helping you in any way I can in taking the guidance of the Executive Committee as well as the Business Development Committee to keep me busy and and keep me on my toes and try to stay ahead of what we've got going and communicating that throughout the duration. Thanks Tim. Any any questions for Tim? Didn't think so. Thank you very much. We appreciate you being here to help us along Tim. All right moving along to Treasurer's Report and Bills to Pay. Lee were you able to get in and you're able to see the balances and whatnot? Yeah I was. So we've got not quite $9,300 in the bank right now and it looks like checks cleared for for three of the bills that I think y'all authorized payment on the first time I attended a meeting. I just got access today so I'm I'm not as prepared as perhaps you'd like me to be but I think Jeremy and I are going to probably sit soon and and turn over more of the sort of bill-paying capacity. Is that right Jeremy? That's right. Yeah okay good. So that's it I'm happy to entertain any questions I probably don't know the answer but I can get them for you. Good. Okay so so I'm going to yeah we'll meet and I'll give you I'll give you the checks. I'll make sure that you get the invoices and some envelopes and postage and the usual usual stuff to get it out the door. I expect you all saw my invoice for the two the two and the two things that I paid for that were already authorized and nobody has any objections to me writing myself a check for those. Does that all look that'll look good? I learned today from Rob Fish that the $100,000 grant that we received as part of the COVID funds was the way I read it in the in the grant contract was that upon execution of the grant we would it would then be dispersed to us and of course I didn't look closely enough and it says upon upon signing the contract and submission of an invoice so Rob Fish said oh yeah you have to submit an invoice for you don't have to do anything you just have to submit the invoice so that we can get the money out the door so I'm sitting here waiting like checking my mailbox waiting to you know to like sprint it over to the to the bank and I apologize that was totally my oversight I submitted that today and hopefully we will see that we'll see that check appearing soon. Jeremy I have a question. Yes, go ahead Frank. Is that like the CARES Act where all of this has to be done by December 31st? Yes. Okay. Okay, thanks. Yeah, and that's why so Tim's contract for example goes through December. The fixed wireless study that we already contracted Fred to do that's part of it there there's some miscellaneous miscellaneous funds that we'll need to account for and we provide a provide a monthly report back to public service department to let them know what we're spending it on and where we are and then whatever is not spent like December I think we get the last $10,000 on December 15th with us you know essentially showing that we've spent all of the rest of it. So yeah, that's that's all got to get out the door by the end of the year. So we could buy a spool of fiber and store it at Greg's house. Sadly, sadly, no, I mean, we could but we would have to find some other money for that because that was not among the the line items that that was put in that I was put in that request. It's a nice idea though. Maybe we'll keep it at your house. I volunteer at my house if it'll help. Okay, but we'll just make sure to put the first server racks and networking equipment at your place, Jeremy. Hey, as long as it gets me service, I'm happy. Sure. One of the other things that I think that Lee and I will do probably Lee and I and Phil and you Jeremy is as the Executive Committee. We will sit down and we need to put together we need to get put together a budget for next year because we will need to get that approved at our next meeting or I'll try to we'll try to get it out as soon as possible. I think we need to have it approved at the next meeting so that it can go out to the various towns and get any their feedback and then we'll have a second reading after we get town feedback. And just as a refresher for new folks, our fiscal year is January 1st to December 31st. So we're passing a budget for starting in January. So we anticipated that we were going to be spending a lot more money this year on last year's budget. So we're going to need to go back to last year sort of wedge it into the proper format now that we're probably going to be having a much more robust line item format and we're borrowing EC Fiber's budget line items to start with but we will likely have to have some additional ones probably to account for wireless infrastructure in addition to wire to wired infrastructure otherwise it should be rather similar. So if there are wants desires needs things that you think definitely 100% have to be in next year's budget not that we have the funding for it mind you but if you think that there are such things then please let one of us know and we will make sure that we at least write the numbers down again and until we get you know a loan or a bigger grant or something else there's not really not really funding for it but we're kind of flying by the seat of our pants there. All right any other questions financial stuff? Michael? First of all I I knew that you needed to submit an invoice and I'm really sorry I didn't tell you and I have a question and that is does that mean since we haven't received any of that hundred thousand that bread is still waiting to be paid? So he's he's been paid $10,000 and I went and I followed up so I sent an email what I was on the 24th of August I think it was we haven't been paid for the broadband innovation grant business plan yet we're still waiting on that $30,000 so I went and I worded the email more strongly that like we have so this is their failure you know to give us our accounts receivable is preventing us from you know delivering on our accounts payable and I said we are we're in a bad situation right now and we need to kind of get this going so this that was sent to Todd Ziegler and Clay Purvis so I will be personally calling Clay tomorrow because we need need need need to get that rolling. So have they approved the business plan and we haven't heard that yet either? I I mean I think they approved the business plan but I do not have any formal communications saying yes your business plan is approved so that's what I'm trying to pin Clay down about. So the moment we hear that it's approved we should write an invoice just like for this other no no no no the invoice is already necessary it's all been submitted already they have my invoice but they have the invoice that I wrote back in August back when it was a like a week after a week after we get the deliverables from Fred they submitted them so there's an invoice in there Fred's invoice is in there the business plan is in there and then they got hit by all of these other requirements and we just fell off their radar or something that's my best guess okay so thanks so you know if we need to you know get you know protest signs and go march down around Clay's house or something like that I know where he lives so we can maybe we'll have to do that but hopefully not so thank you for that Michael any any other questions financial items okay moving along yeah this is looking like a rather short meeting see grant and funding update David have any anything to update anything you want to talk about with regard to muted you're muted I don't have a lot to report right now I mean I know the Senate is it considering you know a two million dollar appropriation for cuts to use for matching for Vita money and the house recommended one and a half million instead of the two million that the governor asked for and I know they're probably going to be voting this week or the end early next week on that and I have not heard back from my communication with the Vermont Community Fund but I think there's something going on with them and Public Service Department so maybe that's why I haven't heard back and that's all I know on the grant side of things okay thanks for that so I had a conversation with the Vermont Community Fund to probably not as recently as you did David but they said that they have some money set aside and that if there are specific things for planning or whatever that we would like to request from them we can put that together but we're talking not not the big capital expenses that we're looking at so if we we could probably request another 10,000 like they just gave us kind of out of the blue if we had something that we needed to spend that on it sounds like we could probably get that if we ask for it but we would need to have a specific a specific ask for that still waiting on the wireless the wireless project thing I don't know they're yeah they're gonna have to move pretty quickly I don't know what's keeping it at that point and then for the yeah that two million dollars the so for those of you that watch the House Energy and Tech Committee so chair Brighlin's proposal was to take the two million dollars that the governor appropriated for CUDs and essentially stick it in an account somewhere there would be very few CUDs ready to use that for the matching funds for quite some time so Tim Brighlin suggested that we put less of that money into the fund because it's really just going to be CV fiber that's going to be tapping that maybe the kingdom and revisiting the funding for the other CUDs that the CD matching funds for next year the other the other twist with this is that the Vita money there's only eight million dollars in that Vita money that pot so if we went so an already there's a couple hundred thousand that have already been spoken for so if we go for four million dollars and the kingdom goes for roughly four million dollars it's done the program is tapped out and they may not offer more so we kind of mentioned to the legislature that it might be good to bulk that up a bit Michael I thought it was 11.8 million dollars not eight I would have to go back and look I thought that the cap on that was eight I think the cap was no more than four for any one application but I believe the number was 11.8 I can go back and look to okay yeah if you if you find out differently that was then eight was the number that was tossed around but but in any event if it's eight or ten you've got so rather than a maximum of two CUDs maxing out the four million ish we're talking about three CUDs we've got what nine now and all of them are saying yeah we're building next year which which is it's it's a nice idea but I'm not sure aside from the kingdom and from us and easy fiber obviously that I don't think that any of them are probably really ready to pull the trigger on any construction and engineering just yet and so we'll talk about the poll audit and the pitch for that in a second but that's the yeah and then the pitch by Tim Briglin was to reduce to reduce the amount of the money that the governor appropriated to 1.5 million so that would still probably work as a 10% match for three CUDs and then another 1.5 million for doing a poll audit or as they call it as FX Flynn from easy fiber called it a poll harvest because it's harvest season and you know autumn metaphors are very Vermont Jeremy yeah I was just wondering if that Vermont Community Foundation 10k could be used towards a poll audit yeah I think we could probably make that justification I think it's going to be far more than ten thousand dollars but could we use that to get us partway there or you know take a get us a step count that as some matching funds if that's part of the planning bit or pre-engineering engineering poll auditing in the project I think I think so that's that's probably a sensible ask and maybe they'll they'd be willing to give us a bit more if we're showing them that you know we're going to be shovel ready before long I mean if you said we had matching funds tomorrow we'd be hopefully applying for the Vita funds by the end of the week and moving quickly on that Greg yeah so spending money on a poll audit will really help firm up a budget for construction so that that would be the case for that with the Community Foundation would allow us to really firm up our construction budget so while we're talking about that so let's move on to the next let's move on to the poll audit discussion the next agenda item and so this was pitched by easy fiber and easy fiber asked essentially asked the legislature would you would you appropriate three million dollars of the COVID recovery money to essentially do have a statewide effort to go and do some of the poll that these poll audits for these like imminently buildable see CUD fiber projects and as I understand it it's it's got some legs and so very well might be that might be funded and so so as we're talking about this and is with matching funds I'm wondering because and I don't I would have to look back at our at our budget proposal how much of our budget proposal for the four million ish project was was poll audit and as poll audit poll audits don't come to 10% of our overall price of our project do they know okay so it's 60 for the phase one project is what 60,000 looks 60,000 okay so but if that could be counted as that 60,000 is spoken for because the state's paying for it over here out of this bucket and if then we get you know pre-engineering support from the Vermont Community Fund then we're at 70,000 and so then even if we don't necessarily get the the state support for the matching funds then that's a bit easier of a number to reach so just a just a thought so yeah I mean there's there seems to be some there seems to be some movement for the state using the COVID money to pay for the poll audit which would happen before we would probably be doing the whole pre-engineering engineering and such so update the financial spreadsheet to account for grant funding there is actually a line item in the spreadsheet where if we have costs that are borne by somebody else we can we can just add that so rather than changing the cost or zeroing out of the cost we can just count that as a grant amount there's it's right on the first tab us as I recall and right now I think there's a hundred thousand dollars in there from the that we were anticipating but we hadn't gotten at that point so if we get sixty thousand dollars in poll audit we can just up that to 160 or if there's you know three hundred thousand dollars in support five hundred thousand dollars in support for the matching funds then we can put those in there excuse me we put those in there as well and that way we don't have to rejigger all the different parts of the the spreadsheet and that should make that cost flow I'm sorry that cash flow positive number look really quite good and probably will will allow us to deal with slightly lower slightly lower take rates if need be or for that matter slightly lower per subscriber cost per subscriber fees but that's that's a decision we'll have to make once we kind of know the final ins and outs any anything else about poll audits there's discussion of this on Thursday and Senate finance I didn't hear anybody's running screaming saying this is a terrible idea everybody kind of acknowledged that this was something that would definitely help us move forward short-term hey can folks hear me I can hear you Nick I just want to introduce myself brief briefly and explain why I'm sitting in on the meeting along with a couple of the Vermonters I've recently put together venture called last mile community connections and we're interested in exactly this this piece of at the poll audit of the poll survey I've been working with a couple of different data options and apps and we I think we have a method we put together that sort of models itself after say the VPURG canvas in the summer where we would be working with underemployed or unemployed Vermont folks in renewable industry linemen people like that have experienced canvassing experience with the utility grid and so we are actively putting proposals together but very interested in picking up a piece of this data collection work and it is my understanding that there's not another in-state vendor that has boots on the ground I am I'm familiar with FX's proposal on some out-of-state folks but I just want to introduce myself as a point of contact as you're figuring out that next step I certainly would appreciate the opportunity to discuss it further and putting our best offer for this work which is really interesting to me and I come from a renewable background a utility background and a campaign canvas background so this sort of struck me as a nexus to my skill sets and a gap that needs filling quickly so I'm excited to delve into this and think we have a method that's going to work real well. Cool thank you very much Nick so you know if we weren't relying on the state to essentially do this for us the plan is and I imagine the state's going to do this too is that we would put this out to bid you know it's a big enough project $60,000 ish that we would put this out to bid and there and there would be other folks including Nick's group that would be looking to to come in and bid on this as well so when we get to that point if we're a decision-maker if we're you know able to select a vendor then we'll be putting it out to bid and we'll have a open selection process like any other municipality would. Any other any other thoughts about poll auditing? Okay to be at early night folks I like the sound of that. Alright so meeting with Peter Welch next Wednesday so there is some interest at the federal level apparently and I'm gonna go to see if I can pull up the invitation he is going to provide an overview of federal broadband initiatives and asking for each of the communications union districts to provide a statement or reflections and then there's going to be some Q&A at the end the and so Tim is signed up for that I'm signed up for that David I don't know if you signed up for it as well I will be signing up okay so can you circulate the link for the sign up? Yes I can and they are they're totally okay with members of the public joining this as well I think he will be posting a link he'll be posting a link to the meeting on his website but I can yeah I can post that so let's see I think I think this is it hold on they've asked only one speaker from each communications union district to speak I'm happy to hand the reins off to Tim or David if either of you want to do that if there's any specific message that we'd like to that we'd like to give I've been to these before I'm happy to talk and you know explain where we are what we're doing but I think David is capable of that as well any any other any thoughts about how we should proceed whoever you are a caller for I can hear some some noise distorted if if anybody has the people who can attend this thing and have your own ideas of bullet points you want to bring up if you want to send them to me and Tim and Jeremy for that matter please do so I just wanted to so if I remember correctly like the very first meeting that I joined us on I had talked about what it would take to make the internet a public good and a utility rather than what it is right now and I as I recall my memory is a little hazy on this as I recall somebody said it had been declared not a utility by the FCC explicitly declared not a utility if anything has shown us that it really is a utility it's been this last six months and so that's a point that I think I don't know where this needs to be made but possibly to our state representative this is an appropriate point to be making because if it has to be decided at the federal level then we need federal pushes on this I think but yeah it that that I think all of this other stuff is really great but if we don't make this a public utility that gets regulated as a utility it we're just going to keep running into this stuff and spinning our tires on a lot of things and so back up what Siobhan said I can live without a damn telephone I can't live without the internet I'm doing my job from home and so it would be it'd be worthwhile watching the Senate Finance meeting this Thursday because you're going to have representatives from the various heavy hitters talking to our state folks and probably making some similar arguments as you might hear them make at the federal level as well I seem to remember Siobhan that actually representative Welch has made public statements I mean he could probably dig through press releases or something on his website I'm pretty sure he has used those words where what you just said I think he would get behind that there's a difference between Lone Vermont congressman you know and then the rest of the 400 and change colleagues down there if we could get everybody behind that that would be that'd be incredible and whoever talks if it's me or David or Tim or whoever it is I think we can definitely bring that up I have a kind of a administrative point if you're intending to go to this meeting I need you to send me an email you need to send me an email because if there's ten of you going ten of us going I need to warn it as a meeting so we're all going to be there what we're not gonna have an agenda item you'll probably hear us talk but but for because I see raise your hand there Henry and David I know you're gonna be there Tim I'm sorry you don't count in the math but if you're intending on going just please shoot me a message and saying I'm planning on going to the Welch meeting and I will warn it I will warn it and make sure that we were following the open meetings law so so what time was that meeting again I'm sorry I missed that standby I don't know that I said it's when finance meeting or or not which which the public knows Peter Wilson sitting this is my 16th yeah Wednesday September 16th at 11 a.m. 11 a.m. to 1145 yeah now I don't know about that so yeah okay yeah because we are passive receivers of the Senate Finance meeting on Thursday afternoon that's that's what I definitely don't have to warn it if we're all in the same YouTube channel at anyone that would be terrifying so if you're planning on Wednesday September 16th between 11 and 1145 then yeah please please shoot me a message and then I will tally up the responses and make sure that we warn this and we're all following the rules okay I think that's it approval of August 18th and 25th minutes I'm gonna move that we approve the August 18th 2020 and the August 25th 2020 meeting minutes as presented second seconded by David any further discussion all in favor hi any opposed or that want to roll call okay motion passes unanimously thank you very much before we do roundtable do we need to have a meeting in two weeks on September 22nd we want to do like an early one do like a budget meeting I don't know that I've anything else aside from if we get the wireless funds do we want to plan on September 22nd okay so thumbs up if you think we ought to schedule this I mean I can just schedule it too so thumbs up if you think we ought to schedule it thumbs down if you think you don't want to schedule it we should have it on the calendar because the it's so short the timing is so quick okay okay so I see enough thumbs up that would be alright so let's let's plan on doing that so to meet two weeks from now and that will likely be a short one too hopefully we'll have just whip together a draft budget probably mostly based on this year's budget and we'll get going with that okay so roundtable we'll start I'm gonna go through my people list Alan Gilbert I'm good thanks all right Andy Gilbert I'm good as well thank you Chuck I would just like to say a heartfelt welcome to Tim we are really looking forward to seeing how much faster we can move with your support so thank you for joining us on this ride thank you look forward to it all right David I just want to say I'm catching up with some things I should have been doing a month ago I'm updating the data for Washington and Duxbury so that we have a complete set of data for all the towns so that should be done by next week and I and I guess I'm passing it on to Fred did we hire Fred to do an update we've we've not we've not approved that that actual update yet I mean I think we approved the money but we didn't actually task him with that yet and I'm kind of reluctant to task him with anything before we actually have money in the bank yeah I agree I mean if he just wants to do it out of the goodness of his own heart for right now or if he really trusting that we're gonna get the checks then yeah maybe we can move on with that but all right Frank all good all right thanks Frank Greg I want to say welcome board Tim and let's all hope we get that wireless award okay Henry great okay I wanted to just ask a couple questions a little technical okay so it was great testimony last week I was really impressed with all the speakers including our own Jeremy I was wondering if this Vita money for the seed money for the big Vita grants if there were any other Vita requirements like I know they had three years of books but you have three years of books but were there any others okay we did we do not have three years of books oh well so audited financials so so we've we only started getting a little bit of money in at the at the very end of 2018 and we didn't really spend any money until the beginning of this year so we will hopefully be oh actually that and that brings up a good question Greg any word on batch elder no I need to follow up I hadn't in the past but she's been not responding so I give her one more shot so I will do that tomorrow thank you very much so the I'm gonna just gonna paste the link to the broadband loan broadband expansion loan program documents at Vita and if you click on the application for download at that link so that's the green button right towards the top that's something that that David and I have asked him to take a look at and essentially start making sure that we have those all the moving parts starting to get those lined up the spreadsheet that we got from Fred is going to get us partway there but it needs to be massaged and we need to make some decisions that we haven't made yet so I know I made those made that sort of annoying false start where I asked you to commit to something and nobody was ready to commit to it quite yet but we're gonna have to do that as soon as we know that we're gonna go forward with this so so you had other questions Henry yeah and another well that kind of leads into one of my other questions which was priorities for Tim have you defined a list of priorities for Tim to work on after he's acquainted done his research or whatever yeah so for right now I mean there's I think it's a bit of a learning holding pattern because we don't have funding for it for any of this stuff so as much as we can get our paperwork together and be ready to to execute the Vita loan and be ready to execute like contracts and builds and understanding how the the wireless project is going to work practically speaking these are the sorts of things that that I've I mean that I personally have come up with if there are other things that you think Tim needs to know or that think you think Tim ought to be doing if you would send those to David and or I and so we can then collect all those and make sure that we we prioritize those Tim but I would respectfully ask that you don't just aim your email directly at Tim and say hey Tim go do this yeah that's just gonna be yeah well 20 requests yeah so to follow on one other thing I wanted to mention was that it's important to start defining the broadband needs for CV fiber for the Ardolf auction and and getting ready for that because that's coming right up in October so I assume the business development committee will deal with that but I just wanted to mention it here and it may be something you want Tim to become familiar with as well so that wasn't one other thing I wanted to mention the last thing is that I just completed Duxbury broadband needs assessment and I'm gonna share that with you it has some kind of a little bit more detail related to broadband needs in terms of use cases I guess is best way to say it so and I assume that that kind of thing is what we want to be incorporating for the Ardolf needs as well so kind of those two fit in with each other what how are we gonna put that case together for the future I think that's yeah yeah yes so if you could share those with me and David and Tim Henry I think that would be enlightening for me and I think that everybody else that's involved with actually putting together you know whatever documentation we have for for Ardolf when that comes down the pike you know will obviously be able to use that then and also for that matter using that in conjunction with the the business plan and accounting accounting for the road miles and the take rates and whatnot for Duxbury as well as Washington so I think David then the work that you're doing with that will also probably be pretty crucial to putting that together good stuff oh there was one last thing which is more kind of off the wall I'm sure you guys already thought of this but when we did the the Wi-Fi proposal did we consider television or radio antennas in as potential locations for Wi-Fi or for the fixed wireless project fix wirelessly yeah they did all the existing towers were considered thank you yeah let's see Jeremy okay so he's going to pause for a minute oh I was just finishing up trying to type up the notes real quick yeah so just a little bit on the line extensions I haven't we responded to the second round I haven't heard anything more from from the heart about anything right so hopefully we hear soon it's yeah getting down to the wire and there was there's a lot of back and forth on that because they gave us minimal information and then we responded and then they gave us more information and we had to decide what anyway the other thing is welcome Tim glad you're here and look forward to getting this going and also I would be curious if there is any update on Ardolf maybe for the next meeting I don't know if we need to do that now but I just be curious of where WEC is in that and maybe if we have a sense of how they are how they're considering it so yeah so so the the tricky bit about Ardolf is that we can't really talk about it in open session about bidding strategies and that sort of thing so we have to be super careful you know I think we could have an update with WEC I mean does that make sense WEC liaisons and folks who have talked with them does it make sense to like have them in at our next meeting would that be valuable maybe I should ask do you think they would it can't get anywhere close to Ardolf and so I would say it's premature there are going to be some things that would be good to present to the board but I don't think in the next two weeks we'll be there okay um I think we could start probably with the development committee first and even I think it depends on what meetings we have um I think there's going to be a meeting later this week with the consortium forget I have to look at my calendar again and that may lead to a place where we're going to report to the board but but we're not but we can't report in open session about Ardolf anyhow so the only thing we can talk about is general kinds of trends towards an agreement with WEC and at this point we don't have one okay thank you they just they just had a survey that I got that that that is pursuant to their feasibility study being run by an RTC who is the consultant doing that and I haven't actually looked at their survey but I don't unless there's some questions in there referencing the CUD I don't think it's relevant to us at this point no it was basically the it was just to gauge interest as far as I could tell questions like if fiber came by your house how likely would you be to buy it how much do you pay for service how much would you be willing to pay those types of questions um you know kind of like David's survey but less in-depth it's interesting price points like if it costs this much would you go for it which I thought was an interesting way to go which are really important questions for WEC to know so if you if you're a WEC if you're in the WEC service area and you have the opportunity to answer that survey please do yep totally everybody does and send it around to Facebook playing field people and sounds good okay so uh Jerry you're up next yeah I just want to say um really briefly first of all thank you to everybody that's on the call today we seem to have distilled ourselves down to a fairly small group of regulars which is an absolutely wonderful thing but we really need to maintain a quorum of which I don't count unless Jeremy doesn't show up but it's it's it's really important that we persist we have to persist we are getting close there are very few of us on the screen right now and we can't let up we gotta keep moving forward we're going to be farther along on the learning curve there's going to be really important decisions coming up and folks are going to be jumping in that haven't been on the call for three months and we need to be prepared for that and we need to persist and thank you everybody for doing that that's that's all thanks Jerry uh John Russell you there John I see you're unmuted now that was me okay and he's back muted again all right we'll come back to you if we uh if you need to wait for a spot for you at the end uh Josh I'm all set thank you is Josh Lee anything else to add Michael uh two things first um very glad that Tim is with us and I'm looking forward to working with him as we've already started actually um secondly on the issue of um whether broadband falls under title one or title two of the telecommunications act of 1996 that issue has been to the supreme court and um it's it's for us um I mean it's important to have passion but it's for us it's a waste of our energy to be chasing after that issue um we need to be working within the rules that exist now and um there are people in Washington who are fighting to change that and it's certainly good to support them but going to the legislature and making pleas are um can will be unproductive because the legislature has no position in relation to the jurisdiction even if they send even if the legislature were to send a resolution to the U.S. Congress that would basically have no bearing so I urge us to to stick uh working on what we can get done within the framework that exists whether we like it or not so so I think I Michael I think that came up in the context of us meeting with Peter Welch next week and reiterating to him that it makes sense at his level to get behind making internet access a public good changing its designation it's it's just been it's just been litigated for the last 12 years and so I understand the issue yes so we say is that what elected officials do we go and we tell them this is what we want to go figure it out sure as we've seen the supreme court is not really the end of this stuff because of all the stuff that keeps being relitigated so yeah it's it's fine if that's what you want to spend your energy on I just recommend that we focus on what we can really get done but but if you disagree by all means go for it thanks Michael uh Phil I really don't have anything I just want to echo others who welcomed Tim we've not met yet except through this medium but I'm sure we will shortly and yeah I'm good all right thanks Phil uh Ray oh uh Ray from Northfield welcome Tim feel like we're going to get some real traction now hopefully we'll hear what the wireless application and funding next week or so while we sort out what the priorities are with regard to orange, blue, yellow, green which fiber I think we're going to go after with regard to the feed at veto loan we're only going to spend a million dollars a million and a half maybe next year I don't know but might be four million dollars but I don't see why to give us four million dollars we're going to spend about a million and a half um but um we're going to get some traction on that as well but the next thing that we have to get around is around is what are the priorities one two three orange yellow green um we need to figure out what that's going to be and I want to ensure that Tim involves also part of that conversation I didn't hear the end part that what was part of the conversation Ray that Tim was also part of that conversation okay thank you uh Shavon just saying you know taking a couple minutes to ask our federal legislators to support something isn't a lot of energy expenditure I wasn't thinking that we should you know like great resolutions or anything I'm just saying if we've got an ear we should whisper in it um otherwise welcome Tim and uh go CUDs thank you uh Tim Shay you are you're up next if you have anything you want to add before we adjourn uh no no uh just again uh thanks for the vote of competence and look forward to working with you all and um appreciate uh all that you've done thus far to get uh central vermont to where it is today thanks Tim and Tim Sullivan uh hi I just wanted to uh also welcome Tim Shay um excited to have somebody uh helping and leading uh our efforts here um a few of the things I just wanted to either ask or mention was if I know we did a uh August uh kind of update uh copy text so that we could put in um the uh front porch forum or to our town select boards um I would hope and like to see if we could somehow maybe do one of these once a month it doesn't have to be as long as what we had composed and therefore edited and re-edited a few times just needs to be kind of like a short sweet thing that our select board could have a factual wrap their hands around knowing that there's some sort of progress and they don't forget about the things going on here too and Jeremy you can talk about that later and we could decide that a different time or whatever but much like Henry I was about to go after trying to do a needs assessment whatever we want to call it I wanted to try and ask uh Roxbury isn't that big we probably have about 300 households out of out of 600 people in total I was going to try and get a needs assessment as far as um who they were where they were located uh dress wise um maybe uh encourage them to use something like fast.com or speedtest.net to to kind of get an up and a download speed maybe a few on average throughout the day and kind of report back their speeds and their enthusiasm if fiber came to their door or a fixed wireless came to their door how likely are they to buy into it if the average price I think we were talking about was like 70 to 80 dollars um and maybe maybe every everybody could do that as well if they have the the means to and a Roxbury is small so it's easy for me um and I can maybe get results in a few weeks out of this and maybe others would trickle in afterwards um I would uh I know we're meeting I think in two weeks we just agreed we just agreed upon but um I would think um we do that more often like if instead of having the the optional meeting especially at Tim Shea coming on board I know for me being new the more meetings help fill in the blanks for me and I'm sure that would for Tim Shea as well um and then I noticed a lot of emails had come through maybe just like within the last hour or two before the meeting and I was rushing to get home to get on the meeting so I never got a chance to actually see them but I know they're sitting out there um I was hoping maybe we could establish a protocol that maybe all these emails that come last minute I know I know sometimes it's because you're busy Jeremy as well but maybe a six hour window before the meeting would be helpful for us to digest uh what's email just in case they were very important or not and that's that's all I got okay so if we can tackle these in reverse order um if Tim if you would work with David and Henry to do that needs assessment but I would also point out that because you came in late you work here when we sent out townwide surveys and I've actually I spent a lot of time in your town clerk's office um talking to Tammy and down at the general store um you know down at the general store he um he forced people that showed up in the store to fill out our survey so yes and he was uh he was uh essential to getting um the the responses that we got in and Roxbury um was one of those that because John was not actively going and soliciting those surveys it was me so I'd get done with work in Northfield and I'd go down and talk to Tammy or I'd go down to the general store and uh yeah and then I hand entered all of the physical like paper surveys that were in there that people didn't fill in online we we have a lot of that data we have those addresses we have those people um and so yeah so David if you could share that with Tim maybe and then once we have the uh you know what Henry put together if you wanted to supplement that at all Tim I think that's a worthwhile effort yeah I just sent I just sent it to him okay thanks I've been in that store a number of times but the the owner proprietor never presented anything like that so well it's no so this is something that that we did um when did we finish that January February January yeah so January 24th there you go so so I finished um you know I would I took them down I think November December and then you know followed up a couple times so yeah so so unless you happen to be be here in the over the winter and popped in there and in January he he probably didn't have anything yeah well we're up there quite a bit in the winter we like it we like the winter more than the summer so so so next next time you're over there you can certainly talk to him about uh about broadband and he is he is an advocate let me tell you I I completely forget his name but yeah me too yeah I talked almost Henry thank you Jeremy yeah no I just wanted to say in general um I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here um and there's two basic surveys that we have that we need to merge David's survey regarding you know people's price points and all that stuff is one thing and then the needs assessment around the broadband needs defined by the federal government you know telehealth telework and telelearning those needs they need to be all kind of combined into one survey and David and I talked about this um we didn't have timing for it but we combine that into one survey then we can send it out to everybody and do a refresh for the business plan if that's you know not too much work but um we need to get the needs assessment out to all the member towns as soon as possible for the RDOF stuff and um so I I think um that we should do that as a blanket thing you know but not you know review what I have and add to it or whatever or take away from it thanks Henry and then going to your first question Tim Chuck you want to address that about the updates yeah I think that's a great idea and that is something the communications committee will run with so appreciate that very much and then yeah and when you get when the communications committee finishes with that then they can send it to the whole governing board and then each of us in our individual towns can shoot that out through whatever means make sure that select boards from porch forum facebook etc etc make sure that everybody knows where we are yeah yeah I mean there's not much to update that's different from what we posted the last time so um okay um who do I've left Tom you have the last word oh I'm good thank you all right short and sweet all right so I move that we adjourn and so we are adjourned have a wonderful night everybody we had a short one thank you everyone good night tonight