 I guess we have enough okay we can kind of start okay so I'd like to call to order the special city council work session regarding negotiations with UVM and Champlain College related to the capital plan and we do have an amendment to our agenda. Yes thank you I'll move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows add to the agenda item 3.02 a communication from city attorney Blackwood regarding legal issues concerning Burlington telecom sale oral expected executive session. Thank you. Is there a second to that motion to amend and adopt the agenda? Councillor Dean seconds that. Discussion on the agenda all in favor of adopting our agenda as amended please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We have our agenda. The first item is a public forum and we have a public forum on every meeting and we'll have a 730 times certain public forum for the regular city council meeting so this would be a public forum for on topics related to the purpose of the work session. So is does is anyone interested in addressing the council at this time? Seeing none we'll move on to item 3.01 and I'll go to the mayor to describe the item and then we can have a motion on executive session. Excellent thank you President O'Dell we have an update for the council regarding the ongoing negotiations we've discussed before with UVM and Champlain College regarding additional payments from those institutions to help fund the sustainable infrastructure plan and I think it would be advisable to have this discussion and executive session. Okay thank you very much so City Attorney Blackwood can should we do two two sets of executive sessions anticipating the second topic? I think you could yes two sets of motions yes I think you should do two motions right now and that you go right from one executive session into the other. Okay so a first motion would be that the public disclosure of negotiations would put the city at a disadvantage. Concerning contractual agreements with the University of Vermont and Champlain College is there a motion to that effect? Councilor Mason move that finding Councilor Roof seconded it all any discussion on that all in favor of that motion on the finding for 3.01 please say aye. Aye. Any opposed carries unanimously. Thank you President O'Dell I'd like to make a motion based on that finding to go into executive session on that matter subject to our next executive session motion. Thank you is there a second? Councilor Roof seconded it any discussion? Seeing none all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? On the legal issues concerning the BT sale this regards potential litigation. Yes in getting legal advice concerning potential legal litigation. Thank you that would be the finding for the executive session. Motion from Councilor Mason thank you second on the finding Councilor Roof thank you discussion seeing none all in favor sorry yes thank you President O'Dell I'm going to be recusing myself from item 3.02 and as such will not be voting on that. Thank you very much we'll note the recusal of Councilor Paul on 3.02 the Councilor Paul will participate in 3.01 great so we have a motion on the finding all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed that's unanimous with the recusal of Councilor Paul. Motion to go into executive session. Based on the finding I'm sorry I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session noting for the record that city attorney Blackwood who else acting CAO you tell me who else is in the room for the executive session. Yes the interim CAO and our outside council Ralphino Rourke and members of the mayor's staff. Thank you. Very good thank you that there's a motion to go into executive session we'll add Mr. add the director public works also on 3.01 any others okay so second on the motion is Councilor Roof again any discussion seeing none all in favor. Aye. Any opposed and again we have the recusal of Councilor Paul so this time we will be going into executive session we'll take a few minutes to clear the room and I anticipate that we will be coming back and starting up somewhere in the seventh probably close to 7.30 being realistic we can launch right into the public form. Well no but this is this didn't go so well I haven't had this kind of experience so I'm trying to factor in everything and I'm a little scared and I'm frustrated too but anyway I can't believe or I look like oh fine the next day but of course you had cataracts. Yeah. Barbara I don't want anyone to have glaucoma really but thank you. Thank you for asking. I'm really worried about tonight. I'm going to be higher. How are you? Yeah that looks better. I'll try it. Alright if not I'm still here. I can't. I can't. I can't. So I'll walk. Oh and I feel like I'm boxing. We have all the city councilors so. Okay why don't we try to get started. Good evening I'd like to call to order this. Are we all set channel 17. This regular city council meeting on Monday October 30th at 740 p.m. Excuse me please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you very much. We will get right to the public forum after taking care of the agenda. Councilor Roof. All right I will move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows note corrected version of consent agenda item 3.19 communication. Lori Lemieux board clerk board of electric commissions regarding electric commission attendance record per Councillor Buscher note revised version of consent agenda item 3.27 resolution authorization to enter into license agreement with Baybury LLC to obstruct a portion of the city's right of way on Grove Street. Licensed committee per city attorney's office. No additional documents and title change for consent agenda item 3.26 resolution authorization to enter into a license agreement with the Snyder construction company LLC to obstruct to obstruct a portion of the city's right of way on Flynn Avenue and Pine Street. Pine Street deli licensed committee per city attorney's office note revised version of consent agenda item 3.30 resolution authorization for public improvement bonds for cities downtown Tiff district board of finance per city office. Note revised version of the consent agenda item 3.31 resolution authorization to amend cooperative agreement with the Champlain parking parkway project revised board of finance per city attorney's office per Councillor Buscher note revised version of consent agenda item 3.33 resolution update to staffing structure of Burlington International Airport revised board of finance per city attorney's office. Note the consent agenda item 3.34 communication regarding Burlington tech company for Ting with the motion to waive the reading except the communication in place and on file. Add to the consent agenda item 3.35 communication Charles Winkleman member library commission regarding resignation with the motion to waive the reading except the communication in place and on file. Advertise the vacancy will be in the 1117 days edition and send a letter of appreciation to Charles Winkleman thanking him for his time served as a member of the library commission. Add to the consent agenda item 3.36 communication Barbara no fee regarding sale of Burlington telecom with the motion to waive the reading except the communication in place and on file add to the consent agenda item 3.37 communication city city office regarding boarding commission openings with the action to waive the reading except the communication in place and on file add to the consent agenda item 3.38 communication Burlington City Council roof regarding Q&A notes from Ting visit with the action to waive the reading except the communication in place and on file per Council roof note updated version of the consent agenda item 3.38 per Councillor Dean note the additional documents posted on the agenda of 4.01 per chief of staff low note updated the additional documents posted for agenda item 4.01 10 pro forma in financing equity 1035 for forward from the Burlington telecom blue water holdings LLC and two cows Ting LOI final October 29002 per Katie vain thank you. Okay so there's I'm sorry the end of that motion was not appearing on my board docs but I will I will follow up on that so there's a motion to accept our to amend our our agenda as stated and to adopt it is there a second. Councilor busher is there are there any any discussion on that. Seeing none all in favor of that motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed we have our agenda will get right into the public forum. We'll set the clock for two minutes and it's great to see everybody and we really appreciate you are sticking within the two minute time frame so that you know we can hear from many of you tonight we'll listen here everybody. The first speaker is Lauren Glendavidian and she'll be followed by Aaron Malone. Good evening everyone I'm Lauren Glendavidian I'm the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and I'm a resident at 29 Harrington Terrace. I think some of you also know that I've been in the cable television business for 34 years since Bernie Sanders had the mayor's task force on cable TV and we were able to convince Cox cable that it was in their interest. To pay the city a million dollars rather than the city go into the local ownership of the cable business so this trajectory started many many years ago. And I believe that all roads and all points on that trajectory lead us to this evening where we have a vote ahead of us to keep our telecommunications asset local. In fact I think that it is actually the only sensible choice. This is a city that values sustainability and resiliency. We had the forethought to keep and preserve our waterfront. We were not intimidated by a lawsuit with the railroad. We had the foresight to make sure that we could control our local food distribution with the co-op and we can see how successful that co-op has been opening a new facility in the south end employing people 14000 square feet of space plus 9000 additional square feet of space. We also had the foresight to support Burlington Electric Department which I think some of you know had a very rocky start more than 100 years ago. But we're here tonight to take the long view because when we think about those people who made the decisions to go with and start BED to keep the waterfront open. To make sure that we had a food supply that we could rely on and to make sure that we started and controlled our local telecommunications company. We thank them. Is that one minute? That's my whole time. All right. Is that my whole time? That's two minutes. Was that time? Was that two minutes? All right. So in conclusion I would say that this proposal meets the state's MCO criteria. The public service board will support it. The economic development driving factors are without dispute. And all that really is missing tonight is the political will to keep this asset locally controlled so that years from now we can look back and say thank you to the folks here at the city council tonight. Thank you very much. Erin, please note, folks, we would appreciate the silent applause because it just takes time and it slows things down and it can be, you know, so that would be great if we do really appreciate that. Erin Malone and then Russ Scully. Hi. My name is Erin Malone. I live and run two businesses in Ward 2. I'm in support of the councillors voting to sell to the KBTL. For a couple of reasons. First of all, cooperatives are a proven business model in this market and the greater Burlington market. I think if we look around we can see that utilities, financial institutions, farms and groceries. These cooperatives represent successful businesses in our community and state. I think what's interesting is that, you know, we're not going to have to teach customers and future customers like what a cooperative is. I think one thing would be interesting for everyone to think about is how many cooperatives they individually belong to. When you sit down and think about that you're like, wow, a lot usually, right? I think this model works in our community and I think with the leadership already committed to the transition team I think success is imminent. Also as an individual and business consumer in this market I appreciate and benefit from the choices. So for cable we have BT and Comcast right now. And for internet there's Comcast, First Light, Fairpoint and BT. A sale to a publicly held international corporation would shake up the landscape. Maybe but more likely the options would have less salient differences. The value propositions would be more similar. I think a cooperative telecom makes all these companies in this space work a little harder to better serve the BTV or the residents, all of us and the businesses here. And then finally the potential of the fiber assets is vast and I don't think this community has even begun to realize the economic potential. As a local buyer the cooperative will absolutely do the best for the greater BT area to attract new business, support entrepreneurship and just prepare us all to compete locally and nationally. As a resident and entrepreneur I live here because the deal isn't set so thank you. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Russ Scully and we're going to just take a minute and get that sticker off the mic please. Great, thank you very much. Appreciate that. Russ Scully and then John Cowlow. Yeah, thank you. I'm Russ Scully. I'm a 20 year resident of Burlington Business Center in Burlington. I'd like to just frame some comments for the City Councilors in favor of KBTL. I just want to briefly describe how this looks from my perspective. Right now if KBTL were to advance tonight as the winning offer I think we know that there's a number of events that are going to ensue starting with a lawsuit from Citibank which ultimately will create some pressure on the Burlington telecom assets. When that happens subscribers are going to start dropping and when that happens revenue is going to drop and the valuation of our utility is going to suffer tremendously. There's also the event of at least three possible vetoes at the end of that decision. And so from my perspective this isn't really a matter of whose offer is better. This is really a matter of does Burlington telecom live or die at the end of tonight. We have a very prosperous future with a very capable operator in Ting and I would love to see the assets in the ground right now work to the best possible opportunity for economic development in Burlington. And I see that happening with Ting's offer. If we go ahead with KBTL tonight I really don't see a future at all for Burlington telecom. I think you're going to see a lot of subscribers jump ship. We're all going to switch to Comcast and we're going to watch Burlington telecom drift into the ether and I would hate to see that happen. So I urge all of you to please consider that from my perspective that's really what this looks like. So I hope that you'll dig deep and do what's best for the city of Burlington tonight. Any other decision I really question whether you're really acting in the best interest of the city because otherwise it really is confusing in terms of what the agenda looks like. Thank you. Thank you. John Callow and then Ted Adler. I'm speaking in favor tonight of the Ting proposal. And tonight is the night for truth. Please speak right into the mic sir. I'm sorry. Please speak right into the mic. Tonight is the night for truth between us. And I think tonight is the night that the city council has to make a decision. We've been at this for a long time. Two weeks ago Madam Chairman you challenged the local option not to sit on its laurels and to improve its position. I'm curious in terms of how you feel now not you personally but the council in general from my perspective it hasn't really changed. When you look at that the this transaction in terms of the past the present and the future in from Rice it Ting is the option that the city needs to move forward on from the past that optimizes the ability to rectify past financial mix management of the original BT from in terms of the present it has Ting seems to have the experience and capitalization and a record a track record to back that up and and hits on more of the criteria that the city provided in its own RFP. In terms of looking to the future I think it's clear that that this is much more than just maintaining affordable cable TV TV rates that Ting rather than the local player is much more apt to optimize the the economic development potential of the city. So for those reasons I urge you to move in that direction. Thank you. Ted Adler followed by Leslie McKenzie. Good evening. So generally I try to support things that are local. I try to buy my food locally a member of the co-op when it comes to supporting local businesses I try to do that and I do that in part because I live here I've lived here for 20 years. I run a company in Burlington and I've always sort of felt that part of what makes this place special is the attention that we put towards local. Along the lines of that when I was approached to be the first commercial user of Burlington telecom about a dozen years ago or so I said yes because I wanted to support something that was local. And you know over the time candidly there were some you know pretty rough spots. I got to know the support person on a first name basis. And if I can tell you anything about your telecom you don't really want to know your support person on a first name basis. We stuck it out and I think in the end you know the product that we've had and the service that we've had probably wasn't as good as it could have been but I'm proud that it's here. That being said the second worst president of my lifetime had a terrible quote about fool me once fool me again not going to fool me again what not. And I'm here to tell you that as the first commercial subscriber to Burlington telecom if keep Burlington telecom local is my new management company I'm done. It doesn't have the backbone it doesn't have the experience it doesn't have the capitalization. This is all very straightforward to anybody looking at a balance sheet and it's not if you're looking at it from a passion standpoint. I passionately believe in local but I more passionately believe in a good sustainable telecom and I really believe that Ting will provide that for us. Thank you. Thank you Leslie Mackenzie and then David provost and BTAP members. Good evening. I'm Leslie Mackenzie I live in Burlington have a student school here have a business in Burlington and I'll keep this brief I'm here to strongly support the Ting proposal. I believe that I believe this is an incredibly straightforward decision that the facts make it obvious and I did send you all an email about a week ago and I have a copy of this so I won't paraphrase all of this. I'll just share another copy with you but I believe the financial strength of the offer the terms of the offer the capabilities of this firm far outweigh the option that we have. The other option we have on the table and honestly I find it almost unfathomable that this is even the two options that we're down to as well as intended as it may be. I believe this is a straightforward decision that the city put way too much at risk that we're out millions of dollars and that as a citizen I'd like to see us make a smart and wise decision to keep this on the improved path that it's on. So I strongly encourage you to support the Ting proposal and to make that decision tonight. Thank you. Thank you. David provost and BTAP members and then Kelly divine. Good evening. I'm joined here tonight by the public members of the BTAP. Teresa. We're getting to Poma. Tim Halverson and Clem Nyland. Thank you for your time. The Blue Ribbon Commission was charged eight years ago this December by this city council. The commission later became the Burlington telecom advisory board. The four of us here before you have been the public members for the last few years that have successfully developed the criteria for the sale of BT that this council has approved and brought forward the four finalists. The advisory board has also provided meaningful monthly board governance to be tab management as part of the major turnaround of Burlington telecom. We will not rehash the last eight years of our work as a citizen as citizen volunteers. Just know that our guidance suggestions and recommendations are not political. They were developed and presented with the best interest of Burlington in mind. None of us hold a political seat and none of us are looking for credit praise or personal gain from our recommendations. You have years of work and effort in what we have moved forward to you. We hope our work and the criteria will guide you in making your decision tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Kelly Devine and then Charlie Giannoni. Kelly Devine. I'm the executive director of the Burlington Business Association. I also have a prepared statement that I sent to council and I have copies with me tonight. And they detail why our organization is supporting the bid for Ting Tucaos. I'm really a little bit frightened right now as folks may remember I spent a lot of hours in this very room in 2009. I'll never forget being on vacation in Disney World and coming back and finding out that the city was deeply in debt. And it was a really, really frightening time. I believe the debt at the time was estimated to be between 50 and 60 million dollars which is roughly equivalent to the general fund's annual amount. Our bond rating tanked, our credit rating tanked and not only was I worried for the future of the telecom but also worried for the future of the community. At that time a lot of people dropped Burlington Telecom. Over the years thanks to the work of the BTAB and the council on this administration I got hope again because I saw the telecom service improve, more people signed up. It has grown and prospered and become strong. And now we are faced with a really big decision after looking at the bids and analyzing them really closely and thinking of them in terms of what could be best for the future of the city. Our group came up with a really clear support of Ting and Two Cows and that's because of the financial strength of the offer, the added benefit of investment in Burlington's economic future, the operational strength of the organization and the large amount of capital investment they plan for the future of the city. We had hoped that over the weekend the KBTL offer may strengthen and at one point we heard that it did and then all of a sudden we heard that it was unchanged. So that's unfortunate because in Burlington we like to do things local but knowing all that tonight I waited till I had that information and we are coming forward with a support letter and support of Ting, Two Cows. Thank you. Charlie Junoni and then Ryan Frank. Hello. Just something a little different. So we live in a representative democracy, a representative democracy. That means that we elect people to city councils and congresses and legislatures and we hope that they do what the public wants but whatever they decide that's what we have. Ideally people on those boards and commissions, they do their best to reflect what the public wants. Now sometimes what the public wants is the best possible thing and you have the best outcome, sometimes it doesn't work out so well. But the fact is ideally it's the responsibility and the duty of people who sit on boards and commissions to do what the public wants. Unfortunately sometimes what the public wants doesn't work out. Donald Trump is president of the United States so what are you going to do? But I just wanted to give an example. So in South Burlington school district there was a controversy for a year or two about changing the rebels name. Instead of the South Burlington rebels as something else like wolves. And so I personally filmed on CCTV some of the meetings of the city council etc. And at three of those meetings I heard the superintendent of schools for South Burlington and the chair of the school board say that literally, and they were questioned about this later and they still agreed to it. They said well we don't care what the public wants, we don't care what the voters or we don't care what the residents and the taxpayers want. We're going to change the name of the South Burlington team. And I was very dismayed to hear that because to me that's a violation of their responsibility. The only thing that I regret of this whole process that has happened over the last few years is that there wasn't a question on the ballot. For instance last March which would have asked the public specifically do they favor selling to the highest bidder or did they favor selling to something local. Because that would have cleared up this whole thing, this evening would have been very simple and we could have all gone wrong. Thank you. Thank you. Ryan Frink and then Chris Trombly. Hi, my name is Ryan Frink. I currently live at 125 Cayuga court but I think I've lived in about half of your districts over the years. So people from both sides asked me to talk tonight because I'm actually currently a Ting customer. They are my provider for mobile phone service and I'm also a Burlington Telecom subscriber. Burlington Telecom has really good customer service. I've worked well with them over the years. Ting is the only company I've ever worked with that's even a little bit better than Burlington Telecom. And I'm saying that because I'm actually one of those people who like I really love Ting. I have actually gone out and talked to my coworkers and told them to sign up. I've talked to my friends and family and told them they should sign up. And it's because whenever I've had a problem or just a question I call them and they immediately pick up. And I'm immediately talking to someone who knows more about phones and the internet than I do. And I actually used to work in Telecom. Their level one tech support people are the best that I've ever dealt with. I would actually challenge anyone here to give them a call and just ask them a question. Tell them you're a potential customer. They really are that good. So I just wanted to come here tonight and say that it's it's really good being a Ting customer. And I was really excited to see that they might take over Burlington Telecom. I like the idea of keeping it local but Ting is really good. I think we'll be in good hands with them. Thank you. Thank you. Chris Trombly and then Dr. Joseph Patelano. Good evening Mr. Mayor. Good evening Madam President members of the City Council here to express my support for the Ting proposal. We have a rare opportunity to make Burlington a more attractive and exciting place to live and work the Ting proposal. The proceeds are two and a half times larger could be used for other projects such as save more auditorium community health center or refund to the taxpayers five times larger annual community contribution five times larger infrastructure investment. And that's where the higher potential for tech jobs that will serve as regional hub headquarters for video services and a center for research and development. And this is how we can retain students. We struggle with the declining population. We want to keep more of those students here in the city. The Ting offer would hand off control to an established company that has experience running a barber in the market. High levels customer service at an affordable price. I ask you each to demonstrate responsible governance and vote for Ting. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Joseph Patelano and then Rich Price. Thank you. I come here in support tonight of the local option and I come in support for very specific reasons. Other people can tell you the benefits some of the benefits that can tell you better than I can. But what I'm here to ask you not to do is to sell our franchise. One of the reasons that I moved to Burlington was Burlington telecom because I was living in Richmond and paying Comcast to take my money that I paid for them and spend it against net neutrality and against my interests. I came to Burlington. I found that my personal information is not going to be sold. Local option is very important and democracy is very messy. You all know that you deal with it all the time. It's not cheap and it's messy and sometimes it fumbles as it apparently did when the original telecom mess happened. But that should not deter you from keeping this asset local people from all over the country say to me why would you do that? Why would you sell your franchise when you have the control and you have the ability to own it? Now the reason one of the reasons that you shouldn't you shouldn't sell this is that selling this to a corporation is selling it to Comcast. And I don't care what promises they make you a novice freshman economic student will tell you that any corporation will tell you what they need in the moment. But ultimately the responsibility of the directors and of the management of that corporation the fiduciary responsibility is to their stockholders. So what's going to happen a year down the line when Comcast or some other large corporation comes to them? And they're going to because consolidation in this industry is rampant and they're going to offer them a great deal. And it's going to be their fiduciary responsibility to take care of themselves and not us. So bottom line don't sell our franchise stay with democracy and don't let Citibank dictate what we do in Burlington, Vermont. Please no please people please people please sound applause Rich Price and then Alex Lavin. Good evening my name is Rich Price I'm a Winslow and I are residents of Ward 1. I brought him here as a civics lesson for him to see how things get done in this town. I work in the south end and I work in the creative marketing tech space and every day we're competing with New York and Boston and San Francisco and other places. So I'm very aware of both the challenges and opportunities Burlington faces when competing on a global level. We're incredibly fortunate to be one of 20 cities to have gigabit infrastructure. But to continue to attract top talent entrepreneurs businesses that see Burlington as a place that they can grow. We need to make smart decisions ones based on dish dispassionate facts. The Burlington Telecom advisory board unambiguously graded KBTL eighth out of eight bids. At its most basic level the city council is tasked with fiduciary responsibility of the city. So please don't make a decision based on sentimentality or politics even. Let's keep Burlington in business and I urge you to support Ting. Thank you. Thank you. Alex Lavin and then Alyssa Nelson. Good evening city council president. Good to see you. And I don't envy your position tonight or any of your fellow counselors but I was brought here kind of last minute because I read this citation from a seven days story. The city bank was planning on suing and attacking the city of Burlington from multiple fronts if I recall the wording from the seven days story correctly and all of a sudden I was brought to this bracing confrontation with exactly the future that I warned everybody who would listen to me was going to happen in this world if we kept on the path that we've been on for roughly the past 10 years. Since we let the financial oligarchy destroy our economy commandeer control of it and subsequently subject the most desperate communities to IMF style austerity. So the way I see your choice before you this evening it's not so much about Ting versus KBTL you know I watched the info session that Mr. Noss hosted and you know in my professional capacity at CCTV I had covered for television and for our viewers to view. He seems like a very nice fellow and Ting seems like a very adept service but I'm not paying the people who acquire Burlington telecom to provide adept service. I'm paying them to insulate me from the savagery of the open market and we all know what that looks like when it comes to telecom service. So again going back to seven years ago the mayor was kind enough to keep showing up day after day for coffee even though I along with anybody else who had listened to me. I kept haranguing him day after day I said we've come to a point in history when one of two things will happen. Financial institutions will break the power of sovereign people or sovereign people will effectively challenge the power of those financial institutions. Have a great night. Thank you. Thank you. Alyssa well done Alyssa Nelson and then our Paul Smith. Good evening. Thank you for the long community process that has led up to this evening. It's very much appreciated the effort that's gone into this. My heart has always been with the KBTL offer. We are a long time Burlington custom telecom subscribers since some of the very first hookups. My heart wants KBTL to move forward because they follow the original city vision. There is a promise that the long term profits might be greater under KBTL but the low capitalization and high interest rate promises are not guarantees. The financial issues and the promise of lawsuits mean we need to make the decisions with our heads and not our hearts. The fiduciary responsibility of the city council means we need to go with the strongest upfront financial package. And I believe that's ting. Thank you. Thank you. Our Paul Smith and then Andrew Gansen. Gansen Barra. Hi. My name is Paul Smith. I live in the word five. Yes, sir. Please speak right into the mic. Get that a little closer. We as my wife just said that we are basically charter company customers of BT. We really like the community based Burlington style and the vision and hope for success that was similar to that of the amazing success that Burlington electrics had. Unfortunately, the management was very poor. The problems were then compounded by an administration which I supported. They got the city in even deeper. Many people in Burlington have made and continue to make heroic efforts to keep keep on the same community based path. In fact, my wife and I came very close to investing in KBTL. That said the promises the city has made should not be broken yet again. The council and BTAB have performed yeoman service in their due diligence. They find that ting appears to be a well run and customer centric unlike poor reputation of huge conglomerates while offering a very competitive bid that should avoid yet another fight. This has not been an easy decision, but at this point you feel it is time to put this episode in Burlington's history to bed and start the healing. Thank you. Thank you. Andrew Ganson Berg or Berra and then Eric Mayer. Is it Berg? Andrew Ganson Berg, yes. Thanks. Hi. I'm a resident of Burlington here and wanted to come out in support of KBTL. Concern for community is one of the seven cooperative principles and is at the in the very identity of all cooperatives. Market-based businesses like Ting-Tukows in contrast are driven by their fiduciary responsibility to return value to their shareholders. Unless all of Burlington's residents are the shareholders of Ting, then their business model does not incentivize them to support and benefit this city. In fact, it requires them to find ways to extract money from this community and return it to outside shareholders. Now I've heard concerns about the high interest rate on the loan for main fiber to keep BTL local. I rarely heard that they have raised around 600,000 in equity from milk money campaign. Cooperative Fund of New England yesterday has written a letter expressing interest in providing a much lower interest rate loan on a portion of that. And I'm sure that the board will continue looking for other financing options, including options like VCCU's co-op capital. In a few years, they will have operational history and a much more appealing investment for financial institutions and can refinance that higher interest loan from main fiber. Highlighting this high interest rate seems to hide the fact that equity is not cheap itself. Shareholders demand a high return and a return of the same rate on the much higher valuation by Ting will likely require as much if not more growth than that of the KBTL. Much has been said about the alleged risks pertaining to the KBTL, but what are the risks of Ting's two cows? Have we considered the externalities of market-based businesses that are only here to make profit? If concern for community is not profitable, then we can expect taxpayers and our local government to be on the hook to clean up behind them. The status quo has given us a changing climate, and flooding in the south and fires in the west are evidence of coming climate migrations. A recent study by MIT economist Peter Taman shows that both U.S. political and economic structures are regressing to that of a developing nation. Now is not the time to be timid and stick to the false security of the status quo, so please support KBTL. Thank you very much. Eric Mayer and then Walter Judge. Hey, thank you guys. We're hearing from opponents of KBTL a lot about how we have to stay rational and keep our emotions at bay or that we need to simply look at a balance sheet. And before we get too deep into the idea that this is just a passionate outburst by those who want to keep our internet here, I just would like to talk about the different ways of looking at these economic decisions. We're hearing a lot about fiduciary responsibility, and that's obviously something that can be defined in a number of ways. We could argue all day about that, about how far into the future you all are supposed to look. Obviously, there's an influx of cash potential now. That would be great for our credit rating as defined by Moody's and congrats to the mayor and others for the... I want to get this right. Upgrade from BAA3 to A3 with a positive outlook if we're judging ourselves by Moody's criteria. That's the same company that was penalized $800 plus million for their role in the mortgage crisis in 2008 for the record. But if we're judging ourselves by that criteria, the mayor's leadership has been an unequivocal success. The sale of Burlington Telecom to cows operating as Ting would be the cherry on top. But I'm not sure this is really how we want to judge ourselves as citizens, and I say this with a sober and overly analytical lens, because that's how I am. We don't want you to assess our well-being using Wall Street metrics and algorithms. We're complex human beings with complex wants and needs. In 2017, many of those are tied to the internet. In the age of Trump, we need to do better than judging ourselves by status quo metrics. We need to do more than declare victory using existing Wall Street criteria. We need to ask ourselves if this late capitalist paradigm is even working in the first place, and if victory is within this lens applied to the many or just the few. When assessing the health of our community, we need to do better than Wall Street likes us. Thanks for your time, continued hard work and devotion to the community, and the community members who make up this wonderful city. Thank you. Thank you. Walter Judge and then Richard Bragg. Thank you very much. I don't like public speaking, so please bear with me. Yes, please do talk into the mic. Thank you. So I'm a citizen of Burlington and a taxpayer of Burlington, and also a member of the food co-op. Not only is the KBTL bid so fundamentally uncertain, so fundamentally shaky, I mean, is it a 14% loan? Is it an 8% loan that they're operating under? Will that debt service allow them to expand service? Will it allow them to maintain the existing service? Will they even be able to pay off that loan? But it's so fundamentally bad as an offer compared to Ting's that lawsuits that were once theoretical, hypothetical, are now certainties. And as a taxpayer in the city of Burlington, not only would I be aggrieved at the prospect that the city is going to take such a fundamentally low bid, but that then as a taxpayer of the city of Burlington, I would be taxed to pay for the defense of the lawsuits that will be lodged against the city. Thank you. Thank you. Richard Bragg and then Charles Thorpe. I really reject the narrative that's been going around. I think this is, let's talk about it for what this really is. This is a gift going forward to whoever gets this. Whoever, whatever side, right? Why do we not care about where Ting is getting their money from? I don't care, who cares, you know why? Because they're going to get their money. Whoever gets this is going to do fine in the long run. I reject this narrative that's going around that this is not the case. It's pretty clear that whoever gets this is going to be in the driver's seat in the long run. Thank you. Thank you. Charles Thorpe and then Jeff Nick. Good evening. My name is Charles Thorpe. I'm from Ward 2. I think we have to admit that there is fear on both sides. The people that support Burlington Telecom are afraid of what will happen to Burlington Telecom if a corporation buys it. We will lose things like valuable things like local control and net neutrality. We know, for instance, from our newspapers in the country now, six corporations control almost all newspapers, and the result has been the homogenization of the news so that Americans are served with less news and poorer quality news. Fewer reporters are hired. So selling the Burlington Telecom to a corporation could, in fact, result in poorer net neutrality and other services of that kind. The people who support Ting are afraid, because they're afraid of monetary problems, fiduciary things and things, but their argument is also an argument of fear. So let's look at what's happening. What we've got now. Burlington Telecom has become a profitable organization, and Shirts and Ting know that. That's why they're making bids. They know this is almost a fire sale. They're getting something dirt cheap. Burlington Telecom has become a goose that lays golden eggs. They want those golden eggs for themselves, and we're saying you can have our goose that lays the golden eggs, and you can have the golden eggs, too. We should be keeping this for the citizens of Burlington who paid for the founding of this corporation so that we can have net neutrality and low internet. I'm less internet interested in television. You can get your television where that's just entertainment, but the internet is a 21st century necessity, and we need to provide that to our citizens at an affordable cost. So let's keep with the spirit that Burlington Telecom was founded, local control, and helping the citizens have what we really need, and that is something that is not controlled by a corporation so that our views on any subject can be put on the internet. We don't have to worry what a corporation thinks about it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Jeff Nick, and then Matthew Flego. Hi, good evening. I'm a business owner and property owner in town here, and, you know, tonight's vote I thought would be very, very easy, and I'll tell you why. Eight years ago, the taxpayers in this town took it on the chin, and it was rather ugly for everybody. Today, because of a lot of hard work for everybody here and this administration, we find ourselves in a very strong position. However, it could have gone a different way. It very easily could have gone south. Tonight, you have the opportunity to recoup some of the taxpayers' funds that was put towards this endeavor, pay off our lenders, strengthen our bond rating, participate in equity, position moving forward, avoid a costly lawsuit, and put this whole chapter behind us. With Keep Burlington Local, however noble that mission might be, I see risk everywhere, highly leveraged, high interest rates, an industry that's ever changing, competition that is out there, and it is just too risky to put the taxpayers in this position. So I hope you do the right thing and vote for the Ting opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Matthew Flego and then Alexander Friend. Hi. So I'm not from here. I've only been here for about four years. Originally, I was born in New Jersey and I got out of there pretty quickly when I was 18, college in New York City, and I stayed there for about 12 years. At sort of the end of that, seven years ago, I was deciding where I wanted to live. And I had a whole bunch of cities in my roster. I was looking at San Francisco, Austin, Boulder, Colorado, and I had Portland, Oregon, places like that. And I decided to choose Burlington because of the community co-op entities like Burlington Electric and a newly formed entity at that time, which was Burlington Telecom, and that made a huge impression on me. It was part of the reason why I actually moved here. So I think that this city council and a lot of people in Burlington sort of focus very myoptically on what this might actually mean for a very small budget. I mean, if you're really thinking about the budget of the entire state, we're really talking about a very small amount of money. I mean, especially coming from New York City. But I think that we might not realize that the eyes of the nation are really on this city in a big way and that we can't really see it from the inside. And I think that this deal tonight is way more impactful than it's given credit for. And I think that the fiber infrastructure, the intent to bring community-owned internet infrastructure like anywhere at all is original and I think it's important. So I would like to grow my four businesses that I just formed while I've been here over the past four years on the back of community resources and I believe in Burlington and I hope that you do as well. Thank you. And I hope you choose QPT local. Thank you. Alexander Friend and then Zandi Wheeler. Good evening, President Nodell. I just wanted to thank the members of the council, the mayor, all of the volunteers who've worked on this issue, hundreds of hours you've given no matter who you support because it shows public engagement and I think more public engagement is great. I'm going to come back to that in a second. I just want to be, we've heard a lot about the risks associated with Keep Burlington Telecom Local. And I haven't heard hardly anything about the risks associated with Ting. And I just want to be sure that you've properly evaluated the risks of that company. If you've dug into them for the first six months of the year, 74% of their revenues were from domain name services, 25% from reselling sprint mobile services, 1% from providing internet services. They have less than two years experience in providing fiber to the home. Burlington Telecom has 12. They have far fewer customers than Burlington Telecom currently does. About KBTL, they've been actively seeking to turn Burlington Telecom into a cooperative for five years. This isn't a new concept. So my wondering is, far elected leaders, at least the majority of them, had promoted the co-op model from the beginning. I think the money and support would have flowed in favor of it. I and other volunteers have been knocking on doors and talking to people around the city for the past few weeks. And I have to tell you that the groundswell of public support for the local option is enormous. Of people that answered their doors, about one in eight were against the co-op, and about seven in eight are in favor of KBTL. I just ask you to hear that call from your constituents and try to find a solution that will retain local control and satisfy the other parties. Thank you. Thank you. Zandi Wheeler and then Carolyn Bates. Good evening and thank you very much for years of work and service on this particular issue. It is truly tempting to believe that one visionary and progressive choice tonight would protect us from corporate greed while ensuring a measure of success in financial security akin to BED and the co-op. I've been a business owner here since 74 and a landowner and member of the co-op, and I think the question tonight is are we going to repeat history or learn from history? We have no more assurance today that we can predict the future. And there are many events that could rock our national and local economy in a fledgling and undercapitalized co-op. Here are a couple that I've really begun to think about just in the last year alone. How would we deal and how would the co-op deal with a serious outage caused by cyberterrorism or worse? How about economic disruption to the states and Burlington's largest employer brought on by abrupt changes to healthcare funding? How about dramatic changes in tax policy that might eliminate state taxes from deductibility on the federal return when we have 4,000 residents in the state of Vermont who pay a whopping 60% of all state income taxes and we're losing six employees a day in Vermont. They don't have to live here. We don't get a do-over and it's not time to double down with the co-ops offer. Primarily because there are a lot of unexpected things that we went over. Thank you very much. We should not risk customer service with debt service, overvalue enthusiasm over experience, confidence over competence, what's properly balanced fiduciary responsibility against enormous popularity and good intentions. Thank you. Thank you. Carolyn Bates and then Dean Coran. So far as I know, yes. We'll let you know. We'll speak right into the mic, please. As you know. I first want to thank everybody, is it working? Yes, ma'am. I want to thank everyone, all volunteers, city council, mayor, and all of the people who've bid for the telecom. I'm Carolyn Bates, Word 5. Ting, you know, needs Burlington far more than we need them. It's so obvious. They keep throwing more and more money at us. Now it's 30 million to buy and 50 million to put in a new telecom center in Burlington. They admit they do not know how to run the telecom business. We have to run it for them and teach them how to do this so that they can make a big profit off of our knowledge. KBL's conservative bid has a payback of one million to one and a half million a year, and that's at the 14%. As Burlington telecom's profit is three million dollars, the KBL payback is very doable. With Ting, whose entire source of money is alone, their payback with 30 million is at least three million a year equal to the total amount of profit of Burlington telecom. With the additional promise of 50 million over 10 years, that adds another five million a year in payback. Where will Ting get this money? And they have also promised a fast build out. Where will that money come from? By upping our rates, of course, upping our rates and selling BT if they run into financial trouble. What will they do in a downturn? Have anyone asked them? Have they done, as conservative of forecast, as KBTL has done, and therefore they understand that they should keep their loans close to the 10 to 12 million dollars? Big companies can fail even easier than small ones. Please go with KBTL. Thank you. Silent, silent, silent applause. Excellent. Dean Corrin and then Michael Siever. Good evening and thank you. I'm Dean Corrin from Ward 1 in Burlington. I've been... I'm glad to live in a city with a big heart and also a lot of brains. And if you haven't seen the resumes of the board members who have put together the co-op over the last several years and done the work and made the pro forma that is incredibly conservative and come up with the results it has, I really encourage you to look at their website and read those resumes. Because we are blessed in Burlington with the people who can put this together. Now, I... I've talked to you a few times and I've gone to some of the more local meetings and I've wondered why it is so difficult for us to come together and see for everybody to see what other people see. And I can use a picture. I need a picture. The assumptions behind the pro forma of the co-operative are reasonable in every respect. It assumes less revenues than BT currently predicts. It assumes higher costs than BT currently predicts and it includes the worst case financing option as never assumed anything better than that. This is what we're looking at in the long term. A short term from Ting, a short term amount of money on the order of a quarter of the $28 million being proposed and that's it. That's it. The co-op is offering this people of Burlington member shares and now they're also offering us those of us who have 150 megabyte because we need it for our business we go to 1 gigabyte. So we are just flying high for that. But the city, if it takes its equity it can take it in cash but if it takes its equity it has a potential long term and not even as long as here and we all know over the 50 year horizon telecom could change entirely and local communities that control their own like Porto, Portugal are doing new things that they decide on but the potential for the city is tremendous the potential for its residents is tremendous and it goes to a fixed one time infusion but the real risk associated with all of these is that the people up there are the only ones in the world who know how to run a fiber system in the city of Burlington and the seamless transition to have those people work for the co-op is much less risky than a Ting. Thank you Mr. Korn. Michael Siever and then Lucy Gluck Thank you for having us here tonight and giving us this opportunity. I'm a ward 4 resident I've been a 36 year resident of the city of Burlington I think it's important we've heard a lot of references to community ownership we've referred to BED BED is a regulated monopoly we are not looking at that opportunity here we're looking at a build over we have one of the strongest probably the strongest cable company in the entire country here and we have an under capitalized company coming in to compete against them we are you're asking our community to take on a risk that you asked us to that a prior administration and city council took on many years ago it failed it put this city in deep jeopardy and what's amazing to me is that we are here today with a group of folks as well intentioned as they may be who after five years we heard that they've been trying to put this together in June when they brought their proposal it was described as being the weakest incomplete not even fully thought through so what confidence should that give us if they had been working on it for five years in the first proposal they delivered is that weak? but let's step back and think about in November of 2014 we were in a dire position and we were going to lose the entirety of Burlington telecom but this administration supported by the city council was able to negotiate in good faith that we would take this company we would make it better and then we would sell it we made a deal and you guys are now thinking of not holding up to the deal that you negotiated I mean how can we not take the responsible deal with a well financed company it's beyond me that we are going to tell the city bank you're a big company so we don't have to stand up to what we negotiated with you the nation is looking at us and if the nation is looking at us and we better stand by our word thank you we have a word thank you very much the last two speakers went over a little bit but now let's try to keep it back within the two and those were one on each side so we're even Lucy Gluck and then Barbie Alsop thanks I live in Ward 3 I love Burlington there's a lot of great passion in this room a lot of good intellect and we're all working hard I know everyone in this room has the best interests of Burlington at heart and we're coming at it from different angles so I just want to say that I've been a Burlington telecom customer devoted I'm proud to live in Burlington I'm proud to be a customer with Burlington telecom and I'm one of many many residents that really ready to invest our time and money to keep this a local local bid I believe strongly that this will help keep our tech economy thriving and growing as a standalone local company the co-op telecom is already embedded in our tech community and has the ability to work directly with local tech innovators to manage investment in the most efficient and effective way possible a local tech leadership committee is being fostered with homegrown experts who have taken our local tech economy to the next level they will guide and advise the KBTL tech innovation program I do not believe that Ting has the best interest of our community at heart as a multinational investor owned utility that is traded publicly they're bound to meet the fiduciary needs of their shareholders first and Burlingtonians last that's a very unfortunate setup in addition our local bid has a very good chance of receiving the CPG that we would need and none of the current legal analyses claim otherwise the public utility commission has different levels of due diligence for telephone and cable the requirements to receive a telephone CPG are basic and KBT local would easily meet the criteria so I'm asking to please support this really smart and fiscally viable choice this is the best direction for Burlington in so many ways I really appreciate all of your hard work and your good listening thanks thank you Barbie Alsop and then Elliott Noss I thought I'd be the only Ting customer to come and talk to you today and I have to say that I have them for my cell phone and I think their customer service people are very nice but they can't do much if you call with a question such as can I change my bill due date because I'm social security and I'd like to pay my bills all the same week no we can't do that we're working on it they've been telling me that for three years the only way I got my due date changed was to cut off my service for a month and then rejoin on the right day so I could pay my bill they don't listen to the needs of the people I also do not get either text or internet on my cell phone it's an emergency phone that means I don't have to pay an additional six dollars a month which matters when I'm poor and about every six months I have to call and remind them that they're supposed to be blocking it this is not the kind of customer service I think we expect from Burlington telecom and this is on a cell phone that is what a third maybe a quarter of their business when cable TV is one or two percent they're using us they're using us because they want to build out throughout Chittenden County they want to turn us into a mega hub they're not interested in Burlington they're interested in making money thank you we have Elliott Noss next to be followed by Josh Ronsky thank you now I've had the opportunity to address all of you a couple times and on a couple different occasions you know this really is a remarkable city I'm amazed at the number of people and I thank them who have come out in support of us tonight but tonight I really want to focus on the people that I haven't had the chance to address tonight those are the people who are here supporting KBTL and who are bringing an amazing amount of energy into this room and into this process first of all you should all be proud of yourself this was a bid that has now lasted through multiple rounds when nobody really gave much hope and you have done a remarkable job but tonight I want to say something different if we are lucky enough to be successful in this process I know that there will be a lot of people disappointed here my deep belief and the belief of everybody who works at Ting is that for some of you in six months for others of you in a year some in three years some in five you will all come to appreciate us as being a part of this community and every one of you will have had a positive customer service experience an experience with an organization that we've supported and helped simply for the benefit of the community you might know or have relatives who are employees either today or in the future they might be students of UVM or Champlain College who now stay in Burlington as opposed to leaving because of the opportunities that are here we do not view this as an opportunity at ownership we have experienced enough of this city to know that that would be much more stewardship thank you thank you Mr. Noss to be followed by Jerry Colby Councillors, Madam President thank you for your service to our city I'm here today to ask you to support KPPT local in their bid to purchase Burlington Telecom I'm a 27 year old resident who is on the verge of buying a home and starting a family in the city that I love the reason I want to live in Burlington is because of our city's long history of supporting the public good not just business interests supporting the public good has always come with fierce opposition from those whose primary goal is to make as much money as possible off Burlington residents our beautiful public waterfront is a testament to this Mayor Bernie Sanders used public trust doctrine to reclaim our waterfront from the rail companies they fought him all the way to the state supreme court but in the end the people of Burlington won that case and Bernie had decided that the risk of litigation was too great to move forward what would our what would our waterfront look like today what will our telecom look like in 30 years if we make the choice to sell to a Canadian company only out to make a profit for shareholders instead of Burlington residents who will use this resource for the good of everyone in our city decisions made for the common good always come with risks opposition and often of litigation what has made Burlington great is that previous leaders have acted with bold and visionary leadership that have not conceded to pressure from the banks and business interests I'm asking you today to continue our proud legacy of supporting the common good just like our city previously chose to create our waterfront save north gate apartments build church streets start the housing trust model and chose city market over conventional grocery stores we can now choose to save Burlington telecom for the people of Burlington not a Canadian company only out to make as much money as possible our children and grandchildren will need to live with the choice you make today I hope you make the right one and support key P.T. local for all of Burlington thank you Jerry Colby and then Char Dennett not as young as I used to be can we hear this can we listen to it well we've heard about the threat of a lawsuit that has come from some officers at city bank some of you may be aware that threats are commonplace in competitive legal strategies to control an opponent to give the threat maker the best possible deal often to the disadvantage of the opponent in this case the victim of the threat is the community of Burlington and the politicians who may fear political reprisal for not seeming to be quote unquote responsible as city corp officers of course see in their minds what responsible is but let me tell you about the last time I had an encounter with a city corp executive it was during the 1980s during our struggle to preserve community banks which had high liquidity from being taken over by interstate banking by giant banks like city corp that had a low liquidity because they had overextended themselves in loans to third world countries corporate mergers and midwestern agribusinesses at that time after testifying before the house commerce committee I raised to the city corp executive who was by the way working the whole the city corp itself was a risk wasn't it? I pointed out how much city corp had recently been exposed by charges that it was parking assets as well as liabilities and quite possibly liabilities to depositors in offshore brass plate banks in the Caribbean he simply gave me a knowing smile and a wink interstate banking did indeed come into Vermont and we now have an example of an interstate bank city corp demanding terms that it has no right to make according to the last agreement signed between the city of Burlington and city corp I run out of time but I wanted to say one more thing Burlington is not for sale thank you please please that's better thanks and then Matthew Dodds oh dear I have to follow my husband well anyway we both recently moved back to Burlington after 13 years we lived in Cambridge Vermont we're back in Burlington boy is it great to be back love you folks anyway I'm an attorney I'm an investigative journalist I'm not weighing in as an attorney because what I've read from telecom attorney Andrew Montrell says there's a high probability that Burlington telecom will get the certificate of public good and I think he feels the risks we're not high in this transaction I want to approach this issue as a journalist and as someone who cares deeply about democracy and the erosion of democracy in our country as we are watching it before our very eyes unlike one of the speakers who said I don't care about television but I do care about internet well I do care about television too I watch it a lot because I'm a journalist and because we are the watchdogs of democracy if we don't get the news out to the people correctly we're in deep trouble and they know it I've heard that some of the best TV reporting on the presidency is happening right now and it's because the journalists know what's going on and what's at stake and that is the issue before us I recently read that the FCC is revising its rules and is allowing the elimination of a rule that permits more local control over television stations I just want to read a little segment from an article in Mother Jones recently published Ready for Trump TV Sinclair Broadcasting which is a right-wing broadcaster is plotting to take over your local news I want to end by just saying will you will you yield to threats of large corporations or will you listen to the will of the people will you base your vote on the bottom line or will you take strength from the people in their struggle to maintain local control and local democracy Thank you very much Matthew Dodds and then Liz Curry Counselors My name is Matthew Dodds and I run a business called Brandtropology for the last 12 years on Pine Street I also serve on the Vermont Technology Alliance and I'm here today to talk a little bit about what I think are some of the challenges with the KBTL I do think that there are risks involved in terms of the financing and I want to step back a bit and to say as a marketing person some of the challenges in trying to sell Vermont because one of the things I've been active in doing is trying to talk about the city and to raise this jewel that I think we all agree with this gigabit infrastructure that we have has been with a bit of an asterisk to it I can't sit around and laud the city for the last eight years if it's got this federal marshals ready to take the servers away that's kind of tough so what I'm looking to do is to find a way forward when I look at the different bids I see there's a lot of risks involved with moving ahead both from the potential litigation but also from just the financial a certain amount of liquidity to move forward and let's remember that it was financials that doomed the first to be Burlington Telecom so I think it's a very legitimate concern and by saying regardless of which moves forward I really want to have some closure on this as a business community to be able to promote this city and hopefully with the gigabit infrastructure that we have is really important for us because tech is such a great potential for our kids and I want to move forward as quickly as we can to celebrate that Thank you. Liz Currie and then Brian Pine Thank you for holding so many public hearings on this issue I just want to make point one KBTL is taking a lot of heat today for prematurely claiming access to a lower interest rate but no one has vocalized the fact that Ting claimed that they would hook up 12,000 subscribers in the last community where they bought the local fiber optic network but that has not materialized either Ting's expertise is in customer service and domain names not in telecom so their experience is only about two years deep and that's all readily available information so this community has a long history of standing up to big money interests we now have one of the greatest senators in history spreading the economic development message that Burlington pioneered our economic success is a nationwide brand and as a result we grew and attracted small businesses like Lake Champlain Chocolates, Union Media, Wind and Waves and the rest of Pine Street we've seen church street marketplace retain a 70% local ownership rate while national chains like JC Penny, American Apparel and Taylor Olympia Sports, Jay Crue and more hold it up demonstrating less staying power and sustainability governing through fear of dubious litigative posturing is not how Burlington moved forward in its heyday when Mayor Sanders and Clavel understood what it meant to be an activist government responsive to its community and more importantly understood how to analyze risk that would allow us to drive our resources to create and sustain nationally recognized and award winning economic development programs that fueled local ownership and rejected the myth that Wall Street can save Main Street and I just want to put out there there's a dangerous narrative tonight that there's liquidity issues and interest rate problems when in fact KBTL has a 1.5 debt coverage ratio and anyone who works in finance understands that the debt coverage ratio is what mitigates the risk not the interest rate and that we're also hearing this myth that there's some relationship to taxpayer to taxpayers money and KBTL is a cooperative economics 101 not reliant on taxpayer money. Thank you Brian Pine and then Charles Simpson Good evening Thank you for the opportunity I've been doing some homework to more fully understand the issues that you're facing with this decision and to better understand the Canadian company to which you are considering selling by all accounts Ting appears to be a very good company they're innovative and seem to embrace the power of the internet as a force for positive change by the way Ting doesn't offer landlines or cable TV and so that term triple play kind of turns into a fielder's choice here so they really can only get one out well we can get three out because we're providing services that people in our community are needing and demanding but that's beside the point they have some really great videos that actually features Mr. Noss it's called Ask an Exec and in one of them I'll paraphrase what the customer asked this question she said I feel like every time a great independent company starts up and gains momentum someone like Google or Amazon just comes along offers billions of dollars and it's just something you can't turn down in favor of your own family will Ting customers ever have to worry about this or big rate increases it's interesting to hear Mr. Noss's reply and I really respect Mr. Noss and think he runs a great company but his reply reflects I think the key issue here we're not in this to sell our parent company Tukau's is a very established company we want to make as many people happy as possible it's a great sentiment really it's possible that we could get an offer from some big telecom that we can't refuse but that would likely include them that they want to do what we do and they would bring us in to run the show wouldn't that be great I think that's really important point really that's a critical point I watched several of these videos and thought they were pretty impressive but ultimately that's what you're being faced with today is the decision to essentially sell a piece over infrastructure that becomes a significant asset on the balance sheet for a company that is in the business to make money there's no guarantee that we won't be faced with this problem in a few years thank you Charles Simpson and then Jason Lorber good evening I want to tell you a fairy story and I wish I could say I made it up it's one I'm hearing tonight this evening it's about a white knight from the north who will defend us helpless fear damsels who incidentally have a dowry that grew by 37% in just the last year all CEOs of multinational telecoms however handsome or well spoken seek maximum profits and edges close to monopoly market control as they are allowed to get the maximum return to shareholders doesn't privilege net neutrality not selling our data support for community television support for new enterprises keeping low rates and strong subscriber service let's trust ourselves keep the power don't trust a deceptive white knight that will as quickly as possible ring out the 27.5 or 30 million from share from subscribers serfs in terms of this story without social value of local ownership BT may well tank taking with it the city's perhaps 20% of equity so let's free the damsel let's let her make her own decision thank you thank you Jason Lorber former state representative and business owner and BT subscriber and I want to thank everyone here for all your hard work and for for your for your vision and looking at long term sustainability and who we are and you know the counselors here Mayor Weinberger you know our history that the council and the mayor's office have such a big impact on who we are and our history and thinking about the local innovation and looking at our Burlington successes whether it's the co-op BED the waterfront church street keeping church street smoke free expanding our bike path and protecting that and all of that work was hard it took guts it wasn't the conventional approach and but you've done it and a lot of these these efforts weren't easy wins that sometimes you had to go back and backfill and figure out how to make it work when you hit assembling blocks but you did it with tonight's decision it's a big decision certainly we can go the conventional route with the idea perhaps that no one was fired for hiring IBM or for listening to the corporate approach but I also urge you to think about our legacy your legacy and who we are and I urge you to take the local approach the community approach the Burlington approach thank you very much Tiki Arshambo and then Michael Long greetings thank you all for putting up with us tonight really my question is why are we here right look at all the support for both sides and honestly I think there's not a wrong answer for either BED they're just out there for very different reasons right you have the Ting BED which could bring some good short-term gain for the city pocket five million and run and then KBTL which could think of it more of a long-term investment so to speak where we get all of our money back and then some as a city and that's why we're here right we went through a public process didn't we this was your thing you wanted to public input we were supposed to chime in and tell us what's important and then number one was on that list was local control and so that's where I grow a little bit confused to why we continue with you know repeating the same comments especially with let's face it right you probably all have your minds made up you you've educated yourselves pretty well on this issue and they're very strong feelings out there on both sides so maybe over the top again I think for both sides but I do think I do support keep BT local and that the the main thought is that if we go with Ting it we're locking in a 12 million dollar loss it was not that long ago when I believe the community wanted that the full money the 17 million right it was all the talk of the town where's my 17 million right we gotta get this back people have sued the city and they lost but nonetheless it was an important thing for this community get that money back and now people are willing to take a 12 million dollar hit by accepting Ting's offer so here again you have a choice it's a great short-term investment Ting I think KBTL is a good long-term investment and that's probably why you wisely chose the two they're very distinct solutions so again there's no wrong answers here no answer is ridiculous so please know that we all have our reasons and I thank you for your time thank you very much Michael Long and then Steve Goodkind good evening I'd like to speak in support of the KBTL bid a lot of energy has been spent trying to discredit that bid and suggest that it is not viable but I believe that it that it is indeed a viable bid and in fact the irrational and emotional elements that have come into the debate I think a stem and large measure from a worshipful adulation of corporate wealth and know-how we cannot count on the corporation to take care of us the corporation's obligation is to its shareholders and not to this community whereas we had a great idea some years ago when when Burlington Telecom was formed as a local entity that would provide a necessary utility like service to the community for the long term the road has been rocky but it was a good idea and local control remains a good idea the Ting bid is a good deal for Ting it's a good deal for City does better with it and blue water holdings does very well doubling its investment in a matter of several years so forth but it's not a good deal for the community and the taxpayers and those are the folks to whom your primary fiduciary responsibility is connected thank you very much Steve Goodkind and then Kit Andrews Thank you President Nodell the more this process goes on I think some earlier said these are the obvious decisions we should make and from my position I think it should be quite obvious we shouldn't be selling Burlington Telecom and we should be looking for ways not to sell it some people say it's just a business deal the blue water agreement is not a business deal any business entity that saw its future as local control and good for its investors it's a liquidation deal plain and simple it's a point of the taxpayers maybe from someone else's point it might look better the taxpayers are going to get 20, 25 cents and a dollar maybe of their 20 million and it is 20 not 17 million it's time to move on from this I kind of hope you'll vote 6-6 and then go back and look at how to deal with blue water and get out of this mess this process is the spawn of a very bad deal we shouldn't have been involved in it we need to keep Burlington Telecom local this city has shown it can run the system and at a rocky start we're running it now it can be done and I think there's no reason for us at this point to somehow ditch it go through what is basically a liquidation it's time to stand up for this system show what we can do and do it for the good of all of our citizens so I say really keep Burlington local Burlington Telecom local and don't sell it thank you Kit Andrews and then Lisa either Lax Lisa Lax good evening and thank you my name is Kit Andrews I'm a resident of Ward 3 I'm going to start off tonight by speaking for a man Matthew Walters the owner of the archives a small business housed at 191 College Street the former home of the Burlington Free Press he's not able to be here tonight when Mr. Walters was opening the archives in 2016 he came into some major problems getting his internet properly up and running the problems developed a few days before his opening for which he'd already done all the promo so he was in a serious emergency situation Mr. Walters writes BT saved the day with a last minute request when the other service provider was unable to meet our needs installation was smooth and easy and we've been completely pleased with our service I'd recommend BT to any Burlington business owner who needs fast personalized straight forward service with no surprises he added BT gives great service by great people who care not many companies provide service anymore but Burlington telecom goes above and beyond their service is second to none Mr. Walters is strongly in favor of keeping BT local with the co-op now I'll say a few words for myself earlier a speaker ended his remarks by saying that if the co-op buys BT he really thinks a lot of customers will jump ship but he gave no citations in fact my sense is that his opinion came from his heart and not from his head well here's some fact based information scores of small business owners all of whom are BT customers and I've spoken with over 100 residents all of them want to keep BT local and this includes residents who have Comcast but a good number of them were concerned that KBTL could not make it and they were very relieved in our conversation with this passionate fact based statements learning that KBTL is a very very strong bid thank you Lisa Lax and then David Lansky so thank you for this process my name is Lisa Lax and I'm a 30 year homeowner and resident of Tebow Parkway in Ward 1 I'm here tonight to ask you to support the choice of a locally operated co-operative for the community and I've been following this issue closely and believe that the financial risks of keeping BT local are being overplayed in the press and by parties with economic interests in the outcome I know that the council I know that you want to make a good decision a good financial decision however I fear the government in general tends to get manipulated by business and by private citizens here in the US and dare I say worldwide we are in an era in which private corporate interests have enormous and ever increasing power over communities this is an opportunity for you to resist that trend and preserve the community ideals of our fair city and provide an example of what's possible in other municipalities in our nation I spent some time door knocking to you and I was surprised to find that 98% of the people I talked to support to keep BT local the people I talked to expressed wholehearted support for keeping BT local yes for the affordable cost in the high quality service but primarily to preserve local control over a basic utility thank you thank you David Lansky and then Paco de Francis I live in Burlington I'm a business person and I am part of the tech community Burlington business council chamber of commerce and the tech council do not speak for me as council right pointed out a couple weeks ago many vocal advocates may not speak for voters the count that the Burlington business council does not speak for me I strongly support keep BT local I'm a member of the board of keep BT local and I ask I'm really puzzled because as I read the BTab criteria I saw local control as the number one issue and I don't understand how two cows and ting can be can meet that criteria decisions about control who gets to sell my house my partner and I who gets to sell my car I do who gets to sell my business I do who gets if ting wins this bidding who gets to sell BT is it the board in Burlington or is it the board of two cows in Toronto or Michigan that's what control is about if there is any meaning at least I understood local control when I answered the question on the survey of what's important in the successor to owner of BT local control means local control and choosing who buys next and to my eyes the co-op meets that where bidders from outside outside the Burlington community can't meet that criteria which as I understand it is number one thank you thank you and then Keith I'm a board of five resident and a current Burlington telecom subscriber and it's definitely a great service a great asset to the city and it's really encouraging that the KBTL supporters recognize that and want to thank them for community for generations to come however I'm a strong supporter of the Ting proposal mainly because of the risks associated with going with KBTL bid for taxpayers like myself not to mention the missed opportunity cost that we have of recouping over six million dollars of that general fund transfer from the $17 million that is still low to Burlington taxpayers a lot has been said about their financing and first of all I do find that some aspects of the KBTL committee is making to have some trustworthiness issues there based on Thursday comments when they put in the final letter of intent that clearly indicated an 8% interest rate and the neighborhood of a junk bond not a lot of faith from any creditor is willing to give a stable business an 8% interest rate but then that on Sunday learned to be not the case that was not in paper so there's some big issues with the KBTL proposal you heard about the debt coverage ratio it's not sufficient EBITDA to service that debt that's because they're only taking out $10 million of debt on something that they themselves are saying should be evaluated at $50-60 million so there's a significant litigation and financial risk to taxpayers and I hope you consider that in your vote Thank you Keith Brunner and then Don some feedback here is Mr. Brunner here okay how about let's go on to Don Tramp please and then B. Bookchin I'm Don Tramp I live in Ward 1 but I want to address is what do we really know BT is very profitable and unlikely to fail in the foreseeable future Stephen Barrichaw and his management team are doing an excellent job running BT BT's hard times are behind them BT is on the verge of an enormous expansion within and outside of Burlington on that basis alone it is not a good time for the city to lose control of BT both Ting and KBTL's primary allegiance and financial responsibility is to their stockholders Ting stockholders are for the most part neither Vermonters nor BT subscribers KBTL stockholders would be mostly Burlingtonians from the start and Vermonters forever Ting fails some of the established criteria for the sale of BT we should have paid more attention when BTab released their sales criteria some criteria were watered down citizens were not asking for net neutrality for 3 years, 5 years, 10 years they were asking for it forever sure they wanted a local presence but really they want local ownership and control and that too forever so honestly with the sale of BT to Ting local control and ownership are immediately lost and net neutrality may only exist here for a few years KBTL meets all the established criteria some might be considered tight but KBTL meets them all the city itself will maintain some direct control as a member of the new co-op board co-op members are fiercely loyal and such loyalty is highly valued by telecom services other concerns are outside the immediate sale but resolvable these concerns are not part of the established criteria Burlington citizens will benefit from a sale to KBTL the city is the largest subscriber the most from stable and low cost services the most of any patrons refund will go to the city as the largest purchase of services the people of Burlington are counting on you to make the right decision thank you very much B. Bookchin and then Annie McKay take the money and then all the problems will be over in one minute accept five years from now we won't own the internet we won't own the infrastructure and we as a city because we don't own these things will be weaker the rates for consumers will go up the service will go down and that is a very very scientific prediction based on what corporations do thank you Annie McKay is it Mac and Annie, sorry about that whatever works for you and then J. F. Carter new visor you're not on my econ class are you no okay sorry sorry I'm on your good side that's fine my name is Annie Mac and Annie and I just have a few things to say this is not a decision that's based on emotion or sentimentality this is a decision that should be made to protect the people of Burlington privatization has led to decreased service and increased costs around the country and around the world selling this asset would take away the voice of Burlington it would make internet unaffordable and inaccessible you must represent the people who won't be able to afford the imminent price hikes who will lose their voices with the loss of net neutrality the people represented by local leadership and ownership protect the people of Burlington from corporate control and keep BT local thank you J. F. Carter new visor and then Robert back us thank you guys so much for allowing me the opportunity to speak I really do appreciate how much you have done I think this is a really difficult position everybody is in who is voting tonight but Burlington as well as the rest of the entire state of Vermont has had a long tradition of participatory government unfortunately in recent years we have seen that tradition weakened our elected officials should not only be responsive to public outcry in support of KVTL but should be fostering innovative ways to give the community a more formal say in the direction our city takes that's why we support the co-op bid despite the overwhelming public support when we tried to create Burlington's waterfront now center of community life we were sued by the railroad companies Bernie's administration way back in the 1980s fought big business all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court eventually winning that struggle the state of Vermont was sued by Monsanto when we passed a law requiring GMO labeling the state of Vermont is currently being sued by Comcast because they do not want to expand service or support public access stations whenever we have tried to make significant progress in the fight for economic equity big business and the political establishment have tried to have tried everything in their power to stifle our efforts while standing up for economic justice and local ownership isn't always an easy choice it's imperative that our elected representatives do so now thank you thank you Robert back as nice job folks thank you and then Brian Sheena good evening councillors Rob back is at Ward 6 between 2003 and August of this year I think I came to this City Council three times to talk on issues this is now my third time on this issue in only four weeks and I'm here because I believe passionately that keeping Burlington telecom local is important for the future of our city I am thinking not of five years down the road or ten years down the road because frankly when you look at a corporate bid that's about as far in the future as you can look I am thinking more like when I was raising children and I was looking at them and wondering what did I have to do as a parent to help them be successful happy adults a 30 year a 40 year perspective I know that there's a lot of guesswork in that but this City Council has talked in those terms with that kind of perspective on how do we maintain our city is a viable place for the long run the history of telecom in this country if we think about it 50 years ago those giants I believe they're all gone there's been a total turn over in shake up if we sell to Ting we completely lose the ability to control our future at all if we keep it local like like the Burlington co-op which has now been in our community I think somewhere around 40 years we are planning for the long run at the property owner and the businessman in this city in a business that employs ten people and pays them including myself fortunately I know that Burlington telecom is the choice that will support me in my work and that will also support me at home in everything I need to do at my home you know my mom is 97 now I think if I can follow her track I've got at least 30 years in me I want to know that 30 years from now this city will still be run by the city and not by outside interests thank you very much Brian Sheena and then Sarah White sorry I don't know why that's happening alright thank you I'd like to start by just expressing my appreciation to the city council and the mayor I know how hard it is and to the people who don't know me my name is Brian Sheena I'm a resident of Burlington I live in the old north end I have a business in Burlington I have a private practice and clinical social work I'm also a community organizer I've served on the school board and I'm currently a state representative I've been working on the seats literally and have to make difficult decisions under pressure and I appreciate you hearing us all tonight I hope that even if we disagree on this issue that we can keep working together on the things we have in common because there's a lot of work we need to do for the people together as elected official it is indeed our responsibility to manage the finances of government however we also have to make decisions that align with the vision of the people that we represent it's not just about how decisions will affect profit, it's about how our choices affect the people, and it's a tricky balance. I grew up in the New York City area and I've witnessed what happens when profits of the few trump the interests of the many. I've watched entire neighborhoods sold off to developers who take advantage of public benefits to gain private profits. I do not support the policy of selling off our public resources to the highest bidder. Although such transactions may reap some tempting immediate financial benefits, what are the long-term consequences of such policy? How does this connect with our vision? We have a responsibility to the people to consider the impact of our current decisions on both present and future generations. A locally-owned cooperative would provide many benefits for Burlington and both the present and future, and you've heard a lot of people say them so I'm going to skip this part right now and just say that please don't let big business interests and out-of-state banks intimidate you. We must stand up and defend what is ours. Burlington Telecom was created with public investment so it should be preserved in a way that most allows the public to retain ownership and local control. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah White and then Karen Long. Hi, my name is Sarah White and I have a question for the City Council. Y'all don't need to answer it. How many people did you guys have to email, call and text to come here and talk about Ting? Because there have been at least 10 or 15 people talking about Ting when there are only two or three talking about both Ting and Shor as a couple of weeks ago when you had your first vote. It's really confusing to me. We see you guys every day even if you don't see us. I've seen all of you on Church Street at least twice and I need you guys to know even if we don't want to watch you, we see you. We see everything that you do and you need to be concerned about our welfare. Thank you. Thank you. Karen Long and then Greg Epler Wood. Not sure what's going on. I think both works. Okay. I'm Karen Long. I feel that choosing Ting over KBTL would be another instance of favoring private interest over public interests. When I look back at what's happened over the last, I don't know, five years, our marina was privatized. There was a lot of discussion about selling memorial to UVM, turning it into a hockey ring. I was totally against that. I don't like that TAF school, which is in my ward, ward one, has been rented to UVM for the price of a two bedroom apartment and we've signed like a 90 year lease. So I mean they're getting a rockstar deal. We gave the marina developers a rockstar deal, a memorial. I don't know what that was going to be and I really don't like the idea that we would sell out this network that we have. I mean, of course Ting wants it, but we should keep it and my mother's 95, someone else spoke about their 97 year old mother. When you look back at things you gave up, it could be a real mistake and I look at the people that are up there that have been working for us and they've made the telecom work and it's earning, my understanding is $3 million a year. It's not going to fail and give it a chance. I mean if it does fail, can't we come back in three years or five years or whatever and somebody's going to sell, buy it for, you know, more. I think it costs $60 million to build. We've kind of looked into that. So it's a lot of money, nothing is enough. But really if we give it up, I think that's a big mistake. Thank you. Thank you. Greg Epler Wood and then if he's here, Keith Brunner. Good evening everyone, President Nodell. I wanted to continue my discussion of love that I was interrupted and didn't finish about a few weeks ago. A few people laughed about that, I did myself because it didn't really make a lot of sense because I wasn't able to finish. But I wanted to just point out one thing that I only heard one person talk about tonight and it's sort of like brand loyalty or loyalty to Burlington Telecom. If it were owned by the co-op, you know, I was early on a supporter. I was subscriber number five, I think, in Burlington Telecom. And when Richard Donnelly was marketing director and he set up booths here and there, he gave out little badges that said Burlington Telecom volunteer. So I wore that and I was helping out, you know, promote the system. The one thing that we will have with a co-op is a loyalty that is kind of like love. In other words, how many people will volunteer to promote a Ting-Tookhouse system? Just think of that. If we own it, let's say 7,000 households or subscribers. Households and businesses are subscribing. If 10% of those decided to become salespersons and say, you know, I'm going to promote because I own it and I would like to keep it going, that's a... I don't know how to quantify that in terms of dollars and cents. But it's something that is real, it's intangible but yet it's tangible. And so I think that's one thing that we need to keep in mind. That that is worth a lot of money. And like I said the last time I was here, these folks will have your backs in any kind of situation that might arise. Thanks. Thank you very much. Is Keith Brenner here? Okay, so that closes the public forum at 9.40 p.m. And our next piece of business is the Consent Agenda. Counselor Roof? I'll move the Consent Agenda taking the actions as indicated. Motion on the Consent Agenda, is there a second? Counselor Busher seconds it. Any discussion on the Consent Agenda? Seeing none, I'll in favor of that motion to adopt the Consent Agenda and to take the actions indicated. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Our Consent Agenda is adopted. 4.01 is our only piece of business and that is the selection of the buyer of Burlington Telecom. I'd like to acknowledge Counselor Paul at this time. Thank you President Nodell. Over the weekend in continuing the task as we all have done in performing our own due diligence on this issue, I have discovered and confirmed that I have a professional conflict of interest in the matter before us. I've tried to work through this issue as late as 4 p.m. this afternoon. Despite this, I find that I must recuse myself from this matter. After being actively engaged in the Burlington Telecom history for over 8 years and investing what is now hundreds of hours to be part of the solution from BT's darkest days, I would much prefer to vote on this issue. This is not the position that I would like to be in. In my 9 years on the council, I believe that I've recused myself 3 times at council meetings. I'm not able to speak directly to this conflict but I would like to state that my conflict has nothing whatsoever to do with the parties interested in purchasing Burlington Telecom. I respect each of you at this table and the understanding that many of you have given me. I wish you all the best as you deliberate on this very important decision. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Paul. So we have two potential buyers that are before us for consideration and I can open the floor to any discussion. I anticipate that at some point, you know, it's respected to vote tonight but we can have some discussion beforehand and Mayor, of course we want to hear from the mayor at some point if you'd like to hear from us but the floor is open for whoever wants to get it started. Okay, Councillor Hartnett. I might as well start because what I have to say is probably something you should all probably hear because based on new information that we heard tonight, not only with Councillor Paul's information about her stepping out now with a conflict of interest but also casting votes along the way to get here and now realizing there's a conflict of interest. I have a huge issue with that in this process and I'm not so sure legally where we stand with that. That at 11th hour we have a city councillor that steps up and says I can no longer participate because I have a conflict of interest but all along have cast votes to get us to this situation. I don't feel good about that. So I would like some legal advice there. I also was told really with no arm circumference terms that keep VT local is not viable and that if we select them tonight that you can say what you want with Bluewater said but Bluewater said that they would veto the agreement. City bank now has taken that threat of maybe suing to suing. I take that very serious as a city councillor and where this puts the city on the decisions that we have to make and I feel very uncomfortable tonight after what we've heard and we're casting a vote. I'm going to make a motion that we postpone action get legal advice where we really stand on this issue given the circumstances that we're under now and ask maybe I would recommend a council work session midweek and a revote Monday night. I don't feel good about making the decision tonight based on the new information that we have learned. So I would like to make that motion. Is there a second to the motion to postpone. Councillor Jang seconds that motion and the floor is open for discussion on the motion to postpone. Councilor Mason. Thank you President O'Dell. I'd like to first maybe Councilor Hartnett inquired of the city attorney about the legal impact of the recusal but we really didn't get your input so I'm hoping you can weigh in on whether the recusal of Councillor Paul should you know impacts our vote tonight or our ability to move forward. I'm not aware of any way that it would impact your vote tonight. She has recused herself and I don't believe it impacts any prior votes. So based upon that I would I will not be supporting the motion to postpone. We've got a room full of people that came here to listen to us debate and have us make a decision. We have one bidder that traveled 10 plus hours by car to be here. I'm not hearing any reason from the city attorney's office why we should not be able to vote tonight so I will be opposing the motion to postpone. Thank you. Councillor Shannon. Thank you. In some ways I don't think that we really have heard anything new tonight. We have gotten another letter from Citibank being more explicit than the previous letter that they will sue but they did pretty much say that before and we've had discussions about that for weeks. We have already postponed to get to this point. The blue water discussion, the blue water also hasn't said one way or another what they would do but we always suspected, we always knew that they had the ability to veto based on a first time operator. So that's not really news either. I mean it is, the letter that we got more recently is more explicit about what their thoughts are but it's something we always knew was there. KBTL supporters have said to me along the way that they've had some frustration with the extensions that we've done up to this point, that that makes it hard for them. And we have Ting who drove through this storm to get here and be here tonight. I don't think postponement is respectful to either the process or the people who have made an effort to come out tonight. I think that we have had ample time to gather information and it's time to make a decision one way or the other. Thanks. I have, Mayor, was your hand up or do you want to hold off or? Hold off. Okay. I had Councillor Jang and we'll come back to Councillor Hartnett on a second round. Thank you, President. On the last City Council meeting I did request for the Council and also the City to have both Ting back here to have an informative session with the community. Yes, the CEO came for three minutes or even maybe two minutes public forum. I don't think that's enough. We are going to make one of the biggest decisions for the City of Burlington. Yes, we were elected by our constituents, but in my own understanding we owe the community of Burlington more than that. Having an informative session where they can ask a direct question to Ting, ask a direct question to keep detail, I think it's very reasonable. Yes, we did also receive updated LOIs, but in those LOIs we have some questions, but we don't have the opportunity to ask them directly. I think that's one of the reasons why I would like us to postpone the first today and make sure that both entities will talk to the community directly. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Oh. I see no one else on the first round, so okay, Councillor Roof. I'm torn here. I came prepared to vote tonight. I came prepared. I did the work. I've talked with many of the people in this room, many, many more, like we all did. We all did that work. Each and every one of the people around this table did that work. While I hear Councillor Hartnett's concerns and I respect them at face value, I am torn between the respect I have for the request and the respect that I have for the folks in the room, the folks that are not in the room that are watching at home that I told them I came to a conclusion, a hard-earned conclusion. I'm not going to be able to support the motion to delay. I think there needs to be a vote tonight. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor, back to Councillor Hartnett. I'm looking. It's okay. No, it's okay. If anyone wants to speak. No, you're up. Okay. We'll all do respect for the people that are in the room tonight and for the people that drove eight hours. I appreciate that. I think you all know that, but at the end of the day, you're not sitting where I'm sitting. And to make an informed decision on this and to be put in legal jeopardy and quite honestly have been threatened to be sued personally through this whole process, okay? And then again tonight, to hear the news that possibly there's a city councillor sat through this whole process casting votes that had a conflict of interest. Her votes might have had influence on all of us through this process. I'm not sure if other councillors feel the same way or not, but I'm not comfortable voting tonight. And whether we postpone or not, I'm not casting a vote tonight. I will not cast a vote tonight. Councillor Buscher, who has not spoken yet. Thank you. I came tonight also ready to vote. And then we had our executive session before this meeting began and we learned a couple of things that Councillor Hartnett has touched upon. I don't feel ready to vote tonight because I feel that the process that brought us to tonight has been flawed and it's been flawed for some time. It was a difficult process to begin with, but we started out with eight potential buyers. We narrowed that down to four. And then we were to embark on reducing that to two. But before we even had a chance to do that, one of them was eliminated and not in a way that I thought was appropriate and still don't. I feel that this other wrinkle in our process now with the Councillor who has identified a conflict of interest is another flaw in the process that I need to digest. If we move forward tonight, I really don't want to vote either tonight. But I was hesitant to second the motion only because I have a health issue and won't be here on Wednesday night or Thursday. So that timeline doesn't work for me. However, it's a really important decision and I don't want to suggest to any one of you from Ward 1 or from the city that I won't cast my vote. I'll call in or something, but I will be there representing you. So because of all of these flaws in the process, a process that didn't have to have those flaws, I believe, I'm not ready to vote. I need more time. And if indeed it was up to me for all of you to know this, I would go back to having the four proposals before us and go from there to restart it. And I don't care who's going to call foul or say the timeline doesn't work. That's where I would be because that's where the integrity of it broke down for me. And if anything, we should have integrity in this process. And that has been eliminated quite a while ago. Thank you. I think I have council right now who has not spoken on first round, but I've got you queued up, Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President O'Dell. I'm also struggling with figuring out how to vote on this because like everybody else has said, I planned on coming here to vote tonight. We had some wrinkles in the process with a recusal that certainly has thrown a wrinkle into the process, as I said, but the bottom line is we are where we are and we are going to have to vote with 11 Councillors whether we are happy about that or not. That's the way it is. In terms of the legal questions, I do agree with what Councillor Shannon said in that sense that the information that we got tonight is not really different from what we'd already heard. We'd already heard that the language was used, that it was a virtual certainty that we would have a lawsuit from City and they made that virtual certainty, absolute certainty. And we had heard the concerns from Bluewater as well. They said that they were not going to insert themselves into the process. They simply stated what we already knew that they could object depending on what we do. So I'm trying to figure out where we really get by a delay. I think we need to move forward in one way or another whether we're deadlocked and we move into some other solution or whatever it may be. I'm trying to figure out, and I haven't figured out yet, I do understand Councillor Hartnett's frustration and I do understand Councillor Bush's frustration with the process. I fail equally as frustrated with the process over the last several weeks and even more recently. However, I'm not sure that a delay is going to solve any of that and I'm not sure that it's going to solve these other questions either. So I'm still trying to figure that out. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I have Councillor Shannon. Thank you. Thank you. I want to speak a little bit to what Councillor Hartnett had mentioned, his discomfort with the recusal process and just because the public may not know that these things do come up for councillors and we've had to, many of us have had to recuse ourselves and I know for myself that I had been voting on the Moran project and at a point someone raised an issue with a conflict of interest which we looked into and then I stopped voting on the Moran process for a period of time. And so those things unfortunately happen. I'm particularly disappointed because I believe that Councillor Paul was going to vote the same way that I planned to vote in this process. So I was not happy but I completely respect the fact that an issue simply came up and that's all that it is. There's not something nefarious going on here. To Councillor Busher's point and frustration about who the finalists are, I know that some people would like to bring companies into this process who are not in this process now because people did not vote for them when we had the opportunity to vote for them and one was taken off the table due to a conflict of interest. When the conflict of interest was raised they withdrew and we went through a process of trying to bring them back which I know President Odell diligently tried to bring them back but they're not here and I think we have to deal with the reality that our choices are the ones that we picked two weeks ago and the idea that we might postpone in order to bring companies back that we did not choose through this process that we all agreed to. I don't think it's really fair to either KBTL or Ting. I'll leave it at that, thank you. Mayor, are you seeking? I am seeking President Odell, thank you. I believe the council has a fundamental responsibility and that is to vote and it is time to vote. A long series of decisions have brought us till now, we owe it to the people in the room and the thousands more who are following this closely out there to make a decision. It is time for a decision, it should be a decision that we are excited to make frankly. We have a chance tonight to end a long, long journey that has been very straining and very problematic and we have a chance tonight on October 30th, 2017 to achieve some very important things for the people of Burlington, first and foremost assuring very high speed affordable internet access with great customer service for Burlington, Tonians for the foreseeable future. We have a chance to bring to an end for good nearly a decade of turmoil and challenges related to BT, we have a chance for clarity for the BT employees who very much need clarity, it is not fair to them either to suspend and continue to delay action. And we have a chance, sitting here in the room, the chance finally to reclaim $6 million of the lost taxpayer resources that we pledged to try to get back, we've got a chance for action here tonight to upgrade our credit rating. It's time to vote and see if we have the political will to do that, to make good on the agreement that we fought for, that I fought for and I'll say it again, the only reason we're having this conversation tonight when it was, when BT had been run into the ground when it was on the verge of being put into receivership or maybe even worse, the fiber ripped out of the ground, the reason we're having this debate is because we together and I personally fought extremely hard to get us the right to direct the future of this asset. An asset we never really owned, we certainly never, we never paid for fully, we fought for the right to do this process and it's time to see if we have the political will to bring it to a conclusion. That's what this is about here is, is the council have the will to make a decision, a tough decision. It is a strange thing is happening if people are watching here is that the supporters for Ting are sitting here ready to vote and eager to vote and the people who have voted to bring this KBTL supporters are not willing and what is going on, it is time for a vote. Okay. Any other first round? Okay. Councilor Tracy, then I've got you queued up, sir, both serves. So I certainly, you know, understand a lot of the sentiments surrounding the table and I'm just, you know, having been very upset at certain points in this process, certainly understand the feeling that the process was not as strong as it needed to be and at times really deviated from what we had previously announced and that's incredibly unfortunate. I, however, do not feel that delaying at this particular time will answer any of the questions. I think that Citibank's threat will remain Citibank's threat. I think that blue, our understanding of blue waters deal will stay the same. Well, I think that, you know, that the different offers may continue to change. I don't know how that necessarily continues to help us in this particular decision-making process I felt like today. It was incredibly difficult to keep everything straight because we had constantly flurrying offers and I think that we could only expect for that uncertainty to continue in the coming week. So I'm fully confident behind the vote that I'm going to make tonight, a vote for KBTL, I feel fully confident in their abilities to make a strong investment in Burlington and I'm perfectly ready and willing to make that vote. So I will not be supporting postponement. I saw, are you, I have Councillor, I'm sorry, Councillor Mason, go ahead. Thank you, President O'Dell. I'm sorry, I'm hearing some concern on legal issues. I would say, you know, to those who are advocating in favor of postponement to address legal issues to remind us that we do have the opportunity to go into executive session and address any legal issues. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Councillor Jang. And then Hartnett. Yep, and as I said earlier, I mean, this is going to be a huge, big decision for us, for our future. And we are, it is our obligation to do our due diligence. What happened earlier is we made sure what we were asked is if we wanted to go visit two cows. Two cows, yes, can be the mother of Ting. Why would I go see in Maryland, Virginia how Ting is operating there? I also want this council to take the time and go talk to the BT employees. I met with them and none of us, nobody here is going, you are ready to make decisions and no one took the time to sit down with them and ask them what they think. And I would like that to happen. And why I would like all of us, I'm just asking for us to delay to make sure we do our due diligence going, visiting the right places, where Ting operates and also taking the time to talk to the employees that have been running this company for years. Thank you, Councillor. I have Councillor Hartnett. I would, we have the motion on the floor. We have to act on that motion. Yes, we do. Before we try to go into the executive session, right? Yep. Okay. Let's do that. I'll save my, and then we'll vote. Okay. Seeing no other Councillor, are we ready to vote on the motion to postpone? Voice vote? Hand vote? Okay. All in favour of the motion to postpone, please raise your hands. All opposed to the motion to postpone, please raise your hands. Council President usually doesn't participate in the debate. I just want to say, I know I should have said this before the vote, but I do, I do think that the council has been under a tremendous amount of stress. And I do worry about us making important decisions under a lot of stress. And I just would like us all to be very aware of that. And the stress has come from many, many sources. And I think many people in the room understand what I'm talking about. So the floor is now back open for discussion on the sale. Councillor Shannon. Thank you. I've been noted that there are a lot of Burlington telecom employees in the room. And I wondered if the council president would see a fit to invite any of them to speak to us if they wish to share their thoughts with us. And I appreciate if they're not comfortable doing so. But I did at least want to, because they are here tonight, want, hope we can make that offer. I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but we appreciate your being here. If you would like to come and speak to the council now or a little bit later in our discussions, you would be most welcome to do that, do so. So yes. And I would also like to say that through Stephen Barakoff, I did put out a request to hear from the employees through email or by coming here tonight. Oh, Lee. Okay. The floor is open for discussion on the decision before us. Councillor Busher. So if we are going to move forward, I would like to ask a couple of questions about the two cows, letter of intent. If somebody is willing to answer those, I don't know if Elliot is. Do we have Mr. Madsen here? Okay. So we, I just want to make sure that they're on both sides that we can ask questions of the principles. Right. So. Good evening. Thank you for being here. So I read this with interest and I do want to disclose that two cows reached out to, I believe, all of the city councilors. And some went to Toronto. I went to Mirabelle's for breakfast and met with them. So that was my journey. But I very much appreciated the offer and I took them up on it as one of the two finalists. And so as a result of our meeting, I read with interest your final letter of intent and wanted a little bit of clarity with some of the phraseology if you're willing to address that. So under BT staff retention, we believe BT is a solid operational, leaving no reason to make drastic organizational changes. Can you define drastic for me? Sure. I think the best way that I can answer that, and thank you for this opportunity. Could you pull the mic up a little bit? Sure. Thanks. Better? Yeah. Thank you. I think the best way that I can answer that is to start with what I started my talk with the staff with. I should say that I got the chance to myself and a couple of our other folks got the chance to meet with BT staff. You know, we've been in this business. I've been in this business, the ISP business, my whole professional life. That is a great group of people. And we were quite taken with both their passion for the business and with their fit with our culture. And you know, I think that we were very, very pleased about that. The very first thing I said to them, and I've had to address, you know, situations like this before, is the first thing I want to say to you is you all have a job. So I want to be, you know, whatever I might say to you here tonight, I promise you that what I said to them when I was looking in their eyes is the more important statement. Okay. Thank you for that. I just wanted to understand the word drastic. I'd be happy to answer her question as well. You can, but I'd like you to answer mine also, thank you. So then there's another, I have two other questions. Another one has to do with purchasing services from BT. You agree to maintain all core BT internet and VOIP pricing for 30 months, and it goes on. It says, some of the current packages may be streamlined. So does that mean, and I'm going to paraphrase this, or I'm going to say this is what I, this is my concern or caution. You could be offering less in a package for the same price. That would be absolutely incorrect. What we mean is something very simple here. The vast majority of BT subscribers are in three or maybe four packages, yet there's about 35 or 40 packages that are offered. We've learned in our years in telecom that simplicity is very important. It allows customers to make decisions more easily, and it allows us to support the business and provide a higher level of support. So what we're talking about there is taking some of the things that are in the long tail of packages, and I apologize to anybody with the gamers package, for instance, right now, where there's an example of very few subscribers and a particular promotion that was done for some short period of time. So the vast majority, and I'm talking north of 90% of the customers packages won't be touched. And if we're ever in a situation, Councillor Busher, where we're moving something a little to the right or a little to the left, we will do that in almost every case in the customer's favor. If they're moving from something that was a little bit less, or a little bit more in terms of the offering, or a little bit less, or a little bit more in terms of money, we're going to make that correction in the customer's favor. That's our history. You don't have to take my word for it. You can go and do your digging on us with our customers. Thank you, and the last thing is something that I really was looking for. So when I met, I was, I had given some feedback to them about why, where they were in my pecking order of who was first, second, third, et cetera, and the three remaining offers, and then gave some insight as to why they were where they were. And one of the things had to do with the minority interest, and I was looking for, I'm not certain that the city would be able to afford a larger minority interest, but I was looking for something more significant than what I had read. And I have to say that I read this and I was, I wasn't satisfied with the statement at all actually. And I would just like you to just expand for a minute on what minority interest, what, what the, what the maximum minority interest could be, and what, when that window of opportunity may close for the city to take advantage of that minority interest. Sure. So I think there's two parts there. You know, when the window may close, I think at a practical level that would probably have to be closing, which would be, you know, if we were fortunate enough to be successful, that would be when the PUC did that. I would note we'd probably jointly want to come to some sort of agreement like that maybe a month or six weeks before that, so we could work through the details of what that minority stake would look like and, you know, what the various sort of puts and takes were around it. You know, as, as I said to you when we were at breakfast, we would really enjoy the city as a partner. We think that that kind of relationship would be novel today in the fiber world in the U.S. And we think that it would be a great opportunity for Burlington to set a standard or an approach that the rest of the country could follow. So your, your first question was around the amount of it. You know, I'm not really married to any number. You know, we had kind of gone into it thinking of, of, you know, sort of the equity stake because we didn't think that the city would want to go into their pockets for money. That would kind of get to 25 percent. Then we found out that there was the blue water debt that had to be repaid. That took that to, I think, 19 or 20 percent. We'd be comfortable at a higher number. I mean, if you wanted to suggest, you know, I think north of 30, we'd probably have to talk about it and I'd want to understand why, but we would be, you know, we'd be open to discussing that. But, you know, I'm not married to anything. We're not married to anything in that regard. And if you made me choose between the city participating or not, I think I would choose participating because I think it has the chance to make a greater mark on the rest of the country. Okay. Thank you very much for answering these questions. I appreciate it. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Moore's up. Thank you. I have a question for Alan Mattson. And, um... Okay. You came down. Thank you. Thanks for being here, both of you. We appreciate it. Yes. Thank you very much. Wait, can we do that again and get a picture? Yeah. Yeah. How about if I would like to announce our partnership right now? We want that picture. We've got it from both sides. Okay. So, I was really excited last week when I saw the new LOI with interest rate that came down. Yes. And then we found out yesterday over the weekend that it actually hadn't come down. I'm wondering if you could speak to that. Yeah. Through this entire process, there have been a huge number of things that we have been working on and there's still, you know, this process does not end tonight. It really would begin tonight for either one of us. Things that are going on that we can't talk about publicly and the reason we can't talk about publicly because they're not certain. And we've worked extremely closely with Main Fiber for, you know, a stretch of months now that we've gotten to places we've had significant discussions about what they can do, what we can do. And prior to putting in the final offer last Wednesday, we had had a significant discussion of a structure that was going to be 8% fixed with, we were going to have significant, you know, they could make significantly more with an expected, probably return of 14%, but the balance was going to be based on the projected value of the company, not just the projected, but the actual value of the company in the future. And that was an understanding we had and it was what we put into our LOI. When we came and actually put that down into paper so that we could put it, you know, in a binding document between the two of us, I think we ended up at a place where we felt as if it didn't really reflect that. It really reflected nothing different from what we had in almost all scenarios. And our approach has always been that we want to be straightforward with what we're doing, we want to make it as understandable, as straightforward as possible. And in the end, we said, this really is not, in almost any scenario, different from what we already have. We should stay with what we have, we cannot improve. And we understood that, you know, we understood that we had been too optimistic on that, but the appropriate thing for us to do was to say, this is the offer we have, this other is not materially different. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Counselor Roof, oh, sorry, I have Tracy, then Roof, then Dean. So two questions for Ting. First, can you please speak to the comments that you made regarding selling your company and how you would ensure the public criteria that we established in this process and that are so important to Burlingtonians in the event of a sale? And then also, can you speak to your commitment to the wonderful public access television that we have in the city of Burlington, see them right here doing great work making this particular evening accessible to folks? That's great. Thanks. Thank you for asking me that first question. You know, I thought that my words were what mischaracterized, I think I would say, as they were repeated. What I was saying very clearly was, you know, the nature of our company is such that it's all about the people in the culture. And anybody who wanted to buy our company would be doing so, they would first of all have to pay a significant premium, you know, much above what typical other just, you know, sort of your run-of-the-mill company would take, because we have such a dedication to purpose and such a history of operating. We are not in this to sell. People ask me all the time, you know, what's your exit? What's your plan? We don't have one. We've been operating this for over 20 years and we intend to be operating it for decades to come. So what I was saying very precisely was if anybody was going to buy us, it would because they recognized that the way that we operated was the way telecom should be operated, not the way it is operated. You know, we believe that what we're doing is really being the first company to bring internet sensibilities to telecom. And if somebody, if a big company, you know, trying to imagine this today, you know, we have the most satisfied customers in the world in mobile phone service today. Our internet customers are happier than our phone customers. You heard from supporters of both sides who actually, you know, are pretty satisfied customers of ours, you know. And if somebody, if a big company were to buy us and put us in charge and say, you know, what you guys do is the way this should be done, that would be to everyone's benefit. Because then what you would have is us taking what we do, which is putting customers and employees first and having that spread more broadly. And that's a good thing. And you know, Councillor Tracy, you've spoken a couple times about fiduciary obligation. You know, we've been very clear publicly, you know, this is a public proceeding. This is going out to the world. Anything I say here, I promise you. I have investors sitting at home right now watching. I will say here what I say to them, which is that we think that if we make our obligation, our employees' happiness and satisfaction and our customers' happiness and satisfaction, that investors benefit. But not by putting them first, but by putting employees and customers first. The people who invest in our company understand that. Second question about CCTV, if you want to. But I'd like you to answer my first question, which was how do you, how in the event of a sale would you be able to make sure that the public criteria are maintained? That was my question. What you asked me was what my words were, all that other stuff. So that's your philosophy and that's fine. But I'm asking about the public criteria. Anybody who would buy us would be bound by the terms of our agreement and relationship with you guys. Full stop. Onto CCTV, we had a nice conversation about that earlier today. We are, not only do we support what CCTV does generally. I'm thrilled with the way that it is here in Burlington. I was describing it as, this is my new binge watching because I've watched hours and hours now of this CCTV channel. We're in a number of other markets today. And we have to negotiate video agreements with city staff. We've had now multiple occasions, three that come to mind right away, where what we see the incumbent lawyers doing is negotiating down the number of CCTV channels that they want to provide in their renewal agreements. We go to those cities and we say, how many do you want? We're happy to provide you with more. How can we help that at a facilities level? We think it's a great opportunity for people to connect with the community and speak directly. So it's something we support and we would expect to expand on whatever existing Burlington telecom is doing. Thank you. OK. Councilor Roof and we can also just do debate. So the open format here. You're on. Thank you, President Nodell. In coming into tonight's meeting, if I were to have guessed that I would not have ever guessed that this was that both of these gentlemen would be at literally at the same table chit-chatting and not listening to me. Gentlemen. And Mr. Matson, if Mr. Mr. Matson, could you stay at the tailpiece? OK, I guess I was trying to sneak away, man. No, I'll sneak in away. I want to take this opportunity and I do have remarks planned. But I think this was unplanned. And so I'm going to go off my script for just a moment. First, to Mr. Matson, we talked today on the phone. I called you a little after 4 p.m. To inform you, you know, from from me to you that I would be supporting the Ting offer and we had a really positive conversation. And I just want to say thank you for the work that you've done. We've got I've got to see it. We've all got to see it. Not just in the bid, not just in the details, but throughout the community. I have a lot of respect for you. I just wanted to be clear with that. Mr. Noss, when I visited with with your with your organization in Toronto, I want to be clear, you did not impress me. But stick with me. That's not an insult. You were very hospitable, hospitable, your staff, very professional. You articulated your thoughts and ideas very well for most of the time. Tonight, sir, you did impress me. Not with what you've said, but I something I witnessed you do while public comment was going on. There was a customer that came up and talked about how their their bill what they want to happen with their billing. And I think when no one was watching, you snuck around and talk to her for a moment, and I think you gave her your phone number. I'm not sure if that happened, but I think I think it did. And I do have a question about about that philosophy in a moment. But I just wanted to say that was impressive. And that is what I took away from my visit to Toronto. Were those intangibles sneaking away when no one was looking and talking to the customer service rep or talking to one of the engineers to see what they thought about working for the organization? I do think I left that meeting that that day on the 27th, having a good understanding of the type of person, the type of people that work for your organization. We also in I provided the council and the public with a write up from the major some major points from the Q&A discussion, which I'm not going to go through point by point given the hour. But I do want to ask you to talk about one thing that we talked about that some of us talked about in Toronto, which was your experience and your staff's experience in meeting with the current Bronx and telecom employees. Could you give an account or a characterization from your perspective of of how that went and what it means to you to be employing folks that right now work for the city of Brooklyn? You know, I so I I I mentioned earlier how impressed I was with them. I talked about what I said to them. I talked about how there was an immediate culture fit. I they're here and I really I'm a bit hesitant to try and put words in their mouth. So I'm going to I'm going to make these statements. Not these are these are my statements. So I want to get your characterization of your experience. You know, I felt like they are the people who are, you know, kind of in the middle of this tug of war. You know, we talked for a long time. There was a two plus hour question and answer session. I think that we and there was four of us there categorically came away believing that not only, you know, were they just the kind of employees that we wanted to join us and to work with us. Not only were they a great culture fit, but that the things that we felt like we could bring to them to help them do their jobs better were exactly the kind of things that they were looking for. And these were simply, you know, these were more technical than anything else. They were they were technologies and practices that applied to the customer service function, the billing function, the building and mapping of five or the outside plant function. And, you know, we, you know, we were speaking with fellow travelers and, you know, we felt like they were excited by what we could bring to them. And I think the best way to think about that is in all of our jobs, we have an element or a portion, some portions of the of that work that is a bit dreary and repetitive. You know, when you when you are able to bring efficiencies to that work and you take out those things that stand in the way of doing what you love to do, you know, that's helping people, that's building and connecting, you know, the fiber plant up to more places. You know, I think that that that your work just becomes more enjoyable. And so, I mean, again, I'll just speak from our perspective, you know, which was that we really came away from that feeling like there was just a, you know, a beautiful match there. Thank you. Oh, you're moving off now? Okay. Counselor Dean. First, I'd like to express my thanks to Mr. Noss for a very informative and insightful visit to his two cows headquarters in Toronto. I thought the day was very informative about the company and they and Mr. Noss and his team dealt with some very difficult questions that I think really helped me understand your philosophy toward this business and toward the people that work with you. I also would like to say thanks, you thank Mr. Massen for meeting with us over the weekend and, you know, sharing his thoughts with us about his his bid and the KBTL bid for the company. But I have a specific question for you, Mr. Massen, one of the things that was particular concern to me and expressed to you in the last meeting was a very minimal amount of working capital available to KBTL and I noted positively in materials that were provided to us that you believe that you have secured a guaranteed line of credit for working capital. I think of three months that is secured by from a local financial institution and is guaranteed by a third party deposit from another investor. Yeah. Can you, as far as I know, can you say who those parties are and are there any agreements that you have written that you can share with us that provide us assurance that you really do have that? Probably not because the third party investor has said that, you know, only in the case of us being selected, you know, does the money get committed and will the third party commit to that? They are not investing in us directly. They've been very clear about that, but they would do that to help with the working capital. They see it as a much less risky and a different sort of investment in the, you know, they're not looking to put direct equity and they're not looking to put direct loan in, but they would do that. And unfortunately, I can't do any more than that for you. As I think I stated before, there have been a lot of things that we haven't talked about that we work on. And this is one where I will talk about it because, you know, unfortunately I can't give you paper, but I'm not going to fall down on that. We aren't falling down on that. I'll set, Councillor Dean, I need a motion. We need a motion to suspend the rules, um, to keep working, which requires a two thirds vote. Um, we have also a local control commission meeting to do. So possibly a motion to suspend the rules to finish this item, um, and to do the local control commission meeting. Counselor Shannon, um, I make that motion. Thank you. Second from Councilor Roof. I'll in favor of that motion. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Okay. So we can keep working. Um, so any more questions for either Mr. Madsen or, or, or Mr. Noss and let's do, finish that up and then we can get to council debate. Um, I'm going to go with Shannon and then Jane. Thank you, President Nodell. Mr. Noss, um, we did have the pleasure of spending some time together in Toronto on Friday. And I, um, noted that tonight you, you said that, um, whatever you say is on the record here and your investors are watching. So I want to make sure we get you on the record here. Though Katie Jickling was in the room when you said everything in Toronto. Um, but some of the things that we talked about, um, there was a concern, I'm going to go through a list here and then let you respond. Um, there was a concern that you would shed the video and telephone service. Uh, and, and I'd like you to speak to that. Um, we talked about the lifeline program and you brought up some, um, ideas about how to better serve the low income community with one gig service. Um, and like, yeah, on the record there, these are some things that are not actually in the LOI, um, and the employee benefits, um, today 50% of the employees, my understanding is 50% of the employees get retirement benefits. And, um, you, you told us that, uh, you expect that 100% of the employee would be getting retirement benefits under Ting and that's it. Thank you. So I'll, I'll deal with the last one first. What we were, what we were talking about in Toronto, wasn't a retirement benefits, it was short term disability and long term disability, if I believe, or that some significant portion of the existing BT employees weren't covered under the same benefit plan that included what I remember was short term and long term disability. And, uh, what we assured you then, and, uh, you know, Jess Johansson, who runs, uh, human resources for us, uh, you know, was the one who spoke to it was that, you know, because she was the one who had the familiarity and had done the digging on the, uh, existing employees that now, uh, all of the employees would be covered by that where some portion of them were not before. So that was that third point, um, on the, uh, the first point. So, you know, we've been working on a, uh, video service internally, uh, for the last 18 months. We've in fact, to some degree delayed the launch of that service, uh, because of this process, you know, we would, we had a plan to, uh, we'll have a head end in the east of the Mississippi and west of the Mississippi. And it made sense that if we were going to be successful here, that we would want to wait, there is already a head end here and we could naturally make that, uh, video, uh, kind of hub for the eastern part of the country. Um, we are not planning, uh, you know, as, as some have, uh, to get rid of video. We think that, that, um, existing video. So when I say that, I mean, traditional cable TV service, um, is, um, uh, something that's going to still be around for 10, 15, 20 years despite cord cutting, you know, we all know people who, who love watching traditional cable TV and we view, uh, uh, cable TV as, uh, being something that just improves the take rate of the fiber. We view, uh, fiber and internet access as strategic and we view video as something tactical that supports that. So we would be loath to get rid of that with telephone, um, in our, and now I'm talking about landline VoIP service, um, in our other markets, we have not had our customers asking for it. We would certainly continue to support it here here as, uh, as, as in other markets that we've looked at, um, you know, there's, it's provided by a third party. We would intend to maintain that. Uh, here you have a nice large install base around that service. We would in no way shape or form want to get rid of it. And, you know, I think that, that, that most importantly, you know, the, the, the, we're not, uh, fussed by having, uh, uh, differences, market to market that we're in. We're only in five markets now. This would be, if we were lucky enough, this would be the sixth, assuming we don't launch any others between now and then. And finally with lifeline, um, you know, lifeline, the existing lifeline program, particularly around fixed internet as access is abysmal. What we have is incumbents continually lobbying to reduce what lifeline is. I think that successfully after a brief period where lifeline was going to be raised to 25 megabits down and three megabits up, the incumbents have successfully lobbied to have that cut down to 10 megabits down and one megabit up. That's not sufficient today in our view to be competitive. We think that we should explore different options. What we talked about in Toronto is something that's been a project of mine that I've spoken with a couple of the cities that we're in, we're in discussion around and we hope to have a trial in one of our markets a little later this year where what we do is we work with the city and local foundations with us being a significant contributor to this. And instead of providing a lesser service for some small amount of money, we should provide a gigabit symmetrical for 1999. So I'm, you know, this is an active vibrant community. You won't find a city that's more interested in public interest than Burlington. I think that's proven with a night like tonight. And we think that it's, again, a great place to model something that can be modeled for the rest of the country. So, I mean, if there was more or more detail that we went into, but I think that the most important elements there are actually, you know, rather than taking, you know, digital divide and focusing on how little we can give, we should be looking at doing this in a way that really creates opportunities on a fair basis and on an equal footing. Thank you. My apologies. I thought you had said that BT employees would be covered by your 401k. Oh yeah. Sorry, that's right. There is a 401k match program that we have. They would be covered by that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Councilor Jang. Thank you. I have two questions and one for each, but I would also want to start before that to say thank you for everyone for coming out and for the best behavior ever. This is wonderful. My first question will go to Mr. Alan. And I mean, I would like you to please talk about the vision you have for Burlington Telecom, not buying it and making it into a co-op with the vision you see for Burlington in the next 30, 40, 50 years and also to talk about your plans in moving the equipment because it was not on the LOIs, moving the equipment in terms of timeline from the Memorial auditorium. Two questions. Yeah. So let me start with the second question first. Within the information that we get when we're evaluating a purchase like this within the data room, there is a fairly well spelled out need to move the equipment that is currently in Memorial auditorium in large part because the status of Memorial auditorium is up in the air as you all know. And it's approximately a million dollar project by what we have seen in the documentation. The view would be that that could be done in our discussions over a two-year period. So while it doesn't say that it's in the LOI, there is $500,000 in each of the first two years in our forward-looking pro-forma financials to facilitate that move. I think that that's a move that I think everybody probably understands who put offers in and would probably be looking at do it in a somewhat similar fashion. I think there's also some uncertainty about whether or not that needs to happen, but if Memorial auditorium is going away, everybody will need to do it. We expect that we will need to do it. But on the other hand, there's always possibility that it doesn't happen, but more than likely it will. You know, as far as the vision and you talk out 30 years, I think that there's an aspect of the internet pipeline that is truly becoming much more of utility than, you know, perhaps even electricity. It is a way we all connect with the world. And I think in the, you know, ideas of, you know, utility, you want it to be something that is provided for everyone within your community. It's available to everyone within your community. And the excitement and the services that it can provide likewise. And this is not just for residences, but it's also for businesses. And so a group that is leading this utility needs to make sure that it is doing the kinds of things that the community is asking for out of this. And, you know, the analogy, as someone pointed out between Burlington Electric and Burlington Telecom is not perfect, but if you think about what we're able to do with Burlington Electric as we own it, we are able to go out and have entirely renewable resources providing the electricity for Burlington Electric. We've been able to work on many efficiency projects with Burlington Electric. Many things that have been good for the community, maybe not exactly what a traditional regulated utility would do, but those are the kinds of things that over the long run as the internet remains and becomes, you know, even more important that we would be able to build the services off the internet. I think there's a lot of standard thinking along the lines of what's going to happen with all the different internet appliances within our homes and how, you know, pretty much every home at some point being offered gigabit services will allow for there to be all different sorts of controls and behaviors with the living spaces that we have, but I think even more importantly, we'll have a local network that connects us all and I think what comes out of a network that connects us all can be services between businesses and among businesses, between people and among people, and as well as I think there's gonna be significant opportunity in creating content because the content is what is gonna flow over this and I think there is going to be, while video will remain a part of the package and it draws customers in, it is something where we really pass through the costs really of the commodity and I think we're seeing that the revenue going to our content creators, like people providing the video streams this evening, there's gonna need to be a change in that model and I think that's something that our group has talked about that we need to get in front of and that change is gonna go from a regulated area of our business which is cable into an unregulated area of our business such as the internet and so I think that we need to be looking as the markets change and how these other pieces change, what else can we provide for the community and the cooperative world basically asks three questions. It asks to whom, for what price, to what end and I think that all of that being based on the community, we wanna make sure that we're providing the highest level of services at the prices that make sense for the community and to what end is really to build both the residential as well as the business community and make Burlington thrive. Thank you. Thank you for coming to Burlington and quick question for you is what are your policies around hosting white supremacist website or neo-Nazi website? What are your policies you have around? Thank you for asking me that question because I've heard you speak on this issue a few times. So you used a very particular word there and I think that's important, you said hosting. We don't host any white supremacist websites. We have a domain registration platform. Domain registration is core internet infrastructure. One of the ironies of this whole debate as it's existed in the context of Burlington Telecom is that we've been both accused of promoting or supporting white supremacists and of being somebody who would be a threat to net neutrality. The fact that we keep our domain registration platform neutral is us demonstrating in the midst of a very public business process how much we support what we do. Now I wanna not just talk about the fact that we support net neutrality and I should note I have been a public active supporter of open internet causes for the duration of my 20 years in the internet, greater than 20 years. We, the company, me as an individual, have signed numerous letters that have been submitted on behalf of tech groups supporting net neutrality organized by people like the ACLU or the EFF. In the middle of this process we stuck to our guns. Despite what people said about us, despite what people accused us of, despite the multiple articles that were written in the local press about this, we stuck to our guns and I want you to understand why. Because what happens, this is net neutrality now, not free speech, we can talk, we can have a separate discussion about free speech. What happens when controls are placed on core infrastructure like domain registration is it is invariably used against people who are protesting political causes, against dissident groups, and against the very people that I think you and I would share great concern for. You know, we have the second largest domain registration platform in the world, over 30 million names. We're under attack, literally, cyber attack every day. Very often we'll be spending tens and hundreds of man-hours to keep a site that belongs to a protest group in a country that has a dictatorship because they're paying people to take that site down. I personally have been involved in the ICANN process, which is the regulator of domain names, since there's been an ICANN process, since the late 90s. On one side tends to be governments, law enforcement, intellectual property interests, and on the other side tends to be non-commercial interests and myself along with some other registrars. Our record is long and public on this. I understand that for most people, and I totally appreciate this. You know, if I take a step back, we've been in the domain registration business since there's been one. My mother still doesn't understand what I do. My partner still doesn't understand what I do. Most of my friends still don't understand what I do. People do see it as hosting. We have had numerous inbound around all of these issues from people who want us to take that down. What we do is we help them get in touch with the hosting company, and we help them get in touch with the resellers who are the proper parties for those protests. I think that, again, our record around net neutrality is long and clear. And our record around supporting public interest causes not supporting white supremacists is also long and clear. Thanks for giving me a chance to straighten that out. Any other questions for either Mr. Matson or Mr. Noss? Thank you very much for being available for questions. I have councilor Wright, I believe now. Thank you, President O'Dell. I did have a question for Mayor Weinberger, but he has momentarily disappeared. He's back. We presumably may be facing a vote here at some point tonight, and I expect it could go one vote one way or the other. So I'm going to ask a question, and I totally respect if the mayor chooses not to answer this. And then I have a question for the city attorney. If a vote passes KBTL through to your desk, Mr. Mayor, would you sign that or veto that? Councilor Wright, I appreciate the question. I think I've made my concerns and my appreciation for KBTL's efforts and leadership in many ways clear. I would have to look very carefully at what actually gets to the desk before finally making that decision. I can't give you a final answer tonight. Thanks, and the city attorney, if a vote were cast that the mayor did veto and that vote was sustained by the council, where would that leave us in the process? I just would like to know that, if such an event should. You're saying that if the council voted for a particular option, the mayor vetoed that, came back to the council and the council overrode that veto? No, if the council sustained the veto. Meaning that there was the veto stood. The veto stood. And then the city would not have taken any action and there would have to be some decision making about what would happen then. So the council would be back at a point to decide how we were gonna go forward. The council and the mayor, I think, would both be involved in thinking about what would, how the city would proceed from there. Thank you. I am going to make a motion to reconsider my vote to postpone action from earlier. I think that I made a mistake in not voting to postpone action now. I think that we're winding on and on into the night and I think that this is gonna be a very difficult vote and I think some of the issues that were raised were legitimate and I think that a, having voted in assuring the president and council that I voted in the prevailing side, I would like to reconsider that vote and reconsider the option to postpone action. Okay, a motion to reconsider does require a second. As a second comes from councilor Hartnett. And the way this process works and the city attorney will assist me is that if this vote has to prevail with the majority and if it does, then we would revote the motion to postpone. Does everyone understand the process? Yes. Yes, councilor Tracy. And how much does a vote to postpone need? Simple majority. Simple majority? Yes. So floors, and this is a debatable motion, I believe. So motion is open, the floor is open on the motion to reconsider. Councilor Hartnett is the seconder, I'll let you go. I appreciate councilor Wright's consideration here. I think it's a wise move. I think we have a lot to consider after what we heard tonight. And I know there's people here that say we owe it to the people that are here tonight and for the people that traveled eight hours. I feel that we owe it to ourselves, that we get all the right information, that we know what's really facing us and we don't have it. And I take issue with the mayor that says 10 people are the only ones issue we're already here to vote tonight. That is not true. I think everybody at this table is ready to vote as long as they know what's ahead of them and their responsibility. And some of the things that have gone on here just in the last day and the last two hours before this meeting. I forgot to mention that. Ting said another proposal earlier this morning that quite honestly, I never saw because I was working all day. And for this council to make this decision, the biggest decision we're probably gonna make and to make it based on some of the actions that again, that I have in here tonight. Okay, Councilor Shannon mentioned, oh, it's very often that a council will just decide that they have a conflict of interest and they're gonna sit out. That is true. Not two hours before a meeting or the final vote. I've never heard of that before. You know you have a conflict of interest interest long before that. And votes were taken up to this process where that conflict of interest, I'm sure existed. And I think that puts us in some legal jeopardy. And I'm not comfortable moving forward tonight. I'll say it again. I think it's not responsible of this council to move forward tonight to cast a vote. I don't care who you're voting for. Ting, KVTL, it's not responsible for us to do it. So I hope you guys will reconsider the ones that voted no to postpone. I think it's wise for us to do it. So the floor's open on the motion to reconsider. Councilor Mason. Thank you, President O'Dell. May I either have your indulgence or make a motion for a brief recess to discuss? Yes, we can recess. Brief recess. Yeah, no, I'm glad to do it. Okay, do I have Councilor Jiang? Councilor Jiang, okay. So we were in, if memory serves, we were on the motion to reconsider and are we prepared to vote on the motion to reconsider the motion to postpone from earlier this meeting? Are we ready for that? Okay, it has been seconded, I believe. Yes, Hartnett's seconded. Okay, all in favor of the motion to reconsider the earlier motion to postpone, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No, can you just raise your hand if you're opposed? So we have more Tracy and Busher and all others in support, so that motion to reconsider carries. Okay, so this time the motion to postpone is in order and I have Councilor Hartnett for that. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn to next Monday, November 6th, to continue the same order of business. Time specific, sure. City Attorney Blackwood, do we need to do the motion to postpone before we do that? You do not. Okay. All right, thank you. Can you repeat the motion, Councilor? The motion would be, excuse me, the motion would be to adjourn time certain, Monday the 6th for the same order of business. So it's the motion to adjourn to a time certain, Monday, November 6th, 7 p.m., to continue the same order of business. Is there a second? Councilor Wright seconded that. So just to clarify, that means that we would come back on Monday and just pick up this meeting right where we are right now. This would be as if we were just continuing this meeting. This is a debatable motion. Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Nodell. Just to clarify, because we're picking up this item where we're leaving off, we would not then be planning or required to have a public forum, the public forum from what we've had today continues to hold. And we would continue the council debate. I am hoping that we could include in that an invitation to BT employees to speak and that they would be encouraged in the meantime to communicate with city councilors. I know that I've talked to several BT employees and while they very much want to share their thoughts, they also are understandably nervous about doing that publicly. So I think it would be helpful if we encourage them to contact city councilors as well as give them an opportunity to speak at the next meeting. So the floor is, so do people understand that the very thorough public forum we had tonight would essentially be, they required public forum for that meeting and it would allow the council to jump right into debate at that time. The floor is open. Did you, was your hand up, Councilor Roof? Councilor Roof. Yes. I voted to reconsider and I'm still not sure whether I'm going to vote in support of the delay. One group that I asked about earlier that I think has been lingering on all of our minds is the staff at Bronson Telecom. She just mentioned it. And I wonder what it might feel like to be someone who works at BT right now and going through all of this. And I just want one more, to provide one more opportunity to anyone from the Bronson Telecom staff to chime in on this. Thank you. Councilor Roof. Okay, I can see that you're looking for recognition. Are you wanting to come forward and speak? Okay, please come forward. Thank you, Councilor Roof. My name is Abby Taikaki. I am an employee of Burlington Telecom. However, my comments tonight are my own and do not represent the views of my employer. But with their permission, I'm also speaking on behalf of fellow staff members, Stacey Trudeau and Dawn Monahan, who've reviewed this statement. Thank you everyone for staying a few minutes later to hear what I have to say. I would first like to acknowledge the members of KBTL, most of whom are ardent and loyal Burlington Telecom customers for their years of support. I would like to thank the management team of Ting for taking the time to meet with us and share their vision. I heard President Nodell mention that the council is under a lot of stress. I hope you'll forgive me for not feeling terribly sympathetic to that cry as the stress around this process appears to have been mostly self-manufactured. Instead, I am heartbroken and resigned the fact that there is nothing that I or any of my coworkers could say that could sway your votes, which are apparently not going to happen tonight. I've been disappointed by invitations for the staff to have a voice in this process, all of which have been half-hearted at best and some requests for meetings have been denied. We've also, as a staff, been largely discouraged from speaking up throughout this process. I joined Burlington Telecom only two years ago. The hard work had already been done. The settlement had been reached and I was welcomed onto a team of dedicated and loyal city employees working with lean staffing and carefully allocated resources to deliver on our charge of making BT attractive to potential buyers. And while not many people were paying attention, Burlington Telecom became so much more than anyone ever thought it could be. That happened because every single member of the staff of Burlington Telecom worked holidays and overtime and did whatever was necessary to achieve our goals. This public process has indeed been very long, but the information has always been available to anyone who cared to know about it. And I speak tonight not to offer my opinions on the bidders, though we do all have very strong opinions about the bids, but to remind everyone here that we're not pawns on a political chessboard. We are people. We are employees of the city of Burlington and we're exhausted. We are stressed and enough is enough. So I appreciate the postponement, but I ask, I implore you to gather what information it is that you feel you need and put this to a vote as soon as possible. Thank you. Okay, so any other, did you want to continue to have the floor, Chancellor Roof? No, thank you. Other counselors? Councillor Jang, I think. Yes. I mean, based on what Councillor Shannon said, I mean, I think when people take the time to take an airplane, to go away outside of the country, to visit an entity that interested in buying our telecom, I think it would have been very interesting for us to start there. Today, when I met with BT employees, the whole notion about the cell process changed totally my mind. Totally, I still, I love Burlington Telecom. If we vote it today, I'll vote for keep Burlington Telecom local. But I think it is important for us to take the time and go and speak to those people. What I learned today, it's incredible. And I felt so bad. The reason why when Councillor Harnett raised to postpone, I totally said yes, to invite every city councilor to take the time, not bringing them here. It's emotional, what we just heard. Not bring them here to speak to us, but we go to them to show them that we respect you, to show them that the love and the hard work you put into BT, turning it around, it's not this administration, it's not the past administration, but it's you. 30 people, we own them at least that. And it will not cost 6,200. Thank you. So are you speaking in favor of the motion? Yes. Great. Okay. Anyone else on the motion to adjourn to a time certain? I would like to close just by saying I think this is wise to do this. The council has done a lot of listening, but hasn't had that done, had the opportunity to do very much talking with each other. And to really kind of debate and weigh out the two options before us. And I think there are aspects of this decision that have not been fully explored and flushed out. And I look forward to having the opportunity on Monday to do that, I expect. So I'm gonna go to a vote. All in favor of this motion to adjourn to a time certain of next Monday, November 6th at 7 p.m., please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? No. I have councillors Tracy and Moore and Busher, but it does carry. Now we have a local control commission meeting to do. So I'm going to convene the local control commission meeting. And I look to Commissioner Dean to make a motion. If you'll give me a moment. On the agenda. I would move to adopt the agenda, please. Yeah, we have a motion from Commissioner Dean to adopt the agenda as presented and Commissioner Busher seconds it. All in favor of that motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. 2.01 is the first class restaurant bar liquor license for Lincoln's at 191 College Street, Commissioner Jang. Please take conversations outside. We're trying to do business. We're doing a little bit business, folks. So if you could- Please be respectful of that. Move out into the lobby, that'd be great. We'll be almost done. Commissioner Dean. I'd move the approval of the 2017-2018 first class restaurant bar liquor license application for Lincoln's 191 College Street with the following conditions. All city permits need to be closed out. All standard conditions and contingent upon fire marshal approval. Thank you. Second from Commissioner Roof. Any discussion? Commissioner Busher, yes. So I know with all the items we had, this seems minor, but when I looked at this menu, they only had one food choice, which is chili mac. And I don't care whether it is so much, is the fact that we're granting a liquor license to an establishment that has limited food offers. And I was somewhat surprised at that. And wondered what the license committee thought about that. If I could ask President Nodell, if I could ask. You can ask Commissioner Dean or he can hand it off to someone else. I'd like to ask my... Yes, Commissioner Roof. Councilor Roof to address this, please. I thought that was peculiar as well. However, state law does say that anyone that carries a liquor license is only required to, that is the minimum and that is the standard. So they can have that and meet the standard. And it's not within our purview as I see it at least to dictate what their menu is. Okay, so may I just speak again? You may. Thank you. Well, I didn't understand until just now what the state law was, but having said that, I expect more from the establishments that do business in Burlington. And I really think that there should have been more food options, not a lot, but more than just one food option. They just meet the standard, just meet it. And I think they should have been asked to do more. But I'll be supporting this, but I'm really looking to the license committee to kind of hold our establishments to a higher standard. Thank you. Any other commissioner? Seem none. All in favor of the motion to approve this first class restaurant bar liquor license for Lincoln's, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Commissioner Dean moves it. Commissioner Roof seconds it. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We stand adjourned at 11.40. Thank you.