 I had better news. I wish there was some arm twisting that I could do. It doesn't appear that that's the case. I mean, if any of you have ideas or arms that you know how to twist, then please feel free to twist away because we're sitting. Michael? I just want to add ammunition to your angst. A new alliance, a joint venture between Cloud Alliance and New England Wireless received a grant award to do wireless in Berk, Lyndon, St. John'sbury, Danville area. Five weeks ago, we have not been presented any contract to sign and we have buried little time to get a lot of work done. The department is in disarray. Maybe we could all just go volunteer there and just that's going to be the fastest way to get broadband to the state is just to go and volunteer to do some tasks and in kind work for the state. I mean, I'm going to call clay and offer that as not quite a joke. I'll ask him that tomorrow. David, you had something? I think the legislature is asking this week for an update on how the money's gone out from broadband. Yeah, well, so you can tune into that meeting. Yeah, so yeah, unless the federal government can sort of un-wedge its head, we'll say, and extend the deadline of those funds. Yeah, I'm not super confident that any of the wireless projects or any of those short-term projects will even happen. Wait, I mean, how are you going to get enough fiber and do all that between if they cut the check? I mean, at this point, they're not going to see the check until second week of October, frankly. So yeah, it's a bit grim. It's a bit unfortunate, but forget counting on the feds. Yeah, I'm certainly cynical in that regard, too. Jared, go ahead. Yeah, you know, some of this I think maybe is reframing a perspective a little bit here because there was a, and I'm going to assume you were part of this, even though I didn't see your name, I don't think. There was an article in VT Digger about the presentation and the discussion with our representative in Congress. And there was a statement that was made there, and I don't remember exactly who made it, but man, it's just been bouncing between the hollows of my brain ever since. And it was that there's a $400 million problem that we're trying to solve with volunteers. And you know, that's, I mean, here we are, we're two and a half years into this, you know, we're chasing every last nickel and the folks that are laying out the nickels half the time their pockets are empty. And, you know, this is a problem that, and don't get me wrong, I don't mean that we shouldn't be doing what we're doing, but there may be a legislative perspective that we should be putting a lot more effort into than trying to scrape this up from the scraps that fall off the table. You know, and I don't know if that means putting more effort into getting together with the other CUDs, or I'm not exactly sure what that means, you know, I'm from a way, so I don't know anybody but you guys, but this is, I'm just, unfortunately, not seeing a whole lot of traction after this amount of time, and we barely have a quorum when there are really important things to do. That's a problem that I see, just as an institution. This is an institutional problem we have. Yeah. And with, so with all of your permission, I think we're segueing into something I had scheduled for a bit later, the grant funding update. So there is some, there's some good news. I mean, obviously with the kind of waiting on the CARES Fund stuff is something that's a problem. And actually, you know, executing this stuff at the state level is kind of grim. So in terms of the CARES Fund, I'm personally not optimistic that that's going to really be helpful. And so I think a lot of the time that we've spent trying to make that happen is maybe not going to, we're not going to get as much out of it as we or the state probably thought. That said, the budget that was passed does have $3 million for CUDs in some, you know, some shape, including $1.5 million that's earmarked for matching funds to go after the Vita loans. So our timeline, I mean, our timeline for getting fiber rolling is still kind of sort of on track. The timeline for getting fixed wireless, I think is off the rails. I'm really not sure that that's going to happen. But that $1.5 million is earmarked specifically for CUDs to get match funds for the Vita loans. So it seems like we will, I mean, should the budget get approved and should all of the internal organs of the state government make that happen, it seems like we will have that. The remaining $1.5 million, which again, which is earmarked for CUDs, that was supposed to be coming out of CARES funds again tied to the end of the year. And that was looking at doing more planning stuff. So that goes to decisions about new funding. So the general question that I'm going to kick to that agenda item is, you know, what would we do if we had another $300,000 that we had to spend by the end of the year, which sadly, it comes with this sort of, you know, cynical slant, which are we even going to get it in time to do anything with that? But I think there's a nice big discussion to be had there. But I'm going to back away from talking for a bit. So grant funding update, we have more to talk about here, but I see Ray has his hand up. Go ahead. I just wanted to make sure we bypassing paying the invoice. And so I'd like to make a motion to pay the invoice for legal fees and the amount of $560.50. Second. Okay. So Siobhan seconded it. Thank you, Ray. Thanks for catching that. I would have blown right by that. Okay. Any further discussion about paying the invoice for the attorneys? Okay. We'll just do an all in favor. All right. Any opposed or would like to do a roll call vote? Any motion passes unanimously. Wonderful. Thank you very much, everybody. I will get that check in the mail. So any other, David, do you want to do a high level public forum consistent coverage of where we are with Ardolf? Should we do a project management report? Let's wait till that after that one. You want to wait till after the project manager? Yeah. Okay. So we're going to put a fork in, we'll put a bookmark anyway in grant and funding update. We'll come back to that in a bit. All right. Project managers report, Tim, you want to take it? Sure. So just give me an update on what I've been working on some of you have been involved. Out of the business development committee, I am working on an RFP that I think basically is going to kind of encompass capabilities and interest request to those ISPs that trying to pull what they're capable of and where their interest levels might be with partnering with us down the road, whether that's fixed wireless or on the fiber. Participate certainly in observing a lot of the Senate and House testimonies that have been underway over the past couple of weeks and those certainly educational, informative, and enlightening, as well as the Bicuda and those Thursday morning meetings have been following along in those and getting up to speed on understanding what the other CUDs are up to and how partnering opportunities and the development of that entity is maturing. Also out of the business development, probably we'll send something off tomorrow. I've done some research on demand aggregation software solutions and we'll send out some findings on my research there with some entities that are pretty mature in this area as things develop on the fiber to understanding where the markets might be and how we can best serve those as well as ongoing marketing opportunities with the information it collects. I did work on a draft fixed wireless schedule which obviously I think is probably need to get thrown out so but at least it's something that's a template in the future and then have kind of switched and transitioned to some art off planning in discussions with the consortium and such so just understanding who the players are, what our role could be, and subsequently more importantly what what CB fiber needs to do as that auction moves near and also I'm just working on an update per the grant to just send off to Rob Fish as well just highlighting some of the progress that's been made over the prior period so that's kind of what I've been up to and also just on your treasurer if you are looking for a you know kind of a paid bookkeeper I'm on a couple of boards and we have some local bookkeepers if you want me to send the information along I can give a referral to someone in the area as well if that's something that you'd like to like to know more about. Yeah I mean really I don't know that we have the budget for a like a fully paid bookkeeper but if they would be willing to at least partially donate their time or take a you know take a rather light stipend you know it would be it would be helpful so I mean if they can do it for the for the public good. Yeah so yeah this is it's someone that you know we contract for a couple of three or four hours a month and then they have a bill rate so it's time and materials and certainly nothing full time but you know you can at least get stuff back in quick books and such. Okay sounds good Jeremy. I just looked up in the old minutes and the stipend for the treasurer was approved to be 200 per month so I'm not sure how that would work out for the billing rate for that but anyways that's what's approved so far. Well for the for the immediate future I mean for the immediate future it's back to me which is so exciting I know but I'm already on the bank already on the bank I have the checks so we'll be fine for now if anybody wants to volunteer to help me put the budget together and put them in line items and whatever just shoot me an email if you would. Anything else Tim anything else that you want to report or have questions about? Another thing to think of and certainly if other things come up you know it's in my way for opportunities to help then you know I could certainly help on the bookkeeping side in the interim as well if that makes sense being the independence that I have certainly got some experience in that if that's something that would be helpful at least in the shorter interim time. Yeah most definitely slowly sometime this week if we can manage it. So being on the executive committee is that something that you're going to want to rope myself and or fill into? Yeah I would I would like to at least run them by you before I just run them by the whole board just kind of as a sanity check if that's all right. Yeah that'd be fine. Cool okay does anybody have any questions for Tim? Michael? Well I have a question for everybody and Tim in particular it seems like round two announcements were finally made yesterday and we didn't get the fixed wireless award and round three will be in approximately two weeks around the first of October announcements is what they're predicting and the sense is that oh they'll never get around to writing the contract they'll never get around to writing a check and this isn't going to work out but I think we're just talking kind of around the perimeter of it shouldn't we address whether we want this project or not I mean I'm personally not sure either but I just think we ought to discuss it rather than just say oh well that didn't work out that's over maybe that's the case but I don't think as a body we've decided that so I thought we should discuss it to some extent. So I think that's a so let's if we segue then back into grant funding update what what do you all think I mean should we should we just retract you know retract the proposal that we have because it's being reconsidered for round three but we wouldn't know like Michael said we wouldn't know until you know beginning of October does that below our timeline does that make it impossible for us to install so maybe Michael so if if you had project go and you had the money in your pocket October 15th would the would the project as proposed be possible? Yes but unlikely I think it would be really hard to and Tim has already worked up kind of a timeline of things that have to get done and just lining up the contractors and setting poles and getting equipment in and getting it installed it's possible it is I still think it's possible I know and and and my company was going to be doing it doing the work and now my other project is delayed if which if it had been awarded I could have gotten you know a couple of weeks out of the way so I could devote more time to the CB fiber project so the combination of doing the one in in northeast kingdom potentially the cloud alliance one if it's awarded in in round three and the CB fiber one awarding round three we would be spread really thin we would need a lot of outside support to make it happen I think that could be organized and I I guess my recommendation is we shouldn't burn the bridge yet I think we should leave it in the process and see if it gets awarded in the meantime see if if we can do some reorganizing to see if it can be arranged okay so that's the potential of spinach one one more sense it has the potential of providing a good benefit to people within our district and in particular I think I forget whether it was Ray or Jerry somebody wrote today some people who may not see fiber for a very long time and that benefits important so for those reasons I don't want to throw it out yet even though I am kind of pessimistic about the timeline okay so if you had to guess I mean I know you're just sort of spitballing here but you're saying possible but not likely could you give me a percentage chance just a total guess so I mean is it 50 is it like 10 percent how you know how comfortable are you that it that it could happen 40 to 50 percent okay Jerry would you weigh in with what you said and then I'd like to hear from Tim David and Jeremy Tim David Jeremy Ray let me write this down I would love to weigh in and and and I apologize because I'm usually a booster but this this is just a fool's errand and not only is it a fool's errand but we're at risk at putting the financial viability of this entire organization at risk for the clawback so we have a 50 percent and and Mike please don't take any of this personally I'm just laying this out from a from a from my experience one with working for the with the federal government for the past 30 years and also my experience with contracting for the same amount of time what they have asked us to do is not designed for a CUD it's designed for somebody with deep pockets that can come in and throw their money up front and get results fast we're at risk of spending money that they are proposing to give us and then if we don't meet their criteria the clawback is we have to give that money back which we couldn't possibly do and it would it would kill this organization financially we wouldn't be able to recover and a 50 percent chance or a 40 percent chance I would never advocate enter intoing enter intoing in enter intoing a contract that the way this is lined out I just I could never be a part of that it's it's just not set up for this type of organization thanks jerry uh doc so uh henry i'll add you to the end tim you want to would you ask your question hey you yep okay there's two tims remember sorry tim from roxbury um I I was just writing on the chat window has it been decided we're the first round of towers the poles would be for fixed wireless because I might have missed it or anything like that or I came to the table too late or something today trying to get connected no so so we we did choose that I think there's 10 poles and we know we know exactly where they're going to be um if you shoot me an email I can I can forward that on that was part of the the proposal that went in for uh actually it was considered for round one and round two which has been okay no it's true oh just a few I'm sorry now tim they're all of all of the locations were north of the uh the line around barricade so not roxbury at all um did I take poles basically in the northern half of cd fiber territory next mic okay um Jeremy you're next all right just one second just taking some quick notes um I mean I know that this is way a long shot but one thing that would increase the chances of this working is if the feds do extend you know again I I think that we should not put much work into it because we're spread thin already but just leaving it in there and saying well hey maybe the funding gets extended and if it doesn't and if it looks like it's not going to happen then we say well no because just because it's awarded it doesn't mean that we are obligated to take the funding I think the taking the hat out now is maybe a little bit premature may as well leave it in and then if we decide we can't do it then we say no but I I totally agree with Jerry that we need to be cautious and not you know do something that is going to put us at risk okay uh David two things one I agree with Michael I agree with Jerry on this and and I have another five I mean we were scored from what I understand very poorly in the system because of the price and the numbers houses we're going to serve but that's beside the point they'll let us know the next round the other thing is the demand for this was about school teachers and students and telehealth and if I hear the governor and the health commissioner today schools are going back let's knock on wood that the case rate stays low and we stay healthy but I mean I I think we have other fish to fry and we should be moving as fast as we can on those other things thanks okay thanks David Ray so Michael I want to ask a couple questions having to do with the critical path assuming that assuming that we could do something what what it's a critical path with regard to accomplishment is it getting the polls from Canada or someplace in the United States is it getting the hardware is it the labor is it getting the internet connection or power connections what is it that's going to delay implementation of this project of doing any towels let's assume let's assume that's just two to do just fix the process we have to hire a contractor who can set polls an example of that contractor could be wash and electric or a use this cable I think either of them have access to poles and access to equipment to set poles so that can get done it's it's a matter of just logistics of getting things in order and doing the the big time suck of all of them is certification of our locations that's what's going to be really hard to do within the timeframe all of the things are going to take a bunch of time a few weeks here a few weeks there and before you know it you've used up three months but the certification of every location which is the only basis on which the department will fund is going to take more than a month of labor with a couple of teams running around trying to do these certifications who does the certifications we have to provide the certification to the department okay is this department the process and the documentation required is there a contractor that we hire to do certifications no well I suppose I don't know of one but anyway to look at it it's it's particular to this kind of technology we're using not that it's wireless but that it's cbrs wireless which is a very particular kind of spectrum that can only be connected in a certain way I mean we could hire some wisp to help us do this we're going to need people we're going to hire people to do it and we can train them it's just time consuming to do and so the reason I'm saying let's not withdraw yet is because of my hope that Jeremy is hoped is right it will get extended if it doesn't get extended that's the 40 to 50 chance of getting it done in time but if the deadline gets extended into next year then it's easily done that's the question and so I would say let's not execute the contract until we have better idea if we're awarded first of all we may not be rewarded but if we're awarded then we should be as cautious as they've been with us to figure out if we're protected and Jerry Jerry is quite right that we can't risk the organization so my experience my experience in doing what I anticipated to be 50 profitable software contracts okay over a period of several years a couple years which might cost us about a million dollars was to do a master service agreement an i diq master service agreement with qualified contractors doing an rfp qualifying them with their python programmers that they were capable of doing the job and then having two or three of them lined up to bid on the work as it came forward with no promise that they'd get any contract at all in fact they may not get anything on the other hand they might get 20 and so it only happened if certain things occurred like getting funding so it seems to me that it might be appropriate to get some i diq contracts in place where we have lined up people so that if and when things happen that we're capable of pulling the trigger if we're going to wait for 300 000 or 100 000 dollars to come into place and then try to do this stuff you know we've we've just added two or three weeks unless we're starting to do sole source contracts and you know what kind of you know criticism we'll get for doing something like that i think we're better off kind of putting pleats pieces in place so that we can execute if and when something happens okay just a thought thanks ray shivan it's your turn so i just wanted to say my experience with when there are delays that are caught my experience is with epa grants so they're federal grants coming to the state to do work for the epa that whenever they delay they extend my concern is that they haven't said they're extending anything even though they're delaying um and i could easily see it turning on and becoming no no we're going to step by this deadline and you're your host but at the at the same time i could also see them think oh no no no we're extended and at the same time we also have a whole lot of where we've got these grants and we had this deadline but we had to push it because blah blah happened and they're like oh yeah okay and and even an extension is it can be just an informal exchange email exchange that we've had with their grants people so i don't i so i'm worried but i don't know how worried to be so i kind of agree that yeah we don't take our hat out yet but we can't risk the whole farm on this i guess that's it so yeah but it's state delays federal deadlines so it's not the same entity that's approving the deadlines and if the state can't deliver the contract can't deliver the funds and the federal government's not expressing any sort of willingness then yeah the state is on the hook well the state is on the hook but part of our part of our contract signs over that responsibility that the state has for the federal fund signs that responsibility over to us so we are on the hook the federal government essentially will claw back from us then with the contract that we signed that was that additional language that was added to the to the hundred thousand dollar cares act funds all right i have henry then michael then jeremy henry yes i was just going to echo what jeremy matt already said which is you know to not bail we can always bail after we get the money and so i don't need to reiterate what he said i think he said that well i'm i'm curious if there if you have a sense of what the barriers are or what the perception is that has um uh resulted in unfavorable outcomes for cv fiber and if why why we didn't if does anyone get selected you mean yeah yeah david you want to talk to everything we can do the to to boost that before this next the third round you know yeah well i can't i can't speak for the exact numbers but ken jones was on the review committee for the state um for the telecommunications advisory board and i think what he told me somebody told me is that we our price per person was pretty high for a service and we didn't have as many priority they scored it on three different categories and we did not score as high as other people in terms of those categories so as it was a it's a three tier kind of a scoring system and as michael knows i think is that they didn't find did they did they fund any fixed wireless in the second round a one one one one up in the kingdom right it's mostly a mobile wireless actually yeah so yeah so it's hard to know and ken ken's not here so i can't tell you on the detail i think he saw the whole list so i can weigh in on this i i talked to clay a little bit and he said yeah your your price point was high we're not offering fiber and um you know some of the other offerings that were out there were more cost effective to hit more people you know with the original the original proposal that we had that was a lower cost per subscriber but it was a much bigger project and it was a differently constructed project that had more risk built into it and this board chose to direct the project team to step back from that risk and go for a more modest proposal that more modest proposal because of some of the built in some costs that would be the same regardless of the size of the project just get spread out over fewer polls and fewer subscribers so i'm not sure that there's a a real good opportunity for us to then fix the proposal and take another crack at it and have it more and make it look better frankly i mean i i if there are creative solutions that we can think about to do that or maybe we even we scale it down even more to a couple polls where it's just if we get whatever sort of change they find in the couch after awarding the other the other grants and we you know we put out one poll and we have a cv fiber poll and it's right next to my house that's what i'm going to go for so maybe each board member gets their own poll and you just talk to your neighbors um i'm in i like that yeah um and michael you're next anyway so it's all yeah um so i spent the last four days doing my best to make make a better situation for the cv fiber and cloud alliance um osils for round three if not round two um we cannot modify a proposal number one we can't reduce it to two or three polls you the process is over and they've been scored and we can't do that that's outside the rules and other other participants would scream murder um what i did for the last four days but after i discovered that two factors caused our projects besides cost caused our projects not to be considered were um in my case a cud objecting to 23 locations and cv and in both of our cases wireless being disfavored in this round wireless got a bunch of projects through in round one the great majority of them veto and veto is the third rail of vermont broadband and once the energy and technology committee got a hold of that the department got a very strong message to steer clear of wireless in round two and that's part of what happened here um if we had gone with our original big project it was what was it one and a half million it was big it was a lot of money it would not likely be even if it was more efficient and effective per location it wouldn't have been funded anyhow because they don't want to throw that kind of money at something that's not fiber so the scaled down version is a better more competitive one in terms of what the project is and its total cost but unfortunately it is per location quite expensive and the odds of it coming being successful in round three are relatively low anyhow but it doesn't hurt to leave it in and so i favor that the one other thing i wanted to mention was that that i'm i'm an officer in the wireless asp association national association and we had a meeting today with all the state coordinators of the country and we were all talking about covid projects because that's what's happening everywhere cares money is funding broadband all over the place and every state is doing it radically different from the next state some states through tons of money broadband other states through pocket change some states are following the federal guidelines to a t in the way that vermont is other states are saying let them try to come claw back that money from us we're gonna build and we're gonna and if we don't get certified the right way or whatever they're gonna have to come and grab they they're not going to get the money so some states have actually taken this renegade attitude i don't know what's going to happen with congress congress is not going to pass an infrastructure bill before the election that's for sure they're probably not going to during lame duck session either they might extend the cares act deadlines that could possibly happen so that's the only hope i hold out for any of these wireless projects i started out talking about how i spent the last four days trying to improve the situation and what i did was i talked behind the scenes to a lot of people in government and out of government who have contacts to express dismay at how round two went to bring some possibility that round three will three will come back you know so round one was way over here round two is now way over here and bring it back to the center a little bit i think there's a chance for that i think there will be some more balanced decisions in round three because of the reactions and overreactions so there's a chance that's it okay so um in the interest of wrapping this up and moving on we'll give jeremy matt the second last uh word and i i would like to add my pitch and then i would like us to make a decision about this if we can so jeremy i was just gonna say that i think everything's already been said and that i don't need to say anything so okay so um my my comment here is that it's so it's it's easy to say that we should just stay in and we should accept it if we get it however i'm the one that gets to do all of the background paperwork in negotiation and signing stuff or whatever and it's not a completely trivial amount of work to do so there is a reduction in in my workload if we say we're out that this is not likely to to succeed on the other hand just waiting until we hear about round three that's fine but i mean if you really um then let's hold out but if if i was voting if i was you know sole supreme leader or whatever i would i would say let's just withdraw our interest let them let them dole out the money to somebody else who can accept that risk and then um move on focus on fiber like we have been and and get on with it i mean that's my that's my druthers so what i would like to do and um like i said i'm i'm of the opinion we should we should bail out of this but i'm absolutely positively willing to go with the will on the board of this and i think we may have a i i'm sure we'll have a split board but i'm i'm gonna go with jerry on this and i'm gonna move that we withdraw our fixed wireless proposal from the cares act process second okay that was seconded by frank any further discussion henry yeah i i'm listening to what you're saying and i'd like you to elaborate on where you would focus instead of you know keeping the paper trail rolling so that um till round three is announced in other words is is you're thinking that there's there's um bigger things to concentrate on that that the cudd money that the 1.5 million dollars in cudd money that that would keep your land all of us uh i mean our portion of that would keep all of us very busy just trying to spend that before the end of the year is that kind of where you're going because i think that would help people in the decision making process on the vote yeah so i mean we're we're looking at and i i don't know the timing of it but um the 1.5 million that's for matching funds but there's also the the new funding agenda item that will be you know what else can we spend this on by the end of the year if we're backing away from wireless you know can we start getting our fiber ducks in a row and go and hit our contractors up for doing the poll audits the pre-engineering and do all of this if we can get part of the project paid for and done by the end of the year then let's go and chase down contractors to do that rather than trying to go find polls try to go find fixed wireless auditing people who are going to go and measure the signal strength at each residence which is required and like michael said very very time consuming and then we can make sure that we have tim shea tasked on just fiber related so delivering that final goal of hitting you know fiber to everybody um that's my that that's my sense here and then we we don't have to worry about chasing down you know getting people lined up and the back the back end logistics of potentially eventually delivering on the fixed wireless proposal that's my that's my answer that and thank you for prompting me up with that henry that's helpful and there is no this is already cleared the white whatever it is uh white wash know the lighthouse people in terms of that extra cut money being because i i know the lighthouse people said that we couldn't do it and and i it's already made the lighthouse barrier that's my yeah so yeah so there's some nuance about what what part of that is allowed and what's not the lighthouse i think those folks and they're the legislature did not agree with that assessment for the record i mean and they were pretty clear about that and they were going to go forward with it regardless but procedurally whatever um but they did previously approve small narrow project centric um poll audits which we could we could do because other cuds have already received funds to do this and already have you know contractors in the pipeline to do this it's just that the big statewide picture that we were talking about through through vikuta was not um was not thought to be falling within those parameters uh david i saw you had your hand up yeah i mean the the rationale they got around lighthouse this time was yeah if you did full inventories as a conservative workforce development good yeah okay anything else before we we vote yeah here michael um we also could consider doing an end run around um connectivity initiative and use three hundred thousand dollars to put up a smaller wireless project targeted at locations that are late in our schedule um that that would be one way to salvage this idea i'm not totally averse to abandoning it i'm not i don't want to be seen as fighting for this i'm just coming up with the ideas and i'm thinking about um all the effort that we put fred to to design one and then another and and all that and all the money we put into that and the planning that i've done and tim's done and others um i just quite i'm not quite ready to say that's abandoned until we're sure that we can't accomplish it so i'm i'm gonna vote um no in this resolution mainly because i'm hoping that the congress will extend the deadline and make it possible again fair enough and i would like to come back to that using the extra several hundred thousand dollars i like to come back to that when we talk about the new funding decisions and talk about you know could we do a small fixed wireless project with that and not not go through round three or whatever so um all right any other commentary on this before we put it to a vote yeah i have a question yes is it both houses of congress that have to approve an extension or one i think it's both i don't know okay because i can't see the senate doing it with what's going on right now yeah it might be like it's not it's not spending billions of dollars it's just saying you have more time guys so that i see it as more possible than an infrastructure bill okay all right let's uh let's take the vote i think we're going to do this roll call because we don't have consensus um i'm going to start with um start in the order of people in the chat window there we start with alan no okay uh andy no okay chuck just to be absolutely clear no is we abandon and yes is we stay the course correct uh i don't know i'm voting that we abandon that we jump ship alan and andy was that clear no i'd like to vote so yes is abandoned no is stay the course okay thank you alan did you want to yes okay andy you want to remain as a no yeah okay chuck this is such a such a complicated issue but i think i'm gonna have to say yes okay david yes prank yes yes is that uh we have been right yes okay jeremy um that's me i say yes uh john morris yes uh catharina oh yes okay thank you michael i saw i saw your lips say yes i could not hear your voice though uh ray no okay shavon yes uh tim solvon i say yes stay with trying to get fixed wireless access points um if it turns into um more no votes abandon i would at least uh suggest that the no um information going to them says why so so let me stop here again again voting yes means yes to abandon the fixed wireless proposal no means do not abandon the fixed wireless proposal so right would you would you like to walk away from us applying for the cares fund money for the fixed wireless proposal for round three i'd like to if you're asking me jeremy yes i because i'm gonna have i'm gonna tell your vote according to that that's what we're doing yes no i i thought i made it clear i'm i'm saying i would like to pursue the fixed wireless access still but if it goes the other way so you you don't have a choice to qualify this you can vote yes to abandon this particular proposal so it doesn't get considered abandoned or don't abandon they don't don't have any sort of nuance here or abstain or you can abstain i'm saying don't abandon okay don't abandon okay so that's that's a no okay time for sure yes okay so let's see one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven eleven yes one two three four no the yeses have it um i'm happy to take any direction as we as i send a message to the public service department to let them know why we are retracting our proposal so if you have suggestions about how to approach this i don't think we need to discuss this right now i will draft that language send it to me in an email if you would please so tim if you have any idea about how to frame this from what you were saying um if you could shoot that to me that would be that'd be great um any other grant or funding updates that we need to talk about michael let me just a quick comment on your request i'm not going to give you my suggestions now but we take advantage of this opportunity to um help the department understand that why their delays have caused this decision i can definitely do that that's what i was trying to get at perfect i can definitely i can definitely tone myself down when i write that polite letter to them and say yeah thanks but no thanks um okay anything else um david did you want to say anything or does anybody want to say anything about the ardof stuff because we're still in we're still in the funding update you're muted so the ardof partnership of nrtc wek kingdom fiver ec fiver and cv fiver had a good meeting this week and moving along um wek is have us a board meeting next week um to decide whether what they're going to do wek did receive their feasibility study yes monday they haven't shared it with us yet um if it looks like they're only going to be interested in running fiber and not doing any drops uh in terms of ardof it's sort of a mixed bag it looks like we have enough people to work on it to get ready to do some bidding i didn't attend the there's a bidding workshop i guess yesterday or today and um that progress is being made and what it does show is we gotta get we gotta get moving on isp guys i hate to tell you guys but it's all dependent on getting us an isp to even work in this so anyway we're going to be talking about that thursday's business development meeting and that's my update on ardof what's that an fcc bidding workshop or no that was from our consortium yeah okay all right uh i think we're done with funding updates oh i see jeremy go ahead you're muted shavon in in the chat asked what is keeping us from deciding on an isp that's a good question david you want to take that one or or tim for that matter tim i should take it i mean tim's working on it so i'll let tim take it so yeah i think at this point it's just um being able to understand what people are interested in doing and who the best partner would be and it could theoretically be that we have several isps depending on what the scope is and where we are in the maturity of our projects but it uh this juncture is is starting to understand who's out there what are they interested in partnering with us on and then starting to strike those and mature those relationships into some at least memorandum of understandings or letter of intense and then eventually getting to the contractual phase once the details and timing and scope of projects mature into 2021 nothing else on that shavon any other follow-ups okay thank you very much for that tim um let's see uh moving along let's uh we skipped over policy committee report back uh phil i see you turned off your camera for the moment i don't know if you stepped away from the computer i'll give you a moment if you're if you're here all right good night jerry thanks for joining us all right let's um pause on the policy committee for a moment and we'll go on to the um all right we'll go on to the decisions about new funding funding so uh we we heard uh before we sort of talked around it uh rob fish at last thursday's meetings said there may be up to an additional 300 000 per cud to spend on things related to planning and getting broadband to folks who need it by the end of the year um and the question was what are we going to spend that what are we going to spend that on can we spend that on anything and i think um as i recall tim you put together a um i think you sent that out to i don't know if you sent out to everybody or if that was just business development um where did that go somebody sent something out i i got a lot of emails today was tim did tim do you want to do you want to talk to that sorry yeah my audio cut out there um yeah so i did come up with uh can you remember how many six or seven um with some input from others as far as options to consider um and this at the current juncture does appear to be money that needs to be spent by 12 30 or there would be a the clawback provision so i think you know taking into account the uh kind of we'll say the risk aversion or reluctance to take a lot of that on um focused on projects that would not take uh too much risk into into mind and and using the funds wisely to not leave money on the table so i don't know if you want me to run through that list or so um one moment i i just want to i just want to mention what what we're kind of proceeding under the impression that the business development committee was going to make a more concrete proposal was going to take this up on thursday so i don't know that we have a decision point on this tonight i did put tim i did put your um your seven suggestions into the chat so you should be able you should all be able to see that over there um uh jeremy you had a question and then i i guess i i would like you tim if you could just walk through those maybe we can just chat about them briefly jeremy you first up yeah so this is just a thought that i had and it may not be something that anyone knows so maybe something to look into but if we get the 300k and we apply it to fixed wireless would there then be that performance requirement because that seemed to be the massive sticking point um can we just put up the polls and have polls and then not prove that they're actually working with the 300k um i think we we could i think we could i mean it's it's not baked into the contract in the same way as the other one was that said if we're not providing a minimum standard connection to the people that just makes us look terrible but um michael you want to address that super briefly and before we i promise to be brief jeremy's right on on that we do not need to be that standard and yes jeremy hanson there's no reason we can't deliver 25 megs the problem was just the certification it wasn't that the technology can't do it it's just this requirement of a certification that's that's onerous and so this would be a way around that and it would speed it up it's it's still be a challenge but it would illuminate that part so uh tim would you uh would you walk us through those sure um the first one is as we were just discussing so either grabbing the recommended towers to put in some fixed wireless locations and as michael said that some of the pressure could be off on the speed tests but we'd probably still need to get those up and running not fully sure what you know what the sign off would be for for the completion of that project the next could be some pre-engineering and other work that could be done with a consultant as far as getting prepared for the fiber builds into 2021 that could include pull audits and any other build out provisions to help pave the way and smooth things out going into next year's build cycles another provision could be a pre-purchase materials that would help for 2021 future expenditures and that could be any number of things but looking at what the opportunities would be to to get some physical goods prepaid in in this calendar year another could be looking really for what the partners are and doing a study more into the phase one areas for looking for the middle mile fiber partners and kind of move more detail into some engineering and understanding and also any dark fiber that might be out there that we could strike relationships with to help identify the the phase one builds to prioritize next as i mentioned earlier doing some work with demand aggregation software and it could be looking to prepay some of those software license fees and start to get a tool more mature and developed it's about a four-week ramp up in general with these so plenty of time and could be some way to get some momentum of collecting better customer future potential customer data as well as identifying those areas that will have more development on the website and using whether it's tying in the demand aggregation software or just maturing the website to make that a more attractive landing place for customers and informing on the status of what's happening with cv fiber and next would just be putting money towards more marketing campaigns to canvas the 20 communities letting know what's out there what's coming and what they need to do to be able to partner and participate more in in the work that you've got coming towards them okay thanks for that tim uh chuck okay uh first just a general question and then i'll have a couple of specific questions about what was put here and a couple of comments as well um the first general question is there any way we can spin leveraging this into vita matching somehow i mean uh uh is it really just completely off the table so whatever we spend this on has to be signed sealed delivered and concrete or planning by the end of the year so the vita matching funds we should have those by the end of the year too this that's a separate pot of money and we should we should have access to that okay um so then a couple of specific questions uh first of all um i know in a lot of other industries uh due to covid supply chains have been impacted and and materials costs have shot way out particularly in building space they're up about 40 percent right now i'm wondering if anybody has a sense as to whether uh you know if we were to pre-buy materials for future phase one right now whether we actually potentially be paying an extra premium on that like in other industries i know a number of people are actually postponing renovations and and such as a result of that huge increase um and then two comments um although they kind of fall under under the same umbrella which is around um demand aggregation software and number seven promoting more aggressive marketing campaigns i do feel that both of those items are quite premature at this point in time uh as you all know my background is is in the startup world um and it's often two three years after launch with customers before you can really justify the ROI and demand aggregation software uh that has any level of sophistication otherwise you hire a you know a 30 000 a year marketing manager and and call it a day because those demand aggregation software is tend to be much much higher than that um so just just a comment on on that front i think if we were to do anything we should really be focusing uh any sort of spend there on things that move the needle truly toward phase one and perhaps that's a development of of things like private loan program that gets us towards that vita matching money uh you know we have a general sense of how to run a loan program based on ec fibers initial information but we have quite a bit more development we have to do to to make that tangible and then once we actually have something in hand like that marketing it makes a lot of sense but just marketing our current state of the world doesn't make a ton of sense to me right now other than the updates we send out to our community thanks chuck uh andy would you would you uh verbalize what you put in the chat yeah and i don't know that there's an answer to it i just it's a little unfortunate or odd that you know we're in a situation where we're talking about ways to spend money that don't deliver any connectivity um and yet we're abandoning in a way that would deliver connectivity because of you know testing or other performance constraints and you know as some of this isn't really in our control so it's just kind of a it's a very odd scenario um that we're in and i you know like it's hard to understand why we would qualify to like do you know generic planning or pre-biomaterials just because you spend the money by the end of the year and whether that qualifies i guess it's okay i'm not against it but it's just weird that's all it's it's difficult to comprehend but it's it's really about the encumbrances that the federal and the state governments have placed on different types of money right so yep yep all right michael so we will take this up Thursday night and in the business development committee um the one suggestion i have is that um i think almost every item in this list i support as possible good uses of funds i don't know what i don't know is what will pass muster with with the gatekeepers and somebody ought to be checking with i don't know whether it's lighthouse or someone at the department or someone in the legislature to to know which of these things are eligible so we don't waste time debating something that's going to be turned down anyhow um so that's one suggestion i have and in relation to that comment about construction materials and their costs this i think is different from building materials in that the demand isn't just from pandemic and other related things like that the demand is going to be hugely affected by ardof after the ardof auction is over there are going to be projects financed all over the country needing fiber and they're going to need a lot of it and already now companies are buying fiber and stock stockpiling it hoping they'll win ardof and having the fiber so they can get ready to go so i yesterday paid 100 extra for fiber because i had to get it for a project that has to happen now and that was because it was the only place in the country i could find this fiber i think the idea of stockpiling some if we can find it is probably a wise investment i think the inflation is going to increase unfortunately so that's just an industry point of view on that okay uh tim you had a comment yeah i think uh kind of to michael's i think uh rob fish has said that he would be kind of the gatekeeper of you know not the final buck would stop with him but i bouncing the focused ideas off on him whether it's this list or another list or a shorter list would be the first person i would recommend um and i could certainly check with rob to see if those would pass muster with him kind of having a good pulse of what uh will or will not be approved so that after thursday's meeting and some clear guidance um that would be my recommendation is to is to use him as first uh first stock cap is that chance you could ask tomorrow or thursday morning before the meeting certainly i mean i could check with him on this list or any any uh any other additions and and see and get a better sense probably makes sense to do that and roll out any that may not so i can check with him tomorrow i think that would be valuable going to the business development meeting where you can say yeah the stockpiling thing it's a good idea but rob said yeah that's really really not something that we can support i think having that additional information would be would be super valuable sounds great we'll do all right any uh so if you have any uh any additions or um suggestions to this um i do see you henry if you have any additions or suggestions for this i would say send them to david and tim and henry what you got you're muted you're muted henry uh based on what you just said is is it worthwhile for us to get a sense from the group as to what the what the priorities are assuming they went through at this time so in other words to get a sense whether people are interested in in the uh engineering more than the others or you know the marketing more than the others is would that be useful at this time um well yeah i would say if anybody has any any thoughts about one of these versus another so michael just weighed in and said that he thought that the stockpiling of you know pre-buying the materials was a good move chuck weighed in on what he thought were were priorities i would say if anybody else has any sort of suggestions if you've got a you know brief comment about them tonight let's let's hear it otherwise if you chew on it for a bit i know ray weighed in on this by email um and if you have comments i would say send them to david and tim but yeah i would just kind of vote for two you know doing the engineering helping uh aid in getting things you know starting to build out would be i think the highest priority assuming that it would qualify any other thoughts any any thoughts about the taking some of this and doing doing the the 10 wireless sites that we'd previously identified or maybe half of them and no answer is is an okay answer too okay still this Thursday yep so yeah so we'll have the business development committee chew on this quite a bit more the only one i would eliminate from the list is number four because i don't believe there's any darker middle mile fiber in cv fiber territory that's available to us um i could be wrong but but i'm not aware of any state fiber or any non-commercial fiber that's available to us other than belco belco has fiber well i i'm i think if i read into this a little bit it might be reaching out to the commercial providers and trying to figure out how many of them would be willing to lease it i know we've had this conversation four or five times before and that's and that was my my sense too but is it is it even worth is the juice worth the squeeze reaching out to you know cci or whomever and saying hey can we pick you back on your on your middle mile you can waste your time they will say no they will say no it they'll sell you lit fiber but they will not give you dark fiber fair enough all right anything else on this any last words okay so let's move on so decisions about new funding we've essentially kicked that over to business development we'll come back to this um at the next meeting i guess if not sooner approval of the september 8 2020 um meet meeting minutes any other any other edits or anything else from what jeremy has sent to us okay i i vote that we approve it looks like was david trying to say something there you go okay i i hadn't finished the motion yet stand by okay i move that we that we approve the september 22nd 2020 i'm sorry the september 8 2020 governing board meeting minutes in the with the newest revision as submitted by jeremy matt david you have something to say i'll second that wonderful all right so moved moved and seconded is there any further discussion hearing none all in favor hi hi hi any opposed or in want of uh roll call or abstentions okay hearing none passes unanimously thank you very much okay we gotta back to the policy question oh yeah so let's start back to policy committee report back phil did you want to take that we're not getting any audio from your mic you are unmuted in zoom but your computer mic is going up okay right clicking on the gear in the upper right hand corner and in there checking what your what what is selected for microphone okay it's it looked like you said i am sorry phil so so you could if you wanted to fill if you wanted to try to dial in on your phone and you can get your voice that way or if somebody else who was also at the meeting would like to uh um talk about what we uh what y'all had in that meeting until we can get phil well i think the two of us who were this is alan i think the two of us who were sort of working on draft language uh to come up with a proposal for the board were ray and i and we we didn't we weren't able to to to get together and told shortly before the meeting tonight to hash out some language that he had come up with that would make um uh substantial revisions to one of our existing policies so i i think the best thing might do would be to to postpone any more action on this until the next meeting to see if we can work that out okay that sounds like a plan it looks like we have consensus from ray and phil um any other anything that we want to task the policy committee with taking up changing okay you can shake your head no ray but we can still task please please don't task this anymore this is one of the high this is one of those hydroheaded issues that could go in five 10 15 20 different directions so i think if we try to focus on what we know we should be doing as quickly as possible that we can resolve this and and move on that sounds like a plan okay okay all right so let's go on to round table um alan while we have you up you just remuted um let's do round table starting with alan uh i i think most of us who have been around a while probably felt flashes of the frustration we felt during the first couple years of uh cv5 are starting up and it seems like from a phase where we thought all kinds of things are going to be possible we're kind of back to wondering how we're going to get ourselves in gear here um and we just have to keep pushing i guess and and and learn to deal with a lot of frustration which a lot of people are dealing with anyhow and ours is a more of an esoteric unbuilt kind of a frustration but it is difficult and i i think again what this what the state and the federal government are doing to volunteers around the country who are trying to solve something that they themselves were not able to solve for a number of years is really embarrassing and i'm i'm embarrassed for my government i will say that okay thanks alan andy oh yeah i i guess i could echo some of that sentiment but i'm good yeah i share the for some of the frustration sadness but yep good all right thanks andy uh chuck i just want to mention the communications committee is going to be meeting next tuesday it sounds like um and i know we have some new members since uh since it was formed so um if you aren't clear as to what it is or why it is or if you might like to get involved feel free to reach out to me uh and i can add you to some communications and the invite thank you all right thanks chuck david well i don't remember if we mentioned the update that congressman walsh had a roundtable phone call for all the cud's about a week ago or so and he's pretty optimistic in terms of a rural broadband initiative that he and a rural broadband caucus that is both democrat republican making progress probably next year um and so to that extent that was you know more positive than i i i'm still pretty doubtful on an infrastructure bill given the debt but anyway that's one thing that i thought i should share with everybody but i am optimistic about moving forward more than that one than the end of on getting things going soon i i think if we get some momentum and finding contractors getting an isp or sorting out what isps we want to work with and in assigning them responsibilities for things we might might do a lot better than keep on meeting every month and feeling a little what are we going to get going thanks david henry you're muted david that was perfect lean into what i i would reiterate what you said um the what i heard earlier in this meeting was that we were kind of looking at who wants to play with us and then deciding where we want to go based on who wants to play with us which is you know definitely reality but i i don't see that getting any closer to what do we want to be when we grow up and i think we need to still have that effort underway in conjunction with the effort of who wants to play with us and you know in that regard it's simple things like do we want to own shit or not and stuff like that and i i think those are things that we we need to be thinking about and and i've sent out a couple things that i've found in different sources on how to decide what you want to be when you grow up and their decision matrix and stuff like that i don't know at some point we might want to dedicate a meeting towards kind of going through those with everybody and seeing you know if we can come to a consensus at a high policy level as to what we want to be when we grow up and then you know feather that in with you know who wants to play with us so don't ask well go ahead no i just the conclusion is i i don't want to leave it up to who wants to play with us i think we should also have responsibility okay thanks henry um and just so you know i i as you were saying that before you said we need to have a meeting dedicated to it so i actually i wrote that down as something that we need to talk about at the next meeting so the what we're going to be when we grow up question and i would encourage all of you before that meeting to take a look at um at what henry sent it was that was like a week ago i think you sent it well there was a couple but yeah there's two of them that that were different from different sources that just looked at different kinds of ways of making a decision okay so uh i am by the way pardon okay i'm sorry they were just they were emails they weren't to them okay okay so um so my my commentary is that um in terms of the new funds that we're looking at we still need to be sure um and we need to get some clarity on what we can reasonably expect to have them in hand so with the new budgeted cares fund stuff even though it's less less tied to performance and whatnot we still need to have most of it in hand before we can do really do anything uh the thing i'm most happy about and the thing that makes me most optimistic is the dedicated matching funds that were passed by the legislature in in the budget that come out of the general funds that don't have a time limit and that we can reasonably apply for and get the vita you know get the vita truck out of the garage i think um i also want to mention our next scheduled meeting our regular meeting is um uh it's not october 6th it would be october 13th so if we um if we find that we need to meet before then um i will call a special meeting particular if we hear more about funding um or if you think that you know business development committee folks you know uh communications committee folks policy committee folks if you think we need one before then just let me know otherwise we're going to stick with october 13th for now i think and uh i can i want to continue to thank all of you for showing up for these and putting in the work and spending these tuesday nights doing this it's not you know we've gone through a lot of people but we still have you know we still have folks showing up and as long as we keep showing up we will cross the finish line as frustrating as it might be and however long it takes us to get there we will i am i am confident that we will get there all right uh jeremy matt um yeah thanks everyone and sorry i had to jump off real quick i had to disconnect the kids wi-fi so that i could still hear the meeting so we need better internet around here anyways that's all here here thanks jeremy uh john morris i have nothing to add okay thanks john michael the town of craffsbury when it was planning its municipal project started out with a committee of 50 and it ended up with a committee of four and one of those four was from out of town it was me and we got it done so keep the faith and for the brother's guilder i want to say that there is actually cause for optimism and we're going to just at the business development committee meeting on thursday we're going to discuss it more at the wek ardof meeting the other day a lot of things were discussed that can't be discussed publicly but separate from those things there was a lot of discussion about isps who would do what and there's there's some real positive developments that um i hope we'll be able to present to the next board meeting and we'll start discussing it thursday night so um keep the faith all right thank you michael ray i'm with michael i'm going to keep the faith i'll show up at the thursday board meeting the policy committee meeting and the communications committee meeting and keep pushing these strings and eventually one of these strings is going to straighten out we're actually going to push something further down like fiber maybe you know and get it someplace so i'm i'm in all right thank you ray shavon i live in optimism right in the middle of orange this little pocket of optimism so i'm here for the long haul you guys are going to have to call me out of here or have a vote of no faith or something i don't know anyway that's it all right thanks shavon uh tim shea uh having you know been with you for less than a month i'm actually pretty optimistic and don't want to just echo but i think david and michael hit on it and um i think you're on the cusp of of doing some really good things so um stay the course i'm certainly happy to be along for the ride and helping you get there but i think you're you're on the edge of really um getting some tangible things done and really starting to make a difference in your community so thank you and uh look forward to helping you get there all right thanks tim and tim sylvan um i'm good other than uh i was hoping to get maybe uh like by the end of the month like a statement that we could send to our uh our towns and our our folks that are interested just more than anything just to um have something to keep on reminding the people out there that we are here and we are doing this so just a short statement doesn't have to be long by any means um just something that everybody i guess approved to i don't want to i don't want to do it without you know learning the lingo in the language first that you guys are using for this thanks tim that sounds like a like a softball pitch to you chuck take it away that is exactly why we're meeting next week uh is to get one of those uh uh set up and approved um and michael you've been a big help on those updates in the past so i'm going to be uh pulling you into this even though you're not officially communications committee as well so look for that coming your way um and thank you to alan who has volunteered to produce the first draft as that's always a huge help and kind of the biggest barrier of them all and i i'd like to add shorter is sweeter because if these things go on front page forum you're looking at them on your phone people don't read stuff that you have to scroll through too far so shorter the better thanks tim and last but not least tom fisher yeah i think there were a lot of great comments in this round table i i agree with just about everybody um i'll just you know add in the keeping the faith i mean think about you know is an can anybody predict where we're going to be two months from now help post an election i mean i'd say there's no point in giving up at this point you have no idea what's around the corner so yeah all right thanks tom and david before we adjourn yeah i just have a public policy question and if i was to hold a community meeting on zoom do i have to advertise that to the whole cv um fiber communities or what's the rule on on public meetings on that kind of a score it's an information meeting so an informational meeting if it is a meeting of more than a quorum of any of our public bodies even if those they're not engaged you should warn it as a public meeting to all of our communities though if it's if it's you david healy giving a presentation and all of us are sort of passive on the phone and not otherwise involved in any sort of discussion you could probably get away with this is the david healy show um but for the most part if there is a quorum of any public body you should warn it like a public meeting okay thank you sure or were you talking about a presentation to your town correct yep oh so that would be you talking to your town so that's not and we want to see the powerpoint slides first though yeah i'll share them yeah great david healy right and ray pellets here and you present it to northfield it's all good okay i'm i will declare the meeting adjourned have a wonderful night everybody we're adjourning at seven thirty nine thank you guys yeah talk to you night everyone thanks everybody