 Let's call the meeting to order at 6.03. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Is hearing none, is there any public comment at this time? Okay, hearing none, moving on, I would like to move to the meeting minutes approval, but I do not see our, I do not see our clerk and I don't know that the minutes have been or are available. Have folks reviewed the minutes? I don't believe I've seen the minutes from the previous meeting. Okay, we're gonna have to pass on our minutes approval and we can move into the Treasurer's Report. Phil, please. Okay, Treasurer's Report. Our current cast position is $1,517,278. Just under 13,000s of discretionary funds. That has not changed. We have 1,504, 385 of grant funds for construction and pre-construction. We do have some payables that will get approved, hopefully at the next executive committee meeting, totaling about 221,000. A few items for poll-make-ready services and poll inventory. There's, ready for approval, totaling about just under 100,000 and the balance has made up of some additional poll inventory invoices where we're waiting for final approval and invoices for RFP development and related field work. Just, these are all normal, you know, normal delays and normal processing. I'm gonna have to get the invoices to make sure they're properly reviewed and approved and signed off. For grants, a little different format today. We've received about $9,799,000 in grants to date. Of, we've spent about $1,577,000 and then less the payables on hand leaves us of funds available of just about $8 million on the nose. We have drawn down three million, just under 3,100,000, leaving about $6,700,000 that we haven't drawn down that's out there available for us. Of those funds that's available for spending, about $6 million is for committed to purchasing inventory to make sure that we're ready to do our thing when the time comes. Because of a long time delays and getting equipment. Any questions on those numbers? I see that RD has his hand up. RD, do you wanna comment on this? Jerry, the only thing I wanna ask is, Phil, are all of these accounts in QuickBooks or is there some other app that you're using? No, actually there's, all these funds are, yes, they're in QuickBooks and they're with our account, Bonnie Batchelder. So she tracks them and I actually track them as well in Excel as a matter of habit so that I can, I just have a habit of liking numbers at my fingertips. Right, Mike, I'd like to suggest that in future, we distribute QuickBooks, P&L and balance accounts, printouts to board members before they advance to the meeting. I would just like to see figures. It's difficult for me to follow your presentation. Not to have an excellent one, but I have difficulty processing it. I would love to see stuff in print or on the screen in text. Understood and appreciated. There's often a delay in getting things through QuickBooks, through the accountant and to us, but I think if we're on them, we can get things reasonably current so it's close enough. I like to give current numbers as of today. Typically if you go through the accountant, you'll have numbers to the end of last month and for a meeting that meets a week or two in the month, that's fairly normal. Okay, I'll pass that on. Very good R.D. point taken there. And if you would lower your hand now, excellent, thank you, sir. So just to continue. Yes, please, I was gonna ask you to. Yeah, we have a compilation report that's in draft format. There's some questions going back and forth that's being prepared by the accountant. And just to highlight, this will probably be my last meeting as treasurer, but this is my last meeting as treasurer. I guess I'll just say that since I resigned as of June 30 or until they found somebody whichever came sooner. So I was, I'm looking forward to perhaps join the finance committee to support that. Again, my resignation in the role is because of my day job taking more of my time and focus. Well, Phil, we can't thank you enough for all that you've done and the professionalism you've brought to this organization. There is absolutely no question about that. Yes, really. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And we do look forward to you on the finance committee. We just decided that it meets three times a week. So that'll be perfect. You really don't know. Yeah, I might miss a couple of those. Thanks for all you've done, Phil. Thank you. Are there bills to pay on this issue, on this, do we have specific bills? I can go through them. We hadn't wanted to in the past, but I'll be happy to go through them with you. Just take me a second here. I'm gonna take it up to three years Thursday, Jerry. Anything over a million dollars we're interested in. There's not a lot to talk about then. I could be a little... Then there's nothing to bring up at this time. Okay, that's fine. Because we do... Yeah, throw it up on the screen if you'd like. So if you see it on the screen, we've got bills for a service for Kentucky, that's for their service, an invoice for APEX, and several invoices pending approval. I use the word chair, which is really so the responsible manager. So those are the invoices waiting for approval. Thank you, sir. You've satisfied my curiosity here. And for ID, since I have this up, I don't generally show my notes on the side here, but I'm gonna just cite them here. That didn't work. Guess it doesn't really matter. So as far as numbers go, here are all the grants. This column is the balance in the checkbook. These are the grant amounts, funds that have not been drawn down, funds received last year and spent in the balance and in the current year. We do have some requests outstanding as well for some funds that haven't come in yet. And some of the payables that are pending to get us to the remaining grant balances. Excellent, excellent. And I'll have this attached to the minutes so that you can look at it more closely. Thank you. Shall we move on to the executive director's report? Janiel, would you like to give us an update on, first of all, what you're doing in Nashville, just in case there's anybody that doesn't know and feel listen on the past week's activities or so? Having a good time, I hope. Yes, can you hear me? Okay, so I am in Nashville for FiberConnect 2022. There are 3,000 people here from the fiber industry and there's a series of educational sessions about the industry. A lot of it has to do with where we are in our project and that is design, developing a network. I was here for the pre-conference conference on Sunday as well, which was very educational. There are special sessions on building in rural areas which are very relevant to us, some funding type of education and a lot of networking. Apparently there were 92 vendors, exhibitors who didn't get to exhibit, so they were on the waiting list. That's how busy it is here. As we know, there's a lot of ARPA funding and support for fiber build-out. So a huge focus on the fiber industry now is on building out these new networks and how we can leverage all of this amazing grant money. So I'm in Nashville learning a lot and I've been here since Saturday night and we'll return early on Thursday morning with a lot of new information and education that is really a godsend. So that's what I am doing right now. I want to make some of the details about the other items, somewhat brief because we're gonna go through them in this meeting. So for instance, the webinar, the treasurer, the signing with waste fields, the materials and materials warehousing RFP, the universal service plan, the business plan and the construction grant app are all on this agenda. So rather than discussing it in detail right now, what I will do is fill in the gaps on some other things that aren't on the agenda and can weigh in on any of those other items when we discuss them later. So as for fence is being installed starting tomorrow, we got our green light from DigSafe from WEC and from our local fencing contractor. So that is happening tomorrow that will secure our fiber. As for the make ready, write out and easements, all of these are happening. Phil mentioned meeting some approvals on some invoices. Some of those, yes, I will approve. Others were waiting for just finals on like for the Philson, just some final authorization. And then we are starting our 1200 plus writeouts with WEC. We had our first writeouts last week and are continuing this week with writeouts in a field with NBI to get whole information which will tell us what needs to be done in the communication space, in the fiber space and with any potential pole replacements. And we're starting on easements with protectives. So that's what's happening with those make ready work. And then the other thing to touch on is the construction RFP, which isn't on the agenda but is a very important piece. We did put out our construction RFP at the end of last month and we got four intense bid which is incredible in the current climate with a shortage of construction crews available. So that we asked for an intense bid as not an obligation but to get a feeling for what we might get. So to me that says despite a very challenging climate in the construction world, we know that four people intend to bid on our construction RFP. In addition to that, we have, and this is the final item I'll touch on in the ED report. And that is the public engagement, RFP or public engagement is a piece that I'm realizing even more at this conference is so important to get, it's more public engagement in marketing but to put out a public engagement RFP which I've been working on with the communications committee and also that we've gotten a couple of proposals from cornerstone and crowd fiber that I think will help us to start getting our message out there and engaging the public in advance of the RFP that we will issue. So that's all I wanted to touch on but please feel free to ask any questions if you have any. Otherwise, some of the other items I can weigh in on as they're on the agenda. Are there any questions for Janiel at this time? And maybe later on as we talk, well, Janiel will be joining the conversation on other items as well for sure. Okay, I hear, I see no hands raised, no questions. For Janiel, let's continue to move on then into our webinar update. We are working on a PowerPoint, if you will, a presentation that will go with our very public webinar. It's scheduled for June the 22nd at seven o'clock. I believe that I will be doing the presentation myself unless we wanna do this by committee but I don't think so. So we will present, you know, there's a lot to present. Of course, what we will present is all public information. None of it would be anything we would talk about in executive session but we do have a lot of news to present on moving forward, especially concerning funds and concerning our ability to utilize those funds to bring fiber to central Vermont. I'm really looking forward to this presentation and I'm looking forward to some public response too. I've been getting quite a few people asking me, you know, when am I gonna get fiber? When am I gonna get fiber? And I must admit that when I tell folks that, you know, this is a big deal, you know, we're bringing fiber to all of central Vermont. This is a multimillion dollar multi-year project. I haven't gotten any grief when I presented that way. You know, I think folks really understand that this is a pretty large undertaking and I'm looking forward to bringing that message out to a broader audience. I hope they're receptive. Does anybody have any questions about the webinar? And of course, the information will be up on our website in the next couple of days. All right, I see a number of hands raised. So let me start with David Lawrence. Go ahead, David. Well, so this is not directly about the webinar but it's related to status of things which is something I expect you to cover in the webinar but if you don't wanna handle it now to handle other people that actually maybe have questions directly about the webinar, I understand that. Essentially, I have a question from my backup delegate in Middlesex who's wondering about the poll inventory and exactly how it was done. In particular with regard to whether the poll inventory is complete because apparently some people had like people knocking on their doors and saying hi and he's under the impression that some roads maybe weren't done. I can redo his message exactly through a brief. My only question at this point is how Middlesex resident would know if their polls have been inventoryed. As an example and looking at their planning outlets, four polls that lead up to our property on Culver Hill Road are not shown on the map. Lee Sharpe mentioned that the people who did the poll inventory actually knocked on their door to provide info but we never got that or missed such a visit. I know it's all about me but I'm concerned maybe other Middlesex residents may have been missed. If there's anything we or other residents should do to address this. That's a good point. David, can you, David Healy, can you address Middlesex poll inventory? Though technically every poll in Middlesex should have been interviewed, inventoryed. Could there be a poll or two missing? Yes. And so getting an access to the actual data which I can do for you and maybe for the whole all the towns would be a good next step. We've still been doing some QC but Middlesex was done a year ago. And yeah, I was under the impression we were all done too. I just didn't know how to answer the possibility that something was missed. No, it'd be good to know if something was missing though. So that's a good question. Yeah, David, both, David, I would recommend that you send the address to David Healy so he can check on the address and see where it stands in our inventory. Okay, sure. I'll forward the message from my Middlesex cohort over to for him to handle. Thank you. Okay, excellent. Siobhan, I see your hand is up next please. I just wanted to, I didn't know if this was good enough for the webinar to get it on the webinar, but yesterday the Orange Select Board voted $30,000 to be given to us. So I don't know if you want to also add that as another town giving it support. It's a done deal. But we don't have the letter yet. So we have to work on those details but they did the vote. We definitely want to acknowledge that. Thank you, Siobhan. Which town? That's great. Orange. Linda, I see your hand is up. Yes. The communications committee would like to ask all delegates and alternates to post the flyers about the webinar around your towns at community centers, at senior citizens centers and in place it has a bulletin board at the library at your town hall, all those kind of places. We are asking you to print your own copies of the flyer. If you haven't received the final version, I will ask John Walters to send it out again. Thank you. Linda's the flyer available on the website. What did I know of? Okay. I recognize that the purpose of the flyer is to get to folks that don't have necessarily access to the website, understood. Just wondering if it was up there. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion concerning the webinar update? So let, hearing none, let me allow me to segue into the treasurer search and I'm gonna ask Janiel to lead this discussion and then I will follow up with a motion if we're ready to do that. But we, this is a very, I can't describe how important this position is because, I mean, we've raised the stipend for the treasurer because very specifically because of the amount of time and the amount of effort that it takes for someone to be treasurer for CV fiber. I mean, not only do we have multiple sources but of funds that need to be kept track of each and its own stovepipe, those funds have specific obligatory routes that they have to take that has to be mapped and everything has to go back to the source and make sure that the funds add up to the amounts that we've been given and the uses have been only in those allowed uses and that is a rigorous process that you must pay attention to. So it's quite a job for the treasurer but Janiel, let me pass it over to you and you can describe the process please. Sure, so the board is authorized to appoint a treasurer and we got noticed that Phil was stepping down as treasurer and so we put out a notice on Front Forge Forum as well as on our CV fiber website, seeking a treasurer and pointing back to the qualifications required for that treasurer. We did get someone who is interested originally too but the one person backed out but we ultimately ended with a qualified individual, Laurie Beth Putnam who has treasurer experience for non-profits as well as for-profit organizations and she also has experience with allocation of branch funds which we thought is an important knowledge base. She spoke with Phil to understand the job a bit more and got some details from him and he got some details from her. I conducted a free interview to talk with her and I also interviewed her professional references who she has been serving as a treasurer for. Then we had a panel interview conducted by myself, Ray Pelletier, Christopher Shank and Linda Bravel to talk to Laurie Beth Putnam to learn more about her and so that she could tell us about her experiences and also ask us questions. So we are now at a position where as Jerry pointed out we really do need someone as we go into this important phase of our construction plan and build allocation of the grant funds. It is necessary to have somebody handling our accounts receivable and payable who understands the process and who can work with us and we believe that Laurie Beth Putnam will be a good candidate and work well with us. So we're excited that we have Laurie Beth interested in this role and we would like to move to ask the board to appoint Laurie Beth. In addition to that pursuant to the statute we'd like to say that there is no bond required as part of this appointment and that she will receive a stipend of $1,000 a month to self-authorize. She serves as our treasurer. Thank you, Janiel. ICRD, do you have your hand up, sir? Yes, just very briefly. I don't recall what compensation we offered in an RFP to a treasurer, but it strikes me that we're at the point where we need someone with serious professional credentials on a more or less full-time basis. Is the stipend of $1,000 a month that we're offering sufficient? And is our RFP, is an RFP sufficient to interest and evoke applications from people who are fully required on a full-time professional basis to be our treasurer or, and this is a question, not a statement, do on account of our other contracts, our service contracts, do we not need a full-time treasurer office that would require us to pay more than the stipend that we're offering? Is that something that we pass off to our service provider? Or is this a, as it were, a corporate office that we're looking to fill? So let me respond to that first and then I'll give Ray a chance. Our treasurers of volunteer, there is a stipend for compensation, I suspect for the amount of time that the treasurer has to put in, but we do have a full-time accountant. We have an accounting firm that is overseen by the treasurer. So the cutting of checks, the working off the quick books and all of that type of work is done by our accounting firm. And as part of our authority, we are required to have a treasurer as an office, as an officer, excuse me, and not necessarily to have an office of the treasurer. So we have farmed out the office of the treasurer, if you will, to our accounting firm. But I will allow Ray to continue the discussion here. R.D., you may recall that we had put in the budget $1,000 a month for the stipend or the treasurer because of the responsibilities laid out in the statute as well as the time that was being spent. And we've estimated that time to be 20 hours plus a month, so five hours plus a week. And of course the individual also attends quite a few meetings as well as monitoring the comings and goings and processing of all the invoices and things. And is the one of the direct link with the accountant. And as a chair of the finance committee, both of them report to me in the chain here. But you may recall that we had, we've also adopted implementation guidelines for our financial control processes so that we have a fairly strict process which we think will stand up under the audit inspection that's going to be coming up in this Q1 of 23. And so and Phil, the treasurer and Bonnie and a bunch of other folks participated in the development of those processes. So it's a critical role, is it a full-time role? The short answer at this point is no. I'm not aware of any CUD that has a full-time treasurer. Many of them are getting accounting firms and many of them struggling to find an auditing firm because there aren't that many that do it anymore and they're having trouble scaling up themselves. So I think that we have the right infrastructure. It could be that the stipend may see increasing increase over a little bit of time here, but I think we have the right infrastructure in place right now. I would like to make a motion here with a few whereas setting up the motion. Whereas pursuant to 30 VSA section 3069, the board has the authority to appoint a treasurer. Whereas the current treasurer is stepping down and CV Fiber is in need of a treasurer to assist in the handling of its accounts, receivable and payable as we proceed into the important phase of our construction plan and build an allocation of grant funds. Whereas CV Fiber has placed an advertisement seeking a treasurer on front porch form and on the CV Fiber website and received an interested and qualified candidate, Lori Beth Putnam, who possesses extensive treasurer experience with nonprofit and for-profit organizations as well as with the handling of grant funds. Whereas CV Fiber's current treasurer, Phil Ciccini and Janelle Smith conducted pre-interviews and conducted reference checks and interviews with professional references for Lori Beth Putnam. Whereas CV Fiber interviewed Lori Beth Putnam on a panel interview that included Janelle Smith, Ray Pelletier, Christopher Schenck and Linda Gravel and found her to be well qualified for appointment. I move that the governing board authorize CV Fiber to appoint Lori Beth Putnam to serve as CV Fiber's treasurer to begin in June, 2022 with a monthly stipend of $1,000 as so authorized. And further that pursuant to section 3067, no bond is required as a part of this appointment. And I would ask for discussion and a second if possible. Second. Okay, I believe Siobhan got that second in. Oh, no way. No, give it to Linda. Linda got it. Is that right? I have a hard time distinguishing the voices there. Okay, is there any discussion before we go to a vote? Christian? Just really quickly, if you want all that or at least the very, the exact words of the motion itself, I'd like me to get that exactly right. I will email that to you, sir. If I start trying to copy and paste into the chat room, I'm sure I'll end up watching Netflix by mistake or something. Okay, is there additional discussion? I would like to bring this to a vote. All in favor of the motion? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed to the motion? Hearing none opposed, the motion moves unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much. Much appreciated. And Lori Beth, we look forward to meeting you again soon before our next meeting, I hope. Okay, I'd like to continue to move on and discuss our Watesfield Telecom contract contract that we have been moving forward with for quite a while now. And we have gotten to the point where we are at full agreement. We are absolutely ready to sign the document on both ends and it will be brought to, if you remember this is now, this has been passed on to the executive committees, the contract is subject to successful negotiations with the executive committees approval. And we are going to bring this to the executive committee on Thursday. That will be an important action that we need to take on Thursday. And this is, you know, this is really, this is quite a big deal. So I'm very pleased that we've gotten this far. Are there any discussion on our Watesfield Telecom contract that is pending? Do we need a motion? I don't believe we need any action at all by the governing board. My intent here was only to make sure that the governing board was aware that this will be brought before the executive committee on Thursday. And with all of the effort that we have put into this, I would, I certainly consider these negotiations successful and we are anticipating that the executive committee will concur. But I do see a hand up, Henry. I'm just curious, the business plan that you sent out is that reflect the current negotiations with Watesfield Telecom? Does that reflect the current negotiations with Watesfield Telecom? Yes, I believe it does because there had to be some, there had to be a reference if you will for what we've assumed in the business plan. So that, and what we have been doing in the business plan all along is looking for the because everything is in advance, we haven't been in operation yet. So we've been looking for our best estimates and many of our best estimates have been coming from responses to RFPs, contract negotiations, et cetera. So the short answer, Henry is yes. Okay, yeah, I was wondering if once it's signed it would need to be updated, but it sounds like it hasn't changed since then. No, the contract will not change to reflect the business plan, it would actually be the other way around where they're already changes. The other way around, yes. Well, we'll talk more about the business plan later. Okay, thanks. And we will actually get to this type of discussion. If there's no more about the Waitsfield contract, I would like to move on to the committee chair appointments that I believe we can move through pretty quickly. Are there any more questions on the Waitsfield contract? And Henry, your hand is still up, sir. Okay, excellent. So at our last executive committee, the executive committee appointed chairs and accepted the chairs from the committees themselves. And at this point, we are bringing the appointment of the committee chairs. The executive committee recommends the appointment of committee chairs to the governing board. And we can have discussion or I can go straight into that motion, which maybe would make the discussion more valuable. Seeing nodding heads, I will move right into the motion. Committee chair appointments, whereas pursuant to 30 VSA section 3071, the board has the authority to create committees and make appointments there too. Whereas the board has created the executive committee and established its membership as including the chairs of the CD fiber committees. Whereas the committees have selected and recommend their respective chairs from among its board membership. Whereas the executive committee has endorsed the recommendation of the committees. I move that the governing board make the following chair appointments based upon the committee and executive committee recommendations as follows. Chuck Burt as chair of the communications committee, Ray Pella chair as chair of the finance and audit committee, David Healy as chair of the planning and development committee and Alan Gilbert as chair of the policy committee. Second. That was Siobhan seconding the motion. Any discussion on these chair appointments? Let's move to a vote please and perhaps I'll do this one the other way. Are there any votes in opposition to this motion? Okay, hearing no votes in opposition, I will move that this motion moves unopposed and congratulations to everyone who's now continuing in this case to be committee chair and thank you for all the work that you do for CV fiber. We would be way behind where we are now without the extensive work of our committees and especially of the committee chairs. So I would like to say thank you. Thank you. Okay, so that taken I would like to move this along to the materials purchase. Actually what I have in the agenda here says action expected but in fact, the action's already been taken by the executive committee so I believe that this is more of an update than a request for action by the board. But Janiel, would you like to talk a little bit about this materials purchase or would you like me to continue? Yes, so we are facing some long lead times on materials. We haven't actually issued the materials RFP at this point but recognizing is that we would like to purchase the electronics cabinet due to long lead times. We are planning to put in as order for cabinets and cabinet electronics so that we can at least light somebody this year. Our goal is to get enough lead time on the longest lead time materials so that we can light folks as quickly as possible. So we propose putting in orders for callets and clear field electronics and cabinets for the purpose of lighting someone within the calendar year 2022 rather than waiting until 2023 if at all possible. Excellent, thank you, Janiel. I'll just put a little bit more 20,000 foot perspective on that. So we have a bill of materials for our entire build out. And what we've decided to do instead of going forward with one large slug or even a large portion of that bill of materials, we took the longest lead and the most important materials for just a small area of where we're gonna, the first areas where we're gonna be building out and where we are negotiating a purchase that was approved by the executive committee not to exceed $250,000 just for those electronics so that as soon as we have enough fiber strung we can get someone lit. Of course it doesn't work exactly like that. There's testing that has to be done. There's backups that have to be secured, et cetera. But the idea being that instead of ordering this full slug of materials we would make this precision order of just a few items that we know have long lead times in the hope that that will catch up with our early construction. And again, there's no action here really to be taken but the intention is to inform the board. Is there any other discussion on this materials purchase? We did cover it at the executive committee meeting. Okay, hearing none, this is helpful. I would like to move into our RFP and potential contract for our materials, our warehouse and our supply chain. We have been extremely active over the past, I guess it's been three weeks. It's hard to remember exactly when we got our RFPs back. We have been working with MBI. We asked them to manage the RFP process which includes collecting and collating the questions, helping us respond to questions and then collecting and organizing the responses so that we can compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges across multiple bidders who of course don't always follow the same pattern that you asked them to follow. These things happen. MBI has a lot of experience in this area and they have been extremely helpful in helping us formulate our evaluation of the RFP. And I will add that we reached out to MBI because NRTC had planned on responding to our RFP. So we took NRTC and took them totally out of the RFP and the evaluation submission and evaluation process so that there wouldn't be any conflict there. Ray, would you like to continue this discussion and I'll take a simple water? Sure, I could. And I think that it might be helpful to start with the motion and it'll provide some context for the discussion and I'm putting the motion in the chat room but I'll read it. Whereas CD-Fiber through its contract with Mission Broadband Inc. issued a request for proposals for materials, warehouse and supply chain services on three May, 2022. Whereas CD-Fiber received four proposals, two of which include proposals for all three components of the RFP while there was one proposal for material only and the fourth was for material was for warehouse and supply chain services which proposal and discussions reflected that the two of them were participating jointly and essentially as one team in response to the RFP. So basically we wind up with three teams responding. Whereas NBI and the CD-Fiber RFP review team consisting of the board chair, the planning and development committee chair and vice chair, the finance committee chair and the executive director reviewed each proposal, submitted questions to the respondents, checked references and conducted interviews with each team whereas acquiring warehouse and supply chain services will require contract negotiations. Whereas CD-Fiber reflected in the RFP a willingness to participate with other CUDs in the provision of warehouse services and at least one CUD has expressed an interest therein whereas the acquisition of materials will require the submission of purchase orders to one or more vendors offering the best value to CD-Fiber in terms of pricing and delivery lead times. Whereas the executive committee recommends the following actions, move that the governing board take the following two actions. One, the board approved the award of a warehouse and supply chain services contract to KGP company, KGP Co subject to successful negotiations with the contractor and if applicable an agreement with one or more CUDs each is determined by the executive committee. And secondly, the board approved the expenditure of up to $10 million subject to available funding and CD-Fiber's procurement policy for the establishment, operation and security of a warehouse and storage yard and the acquisition of such materials from such vendors as the executive committee shall be determined to be in the best interest of CD-Fiber. Second. Who is that second? Was that Christopher? David. David, thank you, David. We have a second, is there discussion and I will remind folks that we are not in executive session if the discussion takes us there we can certainly go to executive session but are there any questions or discussion? Hearing none, I would like to propose that we vote and this time I'll look for the affirmative around the board all in favor of the motion as seconded. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Hearing none opposed, thank you all. This is an extremely important step for CD-Fiber. Excellent. Thank you. What? One extra. I'm sorry, one extra is there a hand? I just want to point out for bearing the board the sensitivity of the timing, these quotes that we got are very sensitive to timing so this is a great movement to help us execute so we can meet the prices they gave us in the RFP because it's changing every month. Excellent, thank you. With that done, that business done let's move on to our universal service plan that all of the board members I hope have had the opportunity to see Mike from Barrytown. Let me ask you directly, sir, did you receive a copy? Are you on our email? Yes, I did receive it. Excellent, thank you. I just wanted to check on that. Okay, so this universal service plan is something it's something that is a requirement for our construction grant application. We have to submit a universal service plan as a necessary component of this construction grant application which is what brings it to the point of being ripe for this meeting because we are moving to bring our construction grant application to the VCBB. So we need this universal service plan and the same thing goes for the business plan but we'll do one at a time here. I'd like to pass this universal service plan off to David so that he can discuss what it's based on and again I will note that we are not in executive session but we can move to executive session should we need to. So the requirements of the Vermont Community Broadband Board was that every CUD if they were gonna seek construction grant funds develop and adopt a universal service plan what does that mean? It means we are guaranteeing when we use their money we will reach all the eligible locations within our district with that money. And so it lays out pretty much where they are how many we're gonna serve our relationships with other folks and make the commitment to the board that we're going to do what they asked. The document is a little duplicative of some of the other stuff in the RFP I mean in the grant application but basically it's our commitment showing them where we're going and how much we're doing and when we're gonna do it. And if there are any questions I'll be happy to answer them without divulging too many details in public. Not seeing additional questions for David I would like to bring a motion to the floor and then perhaps we can continue some discussion and this is concerning the universal service plan where a CD fiber intends to submit a construction grant application to the Vermont Community Broadband Board on or about June 16th, 2022. Whereas a requirement of the construction grant application is the inclusion of a CUD adopted universal service plan and whereas the governing board adopted a mission and vision on May 8th, 2018 and whereas that mission and vision stated the mission being we will provide central Vermont residents, businesses and civic institutions with universal access to a reliable secure locally owned and governed communications network able to grow to meet future community needs. The vision being we envision a high-speed digital highway where traffic flows freely growing the regional economy and broadening digital opportunities for people of all ages, means and interests thereby enriching the public and private lives of our residents. Whereas the planning and development committee and the executive committee recommend adoption of a universal service plan I move that the governing board adopt a universal service plan subject to such refinement as the executive committee may deem appropriate prior to its submission to the Vermont Community Broadband Board. Second. That is a second by Linda if I have this one correct. Thank you. Is there any discussion following up on our universal service plan? Hearing none, I believe we are ready for a vote. Again, I'd like to hear and see the positives on this. All in favor of the motion as seconded, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none opposed, the motion moves unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much and thank you David for all the effort that went into this. A substantial piece of work. So moving next to the business plan yet again another substantial piece of work. We have contracted with NRTC to develop our business plan and let me rephrase that. We started out of course with Interisle doing our initial business plan. And what we did with NRTC as we have learned more about what it takes to provide fiber and as we've learned more about the district and the needs of the district and we've learned more about the engineering required to provide fiber and the operations required we've contracted with NRTC to provide both a business plan and a financial model and actual spreadsheet model that supports that business plan. And we have both of those in hand. Again, the business plan is a necessary component of our construction grant application. So again, the timing is ripe for the governing board to accept this business plan as being a part of our construction grant application. I really wanna point out here even more than the universal service plan this business plan has to be a snapshot. We know what we've seen in the past we try to understand what we see today and we're trying to forecast the future and the business plan has to take all three of those into account. We forecast out for 20 years of operations as a part of our business plan. As we learn things, things change and some of the things we learn are helpful some of the things we learn are new hurdles we have to jump through but the business plan is a living document that will change. We have presented what we call version four of the business plan that we will provide if accepted here by the governing board we will provide as a part of our construction grant application that will be revised at some point in time. As I said, it is a living document. Ray, would you like to discuss a little bit more about our business plan or David would you like to have some additional input? I'll let Ray go first. So I prepared a motion that might provide some additional context. So if I could perhaps present that if that's okay I see John Morris has his hand up. Oh, thank you Ray. Go ahead John, please. I didn't mean to jump ahead of who was already speaking. I just have a couple of questions that are kind of specific in the business plan is now the appropriate time to do that or should we do that after Ray has presented where he has to present? Well, let me ask you a question. Are you going to send us into executive session to give you an answer? I believe that we could avoid executive session for my answer, but my question is a little bit specific. Okay, how about if we let Ray do the motion and then we'll make this part of the discussion with Ray's motion on the table? That's fine, I'll take my hand down. Excellent, thank you. We'll go right back to you after the motion. All right, I posted the motion in the chat room. Where a CV fiber intends to submit a construction grant application to the Vermont Community Broadband Board on about June 16, 2022. And whereas a requirement of the construction grant application is the inclusion of a CUD adopted business plan. And whereas NRTC has been engaged in the development of a business plan informed by the input from the governing board chair, the planning and development chair, finance chair and the executive director. And whereas this is a living document that will undergo change to adjust for changing conditions. This version four is a snapshot in May, 2022 of the architecture, project scope, estimated capital and operating expenses, preliminary construction sequence and schedule, estimated revenues and potential risks. And whereas funding materials and labor availability have already informed this version of the business plan, these factors will continue to cause adjustment in these plans. And whereas notwithstanding the impact of these variables, CV fiber will continue to be motivated by the need to serve the underserved, to sustain the business, to meet engineering requirements and to ensure the maintainability and reliability of the CV fiber community network. Whereas the executive committee recommends the adoption of the business plan version four, subject to its refinement. It is moved that the governing board adopt the business plan version four, subject to such refinement as the executive committee may deem appropriate prior to its submission to the Vermont Community Broadband Board. Second. Seconded by Siobhan. Thank you. Now, John, please bring us your discussion. Okay, so my first question is pretty general. Does including this in the grant make it no longer confidential? Is it then public information? No, sir, this remains confidential and allow me to explain. When we submit the grant, we are asked to identify those portions of the grant that we consider confidential so that the Community Broadband Board, when they receive our information, they know what it is that we feel is confidential information. Does that answer your question, sir? Yes. Okay, and you have a follow-up. My second question, yes, my second question is on page 10. There is a table there that talks about months and years. And I noticed that for 2022, the first, the month in the second column is much earlier than the month in the last column. But in all of the other, for all of the other years of that table, it's the next month. And I'm curious about how that can happen. So I'm looking at the- I appreciate the way you formulated that question. Thank you. David, can you respond to this? I just don't know, is that a mistake or am I misreading it? My guess it's a mistake. I don't have the document open, but my sense is you are such a great proofreader that that error can be fixed. I mean, did it look like it's easily fixed, John? I would imagine that the month in the final column needs to be the end of the year, not the fourth month of the year. Okay. We'll go back and revise that table. Paige, what was it? 10. And thank you. Thank you, John. I'm sorry, I didn't get to read it until just now, so I couldn't give you feedback by email. Understood. We are nearly all volunteers here. Phil, I see your hand is up. Please. Yes, thank you. First, it's great to see this. What a great document, what a lot of work. We're constantly becoming more real. I love it. Mine's really a formatting question. Traditionally, when I look at it, think of a business plan being the accountant, I think of seeing a P&L, a full P&L. Certainly all the pieces are there, but I think you'll find if this is handed to a banker, as part of a developing relationship with a bank, they'll be wanting to see a P&L balance sheet, cash flow attached to it. Clearly those documents are behind this someplace, but it's just a formatting thing. You're right, Phil. Those documents do exist in the multi-tab spreadsheet and dashboards that actually goes along with that spreadsheet. Yeah, you don't want to print it out. That's not going to work. Yeah, I've worked with NRTC in a prior life. I've seen some of their models. Yeah, thank you, though, for pointing it out. Do you have another comment, Phil? That's it. Again, thank you. A lot of hard work. Appreciate it. Thank you. Tom Fisher, I see your hand, sir. Yes, I'm a little late. I was going to reply to the comment about that table, that camping question. It may just be a review of the way it is worded in the headings of that table to kind of explain what has meant my understanding based on information on how build is going to occur, what the process is like, made sense to me in reading that table. So that just may be a difference in the way it's written. But I'm sure David can cover that well when you read it. Yeah, since we did, you know, NRTC wrote this, and I'm going to, in fixing this table, I'm looking at it right now. It looks like it can be fixed based on the other information that's in there. Just an odd one, the 2024 one, and build end and customers starting way before the build end. Not so good. Okay. Well, actually, actually, that there will be installations that are occurring during build. And so none of those dates are out of range of being reasonable. So I looked at the dates, they look fine. And so what happens, John, is that there'll be some building and as they get so far ahead, they'll start doing installations. And so what you see is, you'll see that the building starts in a certain month and then one month later, it shows that installation is starting. That's within the realm of reasonableness. Is it going to happen that way? No, no, but it could. Is there additional discussion? And David, you can still double check that entry, right? Oh yeah. Okay. I mean, what Ray just said is correct. It's a question of whether you believe you can light people up one month after construction in that year started. And it's probably true. You could. So that's the working assumption. Yeah. Any other discussion here for our business plan? We have a motion on the floor. Oh no, RD, please go ahead, RD. Very briefly, David, if we adopt this plan tonight, can such changes as John was sort of peripherally suggesting in his comment, can such changes be made? Absolutely. Yeah, I think the way the motion is worded that this is version four, it's constantly going to be updated. And so we'll be seeing this changes as we go forward is information changes, cost change. As you'll notice, there's certain assumptions made in it. Maybe some of those assumptions will change. And so it'll have to be updated just to deal with those. Certainly some of those assumptions will change. And that's why many of those assumptions are a changeable cell in the spreadsheet that ripples through the spreadsheet. So if you don't have to go and change every calculation, because things like take rates and assumed lead times and these things are all changeable in the document. RD, do you have additional discussion here, sir? No, I think I'm okay. Thanks. Okay, very good. I believe we might be ready for a vote here or is there additional discussion on this motion? All right, all in favor of the motion on the table? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none opposed, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you, everyone for that. So these past few headings and I mean these past few headings, how about this? How about the past three years that we've been in existence have been leading up to this construction grant application? Going back to when we didn't even know there was going to be such a thing as a construction grant. But now we find ourselves and I would say that in the past 18 months anyway, pretty much all of the work that we've been doing either directly or indirectly has been in support of being able to submit a construction grant application and we are there. I don't know, I do have action expected on the agenda but actually I don't think there really is an action to be taken by the governing board. I had to send out this agenda before we had our executive committee meeting. So without knowing what the outcome of the executive committee meeting might be, I included this as an action expected. I think I would like to ask David to talk a little bit about our application and this is for the situational awareness of everybody on the governing board to understand just quite exactly what this is and what's included in it. David, if you would please. So the Vermont community broadband board put out a request for proposals in January. It was to process, first we had to be eligible and we had to tell them how we wanted to submit our application. So we passed the first test, they accepted our eligibility application I don't know about six weeks ago and the next part was the detailed application and the method we're going is a phase construction. So what we're submitting is a phase one construction construction plan and the document, all the elements they want is like six separate parts. They need to certify things. We need to have a transmitter letter and all the general stuff. They wanna know who we're working with. They want a business plan. They want a universal service plan. They want us to describe funding for the project and then they want the details of the project description. And in that, we are very fortunate because NRTC has given us an executable project plan that has all the details the board is looking for. And today we received from NRTC another attachment. They sent us the high level design documentation which is one of the elements that the state's contractor is gonna review to make sure that the technology and methods we're using are up to the state standard that they want done. They have a timeline required not to exceed estimated price. That's interesting. We are only allowed, and I'll give you the number, we're only allowed to apply for $18,289,000. We have already received $6 million. So we received $6 million for the materials. So we'll be submitting the grant application will be for $12,289,000. And so we had a detail of the breakout what the money is gonna be spent on. And then there's a whole series of questions on network performance and monitoring. And then a whole series of questions on collaboration, coordination, resiliency, redundancy, incidental overbuild, sustainability, affordability, technical and security approach, network performance and monitoring. And I think I left out an element in there that I want to highlight. They asked us to provide an equity subscription, description for the whole project in which we did Shabon did a fabulous job in writing that one up. And then there's like, let's see, I got eight, what is H through, A through H attachments. So the universal service plan, the compliance, the compliant business plan and the executable project plan, letters of support, community commitment of opera funds, operating agreements and other partner agreements, network maps by distribution area and a confidentially request. So one of the attachments is a memo from Jerry outlining all the pieces of this grant application that are confidential. So it's a pretty, very comprehensive grant application and you would expect that considering the amount of money they're about to give out. So I'd be happy to answer any question on the process and the elements that go into it. This couldn't have been done without all the different documents that we've had an ITC prepare or Waitsville, Champlain and Telecom. It's all one big package and it's gonna be probably three or 400 pages when they finish. So compiling it into two PDFs, I'm gonna think of it two PDFs but it's gonna be quite large. Is there any discussion or questions for David? Well, David, I'd like to thank you for the effort you're making and pulling all this together. Not just me. It is not just you, but you are the force behind pulling this together. It's definitely been a collaborative effort and thank you to everybody. Well, if there's no more discussion here, I'm wondering if there isn't a motion to adjourn unless there is additional discussion to be had. Well, RD, I see RD's hand is up. Yes, when will we receive an MOU? When will towns receive an MOU for their select boards to sign with respect to our ARPA donations? This month. Good, thank you. Hands down. Hands down. Additional questions from anyone? Comments? I'm gonna make a motion to adjourn. Second. Seconded by Siobhan. That noise, or maybe it's RD again, with his static machine. Not me. Good night, all. Good night, everybody. Thank you.