 David Healy and Scott Passage. I think the idea was that Scott was not going to, he's not going to continue as the alternate that's coming here. So welcome. Thank you. So because we have new people here, if we could take our public comment time and maybe go around the room and introduce ourselves so everybody knows who everybody else is, I think that would be valuable. Jonathan, is this your time, your first time here as well? No, I've attended before, but... Okay, well why don't you start us off then? Sure. My name is Jonathan Williams and I am the alternate from Marshfield here in Jim Bartlett's step. Siobhan Pericone, I'm the delegate from Orange. Tom Fisher, I'm currently the alternate from East Montpelier. I'd probably like to be the rainbow board member. Andy Gilbert, I'm the delegate from Cabot. Becca Schrader, clerk and treasurer, and I live in East Montpelier. Jeremy Henson from Berlin, I'm the chair. Michael Bernbaum, delegate from Plainfield. Jared Thomas, alternate from Cowles. Phil Hayek, delegate from Middlesex and Vice Chair. I'm Alan Gilbert, I'm the delegate from Worcester. Dan Jones, delegate from Montpelier. Frank Moore, delegate from Waynestown. Brown-Schneider, alternate from Williamstown. Jerry DM and TDs, alternate from Berlin. Well, everyone already knows me, but you're in that alternate from Plainfield. And way in the back of the corner. We have someone hiding. This is a special guest. Callis, mover. Welcome, Bill. I'm President Rowe. I'm from Fujitsu Network Communications out of Boston. It will be on the presentation in just a moment. Okay, another public comment. The field sits up there. Very quickly, I have to touch with Front Porch Forum. And they've approved adding an item for you as CD fiber members to be listed under governmental profile in Front Porch Forum. So I just got approved yesterday. I've been there. I told you there's probably going to be a lot more requests coming from each of the towns. So if you have Front Porch Forum. So we should request directly. Yes, you go in and I don't think you will see it as any kind of a dropout. I think you have to send a request to them to say in town if you have any certain position. And then it's CD fiber and they'll list you. Yeah, that's a public official. Well, that means that we get postings from all of the towns that are within the CD fiber district. I think you have to elect into that. I think that's right. Yeah. But what it'll give you the ability to do is as you're when you're posting to Front Porch Forum, you'll have a drop down box that will say, are you posting as someone who lives on in my case, like Varelli Farm Drive or as a Berlin Select Board member. So you can post in your official capacity or in your personal capacity. That's good news, Phil. Thank you. Anything else? Okay. Treasures report back up. Yes. We currently have a balance of $5,694. $1,661. 25 of that is in our savings account and the rest is in check. And I'd like to point out that we are still in need of folks to contribute. I would implore you. I'm going to bring this up again later too. I'd implore you so that we can get the full $12,500 match from the Think Vermont Innovation Grant, which we got. If you know anybody in your town, your form is not going to work anymore. We've been doing it, like, you know, advertised on Facebook. I think you just are going to need to go and ask people face to face and do that hard, that hard ask. Especially if you know somebody who has, I don't want to say disposable income, but who is sort of firmly behind what we're trying to do. VPR had an item today on Vermont Edition. It was about broadband throughout Vermont. And I was thinking, you know, if we could call it from Orange, or if we could call it from East Montpelier, I was like, those folks, those folks want to see this succeed. And even if it's just, you know, $25 from a handful of people, we can get past the finish line. What was the balance last time? Roughly the same? No, we got three donations. I would say roughly 400 bucks since last month. Thanks, Micah. Brad, you have the floor. Thank you. And thank you very much for the opportunity. 15 minutes. So this is going to be fast. Everybody has heard what we did to at one point in time in their careers for merit provisioning to optical networking equipment. We are North American based in Dallas. The corporation is based out of Japan. We are about $40 billion in revenue and 150,000 employees globally. The group I'm a part of is focused specifically on helping communities and states build a library infrastructure. Utilities, municipal utilities, co-ops, and cities. I'll show you a couple of examples here. And I'm going to try and go through this. I will send this to you so that if anyone else would like to go through this in more detail or have questions, definitely. What's our mission? It's helping transportation, like I said, utilities, education, public safety, and designing. And that could be studies to begin with to see if it's even feasible to build fiber in your community, to engineering, to building. We own a construction company that we actually go out and build fiber. We do that quite a bit for the carriers and we also do that for the state of Kentucky. We're subcontracted. We're building that fiber for them. And some other cities and utilities as well. I'll show you a couple of examples. How we work. We are a unique company in that we're always on time, whatever we commit to, even from a budget perspective. We live to it. So we've done engineering design studies that are very detailed and in a community and poles where, you know, we're counting poles and we're determining where fiber's going to run and where it's not going to run and where you want to change to wireless in some instances because the pricing may be right better. We make a commitment to what that cost will be and we guarantee it. So, and that's good for two reasons. One is that there's additional funding that you'll need for this in bonds or loans. We can help with that through our own financing, not budget suits, but our own financing partnerships that we have, as well as through helping through the government to get grants or funds as well. We implement broadband networks. We'll modernize an existing network. We secure it. We run it for you. So we have a network operation center. Two of them that run thousands of customers today, but we manage it and pretty much to take the responsibility of small towns having to build IT forces to do that. We also have marketing to help in driving really, or determining how many residents are going to sign up, what your revenue would look like, that kind of stuff. And then once you do make a decision to move forward in a community, we will actually get out on site with you as the town and help to convince your residents to move over to the network. We revitalize your community and this is a lot here, but basically from the beginning to the end and we work with you. We are project managers. We have a tremendous amount of experience in doing this. We'll be the single prime contractor. Can be the single prime contractor for all parts of it. 24x7 service activation as well as maintenance. So first step options that we talk to a lot of cities about as well as municipal electric companies that are very interested in doing this as well. We start with a board-ready study, typically our least expensive study but it gives the board within your community the ability to have some estimates of what a cost range would be a preliminary financial model customer demographics profile who the competition assessment is and some industry best practices provided the town. What this does is really help a town go back into a board or community to determine whether or not you want to move forward. We go into feasibility, that's much more detailed and then the finance grade business plan you can take to the bank literally for financing. There's lots of words in there, we'll send it to you to read it. Two examples, Kit Carson is a utility and we started with them really doing a technology assessment recommendation. We were the prime program manager. A unique part about Fujitsu is that we are a multi-mender approach to these networks. From an electronics perspective we've deployed Kalex, we've deployed zone, we've deployed a lot of different vendors. Cisco, we have partnerships with 65 different vendors. So we typically build what is best for the town for your needs. Not necessarily what hardware vendors can try and sell to you. And then latest is Fairlongig. Has anyone seen any news about Fairlongig at all? There are 12,000 people in their community. They made a couple years ago the move and got the funding to build a fiber infrastructure. We're the prime contractor kind of soup to nuts on that build as well as operations and maintenance. What are the results? Five times faster, I think they're doing a gig to the house for about $89 a month. Wow. Where are they located? Fairlong, Ohio. And go online. You can see a lot of that. What have they seen since they've done this? Some important things for a community. Increase in housing value. New businesses, 18 new businesses as a result of this build have moved into the community. Hospital has selected them as their backbone because of the higher speed cost. Just in general, it's helping the community. How long have they had this? How long have they had this? Two years. The business model said they had to have 40% of the residents sign up to make the bond payments. They got those people signed up. They built. They're about 60% today which means they're making good money. On the network, they're also deploying with Fujitsu wireless infrastructure in the city. And in some areas that are a little harder to get from a cost perspective for fiber, we've deployed wireless as well. Where the distance and everything works out right. They have any service prior to... Well, they had everybody. They had Comcast. They did. They had them all. So, yeah. And customers, and I can speak only for myself. I live in Pounds and Mass which is northwest right on New Hampshire border. I have Comcast and Comcast alone. I can't get DSL. I can't, you know, I can barely get wireless. And it's $300 a month. What part of Ohio are they in? Outside of Columbus. But it's densely populated. Is that correct? Yeah. 12,000 residents, roughly. And you ran the fiber. I'm looking at the website now. You ran the fiber underground. Some underground, some above. We're kind of different. No, I ran it. Right? I understand. There are rocks down there. We can do it. But it's expensive. Right? Right. It's a little bit above and below. And the wireless obviously in downtown is all above. And now they're talking about wireless and shopping centers and other areas from the town itself. I was just wondering what the wireless speeds, how they compare to the fiber speeds. No, no compared slower and much slower. I think we can see with some of the new wireless and low-ran up to 100 meg for wireless depending on the distance. CBRS is coming. That's going to be a little faster. We're laughing in a good way. Yeah, I get it. Sure. And obviously it depends on where you're going to install it and how many trees and hills and all that kind of stuff but we design it properly so you get the right coverage where you want it. Manage the budget from a network perspective so all the costs associated with planning, engineering, provisioning, labs, fault management, reliability, field operations, vendor management we pull it all together for the town. We manage the spares for any kind of failures. We have folks we typically would in Fairlawn as well we contracted with the local vendor to do hands on if that's what the town wanted for support of some of the equipment as well as the fiber. So what we act as the head contractor of all. You know, if you're doing this is pretty much the whole thing. Why aren't you just selling the service directly locally as opposed to working with a local entity? So let me I'm not sure I understand the question. Let me see if I can answer. Why aren't you at the ISP? Why aren't you at ISP? We're not interested in being an ISP and carrying the content but we can help create the partnerships to bring ISPs on to the network to offer those services. Yeah, that's not something we're interested in. Why not? Just not our strength. We build networks and manage and support them. We're not at ISP. We don't offer phone service. You know, we don't have those kind of capabilities. So it's typically not something we're interested in although we help create open networks for cities. They bring in ISPs which provides typically the city with more revenue. They get a piece of everything that goes in and they can offer phone service Hulu, Amazon, whatever kind of IP type of services. But that's not our strength. We have a security division so provide end to end security on infrastructure itself as well as the IP and making sure everything is secure from an IP perspective. Just sum it up, right? On time, on budget and worry free. We co-create with our cities. You know, we don't force anything down anybody's throat. It's what's best for each city is different. So we're happy to work closely with the cities. Gentlemen, in the lower right corner you have a quote from the Kit Carson Electric Co-op. What was your connection to the co-op when you did this project? From the beginning, we can go back here real quick. I remember seeing this. Kit Carson on the left, we did the assessment recommendation for the technology. We were the prime program manager. We did a multi-vendor network design. A variety of hardware, obviously. You get core networking gear and then you get gear that you're just going to have to put in the residence for access and a lot of different pieces. Was the Electric Co-op? Yes. You were contracting with them. You were the systems integrator. That's correct. When did you do that work? Kit Carson was probably four years ago. But the co-op asked you to do the work? Yes. Make contracting? Yes. They would have all the line brewers that were over there. They own the poles, right? Which is the hardest part, usually. I was just trying to negotiate all that. They own the poles. They know how to run cable. Right? So they may have run, and I don't know the specifics, but they may have run their own fiber. Just because it's simple for them. Do you know if you've worked with other co-ops around the country? We have. I can get you a list. We have. We see the co-ops. I'm working with some co-ops in Massachusetts in Maine today. Early kind of board-ready studies. They're just starting to look at that now for their communities. But they seem to be very interested and more importantly, they have the funds to do it. They have a paying user base. That's correct. Yeah, that's right. I have a question on this slide. If you could help me make sure I'm understanding this right. Just looking at Kit Carson here. 3,000 square miles. 6,000 customers. Over 3,000 square miles. And that is a sufficient base to pay your services and keep that operation running. It is. They're a customer today. The other one, on the other side, if I remember correctly, you said it was a 12,000 population town. 40% take rate if you will. Did I hear you say it was $89 a month? I think they're charging $89 a month for a gig. And less if you're buying less. You can buy less. Yep. And that also is viable with those numbers. Yes, they're making money. So Jerry, wouldn't you say that Northern New Mexico is mostly uninhabited desert and if we wanted to go if you wanted to go road miles then you could compare the apples to apples instead of apples to oranges because it's not 2900 miles of fiber. No. Understood. Thank you. That's helpful. A lot of evil monsters. It's also a big off-grid community. Here we go. Any other questions? So when you're managing for these entities do you have local offices? Do you have local staff? Do you have local people or are you all operating out of someplace else? So it depends on the size of the opportunity. In some of our opportunities like the state of Kentucky we're building the state Wi-Fiber Optic Network. We have offices. We have staff. We have our own construction companies there. Smaller opportunities. We act as the prime contractor and we have a lot of talking. No work yet. Not yet. So let's compare Vermont to New Mexico. It's hard to do but we're more rural than New Mexico is. New Mexico has cities and big towns and lots of space between them. So we're all dispersed just like where you live in New Hampshire. And so we have a lot more road miles per location which drives up the cost for locations. It does. Have you worked with any such areas? Other than towns that have 12,000 in the middle of them. Towns that have 800 or 400. Yes I have. In western Massachusetts no one has really done anything but I've worked with several towns in western where they've had 100 residents for example in the town. And it's a tough business model. You know it really is. The cost to build fiber can be 30 to 35,000 dollars per mile. That's unappalled. You had shown the progress of going from a reconnaissance type study, a board level study to a feasibility study on this plan that you can take to a bank. Are those Yes, thank you. Are those when you provide services are those separable elements where you can go one step at a time and do one at a time? Absolutely. And with that in mind if you're able or comfortable doing so could you give us an order of magnitude cost for what we have up here? I can give you ballparks. Ballparks are great. So a board ready study is let me just make sure I'm right here for a town up to 5,000 residents would be about 10,000 dollars. You get into a feasibility study and then we have to put people on the street much more expensive. You'll probably see that to be anywhere from 75,000 to 150. The finance grade business plan is an in-depth study but more importantly is something you literally can take to the bank that could be anywhere a 70,000 resident town we quoted 300,000 for. So we have a 50,000 resident county that is roughly represented here. It would be something that we would have to negotiate. And we do. John, there's agendas from the chair there. Any other questions? Can I just ask what you said you worked in western Mass on this purchase? I did. Was that around Pittsburgh? No. It was further west. We were a partner with the ISP and NBI and worked with 14 different towns in working through approvals where NBI would roughly pay 50% in grant money towards the build of the fiber and unfortunately most of those towns voted not to increase their tax base or to take out additional loans to fund the remaining 50%. Do you remember the names of any of the towns? I know somebody who's worked on a project there and I'm just trying to figure out so, Sanis Field and Tolland are two very small towns now they have a letter of intent to move forward not with us but with another vendor. It just sounded like a project that had a lot of trouble getting going and because the smallest of the towns, the low density population are sort of like us. It's a struggle. When it comes right down to it from my perspective, it's all about the dollars and where you're going to get them and the state of Vermont there may be some potential the federal government and CAF2 and a variety of different resources and we can research that on a town by town basis to see what monies might be available but that's the biggest difficulty is everybody wants it. Everybody who wants fiber to the home, it's just it's not inexpensive. Are you familiar with what wireless technologies were used? What frequencies are vendors? It's Fujitsu We manufacture wireless equipment. Yup. They use Fujitsu and the CBRS is another vendor because that's not even ratified yet but we have that running at our facilities and a couple of other locations in test. Most people in this room don't know what CBRS is. Right, if it's a higher speed it's citizens family radio service it's not real yet but it's almost. It's real. Maybe the government uses it. Right, but it's not available That's correct. FCC is still in the three gigabits range. Working through the rules on that one. But are we dealing with line of sight limitations? No, not with that. Seriously, it's going to go through the mountains. It's going to go through the trees. It'll go through the trees, but not the mountains. That's right. So we do have issues with verticality. That's why you use multiple towers. Yeah. Let's talk about a deal about that. So let's have you done in the areas that have a lot of verticality where you've got some people up on the top of the mountain and other people down in a valley. In Kentucky, we've done that. Traverse City, Michigan, we just were awarded and there's a bunch of others as well that I'd have to provide. I could provide you those. But they vary all over the country. My people from Kentucky, I know about them. Okay. It feels for Brad. Thank you very much. Moving on to the think Vermont Innovation Grant. So we got it. That's good. We heard on the first. That's very exciting. The really the only two things that we have to do at this point are show them the money basically and provide the certificate of liability insurance. We need to carry liability insurance if they're going to write us a check. So I expect that this is not going to cost much. These are the sorts of insurance policies that in my experience on the Berlin Select Board that folks who are running like road races, there's a five mile foot race that goes around Berlin Pond, for example. And those folks have this. I don't think this costs very much but somebody needs to go and chase this down. That's very much. I have to get it. For how big of a project though? 15 months. Okay. So dollar amounts that you have to ensure for it was a half million dollar project. Okay. Ballpark? $300 a month. Okay. So I'm hoping it's not going to be that much if they're giving us $12,500 and they expect us to burn $3,000 of it. Right. In any event, it won't be liable against it at this point. I mean, we're not putting a tower in here. It's all we're doing is studies. I think you're right. And no bouncy house. You've got no... That's not really an expensive house. Yeah. So... It's expensive to do insurance for one day. So there are several questions in here that may be policies that can be tweaked or enacted that go along with this. So the checklist for insurance certificates that are specific about what the coverage is, I think the good news is we're not covering any infrastructure. We're not covering any cars. We're not covering any employees. So I don't know if this is something that we can hand off to finance committee or to a treasurer in our finance committee or somebody who's willing to go and chase this down, get a couple quotes from... I have one suggestion, go to BLCT and see if they can get municipal insurance through their... through your passive... They only offer that to members though and they previously said that we don't qualify to be a member. I mean, unless they change their bylaws, it's worth a shot to see if they reach outside of their membership, but I need to delegate this to somebody. It's yours? Great. And I can send you the PDF versions of those as well. I'm gonna... I think... I don't think I forwarded these two and I meant to. A handful of questions about grantee compliance. I'll just throw these out there. We can talk about assigning these maybe in a moment so we can get out to committee assignments and membership. A, does your organization maintain policies which include procedures for assuring compliance with the terms of the award? So that's kind of hard to... I imagine those would be largely financial policies which may that itch may be scratched in a later agenda item. Does your organization have an accounting system that will allow you to completely and accurately track the receipt and reimbursement of funds related to this award? I think that's a yes. If staff will be required to track their time associated with this award, does the organization have a system in place that will account for 100% of each employee's time? Easy enough. No employees. Did your organization have one or more audit findings? No audit, no findings. Did your organization have one or more audit findings? About different things. So no audit, no finding. So it's really just that first one. Policies which include... volunteer hours. I know they're non-employees but we had to track volunteer hours. Not for this particular grant. This is the list of things that the state says that they need. This is the Department of Commerce. Correct. Does your organization maintain policies which include procedures for assuring compliance with the terms of the award? So the problem we were going to look at if you want to know the first sentence on the central amount of internet finance committee in order to ensure the integrity and transparency of district revenue and expenses, she'll oversee the treasurer and the financial operations of the district and then it goes on and on. It seems to me that's... And so we will take those policies. We'll say yes and we will submit those so your timing on this is actually quite good. They might need something more specific than that though. I mean it kind of sounds to me what you're saying. Because I've done grants for the state before. It's the same questions. You just have to answer yes. I mean they may question it. The initial submission is just to say yes we do have policies. What are we buying software now? That's horrifying. It's true. You can check again. Just say yes and they don't really ask again. They're actually new. This is more stringent than they've only been doing this for a few hours. If they need something more specific, a policy like that is simply stipulating that we'll abide by the terms of any grants written off and presented for at least. We as a district are also under a lot more rigorous requirements than the average non-profit or for-profit organization that just got a $5,000 grant from the state. I expect that a lot of the stuff that's in statute for how communications union districts ought to behave is going to cover that as well. I was just going to bring that up. What is it? Gatsby? There are rules about how we're supposed to manage all this stuff. And again which I think comes with some of the stuff that actually I think that specific thing comes with the finance committee's proposal here as well. So it says with our responses, which you're right it looks like we don't actually need to submit anything, with our responses and a PDF copy of that certificate of insurance we will sign this and return a hard copy to folks at ACCD. So how long do we have to get the $7,000? $6,100 $6,100. Thank you. I mean we have not really asked for them to give us the money yet but I mean I expect when we're ready to pull the trigger and ask them to do so then that would be one of you need to demonstrate it. FY19 it's going to have to be by June 30th. Jeremy could other grant funds be used as evidence of a match? And in fact that comes up in a later conversation in the next agenda item with the USDA World Development Planning grant is that in fact what's in the reverse the $12,500 that we hopefully raise the match from the state at $25,000 then can be used as a match for USDA World Development for that grant. So we can leverage our match for state money and use all of that as a match for federal money. But if you have other ideas or other places where we could pursue other money from other sources we're certainly all ears. Should we look into more targeted donors like big names of companies like Cabot or I'm going to be doing a series of contacts that would be like well this is there we're going to get this out of there Cabot is already exhausted from a public support perspective through the time of Cabot. But I'm going to talk to folks in Cabot that are part of that whole thing to ask for help I don't know I will do that part but national life always that one's great. Any local business owners that you might know who would generally support what we're trying to do they generally have funds that they try to set aside each year for giving. We're in a nice situation that the money from the state is literally sitting there and if we can get the matching funds then we double that and that is a it's our next step. So were we awarded a match of up to 12.5 or do we have to raise 12.5? I don't know the answer to that sorry for sure I don't know the answer to that for sure I would expect that they will provide up to 12,500 from what we would be sadly money on the table although arguably they're not asking us to document we have the matching funds I just said in the application that we expect that we will have that from it's just when we have to prove that I think that's the question typically sorry to interrupt I service the grants manager for the Vermont food bank so in my experience they will require a report to be submitted to them at some point it's not usually six months to a year afterwards after the grant funds are awarded and in that point we may have to actually document that we have the funds available. So not even before they hand it over? I don't know the specifics of this single opportunity but it depends sometimes they'll want to see that front sometimes they'll want to see it as in a report sometimes they won't want to ever want to see it for the grant we administer for the state you have to show your match with your you have to send it in with your it's not a grant agreement before we write a check. So let me ask you all this what's your appetite for going after promissory notes asking well I mean to get us to get us started asking if somebody's willing to loan a thousand dollars I think we should probably go for donations first. But that's fine but because what do we really yeah it's a little it's a great question that's a tough it complicates things a lot. I agree with your first response you should go for promissory notes but not yet. I would urge you to see if the U.S. if indeed we will be applying for a USDA well development planning grant which I am familiar with I would urge you to inquire if the those funds even if they are only for planning purposes could be used as evidence of the match for this thing for my innovation grant which in that case one meets the other and the other meets the one and we don't have to worry about it from no I mean when we talked to USDA they said you couldn't sort of cross pollinate like that they said you could take your money the state match and bring that on board as part of your application packet and Jerry's fairly far along in that planning grant process and will be enlightening us more. We're actually taking twelve and if we can get twelve and a half thousand we're taking twelve and a half thousand and we're getting sixty thousand. So the next six thousand that we raise is extraordinarily leveraged money. What about doing like an appeal letter sign you all think of the five people in your town that have actually know who they are because it shouldn't be that hard to raise six, seven thousand dollars. I think especially if it's bundled in with you know we got the grant it's a match opportunity this is really our initial step at some of the planning feasibility efforts I think it's deductible. Yeah I think we should just push hard and the way USDA was talking to us they seemed reasonably I mean the local folks seemed reasonably excited about what we were doing and very helpful like giving us staff time to review things before we submit it finally. So when Jerry says we're going to be we raise twelve thousand five hundred he's right turns into another sixty thousand in a very concrete sort of way. I'm sorry I haven't been here for a lot of this discussion or is there would they be willing to accept any in-time work as evidence of the match? Which grant do you talk about? Sorry the think for my innovation there. But the USDA? Unfortunately. Explain to me the thought though that we take the twelve and turn it into sixty what the plan is leverage this as some of the requirement for the USDA points or do you want to take this Jerry? Yeah, yeah so so there's a number of different things going on here. First of all there's just the street match. So the the money from the Vermont innovation grant can be used as a match for a thirty thousand dollar grant from the USDA. So if we put in twelve five and the Vermont integration grant puts in twelve five now we're up to twenty five right and we can also use in-kind services as a match and you're going to double it again. And we're going to bring it up and you also get scored based on what is the percentage of the USDA money for the entire thing that you're trying to fund. So the more match we get the more in-kind service we can build up the better our score will be in the process of getting this grant application approved. So I'll the motto I'll design a coffee mug and a t-shirt and get it up on one of those fundraiser sites. I did double check I confirmed I've got screenshots of a check of the Latin for the motto to confirm that it is valid and had the suggestion to give make it a quote from somebody and so I'm just going to make it Socrates because that makes it literally hilarious. Socrates didn't speak Latin. That's the joke. He also didn't say our internet doesn't suck. Nobody Latin did. It's called a dang me. Anyway So how about that and just a plain old CB fiber logo on coffee mugs or something like that. And then we can get that up and I have to look into how those work but that might get us a trickle. It might get us something. We'll take that. But then again I'm seriously asking folks they're only available for a $300 donation. It's tote bags. It's tote bags. But there are like cafe presses the example that comes to mind but I don't think they're a good operator but a good actor. I will find one and you come up with the designs and you decide what products are there and how much you're going to ask for them. And then you get a certain amount of that money and they take I would say my only concern with that would be the turnaround time because it would be if we can have checks in hand by our next meeting or before hopefully that would be best. I just had a quick question. I was wondering how much effort has been made to go out for businesses because it seems like that might be a place. There are a lot of businesses around that use the internet that might be interested in faster internet. So I've talked to not too many businesses directly I have talked to the Central Vermont Regional Planning which is not so not quite businesses but Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation and they are supportive they seemed willing to do a little outreach on our behalf for something like this and they also offered to write a letter for the grant. So if you have thoughts if you want to go to positive pie in Plainfield or the brewery or walking in the door in a random way do we want to approach it in a more organized strategy? Do we have a list of different donors that are likely to start targeting one or another? Again, the timeliness question comes to mind and I have a handful of people that I have yet to talk to personally but it's going to be me making personal contacts and doing that I think it would be worthwhile if we could put something together that looks better and be a little bit more targeted about it but that's something that somebody is going to have to own making that happen. So Brad, does Pujitsu have some money? Big B Corporate It's a little investment. We have not done that yet. I have two questions I can draft an appeal letter and send it out with the minutes That would be really helpful. And then I think if you usually you have a lot of success if it comes from you personally and making the personal appeal it'll be generic so that you can each add something to it and so you can either add something to the note, like if you were mailing it would be really nice to put a handwritten note on the bottom but if you're emailing it say something in the email about your connection to that person and how do you think this will be great for your community and that kind of stuff because that personal connection is a huge tipping point for people making donations. I would also recommend, especially in Vermont making personal phone or face-to-face contact is going to be far more preferable than by a mail and again with the timing issue being able to show what we have in the bank and what we potentially have coming from the state before long I mean we're at what, three weeks out, Jerry Yes, 29 March or 28 March whatever that Friday is. Yeah, so it's coming up right quick so the more that we have the pipeline sooner the better. Okay, I've got two problems talking to people of means in Montpelier because it looks like Montpelier is like at the bottom of the totem pole as far as when it will get wired has been a bit of a resistance to getting their interest. Do we have work field or is that in the EC fiber? Brookfield's EC fiber. I could get my head of Brookfield back. You should ask anyways. They're building Brookfield end to end and if they want to see more economic development in the region I think that's an easy sell so if you've got somebody down there ask. There's folks in Burlington that I'm approaching. Brookfield comes down to us for the food show so there are connections. Jeremy, I would assume the Chamber of Commerce for my business social responsibility CDEDC, they all have lists of their members and of the companies in the area and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them rank them in terms of size. If we could get a hold of those lists of the life of the big guys we could get 6,000 out of one of them just if I ask 12 of them one of them is just going to say yeah. I'll go after VPSR if somebody wants to take the other ones. I think National Life has a set set every year they set what charities they're giving to the older ones. It was also ending childhood hunger. They might have a vested interest in terms of supporting their business in terms of charity. Was somebody going to the Chamber? I'm surprised that the regional Central Vermont CVRVC because they have that connection to the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce I don't know if you're speaking with them they approach them. I'm sure they didn't. If somebody would be willing to do that I'll go to CVEDC I've already talked to them about getting on this business why don't you get that listed? That's what we want. We want names of businesses to contact. He said that you'd be willing to send out an email to their members. That might be valuable. Not really a secret. On the Berlin Select Board I and the Chamber have history so it would be better if somebody else reached out to them. What did you do? I'll tell you later. Go read the minutes. I made decisions based on data. That'll get you. Let's see the exact minimum number we need to meet that target. $6,900 I think. I did my math. $6,900. We're at $56,000. We want to get $4,500. We can go over it. When's the drop-dead deadline? It's not really a drop-dead deadline. If we have it in the next two weeks it looks much better on our application to USDA. If we got to get that $6,800 if we don't get it we get $30,000. That's to me a drop-dead. It's within a few weeks. I think it ends up being $7,000 we're talking about $500 a town. That's less than that. Or $300 a person sitting on the throne. Most of whom have already donated. Just in terms of if we all are able to stuff it out of our pocket at the last minute of the afternoon. I'm seeing a bit of that in my future, yes. In terms of a backup emergency plan we considered looking at the very revolving loan fund in order to just briefly take on funds in order to generate the match requirements. Sounds like the promissory note question that we were talking about before. Could we, yes. That would have to be something we'd authorize now-ish. My concern is we're so early and we're so whatever, we have no real money. I think I have a meeting in the next week or two with folks in Barrie so I'm going to be asking that question of business folks there. But Barrie is in a similar situation as Montpelier where we are probably not targeting them first even though there is well even though there is a lot of demand there clearly and especially from businesses. But we need to think about whether that's something that we whether that's an angle that we want to explore. Sometimes it does make sense to go to places that seem like they're already served. Right and that would be where that fuses us our progress forward. Yeah and that's where that feasibility study comes in. So that looks to the people who are not in Montpelier. Oh of course they're serving Montpelier first. But again if we can if we can have people in Montpelier you know Barrie City, Barrie Town taking the longer view you know the 10 year view I know Dan, I know. The longer you Yeah. We will get there. I'm confident in that and if Montpelier anyway we don't, EC5 are going to because they'll be finishing building. Even longer view but they are they sure? Anyways Okay another question just while we're on this area Ken Jones has suggested the last time I was at the meeting was that Northern Borders Commission which if we are interested they will give quite a bit of money and I believe anything you raised if you had that 60,000 could act as a match for up to 150,000 or something but they need a letter of intent by the end of the month. But not for planning. That's not a planning grant though. That's for infrastructure. That's something that we know after we've done our business plan and our feasibility study and we're ready to start paying cables. That's definitely. We're following Ken's recommendation which is to go through the planning grant to get to the implementation money. Next year though. Okay I was missed because there was a point at which they're sort of planning an implementation if you're doing infrastructure stuff this kind of gets mushy. It's like setting up an office manager who runs your organization. And doing the engineering etc. I don't know if they'll fund the engineering. Oh yeah. We could ask. I think they will. There's other money. I mean I'm going to say right here let's go to the next agenda item. Let's go to Jerry with USDA. There's also the bill that's coming out of the legislature that will likely free up some great resources next year which are really targeted towards us. But again that's still not until next year. So I'll turn it over to Jerry. Sure so I've been working on this USDA grant part time of course. So we talked about the money and how much it is and how it gets leveraged. We talked about the date that it's due which is the end of the month. I think they said the 29th but the end of the month is actually the 28th it's a Friday anyhow. It's due then there's a couple of things that have to be done apart from just grant writing. One of the things that has to be done is we need to be authorized the board needs to authorize applying for the grant and appointing a point of contact. So we need that's the language right there I believe. This isn't typically due but I made it as short and sweet as possible. There has to be a resolution by the board to authorize getting the grant and to authorize the official point of contact. So I will read this letter that Jerry just handed me. It is nice short to the point it essentially has to be as the chair the point of contact for the grant. So it says March 12th to whom it may concern an application for USDA Rural Business Development Grant has been authorized by a resolution of the CB Fiber Governing Board dated March 12, 2019. The Governing Board appoints Jeremy Hansen my email address as the official point of contact with the USDA. So moved. Seconded. The only, I do just brief discussion on that. This is the, what the Jellon was like oh you don't have enough time but you're just like that's right. I don't have enough time. I'm telling you 14 hour days and then that doesn't matter. We need to do this now because we need somebody, fathers to get this stuff documented and we move forward. There's no downside in it anyways. We have to do it. But there's it's, it's this is what the Jellon was talking about but also we were also talking with the folks from WEC who were thinking that they might initiate this but let me tell you they decided not to because they didn't think they had enough time and I'm going to talk about some of the requirements assurances and certifications that you have to do that for an outfit like it's probably just too heavy a lift. Who is, and we have a representative from WEC here by the way if you want to put your chair up you can Bill. That was a board decision. Board should handle that answer. I appreciate to ask but it's not going to be all. Okay, thanks Bill. So do you want to let Jerry finish this thing before we act on the moved approval? Either way. That would be my preference. Sure. Okay, so so technically we have a motion on the floor so we can have somebody withdrawing their motion or we can vote on it. Somebody could seem to have moved to table it. Apparently. Apparently I won't. But isn't Jerry about to provide us information in the background for discussion? This is discussion. That's discussion. Discuss. Discuss. So there's a there's a structure for scoring these grants and I'm not leaving without your business card. There's a structure for scoring these grants and one of the important things that we can do here is leverage in-kind services. And the type of in-kind services I'm thinking about for this planning and this feasibility study business development grant is I'm looking for somebody with planning experience that has done this kind of work. I'm looking for GIS experience and David's not here but he's the he's the obvious go-to guy and then there's also development and with the survey development there's the implementation of a survey questionnaire and there's also the data management from that you get from that from that survey. Presuming that there would be a survey as a part of the feasibility study. So I think we can at least do those. Do some of that in-kind. I'm open to other other areas where we could do things in-kind I can do that. What level of GIS experience are you talking about? Yeah you've got to be able to pull down the databases off of the internet. You've got to be working with addresses. We're going to be working with poll locations. We're going to be working with what other information. Well then of course we're going to have the survey. We're going to be working with files and stuff like that. So is it creating maps or is it doing analysis with that? Both. Maps and analysis because we're going to need to blend that information, that infrastructure information with our survey results information. So that will be the analytical aspect. I might be able to help with that to some extent. I don't have a ton of GIS experience. We do have an expert that doesn't mean he doesn't need help. Right, so working with him and if there's some other work that you could do in conjunction with him to do some data cleaning, massaging, these sorts of things all that could be useful as well. What's your name? Jeremy Matt. Last name M-A-T-T. We had Matt as your name. I know and that's why I wasn't getting any emails. How can I get in touch with you? Your correct email is now on the description. Again, dot last name G-E-R-E-M-Y dot M-A-T-T at Gmail. How did we get that wrong? I don't know. It was based on his email from whoever on the select board. So I can do it. I never found it here. There must be some that helped. Good. So there are any kind services that we need. Another thing that we need are letters of support from towns and businesses. We need five. You only get five but we need all five because they're point based. So we have one. Is it the regional? No. Is it the central Vermont business? I think either I think both regional planning and academic development cooperation would write a letter. Do you see a letter from a business? Businesses in towns but businesses would be preferable. Oh, I can provide you that. You can? Yeah, mine. Okay. What's your name, sir? John Guifre. Jerry, if you could send me an email of what you need, I'll get the regional planning development cooperation to. Would you accept a letter of support from a nonprofit? Well, we need five. And I'm hearing regional planning, economic development, a town, a business, and Montpellier that sounds pretty powerful but yes. Is there any points waiting system? Does it matter what names get used? I don't think so. No. No canned letters. And it has to clearly show why this would be important. These are support letters. There's another set of letters I'm going to talk about in a second. But is yours going to be? The Vermont Food Bank is also applying. Well, Northeast and Vermont Regional Hospital is applying for this same grant, not a planning grant, an implementation grant for the Vermont Food Bank. I won't say who's actually writing the application, but... I guess you don't have to. It's a lot of copy and paste opportunity here. So if it's okay with my superiors, then I think it would be fine if the Food Bank were to provide whatever support. And the Food Bank is physically located in Berry Town? Yep. I also know some people that own businesses so that's going to be next. That's going to be next because the next thing we need is we need letters of commitment that three years after the grant the business is writing a letter of commitment that they will, of course it's not binding, but they're writing a letter of commitment that they will hire X number of people because they have fire. All the USDA grants do that. Pardon me? All the USDA grants require that. Yeah. Gotta do it. That's fine. How many years? Three years out from the grant. So we... Supposing we turn you on three years from now. Would that allow you to hire more people? Two years from now. How many? Do you want a letter of the same size of letters from the same person? I can do the support one better than I can straight face to the second. The letters of consideration are much more important because you are providing tangible evidence that this is economic development. And there is a scoring system that the amount that the federal government is putting in gets measured... It's basically dollar per job. If we say we're going to do 10 jobs and they're giving us 30,000 bucks it's 3,000 per job. And there's a category. The lower the value the lower the federal money per job the more jobs we can get going. The higher the score. So this is a really important component. Letters of determined... It's a commitment letter. Commitment letter from a business. Does it have to be a currently incorporated business? Does it have to be a currently incorporated business? I have an idea of developing a business that requires this but it's currently not in action. I don't know about that. I probably wouldn't if you're going to file with the secretary of state and create it and you have some sort of reasonably concrete plans. It seems a little bit sketchy. I don't want to go out on a leave here. This is a federal grant. But if you have an operation or we know folks so we've got to reach out and get these letters of commitment because they're really important. Do we have some kind of details as to what the letter should say? Yes. The letter should say within three years of having this of the grant being issued. So let's say it's three years from the issuance of the grant of the award of the grant I guess is the right terminology. My firm will hire ex-people because internet, fast internet service is this component of my business. You have to say something like that. A little more eloquent maybe. Can it be conditional? If we get this grant and don't build any fiber out they can't commit to hiring people. Can't they say assuming that this outfit actually holds fiber to me I'm going to hire 12 people? Absolutely. I'm just asking for the report at the end of how many jobs were created. We're actually created. Because we've done several USDA grants and you say how many jobs you estimate will be created and then each year you report how many jobs have actually been created. But they've never come back to us and said when you said you were going to create two more jobs so we're taking back $20,000. I would just add importantly they do have to be original copies of the letters signed by the governing authority or a person in charge. They can't be photocopies or anything. They have to be signed. Same with the letters of support. Everything's got to be original. I can say what needs to be the letter of support. Short and sweet is what I've been told. Short and sweet just... Where are we supporting? The obtaining of the grant or supporting CVF as an organization? Supporting CVF. Yes, that was one of the questions that I asked. Is this tied because the grants just for developing business plans so we're not going to generate any jobs we're not going to... No, this is for the outcome of the business plan. Dan, could you take that question to Montpelier folks too? Do you think there would be appetite? Well one, you're not going to have three years. But again, it's hypothetical. We're saying that if we were to build this thing and maybe the feasibility study shows that Montpelier is in fact the right thing. We've been parking at the wrong tree. If we were to build this out, would the business support it? Or would the business commit to... Like I said, I'm good friends with the Development Corporation directors so she would give me... She'd do this before, but she's the one woman job. No, I understand that but if she could put you in touch with Montpelier businesses who would be willing to expand whether it's the new distillery or... I don't know. I won't ask but I'm not guaranteeing I could be. I just want to put all this stuff out there. Right. So we all need to do some outreach on that because I just don't have enough time. There isn't enough time for the other things that need to be done to get this out the door at the end of March. So we really need outreach on this. And that means whoever's committing to do this and I'm going to ask you to seriously own this to get the letters in your hand. And if you once you have those letters in your hand then contact me or contact Jerry and we can take it from there. And I'm happy to talk to somebody if you're starting a conversation and you want to keep going, I can back you up. We can figure out some way to get on phone or get together and I can back you up. There isn't enough time to do all the running around myself. And there's one more thing that I want to talk about. Two more things. There are the assurances and certifications I've called. Jeremy just read off some of the ones for the innovation grant. The federal government has a list of 8 or 12 or however many it is. I don't have the personal experience answering these kinds of letters. Things I haven't even really read them and I don't have the time. But my guess, you might be more familiar my guess is for an organization like this that has no bricks and mortar no employees, no history and only a hope of a future to be able to sign off on these things pretty easily. Some of them are anti-corruption things. We have to say we won't do certain things in the future as well. We're not trafficking humans. None of our standards are disbarred. Doing drugs. Boiler plate. I think there's no felons. But this seemed like the thing that tripped up WECC or at least in part. This assurances piece at least that was my understanding. I could be mistaken for talking with Barry but it seemed like he was afraid his people were going to get bogged down. It's also the reporting requirements. Quarterly reporting requirements get really onerous if you have a whole huge financial history. So I think this kind of thing is an easier lift for us. I have one question. Do we have a DUNS number? Have we registered with Grants.gov and all of that? No. My understanding is that this opportunity requires that we have created a registration with Grants.gov Sorry. Yeah, I believe it's either sand.gov or Grants.gov. I think it's Grants.gov. We needed a DUNS number in order to register with Grants.gov. That's something that Sue Pohl never mentioned. It's in those, at least for the implementation enterprise grants. It's in one of those federal forms that you have to fill out. Okay, it's one of those. Yeah, it's not too difficult to register with Grants.gov. Well, we got the package. So she gave us the package. We have all the things that need to be. So if that's one of them. Is there a limit or a requirement for a number of letters of commitment? Was it for how many? Commitment? No. There's only five letters of support, but there's no ceiling on the number of jobs and letters of commitment. Checklist on the World Business Development Grant. Are we, we're not doing the World Business Development Grant, though, are we? Yeah. This is, that falls under that? Yeah, okay. So yeah, summary information. A legal name of applicant requested grant amount to DUNS number. A code and expiration date. I don't know what that is. I do. Certification of relationship to art and employees. Certification of blah, blah, blah. These other things that we saw in there. Right. Public bodies need a documentation organization, a resolution passed by the board, authorizing entity to apply and administer that, which is what's in front of me, what's on the table right now, and a list of the board numbers. So the last thing I want to point out is that I'm going to send around drafts of the application as I'm pulling it together and I was going to target the folks that are on the business development committee to review them. Is there anybody else that knows about this stuff that would be interested in reviewing, I mean, if you have a history of a successful rural business development grant to help. I don't comment. I do this for my day job, but if I can be of any assistance in the limited time that I have, I'm happy to review the application. Will that count as an in kind? It's my contact information. Somehow I don't think so. He didn't sound too kind about it. Well, I'm on the business development committee, so obviously I should be able to do that. I can look it over also and I'll see if I can find our it's been a while since we did a rural development business grant, but I can probably pull up an old one just to compare it to. Just to clarify the pot of money for the Northeast Kingdom for this grant opportunity is separate from the rest of Vermont. So I don't believe that is a conflict in any real level in terms of the food bank for its application. All right. Anything else on this, Jerry? I believe that's all I have. I will take care of that with the guns and the cage and the SAM and all that. Okay. So we have a motion. I will re-read the letter. What it says right now to whom and make a certain application for a USDA rural business authorized by a resolution of the CB Fiber Governing Board dated March 12, 2019. The Governing Board appoints Jeremy Hansen with my email address as the official point of contact with the USDA. Okay. So moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Opposed, nay. Abstaining. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Do you want to have this physical copy, Jerry? I want to keep it with me for now. Okay. I'll hold you get the whole package. Yes. Oh, you want me to email it to you? Sure. I want to get sidetracked before we get too far away from trying to raise that. It says a thousand bucks. Did anyone... I was driving today. Did anyone hear Vermont edition on it? So the guy they called in was a running telemedicine. The result was they were sort of rehashing a story from the end of February on trying to bring broadband to Vermont. And I've been trying to find his information and I could probably call him but if anyone remembered who they were I don't remember his name. So he was saying not only is it a problem for the people that are trying to run that but it's a problem for the people that it's serving because to do that you need a certain amount of broadband with. So my thought is if we get a hold of him maybe he has a connection to a hospital or something like that because I mean this is a public health situation that would be well served by this and there's lots of public health dollars. The recording will be posted probably tonight on the DPR website so you can listen and catch us. We're broadcasting it right now. I've been trying to find out yeah. What would you try to track him down John? I will. I got a bunch of leads at one o'clock today and I thought wow all these leads are coming and I wonder why and then they all heard something about us on that show. It's representative Tim Briglin mentioned CB Fiber on the show today. Nice. I got all these leads. That was great. And actually Catherine Sims mentioned King and Fiber. We had a single paragraph at the bottom of the US World News and World Report and most of the talk to EC Fiber. She lives actually within CB Fiber territory and she's been she was at all the organizational meetings she used to work at BT Digger and did a very long phone interview with her none of which ended up in her article. It was like literally a 90 minute phone interview. Say Levy. Yeah. Anything else on USDA, Jerry or anybody else? Thank you all. Thanks Jerry. Committees report back. So before we get to finance business development there was really nothing else sort of in the pipeline other than this. Is there Jerry? This the donate button is working on the website. What else? I just threw a piece in from porch forum just for some towns. Whatever towns are part of my my thing. You'll only get for a little. I think if you have it visible to neighboring towns that's about it. More town very much. So if anybody wants to put something on from porch forum on their side of the service area. So the donate button is up now. Even though the link didn't work you could still cut and paste and get there. Okay. I don't think policy committee doesn't have any reports back but Rama you want to take it from here? The finance committee too. Two things. One I got some policies to present. But also as we were talking with Jerry earlier at our meeting and just trying to get a sense of the process moving forward and how to set up a budget. And I think we're getting some understanding of what we're trying to get to at least for as we're talking about the process setting up a budget for FY you know where this is 2019 and of course our fiscal years run from July 1st to December 31st. So we were trying to get a sense you know when you write a budget you got to know what you're spending money on and you got to know where you can start to get money back from. So we are working on that. What I have primarily here is a couple of policies that came I have a limited number of copies here so if you really don't need them I did send an email this morning. Yeah you should have an email as well. So I don't know if you folks have access to the emails. They'll be on there. Otherwise take one pass and share with people. But we're we are only looking at the first two policies there and I apologize for the piece of paper. The piece of paper was actually a document I didn't print it out before I came to the meeting tonight. So we're only looking at what's labeled as CDI, FC1 and 2 there. And these policies come up from what about 6, 7 months ago we had where the board passed the finance committee coming up with policies to oversee the finances of the district. So one of the reasons why we've been slow on this is we've had trouble figuring out what it is that we're trying to make policies for, what kind of organization it is and what it's going to look at and what we shouldn't be directing. So at the moment these two that come forward are very basic. The first one is just the broad statement policy that you know I'll read it verbatim for anybody that doesn't see it. The Central Vermont Internet Finance Committee and I don't know I guess I should change it to Central Vermont fiber, right? Yeah. Finance committee. In order to assure the integrity and transparency of district revenues and expenses show, oversee the treasurer and the financial operations of the district, that's actually repeating pretty much something that was said earlier in the earlier motion back about 8-9 months ago now I guess we're in January already. Oversight of the treasurer will be accomplished through the development of written policies and procedures that assure the treasurer will have appropriate direction on any issue addressed by statute, governing board by law, or committee direction of any kind, and the governing board shall in cooperation with the finance committee and treasurer assure that the treasurer has access to training that's necessary for carrying out all assigned duties. And yes this kind of states somewhat of the obvious that you know they will oversee the treasurer and it's mostly put out in point blank language so we understand, the treasurer understands everybody understands that whatever we task the treasurer with we're not just going to say you go do it, you figure out how to do it that you know it's part of the district's response that will make sure the resources are there so the person we're asking to do a job for us knows how to do that job and has the resources necessary to do it. So I don't know if there's any questions on that one. I'd like to move that we approve the first one, striking central to my internet in the place of the CB50. Second. Just question in terms of point of order. This wasn't warned as an agenda item. It's an adoption of the policy. I think we can warn it for adoption at the next meeting. Unless you know others disagree, that's my take on this procedural. How important do you think this is to the paperwork for the state grants and federal grant? I don't think that's going to be asked for the federal grant. It's certainly not on front. Can we maybe consider a motion that gives preliminary approval with full approval given at the next meeting? Okay, so that sounds like an amendment to the previous motion. I think so. Just making it a first. I mean, we just redraw the motion. Let me present these. We can just bring them back next month for approval. I just don't want to put somebody in a position where they're asked whether we have policies in place that insurers some sort of fiduciary disabilities are being carried out. At least we can have somebody say there's preliminary approval. Full approval will come at the next meeting. I mean, that was in way my intent by saying it's warned for adoption that we have something officially in the minutes that we're warning for adoption is put on the next agenda. This is no different than doing a first reading. That sounds great. I didn't mean to stand in front of your guys' camera. So, do you want to go over the rest of them and then maybe we can take these? Well, only the next one together. Don't worry about what comes in number three and on. So the next one and it's just followed by that section 3069, which is just copied and pasted from the statute, from the governing statute. So that's just to explain what the actual policy is. So the actual policy would be unless and until the governing board in accordance with 30VSA Chapter 8231 delegates otherwise the treasurer shall perform all the duties. There's an extra above there, but at least we dropped. Shall perform all the duties listed in 30VSA Chapter 82 Section 3069. So I have Section 3069 there just so you can see what's written. That's not part of the policy itself. And it refers back to on Section 3071 of the enabling statute for the district essentially says that we can delegate out board responsibilities and board duties. The treasurer is not in a elected position for us. It's an appointed position therefore, you know, I mean we can delegate out the treasurer's responsibility. And that, you know, it's not something assigned by virtue of them being elected to office. So, depending on what we ended up with as an organizational structure this kind of leaves it open, but it just says that for right now that's what the statute says. This is what we're expecting the treasurer to do. And so and unless we delegate otherwise the treasurer will just continue doing that. Great. I guess I will move that we have general support for these policies and we'll take them up for a second reading at our in our next meeting for full approval. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor? Opposed? Abstaining? Motion passes. We will have that on the next agenda. Any other I'm going to strike that finance committee policies items or any other committee report back stuff that needs to get there. Maybe just to wedge in here. It's not really a committee per se. Do you want to report back about the Secretary of State's action with the name dispute? Well, there's no dispute. The short version is that Jeremy and myself went to a quasi-judicial hearing from the Secretary of State's office and regarding the name Central Vermont Internet and just recap in case anybody's not familiar with it is we were formed as a municipality called Central Vermont Internet the day after we were formed somebody went and registered as a trademark as a trade name rather the state of Vermont the name Central Vermont Internet the board said gave permission to contest that Jeremy and I went down and were there for the board on the quasi-judicial hearing Mr. Whitaker who was the other side he was representing the business of registered the trade name and we got the result I think most of you folks saw it I don't know who it is I forward it to everybody I mean the upshot is that the Secretary of State's office sided with us as far as ownership of the name Central Vermont Internet and that for various other reasons he stated that it didn't look like it was intended the motivation was not to use it for business and so unless it gets appealed I'm not aware of any appeal and it can get appealed at the superior court so unless it gets appealed that means that Central Vermont Internet is our name although if we're going to use it I guess we are expected to register also as a trade name that just adds extra protection so okay review of back burner items we don't have actually I was just going to say at the last meeting Tom had suggested that we add equipment standards to the back burner okay equipment standards because there was questions about the equipment okay I should maybe put that on the next agenda if you want to talk about that more on the next agenda I think we have kind of bigger fish to fry right at the moment we don't have equipment yet so I can stay on the back we will have a policy once we start to get to that point okay we'll need equipment all right positive thinking membership is there anybody that wants to be on or not be on any committees we have some new folks in the room we have three committees we have a business development committee policy committee and a finance committee so if you are at all interested in participating in any of those the policy committee meets as necessary they have not met in probably almost like two months maybe longer business development meets roughly once a month slightly more but it's been a little difficult these past couple months but we try to meet once a month what about a month ago was it a month ago? and finance meets about once a month also usually right before this meeting yeah across the street good and it's better I was close to where we were having a meeting at that time all right do you have anything that needs to go in here let's move on then and we are almost back on time approval of February 26th meeting minutes Becca sent those out not terribly long after we had that meeting and they went up on Facebook shortly thereafter I actually was going to ask about that though the only reason I didn't put more because I assumed we would also have those slides which I have not gotten the sanitized slides I can forward them to you okay of course thank you yeah that would be great those would go in the minutes right that's what I was expecting I would just refer to them yeah refer to it and include it with the minutes I guess with the committees that really need extra health right now business development or finance committee chairs we can definitely use extra health there's a lot going on you've already offered to do a couple of things here then that supports the business development committee if you'd like to consider yourself a member so be it I'm going to move to a point Jeremy Mass to the business development committee out of agenda order here sorry about that second any further discussion I'll enabler I'm opposed abstaining while we're on that this is not asking anybody to necessarily join the finance committee but if there's anybody that has some expertise in setting up budgets for these types of organizations that would care to maybe spend half an hour at one just one finance committee maybe try to help give us an idea of what we're trying to do at this early stage because it's still from the finance committee's point of view it's still very fuzzy and you wouldn't even need to be a member of the finance committee that could just be a drop in do you mean budgets for operating or budgets for planning well I would say at this stage the planning part just more to help give us a sense of where as a finance committee we're looking at trying to develop the process for so I can help in the later stage when we get to the operating I don't think I would be I'll remember that but we'll come back to that but listen if nobody's available that's fine but if somebody does have expertise this is a particular time where a little bit of expertise to help put us down in various ways we've come in handy so I'll just leave that out you're free to drive we try to meet right before these meetings and we try to meet some place where there's food and coffee right before these meetings great okay so backing up to where we were with the meeting minutes actually I'm pretty sure I did send out presentation while we were in the meeting or was it or was it matrixes you said you sent it but I didn't receive it so much all three of them on the drive that would be great do we? you did send it during the meeting Germany because I was reading it that's right you did send that one it would be great so I think that's the sanitized version she didn't have all the rest but I didn't receive it but I got one from her later so that was my other question too sorry but obviously all of this is public but we're also getting proposals is it just that the proposals are really general that we don't need to start worrying about what is proprietary and what is actually right if they've expressed a willingness to share it with the entire board understanding that that's fine but there have been some personal discussions that involve proprietary information that's not subject to disclosure which we will talk about more in the imminent executive session so I'm going to move that we approve the minutes for the February 2016 2019 governing board meeting with the presentations appended do I hear a second second don't fake it any further discussion all in favor opposed motion passes okay so we have contracts and RFP discussion I have language here the way that we can go into executive session is very specific according to Vermont law and I sent all of you as part of this packet the open meetings law advice from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns we need to do this in a two step process we need to find first that our discussion of the contracts that we are about to discuss premature general knowledge of this discussion is going to clearly place us at a disadvantage because we risk disclosing our negotiation strategy effectively so this is one of those opportunities that we have as a public board to say wait, we turn the cameras off we get to talk candidly we essentially get to ask everybody to leave and we put our heads together and talk about the contracts and make some serious decisions about it any decisions that we do make of executive session and we can discuss publicly okay things then in kind of justification of that but first motion is to find I'll make the motion we can discuss it then and then the second motion will be to actually enter the executive session so we have to find that the premature general public knowledge I move to find that premature general public knowledge of a discussion of feasibility study in business planning contracts would clearly place CV fiber at a substantial disadvantage because the district risks disclosing its negotiation strategy if it discusses the proposed contract terms in public pursuant to 1VSA section 313A1 so now we should discuss whether you think that's true what is the statutory reference 1VSA what is that the statute of proprietary information that's contracts that's the subsection describing going to executive session to discuss a contract and that requires that trigger premature general public knowledge I definitely agree that it does qualify that way I have a question and that is are we going to discuss any other topics during the executive session besides feasibility business plan potential contracts we can only discuss the things that we go into executive session to discuss right so I'm asking if we should add anything to that okay if there's something you want to add we should bring it up now and I can tell you whether we can talk about them in executive session I don't know I was wondering if you had another another piece of the agenda but apparently not so so this is reasonably broad I think that will let us talk about really strategic vision for what we're hoping to do over the next few months which will include of the USDA grant requires us to either have a contractor to do this to do this planning work in our pocket or to have an RFP ready to go when we submit the grant so there are decisions that have to be made today so that we can choose how we are going to proceed can I ask you a question about that please do are there any requirements that we as a municipality have to follow an RFP process or are we free to not as I understand it and fellow municipal officials or folks who have worked in this space before I kind of wish Jim was here but as I understand it no those are policies and bylaws that are adopted by the individual municipalities there are not mandatory purchasing or bidding policies out there that are prescribed by statute again please shut me down if anybody knows better no I think you're right especially something like planning process is seen as professional services and you decide who you think is going to give you the best product and look at a number of different people and even so we would not we would not be constrained to always take the lowest bidder in any case there are procurement policies that are required if its federal money is involved especially if it's USDA so but there are different tiered thresholds for how much money you are spending and what's so like a sealed bid is sealed bids are required at this level and I don't I can't recall the top of my head but I don't know if the planning if the amount of funds we're seeking for planning purposes require that level of okay so the motion that's here is finding that we have a reason essentially to go into the executive session does anybody have any other discussion about about that y'all ready to vote then okay I'm going to read the motion one more time so I move to find that premature general public knowledge I will hand you this I'm going to find that premature general public knowledge of a discussion of feasibility study and business planning contracts would clearly place CV fiber at a substantial disadvantage because the district risks disclosing its negotiation strategy if it discusses the proposed contract terms in public pursuant to one VSA section 313A1 all in favor opposed abstaining motion passes next step I move that we enter into executive session to discuss CV fiber's upcoming feasibility study and business planning contracts under the provision of one VSA session 313A1A second okay commentary can you read in the alternate some new participants in that who's in who's out all delegates and alternates I think should be part of it okay