 I'm just kidding. We're good. We're good. We could even lose somebody. We don't want to. Don't say that. You can't lose anyone. Be careful what you wish for. All right. So I see a quorum at six o'clock. I am declaring this meeting. I have to start recording. Start recording. That's me. I have to do that, right? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Starting recording. An orc is here, but I think it's good for us to maintain. Yeah, just be in the habit. Yeah. All right. I am here by declaring the March 8th, 2022 regular governing board meeting of CV Fiber to order. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Chuck. Yes, I have a new delegate to announce. Okay. We will put that after public comment. Great. We have an action item under contracts update for mission broadband contract award. Does that need executive session? I don't think it will. Okay. Christopher has his hand up, I think. Christopher? So potentially two items. Number one, in the executive director search update, I would like to change that from no action expected to action expected. I'd like to make a motion during that time. And the second piece is completely optional. Given our just barely quorum status, I just wanted to, you know, make sure that if we have somebody that may be leaving before that happens. Let us know so we can get it in. Correct. So in addition to that, Christopher, will you need to go into executive session? No. Are you sure? Yes, we're not discussing any specifics. Just process? Correct. Okay. Okay. Christopher, if you'll put your hand down, is there anybody else? Any more additions to the changes to the agenda? Seeing none, I will move on to the first thing, which is public comment. Does anybody have any public comment that does not treat on any of the items in the agenda? Going once? Okay. We're going to move on to the next item, which is new delegate announcement. Hi, everyone. I would like to reintroduce Sam Rosenberg for those of you who were around kind of this time last year or a little bit sooner than that over the first half of the winter of that prior year. You know, Sam joined many of our calls and was staying on top of CB Vibers doings. Admittedly at the time, it was probably fairly self-serving because he just wanted to know when he could get internet at his house. But he is actually my next door neighbor right up the road for me. We both have Starlink now for better or worse, but in the interest of making sure we have active alternates, I approached my select board about having Sam added as an alternate for us. We are continuing to have Karen Horan as a named alternate, but she doesn't typically come to these meetings or really know what's happening here at CB Vibers. So we wanted to have somebody who would actually stay in the loop and on top of the goings on and could actually step into a vote if I had to miss the meeting. So Sam, welcome. You want to just give a quick hello and intro to yourself? Yeah. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me. I think Chuck pretty much said it all there. I've moved from self-interested to self-interested, but also happy to be helping in any way I can. So I'm happy to tune into the meetings and make sure I'm on top of everything going forward, and hopefully Chuck won't ever happen to me, but if he does, I can do my best to try to fill a part of the issues. Thank you. Sam, I will also call out your level of involvement is going to be ultimately up to you, but alternates can serve on committees, too. So we have five committees of which you're welcome to contribute more if you feel so inspired to do so. Yeah, perfect. I'll see where the needs are and how I can best help out. Welcome, Sam. Thank you, Sam. And welcome aboard. We'll move on to the next meeting agenda. Approval of the meeting minutes of the February 8th governing board meeting. So on that, I have got some edits. They're mostly minor. So what I would like to do is share the edits that I received from Allen and then run through those and then make a motion that I'm going to be approved with the addition of the edits from Allen. Does that make sense? Yeah, go for it. Okay. So sharing my screen. Let me know when everyone can see this. Okay. So the first edit is that meeting should be singular. I'm not seeing it. Are other people seeing it? I can't see it. Oh, there it is now. Okay. Sorry. Just my internet. All right. It's probably mine. My kids are home and they're trying to be good. Anyway, so the first edit is that under meeting minutes approval, meeting should be singular, not plural. Then there are these edits about what the Vermont Statue State that should be well Vermont Statue State that once the CUD becomes operable, basically replacing these edits in yellow here. Again, they're mostly just grammatical. They don't really change the meaning. And then getting rid of the A here. And then again, these grammatical changes, some more grammatical changes. And then again, more minor little grammar things that I didn't catch when I was going through them. More grammar things. Is it NRD is in dog C or NRT is in Tom C? T. Okay. So you've got an NRDC down there. It leapt out and poked me in the eye. Okay. I am under town communication. Uh, uh, let me, let me find it. NRDC. There we go. Okay. So I will change that as well. Okay. Um, yeah, it's entered. Oh, I see it. It's right there. But it was NRD somewhere. NRDC. Yeah. Down, down after there should be they down over there. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I believe that that is that these are the edits. So I'd like to make a motion to approve the February 8, 2022 meeting minutes as drafted with the grammatical corrections suggested by Alan Gilbert. Second. Second. I see the motion made by Jeremy Matt and seconded by Jeremy Hansen. Thanks for your patience. Any, any discussion of that? Any further discussion? Any objection to the approval of this motion? Hearing no objections, I direct the clerk to cast a vote unanimous vote in favor of the motion. They get that right. I think you can just declare it unanimous because we're not unanimous. Okay. Yeah. All right, treasurer's report. That's for like voting for a position like we're voted for. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah. Ray, is that you? Chair. Yep. Yeah, Madam Chair. Actually, this is Alan. I just wanted to thank you for paying me by the hour. We're going to double it. Just give me your minutes. What is it that you needed, Ray? Madam Chair, filling in for Phil is the treasurer as the chair of the finance committee. I'm putting into the chat room for Jeremy's pleasure. The treasurer's report make it easy. So basically the 2018-2021 financial compilation report is expected in April. We paid $74,000 plus in bills last month, poll inventory, accounting services, and other smaller bits. We have $59,000 pending the Executive Committee for Poll Inventory invoices. And I've note in the Treasury report documentation that I passed, sent around just prior to the meeting. There's a balance of $714,761 in grant funds. And a particular note is that there's $2,426,500 in grant funds available upon our invoice to the Vermont Community Broadband Board. Any discussion or questions? Is that all on the treasurer's report, Ray? It is. All right, so let's go on to the budget amendment, and that is also Mr. Ray. It is. Let me find my C here. Let's go down here, come over here. So I sent out an email regarding the budget adjustment to the Board. And this will be the motion. The Executive Committee recommends that the Board approve a budget amendment that moves $17,500 from the audit account to the advertising account in recognition that an audit will not be required in 2022 and to address current and future 2022 advertising needs. That's the motion. Second. Second. It is sent around the document as well that identified that showed where the impact was for our proposed amendment, change number two. Jeremy? Yeah, I was just going to say that for the and for the record, who the second was. The second was a Jeremy Matt. Okay. Motion made by Ray. Sorry to interrupt, Ray. You can continue, Ray. Any discussion? Yeah. I can do this. Any discussion? Any objections? Okay. So hearing no discussion, are there any objections to this motion? Hearing no objections, the motion carries. Right? Right. Sounds good to me. Okay. This is the first meeting I've run beginning to end. So, you know, I've got to get my great. Yeah, you are doing great. I wasn't fishing for compliments there. Just don't yell at me. Okay. All right. So the next item up and we are, it is 611. This is timestamp 645. I'm awesome is what I am. All right. It's the executive. No, no, no, no, 635 front porch forum. Chuck is up. Yeah. So hopefully you all saw a motion put forth by Ray earlier today. The purpose of this is ultimately to make it so that we can communicate directly with our communities via front porch forum. When you do the math, it comes down to approximately $20 per post per community. If we leverage the full two posts per month that we would receive, the rate that was given here is negotiated down from their normal rate, which is about $12.5. So it's little savings, but it is a savings nonetheless. And there is an expectation that next year we would probably be asked to go up to the full rate. But since we're starting fresh on this, they agreed to give us a little bit of a cut so that we could see the value of it. What this really does for us is it means those monthly updates that we send out and ask all of the delegates to post a front porch forum on our behalf, we'll be able to just send directly to all of our communities. So if we have delegates that haven't been doing it, their communities will get that engagement that they haven't been getting. And I just want to also call out that while we would then take that on for the monthly newsletter updates, delegates are still more than welcome to continue posting and plugging CV fiber and would be encouraged to do so, providing either clarifications or other updates that are outside of the monthly newsletter or other engagement opportunities. This is an important step because we have to show that we are engaging our communities in order to get the grant funds we are seeking. And so we believe this to be an incredibly important step. And it is relatively cost, you know, it's relatively affordable, all things considered. If you think $20 per community, per post, it's probably going to get in front of at least a few hundred eyeballs in some communities, maybe a few thousand. And so, you know, we'll give it a try. We'll see how it works. And we can always revisit if we're not finding value in it next year and not go down this path again. So I'm going to skip all the whereas. Ray, thank you for putting the motion and the whereas in the chat. But I'm going to skip the whereas you're more than welcome to read it yourself. I'm going to jump right into the motion. It is hereby moved that the Governing Board approve an agreement with Front Porch Forum for $10,584 for a 12 month period and that the Executive Committee is authorized to oversee and implement the agreement. I second. Motion made by Chuck Burt, seconded by Linda Gravel. Yes, I think I saw Henry stand first. Yes, just curious. We are obligated for a full year if we decide we don't want to continue it, we don't get any money back. That is correct. And I will point out that this price we got was their price for one post a month, which is actually what we're using. But what the negotiated deal was that we would get their two post per month deal at the one post per month price. So, you know, right now I'm quite certain we will continue to use it at one post per month. However, hopefully in three to four months there'll be enough activity where we might want to start adding in a secondary consideration, particularly in areas where service is hopefully by then in construction. And Tom. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Henry. So that I'm fine with that. So, if we start to go to two posts or more, do we get charged for that? Or we get we can do as many posts as we want. We cannot do as many posts as we want. They limit any organization to no more than two posts per month. And they seem to be very strict about it. They said they've never even let the state do more than two a month. And the state does subscribe to this custom access program. Okay, thanks. And Tom. I was going to point out, sure, many of you who have been on French Porch Forum have noticed that I'm not sure if it's Comcast or Consolidated has been putting in their own little posts here and there. And seeing that it's a good move for us to be able to hit the same people. I am in favor of this motion. And Linda. But we still as individual delegates can put as many posts in as we wish. So please do so. I'm in favor of this motion. And Walker. I'm in favor as well. I was going to say essentially the same thing. The one thing I've also seen is a ton of underwriting on VPR by Consolidated with their new fiber offering that they're kind of showing, saying 50,000 subscribers already, et cetera. I don't know if that's something we've thought about as an avenue for community engagement, as what we're calling it. But I don't know, I'm just putting that out there. That's what I've been hearing. And Chuck. Yeah, I have heard that as well. In my humble opinion, I think we're not quite at a point where we might see as much value out of that. It's pretty expensive. And I think if we were approaching actually selling subscriptions, it's a great idea. And we should certainly revisit it at that point in time. But I might think I might contend that it's a little bit premature. I do also just want to call out that actually know you can't post as much as you want on Front Porch Forum. If you do it too much, they will actually put the kibosh on it, although they wouldn't tell me what the number is. But they told me they do keep an eye on that. And when people get too aggressive, they do actually start blocking their posts and asking them to tone it down. Is there anybody else? Ray, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to note that, let's see, what is that I wanted to note? I want to note that I'm tired. I want to note that this is not the marketing that we're going to be doing for subscriptions. That we will be working with Weitzfield Telecom in a marketing program that they have. They use a program called CrowdFiber. So this is in addition to something that it will be part of our Weitzfield Telecom contract. Good to know. Thank you. That's good. Does anybody else have any questions for Chuck? Any other discussion of this motion? We have a motion, right? Yeah, okay. Any objections to this motion? Hearing no objections, we find in favor of the motion. And Executive Director Search Update Christopher. Good evening, everyone. So yeah, I just want to give you a bit of an update. So the CV Fiber Planning and Development Committee built a job description and formed the recruiting work group, which included six members of the CV Fiber Board. The CV Fiber Executive Director role was first posted publicly on January 9th and ultimately was posted on LinkedIn in the Seven Days Times Argus, Vermont Professionals of Color Network, and Vermont Job Links. A candidate tracker was then built to thoroughly document every step of the recruiting process, including details of every candidate decision. The initial round, which included all who applied through February 12th of this year, included we have 34 candidates apply in that initial round. Every candidate application was reviewed by the recruiting work group, and the candidates were each rated and ranked. And so the rating was basically, yes, we would like to further consider them or no, we wouldn't. A little bit more complex than that, but that's basically it. And then ranked. So each working group member basically ranked from one being their highest rated ranked candidate to 34 being their lowest. And I should say we also committed to responding to every single candidate. So once a candidate is ruled out, they are immediately notified. And so once every candidate was rated and ranked by the working group, there were seven candidates who clearly rose above the rest, and email screens were sent to each of those candidates. One was ruled out and the remaining six candidates were phone screens by myself. That was just a quick 20 minute phone call asking some specific questions. And sorry, I just lost where I was. Here we go. So Jerry Diamentidis, Linda Gravel, David Healy, and myself then held 90 minute interviews, which with each of the remaining top four candidates. Those four interviewers plus Tom Fisher met this past Friday to discuss the results of those interviews. And we all agreed that all four candidates were exceptional. We really had a fantastic pool of candidates to choose from. And after a little bit of deliberation, ultimately, five of the six working group members who were in attendance all agreed on a single top candidate. The sixth working group member, Jeremy was unable to attend for scheduling reasons. It's totally understandable. But I wanted to call that out that Jeremy didn't object to the results or anything. I just wasn't able to attend. And then finally, this week, Linda Gravel is performing reference texts on our finalist candidate. So I guess before I go any further, does anybody have any questions about the recruiting process? I love it. It sounds wonderful. You know, I'm anxious to hear Jeremy Matt's minority report, but so Linda, go ahead. I would like to thank Christopher. He's been coordinating this whole recruiting process. It was a lot of work. He put hours and hours into this. So I want to thank him for all this work he has done. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Jeremy, your hands up. Yeah, I was going to say thanks as well to Christopher in particular, but also Linda has been doing a lot of work, you know, calling candidates and references, et cetera, et cetera, and sort of to apologize that my schedule work-wise kind of went off the rails a little bit and been less involved than I would have liked to have been. So anyways, thanks for all the work that everyone put in on this. Well, I'm going to turn that back around to everybody, including you, Jeremy. So, you know, Jeremy, you may not have been on the interviews, but we had, I'm going to say that again, we had 34 candidates and we reviewed every single application. We seriously considered every resume that we received and most candidates submitted cover letters, which, you know, we thought was a requirement, but we reviewed every single one of those and every, all six members of the recruiting working group were very involved. You know, some a little bit more than others, but it was a lot of work for everybody. So thank you, everybody. Yes, thank you. Does anybody else have any other comments or Christopher, do you have more to say on this? I do. I just want, I was asking if anybody had any questions about the process. So originally, the original authorization was for the recruiting working group to make a recommendation to the executive committee and then the executive committee would make a recommendation to the board for final approval. However, as we're not ready to to recommend the candidate tonight because we have not met with the executive committee yet, honoring this plan would result in more than a month delay and onboarding a potential executive director because while we technically could call a special board meeting to approve, you know, before now and or between now and April 12th, seeing as it's a challenge to get a quorum on the normal board day, I think it would be next to impossible to get a second meeting scheduled with a quorum. And so therefore my forthcoming motion is to propose a slight modification to that plan. So I can post the motion in the chat if you're ready for it. Yeah, go ahead. Don't like the teams can't let you look at the participants and the chat at the same time. Okay. So and I apologize. This is my first ever motion on any board. So forgive, you know, if this needs to be modified, my feelings will not be hurt. So I move that the governing board authorized the executive committee to approve a candidate recommended by the recruiting working group for the exact for the position of executive director and authorize the executive committee to negotiate employment of said approved executive director candidate. Second moved and seconded by Christopher shank and Jeremy Hansen. Can I have discussion please? Go ahead, Chuck. Just a quick point of order. Chris can Chris make a motion as an alternate? So I asked Jerry this earlier today because I had concerns about that. But if if that is a concern, I believe Linda may be prepared to make the motion. If we want to just make sure everything is go pathetic. I'm totally fine with that. If Linda, you are. I would like to make that motion. I can just clarify if Chris wants to do the motion when an alternate is assuming the role of delegate because the delegate is not there. The alternate has the same powers as the delegate does. So I it's proper for him for him to make the motion if he'd like. But it's one of us here, but it's primary. I will gladly make the same motion. Okay, so the motion was made by Linda and seconded by Jeremy Hansen again. All right. Any further discussion? Jeremy, whose hands up? Chuck, your hand is still up. Okay, Jeremy, Matt. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I mean, as part of the working group and part of the executive committee, I'm fine with it. If other people are, it seems like a lot of authority to be delegated to the executive committee by the board. I guess I'm a little bit, it took me by surprise, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, and I will apologize for the sudden kind of springing this on everybody. Today we were working through, we were actually hoping to have a little bit more progress before today. And suddenly we started looking at a calendar and started figuring out when the candidate, and so, you know, we, if we get this passed, then we should be able to onboard a candidate in April. If we don't, we're definitely talking early to mid-May. And so, if the board is uncomfortable with this, I completely understand it is unusual. Chuck, your hand is still up. Do you want to talk? Yeah, no, this one is legit. I guess I share the concern that Jeremy expressed. And, you know, again, I'm also a member of the executive committee. So this is delegating the authority to a group I am part of. But I really think this is something the broader board should be interested in having some level of engagement in and, you know, that's just my opinion there. I, for one, I think would be slightly more in favor of trying to call a special meeting of the board subsequent to an executive committee check. Okay, Jeremy Hansen. I guess I'm just wondering when you imagine this executive committee meeting to happen. This would be a special one later in the month after the regular one that's on Thursday. Is that the idea? Christopher? No, we're, we should be prepared to make that recommendation this Thursday. Okay. So I guess my comment is that if folks want to weigh in on this, they could come to the executive committee meeting on Thursday. I mean, it's not like at least in my experience that that meeting has been terribly exclusionary. And so not that folks get a vote necessarily, but if folks want to weigh in and want to see the candidates, you could certainly show up on Thursday. That's all I got. Ray? Yeah, several, several points actually. First is I want to applaud the due diligence that the committee has gone through. You guys have done a great job. I think it's important to know and I hope it's captured in the minutes appropriately. Secondly, I've been all in favor of moving a great deal of the work that has previously been done by the board of the executive committee so that this organization can be more agile. Okay. And now the executive committee is meeting twice a month. And so I think that's important. And I think that we're going to get a lot of things done quickly. Having said that, there are some things that are so important that the board ought to make the decision. And I agree with Chuck. Call a special board meeting. We'll get 11 people there. And this motion will go through. But as I've said, for a long time, the process is a solution. There's no shortcuts to the process. And I realize that, you know, we're looking to bring somebody on board as soon as possible. And I'm all in favor of that. And I think we can do that. I think we can make those decisions here in March and get that done and get this thing going as quickly as possible. So I'm just speaking about process. Okay. And I do think that you guys done a great, great, great job bringing this together. Thanks. Ellen, your turn. Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines as Jeremy Hansen. But the more I thought about it, and I think particularly after what Ray just said, it might be just as easy to schedule a separate special board meeting as it would be to invite as many people who wanted to come to the executive committee meeting and end up in the situation that we therefore have, we all of a sudden have a have a quorum of board members and we haven't called a board meeting. So I think if we were trying to conflate the executive committee meeting and the board meeting together, we'd have to we'd have to warn a special meeting for the same time we warn an executive committee meeting. So it gets a little bit confusing. I think it would work. But probably what Ray is suggesting is the smoother and easier way to do this, maybe a few days longer. But I think I would agree that we really should respect the process in this one as much as possible. This is a big this is a big decision and an important one that everybody should be involved in. Okay, Tom. I tend to agree. And I would say if we could limit that agenda for that special meeting to the single item of watching the executive director, I think that would probably help make us people have the time to be able to make it. We can try to reduce how long I take. I don't know how long we have to review the candidates for it, but hopefully not two hours or anything. And then I would just, you know, maybe aside from just sending out the typical invite, make a flag at the top that says, Hey, you know, pay attention. This is this is an important one. I think beyond it being something I think we should as a group decide, I think it also sends an important statement to our new executive director that they have the full weight of the board behind this decision. And Jeremy, Matt. I mean, one idea could we call concurrent board and executive committee meetings at the same time and just you miss the window if you thought it was going to be this Thursday. That's not true. 24 for a special meeting. So we could call it for just after the executive committee as was suggested in chat by David. Anybody want to discuss that? Allen, go ahead. Well, that's what I was sort of noodling with. And I think it I think it could work. But you want to remember if the executive committee, let me think about this aloud, the executive committee wants to go into executive session for discussion. Um, we would have to we would have to allow members who are not part of the executive committee to come in and join us. And you have to have a reason for that. And I guess we could give a good reason, although it's very clear what we're trying to do when you get to that point. We're obviously trying to have a full meeting of the board concurrently with a meeting of the executive committee. And that's that's what I worry about. Just just gets a little bit messy. And it seems to me if we can do this, and it only takes us four extra days to do it in a more straightforward, proper fashion, I think it's worth it rather than conflating the two. Jeremy, did you want to speak again or your hands? Okay, Jeremy does have Jeremy. No, I'm going to stop you. I'm sorry. Walker hasn't spoken yet, so I'm going to let Walker go. I concur with what Alan said. I also think that the executive committee might need some time to really make a decision. I mean, there might be more complexity that comes out of that meeting. And I don't know, but I would like to do it in order and not at the same time. And I think that also personally, it's a little hard for me to make time on Thursday. It's coming up pretty quickly. I can rearrange stuff for the next week, but that's going to if everybody has to make make room on Thursday, you might not get a quorum. Okay, Henry, I'm trying to envision what difference having I mean, I understand the process, but I'm trying to in reality, what difference would it make if we had this special meeting for all the delegates and we and, you know, people are going to what discuss, they're going to try to process your decision and say why did you make that decision or maybe it should be someone else. I mean, what's the value in having it go before the whole board except for the process and the fact that, you know, it was it done in that matter and it seems like it's just going to wind up being the same as letting the executive committee take on the responsibility. I don't know any thoughts on what that actual special governing board meeting, why that be so much more beneficial than just letting the executive committee take that responsibility. So I'm going to jump in here and address that particular thing Henry that one of the things that was said earlier was just the weight of the board behind it. Our executive director is a very important position. They're going to be setting the tone for an awful lot of the work that's done and having the whole weight of the board being able to say yes the board voted this person in rather than the executive committee that kind of it gives more of for the person but it also kind of puts us all on the hook for this decision because we are making this together. We haven't we're not putting that on any individual and and I'm now going to recognize Jeremy Matt again and we're doing second rounds now if anybody's got a second round. Okay yeah I kind of I agree with you with what you said and also you know just wanted to really emphasize the it makes it so that no one can come back later and say well you didn't go through the right process you didn't you know if you had recognized if you had warned it for a board meeting then I would have showed up you know there might be someone who wants to weigh in on this who isn't at the board meeting right now and who might be upset if that was passed off to the to the executive committee. So and the other thing is with the idea of having the the special meeting right after the executive committee meeting that could be a little bit challenging scheduling wise because we don't know exactly when the executive committee meeting ends. I mean I would like it because it makes it easier for me to show up. I'm already on for the executive committee meeting but I think it would be better to try for like Friday or the following Monday or something along those lines. Okay Linda. Would it be possible to schedule what that meeting the time for that meeting the special meeting tonight so that all parties leaving this meeting at least know when we're going to get together for the special governing board meeting. Before we do that we should figure out what's going on with the motion. Sorry point of order. Yeah that's that's fine. All right so this motion um right as David says we need to reject the motion and then we need a motion to do we need a motion to request a special meeting or I just need somebody to request a special meeting. The chair can I can just schedule it. I can just schedule it. Yeah right Jeremy. Yep. Yes okay. Jerry didn't know what he was getting up. No he had no clue. What's hilarious about this is I'm out of town next week. So I don't know if Jerry's not around. Friday's a good day. Yeah okay um so uh how do we reject a motion do we do I have to have everybody should I do a voice vote? Roll call. Roll call vote okay roll call. Somebody can withdraw a motion. Christopher and or Linda can withdraw I think. Yeah you can withdraw a motion. She wants to do that. Yeah Christopher do you want to withdraw the motion? Linda's motion. Oh it's Linda I'm sorry you're right it's Linda's motion. Thank you Jeremy. I think there's been enough discussion that I should withdraw the motion. Okay does that need a second to be withdrawn Jeremy? No okay the motion has been withdrawn and the floor is open for another no we're gonna do we're gonna do a special meeting um and we'll try to schedule it next week so special meeting for next week does that sound doable to people and that will be we want to try to find out when works for people or take a straw poll now. So just note that PDC is Tuesday Thursday is comms committee that leaves Wednesday as a possibility the following week is finance on Tuesday and policy on Thursday but I'd recommend Wednesday the 16th is it? Yeah I think the the 16th that would give time okay we'll do the scheduling offline that I've got some guidance I'll be in contact with Jerry we'll get something out okay next item on the agenda means I have to open up the agenda again where is it? Oh that's not it that's it where'd you guys go? Okay um the contracts update is that David or Ray? Both I think. Okay so I think there's several things to report on one is the mission broadband contract award so I will be making a motion on that another one is the right-of-way permitting services action that the executive committee has taken to inform the board the W status of the Watesfield telecom and an update on the NRTC contract. David did you want to speak to any one of those? I mean I can talk about the NRTC contract if you want. Sure go ahead and start with that. So we're we're proceeding with this very complex multi-part contract with NRTC we've been working Jerry and Ray and I have been meeting with them twice a week for two hours to help them finalize the executive executable project plan and all the content that needs to go on that and and I'll talk about where we are with the plan later on that item but that's sort of where we're in the process of um they're sending us the next tranche of contracts to review attachment C, D, E and F I think maybe even G in which we'll be authorizing when we do approve these um a third down down payment on the detailed design so it's a big chunk of cash that will be going out when we do that. Yeah those individual exhibits are project management design engineering and construction plant I think right something like that so there's a whole group of those in front of us with regard to the Watesfield telecom contract as you know the executive committee has asked Jerry and I to be the front leads on those contract negotiations and we have basically pretty much concluded now the standards we're about ready to get into discussion about the fees and I'm hopeful that you know the course of this week and next week we can bring that to a closure and bring that to the executive committee and the board the executive committee the last Monday of the month and maybe the board the following um the following second Tuesday of what is it April already okay uh the next is the oh so um under the under our procurement policy that we adopted um a couple of months ago one of the options was that if we if we wanted to enter into a contract in which the value is between $10,000 and $250,000 we can go into what's called a simplified bidding process which allows us to submit a statement of work to two or three to two minimum two or more contractors that we're aware of that have expertise in the area that we want to have the contract bid the contract could be any more in any one year than $250,000 okay so one of the things that we were looking at is the right-of-way permitting service this requires a great deal of expertise um and experience um and relationships that have been established over a great number of years so we the executive board approved it could be approved the issuance of a statement of work that went out last uh Thursday morning I think we're expecting proposals back um on Wednesday that's tomorrow already I guess and for to bring to the the executive board executive committee on Thursday so that we're expecting that they'll be able to take some action on that date with regard to that limited contract an important one however the last one is the mission broadband contract award I did send out I did send out information about that in a mailer and an email before this before this meeting and what I was what the whereas clauses refer to is basically that we have gone through a procurement process which in which we asked for consulting services on a number of in coordination services on a number of different things and and we did have five teams that did bid on that and we selected the nrtc team which included among them mission broadband which is actually the firm that does the coordination has it has a great deal of experience in coordination and consulting and in the areas that are cited in the uh whereas clauses um and and we have reached an agreement with mission broadband uh in the uh for contract and so I'd like to make the motion is hereby move the governing board approve an agreement with mission broadband to perform consulting and coordination services and that the executive committee be authorized to manage the agreement and all services to be delivered under the agreement this motion is similar to the motion that we made with regard to nrtc and so if there's a second we can have some second second motion made by rey seconded by tom um and I guess it uh open for discussion questions comments not hearing any discussion do I have any objections to this motion hearing no objections the motion passes unanimously thank you folks next thing rey uh that's yet under under contracts I think David has David Scott is big yeah I forgot we have we have um whole inventory contracts going on right now um we forget that anyway um apex one of our contractors has just finished the towns of plainfields rocksbury in washington and is moving on to Williamstown and our other contractor tilson is working in the town of orange I believe um I think they may have slowed down because of weather at one point but I think they're there now so those run away and um going pretty smoothly I think um the other one is the high level design contract which is with vantage point solutions out of south dakota which was a joint effort with washington electric cv fiber ec fiber and any k broadband and today they told me that they have finished the work and they're going to package it up and send it to us and um we'll have that to share with everybody in the meantime and RTC is sort of work is over is sort of jumping over vantage points work but it'll be good to have some comparative um assessment of costs and and things like that so yeah and there's a lot a lot of activity going on David give them a good news about the grants which for the high level design oh we got money coming back so and then and then we'll be able to reuse it for our other work yeah yeah so that's the good news is that we had requested a whole bunch of money for the the high level design turns out to be far less than what we had requested so um there's money left over in those grants and those were pre pre construction grants those were those were that was different money and we're going to be able to roll that over into other things now some of that money goes to it belongs to ec fiber and any k because we were doing the wek high level design in those in these three cud's right but uh we still get it and it's a not an inconsiderable amount of money it's going to be at least 100 grand um so that we'll be able to roll it over into other things um to be determined uh we have to submit some work and we'll take that up at the executive committee i think on thursday good news yeah any other grants or contracts news okay um town arpa is that david or ray jerry it's jerry it's jerry so i'm gonna take this on i honestly i'm just gonna say that my town of orange and i'm just gonna open this up to the floor after i make my comment my town of orange is having a special arpa funds meeting on march 21st that they announced it town meeting day and that i am going to be attending um they want to give us the money um and and so i'm kind of hoping that we get the the checklist and procedure documents and stuff that we're being worked on i hope i can have that in hand to show to somebody by the 21st that would be awesome um anybody else have arpa town money discussion linda wait did i get out of turn there no chuck was first sorry chuck sorry linda it's chuck no problem um so i met i met with uh our select board last evening um i will have to say they continue to be pretty conservative about what they want to use town arpa funds on but they they remain receptive to the idea of it um i i do get very little uh negative reaction to it um i unfortunately was not prepared with checklists and and draft mo u or anything like that for them on this particular visit but like shivan uh our our select board is spinning up a committee to drive the process of selection of options it sounds like that committee is going to meet for the first time next week um i'm probably not going to be directly involved on the committee since i'm obviously biased but i will do my best to influence the committee as much as i can and and i'm thankful for having sam's help i will call out that uh in the meeting uh caron horn from the vermont league of cities and towns was there and they've been sort of historically towing a line that town should remain very conservative about uh allocating any funds from arpa and go very slow about the selection and yet uh she also turned around and said that uh both personally and professionally she thinks uh you know this match makes it a pretty a very good opportunity to invest in broad uh band expansion and and so she'll definitely have the ear of my select board more so than i ever will uh and so hopefully that will help incentivize them my my anticipation what they've sort of communicated uh is that you know they're hoping they'll have a decision come late spring early summer uh whether that makes the deadline whether they actually move that quickly remains to be seen but uh there is definitely at least a possibility here okay linda the waterberry select board is also meeting on the 21st i would love to have the paperwork ready to put it on their desk for that day um they have two new elected select board members um so i will be redo redoing the presentation that i did last month um so um please help me out with as much of the paperwork as possible so that i can lay the contractor right in front of them thank you and allen do we have an update on when the paperwork might be available so what i would say to you is that um there was an appendix to the mo u which is uh 99 done uh and the appendix is a checklist of those items that the town would select from with regard to how they wanted to use their money which included for example uh connecting homes and also included connecting community facilities and why is that on there um why is that on there yeah i i with my select board the less you put in front of them the better off you are no i i i know i absolutely i absolutely agree with you i absolutely agree with you uh less is more but um there's several points to be made one is that any money they give and any matching funds will be spent in their town and so they get to pick from among of some listed things and if they have something else they want to choose from they can do that but if they want to be involved with connecting the drops to the homes in the community then they can make contribution that fashion if they want to make sure that schools and senior centers and fire police town hall etc etc are connected and have the state match their funds they can choose that if they want to give us a blank check or let's let's rephrase if they want to give us a hundred thousand dollars and they don't care how we spend in their town that's good too i'm only saying this because my town doesn't have most of the things you listed as possible options to spend the money on and i think that's probably not untrue for a number of other of our towns so i'm i'm just i'm getting more and more nervous the longer this takes i've now had a changeover on my select board we're the previous chair who i work with to get this thing through has now left and a new guy has come in i haven't i haven't talked with him yet but i'm just feeling nervous and the sooner these documents could be ready the happier i'm going to be thanks uh jeremy matt uh yeah i mean i just wanted to say that i'm kind of a little bit of a different vote from you alan my select board is like okay where's the value and that you know like what what do we get out of that and being able to say like you know here we will give you know you can choose you know to subsidize everyone's drops in the town or subsidize low-income people's drops in the town that's something that any town can benefit from you know and then the municipal offices i'm not sure if that would really help playing field to be honest because you know they're they've already got cable at the at the town offices so we're not going to be passing by them for a little while most likely um but being able to show this is the value would be useful right now the update for playing field is that they're also forming a committee to figure out how to spend these funds and an uninterested committee is how they put it whatever that means um but being able to provide them with here's the mo u here's the list of things that you can that can choose from um would be very helpful the other thing is not sure if this was brought up but the matching funds being first come first serve i think would also be a very good thing to put out there that you know we get a certain amount of matching funds the matching funds themselves are first come first serve and we're going to be allocating the first come first serve money that we get two towns on a first come first serve basis i believe that's what we've talked about at any rate yeah the one another thing just just for your town jeremy it's not just the town offices but the marsh plain school um you know it's the the library it's it could be it could be more significant for some some of your cornerstone the health center that kind of thing um that might be good to to to get on board um does anybody else have any comments about town urpo money and i don't see any oh henry go ahead henry oh walker you have your hand up too yeah um no i just um on the same page where jeremy matt about you know this makes it seem real and not just um you know a bunch of money that's going to go into a general fund so i just support it what he said okay thank you henry and walker um yeah katerina and i met with the suckport in washington in january and we we essentially let them know that there was going to be more discussion once we once they knew what where you know what they could spend on arpa and once we had a clearer list of options for them um i had heard that there was going to be matching funds possible i let them know this but you know it it's really good if we can get a very clear document down um along with poll inventories honestly you know where we can actually get into the details um and then give them the options so they know that it's real um i think oh yeah the the one below that we had in in um for me is the the issue of if they can use it for town road stuff or not for any road stuff and that i i keep seeing stuff where the decision has been made yes and then the decision was made no and then the decision was yes and where that actually has fallen i think the most recent decision that ray sent out said that they could use it for road stuff which is going to be a stiff competition in orange because our roads same same in washington it's going to be just yeah catharina go ahead yes i just wanted to add to what walker said we also had a instead of a town meeting day we had a zoom and i was on there and um one of my neighbors asked how how townspeople can support you know our us getting arpa funds and um it was pretty clear that it was not a high priority on the selectments agenda because there are other projects that have been on the back burner for long time which they did more important but i think if we can it seems like people in town were behind it and would be willing to you know step in and support us if we tell them how maybe that needs to be a front porch forum thing or we really just explain the situation maybe linda could explain the petition that she had signed uh that she did some work on linda go ahead yep that's why my hand is up ray yeah we printed up 250 brochures um i passed them out and talked with voters as they came in on march 1st into the polling place um and i got 140 signatures on a petition to the select for that people were interested in spending five percent of the arpa funds on a cb fiber broadband um i have a hundred or so brochures left over and i asked david to send me a list of the unserved in waterbury so that i could actually go door to door to those people who have the most to to gain from the matching funds and try to get them to either sign the petition or actually show up for the select board meeting and i do plan on uh advertising the select board meeting on front porch form as soon as i get that i'm on the agenda for sure like i said we have two new select board members and i got to do some convincing of them so move on forward with more brochures i think it works really well for me to publicize the fact that a lot of people are interested the select board needs to know that thank you christopher yep so to to add on to that and and and by the way i have to tell everybody how lucky waterbury is that we have linda i'm going door to door um i think that's i think that's fantastic so thank you linda um so in the brochure that that that linda and i put together um we actually included the waterbury select board member names and email addresses in the actual document and and in there we we gave instructions to email your select board members with this text you know please say this you know um and so so that could be an answer that if you know even if you didn't have a flyer even if you didn't have you know the the time to go door to door or petition or anything you know if you're having people ask you um you know what can i do the simplest thing is email your select board members that you want this and the more people you get to email those select board members um you know the the more they're gonna start you know having visibility into the desire of the townspeople to to have that um and then one other little quick note that i'll make um when when we when we made this flyer we made it sort of generic enough that you can we can very quickly um edit the document for any other town so if anybody is interested i think there's a way that we can we can have that recreated for your specific town and then have them printed okay thank you christopher tom and after tom i'm gonna call and end to this discussion because y'all are cutting in on my lead you're not allowed to do that i believe right um i can shut you all up if i want to go ahead i'll try to frame this not as a laziness but uh of an effort for efficiency and increasing our reach here um but i'm wondering i mean i love the idea of the petition and i'm trying to figure out how i would make that happen is there a way that we could do this digitally um where we could through a front porch forum post have a link like hey if you're interested here's like put your name your town and say yes i agree to this and then we can send that doesn't even have to be super official it just has to be something we can put in front of like we're and say hey look we got 800 people in the town that's a pretty big number who are interested in having you do something about this and at least it would start moving the conversation along i understand it's not something you would like the communication communication committee would to consider humbly chuck just take that into account then please all right are there any more comments on the town arpa money we're going to move on to fax and that's alan yeah so i sent around to everybody about 20 minutes ago half an hour ago through through email a list of faqs that the policy committee looked at the other week what it what the list is is a um combination of faqs or similar information that's presented on um the website of i think it's five different uh cud's uh vikuta and there's a third one uh that must be the broad no the department of public service and what we were trying to do was to just see the range of kinds of issues questions that people are covering covering in their faqs knowing we're soon gonna have to be answering a lot of questions as well um what we're trying to do now is to look at all the different questions and try to put them into categories for which we could make assignments to various committees or individuals to help us begin to develop an faq this is obviously going to be a lot of um collaborative work with the communications committee and with probably some of the other committees that have special knowledge about specific things if anybody has specific knowledge about digging conduits that would be good for us to know but one thing that we're finding is there's a heck of a lot of information out there already if you look at if you look at what's on some websites some of it is very detailed ec fiber is probably the best example of the most detailed website when it comes to having questions that people can search for and get answers to online and that makes sense since they've been in business so long and there are other websites that seem to wander all over and don't really have a compact presentation and don't cover things that I'm going to guess we will eventually be getting a lot of questions on one of those areas and that's the second topic we've been talking about in the policy committee is digital equity how do we make sure that even though everybody's we hope will soon have access to high-speed internet that they're going to be able to afford it and I think one thing that we've been learning in the policy committee is we talk with people and this past week on Monday a number of us listen to a talk by holly groshner to the uh to uh uh the CUDA one of the things that we that that CUDs are very likely going to have to be able to explain to people is how subsidies work to make it better able for them to be able to pay the cost that whatever that's going to be of their internet connection this this is an issue that I started to begin to worry about more and more because it looks like the state itself doesn't want to get involved in essentially operating another social service that tries to figure out who should be eligible for a subsidy for helping to pay uh connection costs or ongoing subscription fees I think what's going to happen uh and shawan maybe you want to say something about this later too because you were in the call um I think what's going to happen is ec fiber is going to use the foundation it's already set up to create a model by which a CUD could establish its own way of handling requests and helping people get subsidies to help pay the help pay their their their internet connection bills the really interesting thing is going to come when we all have to figure out where the money to pay for the subsidies is going to come from we all sort of think or I think we want to think that there are a bunch of government programs out there that are going to take care of this for us and I don't think that's quite the quite the truth I think what's going to happen is each CUD is going to have to figure out how to draw some money from its own revenue in order to help fund subsidies for our customers ec fiber is already starting to do that through the foundation that that holly grosner is working with and I think eventually that model is going to apply to us so I think there's going to be a lot of a lot of responsibility put on us for explaining to people why it might be that our fees that we charge for internet are a little bit higher because we're subsidizing um internet connections for people who are lower income and in a sense we're going to be coming kind of we're going to be providing a social service this is you know beyond holes and wires and conduits and and devices to connect it's it's also a social service to try and bring equity to the people we're serving I think we're all in favor of this but it's I think it's going to be a lot of work and I think in the end it could could end up to be a substantial cost so that's the that's the news in both FAQs and and off of FAQs the whole idea of digital equity I think it's going to be I think it's an evolving issue that's going to get bigger and bigger so um let me look at this Jeremy Matt go ahead yeah I mean I'm very much for uh digital equity I mean and not being part of any of the other conversations don't really have much to say in it it seems like doing it piecemeal through different CUDs isn't the best way to do it and you know I honestly I think that we have our hands full enough with trying to make quorum and getting an executive director on board and that's probably going to continue for the next foreseeable number of years and to add that on it doesn't seem like we're a good fit for providing social services you know we're I don't know I mean I guess if not us then who maybe but so I just I want to clarify because I've been in a couple of meetings and I've seen a couple of demonstrations of the actual software the eab has had that they spent a lot of money to develop um the idea is that there's a central the equitable equitable access for broadband I think it's what it's called yeah right that's holly groshner's group yeah that's holly groshner's group um they they've uh with with the help of funding from ec fiber they have actually developed an application and the idea of the application is that it's a data collection point you get you qualify you get they are they are talking about having social services case managers do this at the time they're intaking them for other things that this becomes another program they intake people for their problems with that issue with that idea as well but it's a starting point so they have actually signed people up through this application they get their their qualifying information and their location and if ec fiber doesn't serve them they tell that person to contact who can serve them with this this uh cursory approval of the initial the initial approval that they do qualify for these federal subsidies or these federal grants that are coming through so in a way it's kind of like some of the the subsidy programs that are provided by for for fuel oil or or home heating kinds of things for for low income folks and I think the idea my impression of what I think holly is going for is for this to be a solution that the other CUDs buy into so we've got a group of people who are doing the intakes on this who may be the social workers or maybe staff members from eab themselves doing intakes or that we've got we're sending people to talk to them instead to do the pre-qualification and then when the time comes that they they're qualified they get referred back to us if they're within our district and then we get them hooked up and we probably have to deal with getting the subsidy paperwork processed or however that ends up being whatever that final form is um but I think the end goal is to make it a statewide thing at least for the CUDs possibly through vikuta or vermont community broadband but but as as alan has said you know he's he's commented before that you know the state doesn't have a good record on any of this so we we don't know where this is all going but we are trying I am trying to push this out so that it is not on us to be making these decisions because I don't we don't have the staff we don't have the qualifications to make these decisions and there's a lot of fun points to these sorts of qualifying programs that you really need people who know how they work to figure out who's going to qualify and does anybody else other than Jeremy have any comments before I recognize Jeremy again I don't see any go ahead Jeremy I feel like I'm back in class with my professors telling me to stop asking questions it's totally flat I'm totally that's totally what I intended to I I totally respect that and have no problem being told that to take a break anyway what I was going to say was that the idea like the way you laid it out yeah that sounds fine you know that we allocate resources to you know filling out the paperwork and stuff like that but you know managing case files and eligibility requirements and figuring out because you know we're we're not social workers and you know I think it's yeah exactly so that's that's not that's not it anybody else oh oh I did want to make another comment since nobody else is talking about it is just the broader topic of FAQs I had explicit questions about conduit and running fiber up people's drive waves to their houses and and what's our policy going to be on that and how much is it going to cost and so I do have some anxious people who really want high-speed internet they're very in favor of it but the sooner we can come up with thoughts on that the better we are and Walker go ahead oh wait yeah Walker I've been telling people that a lot of our you know the funding that's going into this build out aside from stringing on to um polls you know we're charging a fraction of what is costing to hook somebody up from the pole to the house um it's important for people to know that that their their their setup is going to be somewhat subsidized it's not going to be cheap but it's not inexpensive to run conduit to someone's house if it's not available yeah and Linda I think this uh conduit uh discussion came up at the the holly eab discussion didn't it Alan yes yeah and so they had a policy already in place we should get it up on the website perhaps well I think we want to look at it first but if anybody wants to see what I I think is a really good and time-tested conduit policy if you want to call it that go to the ec fiber website and that web address is on the information that I sent around the faqs attachment that I sent to everybody um you you can actually look at the list of of faqs that is posted on the ec fiber website about conduits uh on that document and then go to it and you can prowl around yourself to see what's there I mean these folks have been dealing with us now for what 10 years at least so I think we can assume that the guidelines they're using for conduits is probably those guidelines are probably pretty solid and we can I hope adopt those without having to to do to do a lot of a lot of changes to them but yeah I I'm starting to get questions about this too and and I just I just want us to be ready that's what I'm worried about but let's put it on the policy agenda well we've had it on the policy agenda the the faqs we know I mean the conduit policy well I don't think we want to post anything that we haven't looked at and I don't think the policy committee is the right committee to look at conduit policy because I we don't know anything about construction and that's really what you're talking about like how far down to dig and what kind of materials to use and how you charge and I mean it's it's go to the website go to the ec fiber website linda and and look at what's up there and you'll you'll see it gets pretty complex very quickly okay okay Jonathan can folks hear me I'm on another computer uh if I may return to the the the digital equity question you know I'm strongly a proponent of us not passing the buck in terms of you know the burden of having to complete paperwork and application forms I'd really like to not pass that on to the consumers and I will say that you know as an employee of the food bank we have quite a bit of experience in you know mitigating the requirements of federal and state dollars when it comes to having to track people declaring income and that sort of thing because we serve so many low to moderate income persons I'm sure there are ways that we can work around having to you know lost you Jonathan oh no can you am I still I guess you'll hear Jonathan oh okay um sorry uh and I think there are ways we can manage our finances such that say we use the federal dollars that have more stringent requirements around um income identification for one purpose and then fund our unrestricted general operating dollars or the money's generated from subscriber revenues for for that sort of assistance to persons who can't afford our services on on their low lower or no incomes and I also believe that you know we can have it such that we don't we don't have to function as a social service agency we can simply ask people to self-identify that they are of low to moderate income and that should be sufficient in my opinion I think there's some amount of trust that we have to adopt in order to truly be an equitable organization and and offer an equitable service here I think so I just wanted to say that thank you okay Ray I'm recognizing you I think Jeremy had his hand up for I did a few like yeah but he's already spoken on this okay a couple things one is that um with regard to the technical requirements like conduit you know obviously this is not a policy committee discussion it's a really um discussion with our engineers and and so that that's the you won't be drafting those requirements somebody else will be doing that secondly with regard to the people qualifying for example for subsidization etc etc no we're not going to set up an infrastructure to do that yes there'll be something that'll be done statewide I expect it to be equal access to broadband I expect them to get some marper funding to help us set that up I expect they will be the people who'll be doing the qualifications for people to get subsidization and we just need to if we if we are aware of people that need that we just need to make them aware of that so that they can follow up on it and that's it requires personal touch that I'm obviously not the right person for that personal touch and neither is an installer or the right person for that personal touch but it'll get worked out with equal access to broadband so I I we should be interested concerned and and supportive and but I think we're going to have something set up statewide so we can join Jeremy um yes I just wanted to disagree a little bit with Jonathan on not passing costs along I mean if we have costs we have to pass them along I mean we are our balance sheet is kind of a zero sum game if we have increased costs we need to get that back in terms of higher revenue so um for higher higher fees um I agree we can minimize that but you know if it's costing us money or labor that's going to raise our rates any other comments on facts all right website update oh Jonathan go ahead oh I just wanted to respond I'm not suggesting uh Jeremy that we not charge people an appropriate amount of monies but I think that you know we are a municipal organization and we do have uh uh we do have to provide a service to the greater public good and so I think we can do that through an equity lens I completely I think we're both in agreement here um I think we just need to do it in a fair way that's all I think I was miss hearing what you were saying maybe thanks okay website update Chuck is that Chuck I'm going to defer to Linda uh to give us just a quick overview of some of we don't want to hear from Chuck talk Linda talk we changed a lot of pages around we put a lot of documents up uh um Alan gave me policy type documents that I put up um there's a a new navigation bar uh we uh understand that we need a new calendar uh that the google calendar that we have up at the moment is not working for us um um I looked into it and Chuck has been looking into it and it's very complicated to try to put the Microsoft calendar up but we're we're still working on it well we'll come up with something um what did I miss oh we do have a FAQ page up there so if anyone that comes up with some definitions for FAQs from Alan's list I'd be glad to post onto the FAQ list I do have one question is this is is this website structure um screen reader friendly for accessibility so the the the short answer to that question is we don't have a screen reader but we have a screen reader emulator I run it through every once in a while okay um and so it's it's not perfect but we're not going to get sued by the ADA over it well and by the way I have gotten sued by the ADA before so I know that pain okay all right anybody else uh Jeremy Matt you get a question or a comment uh yeah no I a comment I just wanted to point out that when I've been posting minutes and agendas I've been very careful to put in the text description of the documents uh to make that more reader accessible uh to people so thank you if anyone needs if anyone needs any help posting agendas or meeting minutes please let me know I just wanted to add that uh thank you to to Linda and to Christopher for all the work they're doing on the website they've made a lot of changes a lot of improvements navigation a lot of public documents and things are up there the is an ArcGIS map up there and it's constantly being changed if you have suggestions send them to check Linda and Christopher and uh you'll probably see them real soon now you're doing a great job thanks a lot thanks right any any other comments we are to construction planning is that Ray is that David David so we are continuing to meet with NIDC and I'm gonna say the wrong name now too NIDC and the development of the executable project plan in the course of doing that they have completed a basic of it there's a pretty detailed high level design of the network and I'm gonna share the screen and give everybody a preview of where they are let's see if I can find sharing just a double check David this is nothing that should be potentially thought of as confidential oh god I don't know anyway I don't know I just I will not show the map but I'll describe it basically they've they've identified nine locations for cabinets which would be the light that connects the the the backbone it's 131 mile backbone that goes through our whole network through our whole all our communities not all actually does it go through every community now it doesn't go through every community but close and it's um but 985 miles of overhead and you know but I forget how many underground but there's a bit of bit of underground and there are 23 distribution areas being serviced off of those nine cabinets so the average area is about 43 miles of each distribution area and we're working through prioritization and efficiencies and should be back with everybody in very short order because it needs to be part of the having the moofo with the detailed design um I'll be happy to answer any questions go ahead Ray no no I did David did a great job oh well you still have your hand up I thought you had a comment oh no do I apologies oh my goodness anybody else have any comments we all starting to drag a little bit okay everybody get up and dance here we have a jump okay no I can't do that I may be all powerful as the as the chair but can't make you dance all right so that is construction planning and WEC partnership is next is that also David or is that I guess I could tell you Jerry should be the worst in doing it but anyway um and I don't think this needs to be an executive session do you right um they haven't uh WEC hasn't announced anything so it either either it is or we table until the next meeting let's table until the next meeting we'll table it to the next regular meeting yep and we're right on time the board and we are right on time so I'm gonna do a round table I'm gonna call you call you talk Jonathan are you here is berry city I am here is berry city that is good so do you have any comments for the round table no I this has been a very productive meeting thank you all and um you know I sorry to put on my my food bank hat for the evening but it's okay it's good it's good all right Alan Gilbert well as former mayor Rutland former mayor of Rutland Gilligodnik once said finally our reality is becoming a dream um that's somehow I think if you reverse it it's it's it's what it's what I'm really beginning to feel we're we're really we're really beginning to see that something's going to happen and that really feels good and by the way that comment was made by Gilligodnik in the 1970s when he got a lot of government money to build a parking garage in downtown Rutland which was torn down about 15 years later so the dream was realized that then was obliterated Alan it's just in his positive so for the round table our alternates also round tabled do okay Christopher I think I've said enough seconded Chuck Burke just kidding I'm kidding if you want to say something wow no actually you've heard me enough thanks everyone okay David Healy do you have any comments I'm done for the night thank you um David Lawrence I do not recognize this name David I'll recognize you for round table if you want to talk uh is it David Lawrence or David went well this the list I'm looking at says David Lawrence middle sex okay so so I'm not a lunatic David Lawrence you're muted if you're trying to comment but if you don't want to comment just don't say anything and I'll move on all right David went uh nothing bad thanks everyone okay Henry I'm a steady I'm a study you I'm a study I'm a study um yeah no I think it's great everything is moving along and you guys are a powerhouse team making this all happen I offer any technical support if you want me to attend NRTC meetings or review documents I'm willing to do that thank you Henry Jeremy Hansen I just want to give you a round of applause Siobhan Bravo for running the meeting everything went smoothly on time and everything worked well and thanks to everybody else for their continuing good work as we uh start getting towards our first lit subscriber thank you Jeremy Matt no you already told me to zip it so I lost that John Walters uh have to talk okay there you go go ahead nope nothing uh nothing to add I'm just the observer oh okay Katharina nothing good okay Linda Gravel I cannot do my job as delegate without all the help from every single person on the governing board thank you so much and Ray yeah I was just envisioning a person who is our first lit subscriber with a t-shirt that says first lit subscriber I am all in favor of that Tom Fisher Tom Fisher I was going to echo the sentiment so this is a very well run meeting Siobhan congratulations and it is most appropriate that on International Women's Day we you should lead us to this meeting Jerry Who right Jerry Who and Walker thank you all nothing to add great meeting okay well I'm going to tie this up with I can't remember what I was going to say it was going to be really witty so everybody it'll be fantastic um so I don't we all like shag rugs yes yes my 1970s decor here this is this is awesome um so do I need a motion to adjourn or can we just adjourn you can declare the journey I'm declaring us adjourned at uh 7 39 p.m thank you everybody bye everybody I'm so glad we had this time together