 How's it going? Jeremy, thank you for the quick turn around on that, uh, invoice. Sure. You are welcome. Did it already get to you? We did. Yep. Hey, Michael. Hey, Michael. Hey, everyone. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Hey, Herman. Hey, Michael. How are you? Well, thank you. I did just the same thing, but I managed to finish stuffing my face before the meeting. Yeah, so thanks for getting back to me, uh, as a meeting. So I'm going to check. What was that already? Maybe he said he was going to reconnect? Jerry. I'm about to start a meeting. I'm going to meet Michael as a courtesy, just so his phone conversation doesn't bleed back in. And I've somebody remind me to unmute him at some point because he won't be able to do that on his own. Sorry, Jeremy. I'm back. I made a mistake. Oh, that's fine. I was just saying, uh, thanks for getting back to me about the, uh, the logo stuff for the people that did, although Michael's on the phone. He's one of those people. But yeah, I mean, I get your point that we probably don't want to register nationally. But I only have seven. We need three more for a quorum. Otherwise, we might just have a good old fashioned discussion tonight instead. Here's David. There's eight. Too bad. I don't count. Well, you do at the moment because Michael's not in the room. Yeah, I guess you're right. And the answer, Chuck, to the question about the extension is actually a subject of conversation that we'll have later. The way that the extension is going to work is going to be, um, is going to be hashed out by joint fiscal and by DPS. So um, we know some things, or at least we think we know some things, but the bill has not even been signed by the president yet. So yeah, we're all still all big fat TV days. Hypothetical at this point. So while we're still waiting for, for folks, um, I had completely forgotten that that Trev Thorpe from Woodbury had stepped down. Um, maybe someone with better memory than me also remembers that, but I actually went to remove him from the distribution list and he was already gone. So, um, with us, we have, um, a Woodbury resident Gretchen Priest who is a high Gretchen. And I think you're sort of representing some of your neighbors too, who are all very interested in getting some improved service. So welcome. Our area has, um, has a need. So this is all come to my attention through trying to figure out our problems. Well, welcome. There's bigger problems. So I'd like to be part of a, you know, statewide, a local, local solution. I'm sitting in. I'll be quiet. No, no, it's, it's all good. We don't actually, we can't, I can't take any agenda items until we have a quorum because we're a public board, like a select board. So we can't do anything without, because we have 20 towns. I need 10 of those towns represented before we can get rolling. So yeah, including Woodbury, we have 20 central Vermont towns and cities, mostly in Washington County, but also a bit to the north of you and Elmore and also to this down to our southeast in Orange and Williamstown. And Washington actually. I do have a question. Um, Skip Lindsay from Woodbury, he was the alternate. So does that make him the, um, the delegate now? If, if Skip showed up to a meeting, he would have voting rights in the absence of a delegate, but he's, he kind of was intending to be a long-term backup. I mean, so, but then again, I haven't heard from him in a while. So, you know, if we appointed delegate, that delegate would be the primary and skip would remain the alternate until I hear something else from Mr. Gray or the rest of the select board. Well, rather do the town. Okay. Yeah, you'd be the select board appointing not us. Right. Right. But there, there's Michael Gray is the select board chair there. So I would hear, I would hear from him what the select board did and we would be able to move on from there. Okay. Thank you. Sure. So we're waiting on one more. I think I think I saw Sam show up. Sam's not a delegate. Oh, he's not. Okay. Sam, you come to enough of our meetings. We could make you a second alternate if you'd like, although you're, but you're, you're a more town resident. So you're duplicating. So, yeah. And our alternate is Karen Orr and it's pretty hard to fill those shoes. I suppose that's true. No offense to you, Sam, but she, she, she's a major player in the, in the region. We could use several duplicates of Chuck actually. Yes, that's definitely true. Five, six, seven, eight. Yeah, I've got eight. Sam, that is on the agenda. Sam just posted in chat a question around the extension of the cares and, and you actually just missed the conversation that largely we don't know the answer to most of the open questions at this point in time. We will get to it and as an agenda item if this meeting reaches quorum. But otherwise kind of in a nutshell, it's going to go, have to go to states to decide exactly what to do next. And so we'll be awaiting our state's interpretation of the bill, assuming the bill gets signed, you know, into law, we'll be awaiting our state's interpretation of how to proceed with it. So I saw Tom join, I see Henry join, and we are at a quorum. So I'm going to call the December 22nd 2020 special governing board meeting of CV fiber to order at six o' six p.m. Let me start my recording. Okay, and here we go. So I'm unmuting you, Michael. I muted you because we were hearing your phone conversation and I wanted to make sure that we weren't hearing your phone conversation. Thank you. Thank you for meeting me. Sorry, I disturbed you. No, that's, it's all right. I didn't want to snoop on your private business. Okay. So are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Okay. Seeing no hands raised or any comments out there. Moving on to public comment. Is there any public comment about items that are not on the agenda? Hearing none, moving on to the consent agenda. So I'm going to move that we approve the consent agenda as presented second seconded by Chuck. Is there any further discussion? I can add a little note that you are approving all of these invoices, but I've already sent them. They've already been paid. So David, David, your reimbursement check and the compass that we got from the consortium that's in the mail to you today, you should have it, you'll probably have it Thursday. So that was allocated to you and I just never, I never put it in the mail. That assumes the post office even working. Yeah. They're pretty over taxed right now. Yeah. We shall see. Okay. So any further discussion about the consent agenda? Okay. Easy peasy. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. They're opposed abstentions or folks who want a roll call. Hearing none. I see that we have unanimous approval. Thank you for that. That's one of those seeking motions retroactively, but that's asking for forgiveness rather than whatever. Okay. Finance report. So I sent you a I sent you a bank statement or a current balance that does not account for most of the checks that just went out. Some of the checks are accounted for in that list. Say more than half or not. We still have absolutely positively no cash flow problems right now. And as a matter of fact, the state will be cutting us a check for another 70 K before long. I sent them the invoice for the second half of our grant money yesterday, I think. So whenever that gets here that I'm going to put that in the bank. And we will talk about what the what the grant money looks like and what our how our how our hands may or may not be tied in a little bit in the 710 cares extension options conversation. All right. So moving on. Anybody else have any questions about finances or the finance report? Jeremy, I do. This is Jerry. Yeah. And I apologize if I'm behind the times on this, but I would be expecting a treasurer's report that would reference our CPA. Do we have neither a treasurer nor an accounting firm? So that's a that's a really good question. Thank you for asking that. So we have a treasurer in name who became very busy and was not sure that she was going to be able to dedicate the time to CV fiber while she was going through some other stuff. I need to reach back out to her and find out what the what the situation is if her schedules loosened up a bit. Otherwise, Tim Shea, thank you very much, Tim, put me in contact with somebody who may be willing to do both potentially the treasurer, but also the bookkeeping CPA stuff. So the answer is we kind of have a treasurer and we don't have a CPA at the moment. But I bring that up because I I don't want to put us at risk at some point if somebody's going to lend us some money, they're going to want to look at something you know with with more information than than just what you can download off the bank website. Indeed, and that's something that we actually have to prepare for the for the Vita loan, a actual like prepared financial statement. That's not something that I'm capable of doing, but I mean I'm I'm I'm writing the checks. I'm mailing them. I'm doing kind of the management while Lee is sorting out her stuff. So I see Tom with this hand up and David with this hand up. So Tom, I think one or two meetings ago, Siobhan brought up something about us getting an annual audit. And I was wondering if that has also been figured out as far as when we need to have that done by. No, I don't I that's not something I've had the had the bandwidth to tackle. I mean that that would be something that would be a good thing to do if we get a bookkeeper on board. And if they that could be the first thing that they do is go back and do the audit and then start the bookkeeping after that. I mean, that would not be something that we would want the person to do on an ongoing basis. You don't want your bookkeeper to be doing your audit also. But it may suffice for them to do the audit. I mean, and that's I don't know what the CPA rules are for that if they can do the audit and then come in and continue to do the books for us afterwards. We can hopefully figure that out. And then David. Yeah, no, I was two things. One that we should probably authorize the purchase of quick books for business or something, whether we actually can put in a chart of accounts and track things by appropriate categories. And I mean, I'll make a motion that we authorize that because I think we probably shouldn't be waiting too long on this and the book keepers should be using our software, I believe. Maybe I'm wrong. That would that would be a good idea. Let's see quick. Okay. Thanks, so moved by David seconded by already to go get quick books. I'm just looking at the quick books desktop premiere 2021 for two users is $9.99 a thousand dollars. So I don't I don't know what the right package for us is if there's a number of seats. Let's see small business. 1250 online. Probably adequate. Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing. Quick books online. Book books online is is 40 a month. Jeremy. Yeah, this is Alan. I thought at one point in the first year or maybe first 18 months, we actually bought some software when Oh, who's our first treasure? I can't remember her name now. This is terrible. Rebecca. Yeah, I thought that we had gone ahead and actually purchased some some software to do the books. So maybe before we move ahead on authorizing a thousand dollar purchase of quick books, we ought to try to figure that out. $40 a month. 40 a month. Yeah, I'm I don't remember. I don't remember that. We can go back and ask her. That would be good. I think so. So why don't we just why don't we authorize it? And if we don't need to buy it, then we don't need to buy it. I've I've never seen any reports out of it. I've never seen any logins. That was not one of the things kind of the package of things that Rebecca handed off to our second treasurer who I'm again. Yeah, Alexander Hamilton. Yeah, Jeremy. Yeah. So I you should probably connect with the book because generally they'll have their own quick books and you can get a they'll give you like a flash that you can just upload to be able to pull reports. But in general, you'll get the reports. So the only reason needed is if you want to do some journal querying and such. So but she'll have they'll have their own quick books that you won't have to not buy a license for our on on CB fibers behalf. So that's also another avenue to pursue to see how much you're going to dig in on the journal entries. So okay, so so Tim's suggestion here is that we may not need this. Chuck. One other thing to note is for my business, I have the single user license, which is a little bit cheaper. And that license, you can still provide access to your CPA for no additional charge, and they can actually still log in and get all of the information in order to run reports and get charts of accounts and so forth. So, you know, I think it's 25 a month for a single user account and goes up to $70 a month for up to five users for the online variant. And it does come with some additional bells and whistles for that that that higher tier package. So and seeing Alan's comment in the chat, Steve Mnuchin will be looking for a job soon. Maybe we could contact him. Oh, God. Not sure I want them. They know they're not going anywhere. Another four years, they're not, they're not going. All right. So, yeah, two great things. Two things. One is it sounds like there's enough controversy about, you know, what to get, do we already have it, blah, blah, blah, that somebody ought to perhaps research it. The other part was I understand from, I think it's reading the DV, DV fiber website that there's a statute requirement for a finance and audit committee for CUDs, and perhaps we should establish one if we haven't, and then put them in charge of overseeing all of this stuff and making recommendations back to the board. I'm not volunteering for the committee. So, we do did have a finance committee. It's been long languishing, so it does exist. I could, we could find out. Yeah, I didn't see, is that already was that you? That's me. How are we keeping our, how are you keeping records at the moment? It's going into our bank account, and I have, I'm, I know which checks I've written. I know I'm using Excel to keep track of how much, how much money we've essentially spent out of each grant, grant fund, because we have, you know, X amount to pay our project manager, X amount for office expenses for communication, whatever, and I have, I'm maintaining that, that's something I'm going to be submitting to DPS shortly, which is, I totally recognize woefully inadequate, but somebody else. What was our bookkeeper? Was our treasurer or bookkeeper using an accounting program? We had not gotten that far yet. Not, not our most recent treasurer anyways. It just, it just seems elementary for a functioning business to have its own books and a program to keep them. QuickBooks is fairly, so we'll get for how long? A dozen years. I've been using it, and it's fairly easy to use. It's fairly inexpensive. I would expect that after some research, you would go ahead and, and make a QuickBooks purchase and start using it. It just seems element, one of those elementary business things you do from the ground. Sure. The, I, I'm in favor of the motion, where they'd authorize you to make the purchase based on your, on your research and your best judgment. I think you have a volunteer for the committee too. Wow, sounds like it. Well, so, so we have to pin, so what I was about to say is, yeah, we have to pin people down for this because it's, it's, it's good to say we ought to have, you know, accounting software, we ought to have bookkeeping software, but who's going to run it? Because it's been your esteemed chair here that's been also double duty as treasurer. So if somebody is going to pick up that slack and we don't have an active treasurer or a paid bookkeeper, then which, which of you is going to, going to run that? You've got to have a bookkeeper. So, so, so let's, so let's get us one then. A committee can't keep the book. I thought Tim had gotten a bookkeeper for us or has found one for us. We just didn't talk to the person yet. That, that was, so bookkeeper, person to do the financial review audit or whatever. Yes, I still owe the batch elder a, No, I was talking about it. He had a bookkeeper in mind, right, Tim? I, and I got that email from you last week. Yeah. So yes, I have yet to reach out to them as well, but, Jeremy, I'd suggest you delegate that. Okay. So who's going to own reaching out to bookkeepers or financial review folks? All right. This is Jerry. Give it to me. Okay. Well, and you've probably already had some interactions with that shoulder through the fire department. I have indeed, I have indeed, but that's on the information to me because I don't know that I was privy of that particular email. Yeah, that was an email just between, just between Tim and I, maybe David was on there, but okay, I will, I will pass it on to you and we can hopefully make some for progress. All right. Thank you very much for that, Jerry. Anything else on finance? Okay. So let's continue along. Is there still a motion? Is there still a motion on the floor? Yes, that's actually true. Thank you for that. Yeah. So it looks like we could get the single seat license for QuickBooks for no more than $300 a year. I mean, they do have an incentive right now, but it is after, it is done after three months. So any further discussion on this? So the motion is actually to approve the purchase of QuickBooks, web application of QuickBooks for $40 a month. Well, it's, so it's, it's not $40 a month, but sure. Whatever it is. Okay. Tom? So am I understanding correctly from Tim that once we have a bookkeeper, there would be not a need for this motion? And then maybe we should instead move forward with the bookkeeper? Or do you, does the board generally think that, no, we need to get this done faster than that? And that's a greater need. Well, it's going to depend on how fast we get the bookkeeper. And from what Chuck said, it may be sensible to have us, for us to have our own segregated books that the, that the accountant can go and get access to directly. And that way we can go pull our own reports and such. I mean, this, this is information that, you know, whether our treasurer or one of us extracts it or the bookkeeper extracts it, we're going to need it right quick. I mean, certainly for the loan application, and almost certainly for other grants and loans in the future as well. David? Given our track record, I think we better have our own copy because we're going through treasurers and bookkeepers like we have a problem. Here, here. I think due diligence requires we do that. Okay. So, so can we friendly amend this to a, not to exceed $300 a year? At $70 a month? No, it's not 70. It's only $70 a month. If you have multiple users and you want some of the added bells and whistles, I mean, I mean, if we want that additional level, that's, you know, we can certainly do a not to exceed 900. I mean, it's not going to break the bank. Thoughts? Do we need the one? So I put the link in the chat. So if you want to look, the simple start is the one that's 25 a month. And then the plus listed as the most popular is $70 a month. Why restrict ourselves now? We don't, we don't need to make the purchase decision now. Let's give ourselves a latitude to not have to wait for another board meeting to do this. Okay. So is that a suggestion that we go for the not to exceed 900 then? For the non-voting member tonight? That's fine by me. Okay. So, so, so Jerry's suggesting that we give ourselves a little more latitude or give the, give Jerry, who, you know, maybe going to be dealing with this more, you know, the latitude, or maybe the bookkeeper is going to want something slightly different, whatever. Does that seem, does that seem reasonable, amenable to everybody? If we can amend that? So David, is that okay with you? Yes, certainly amended accepted. Cool. Alrighty. So not hearing any, any other commentary. All in favor of approving purchase of QuickBooks for a year, not to exceed $900. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions or wanting a roll call? Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thanks for that. Anything else on finance? Can we go back to, can I speak? Of course. Can we go back to what Tom was asking originally? Don't we statutory need to audit once a year? And if so, the auditor would not be the bookkeeper, would not be the CPA, would be an independent person. Or is it, or is it that we're required to have a financial audit community that looks over the books that the treasurer has been keeping? I don't know which it is, but whichever it is, we need to establish that and follow our statutory requirements. So, so the statutory requirements require this audit once. And so this is where legal minds that are smarter than me about this would need to figure this out. The audit itself is only required once the district becomes operational. That's the word that they use. What does operational mean? Does that mean once they have, you know, funds coming in and going out? Does that mean once they're serving customers? I have not dug through statute to understand what that means precisely, but I think we probably have triggered it by now and we should probably move forward with it. That, that was what I was expecting Batchelder to do, is to do that financial review audit that's going to be satisfactory as a deliverable as part of the Vita loan package. And that's one of the contacts that I'm going to be handing off to Jerry. The bookkeeper on the other hand would be the person that we would appoint Treasurer, hopefully, and also give them a stipend very much like we give a stipend to our intrepid clerk to do the work that he does. Does that seem, is that reasonable? Yes. Okay. Tom, I saw you had your hand up and then Chuck. I'm all set. Okay, Chuck. Do you recall how much that stipend is? I want to see 200, but I could look that up. And our budget changed this year, so we're working with different line items. You'd have to look at the new budget, but it's in there and it would be, yeah, it was something on par with that. It was a couple hundred dollars a month. I was 250 a month is what we approved in the April 14th minutes. Okay. Again, if that's changed, I don't know. I don't know if that would be a board thing that we would need to vote on to change it or... Yeah, I expect we would, especially, and if we're going to hire someone who is a paid bookkeeper and they have a rate that doesn't allow them to be so kind to us, even as a public organization, you know, if they have a rate, people should get paid their rate. If they want to volunteer or semi-volunteer their time, that's fine too, but we may have to revisit that depending on what folks are going to be expecting. Is that... Are you good, Chuck? Yes, thank you. Okay. Anybody else on finance? Yeah, Tom. Does that require any sort of motion for us to go, you know, hire an auditor and complete an audit or... So we're not... There will be soon. I mean, once we've identified who's going to do this and we're going to expend any funds then, but I don't know what that cost is going to be. I don't know who that's going to be. So if we're appointing somebody, yeah, we'll have it at our next meeting. And perhaps sooner for just a quick, you know, hop in, make the motion hop out. Okay, anything else on finance? Moving along. Communications committee report. Chuck, any updates for us? Yeah. So since we last met, the website initiative was kicked off with Code Rider and I'm happy to report great progress has been made. We've got an overall structure and some of the look and feel elements already nailed out and we are well on track to launching a very simple redesign by next week. But there will be ongoing improvements that go thereafter as we increase the amount of content. The next steps are I'm going to be sending an email to the communications committee to divide and conquer a few pages where we want to rewrite some of the content. And I'll be asking kind of some subgroups that would not trigger quorum to take those on so that they can kind of discuss those on an ongoing basis and so forth. I would encourage anybody who wants to be involved that is not officially on the communications committee to reach out to me if you want to volunteer. I'd be happy to include you in that list and get you on there. Tim, I saw Tim Sullivan raised his hand. Great. Tim, I'll add you on that list. Anybody else who wants to go ahead and hit me up in the chat and I'll make sure you're on that kind of divide and conquer initiative. All right. Thanks, Chuck. Any questions for Chuck before we let him off the hook? I got one for Chuck. Sure. With the proposed changes or the changes that you've probably seen that we can't see, usually when I build websites and modify, I usually make a new folder for the new site and that's easy enough to do that way you could put a folder that's considered semi-private where you could send us or other people to it to review and it doesn't affect the existing running system. Tim, we have a staging server set up. The staging server is not actually password protected but security by obscurity if you are familiar with the term. I'd be happy to share the link with folks. I would just ask not to get inundated with a ton of change at this point in time because we have a very tight deadline. But if people do want to see it, I'd be happy to share the current state of that site at any point in time. Just reach out to me. Yep. Thank you. Okay. Anything else for Chuck? Okay. Business Development Committee. David. So the Business Development Committee met last week and covered a few territories, including Project Manager, what to do next, and we've got a subcommittee of Ray and Siobhan who are working on that and we're looking for other ideas of what we should do. Tim prepared a summary of what he thought we needed in writing and so we have that to work from. We also had a discussion about whether we ought to reach out to the Regional Planning Commission to see whether they might have a role in managing our operations and staff and having a place to staff or operations or hiring a person through them. It would be their employee but our person. So regarding that, I did send an email to the director yesterday afternoon and haven't heard back from her soliciting interest in that and having a dialogue with her about that potential. That came up because in the Vecuda meetings. Sorry. Who was for Bonnie? Who wasn't you're speaking with at the Regional Planning Commission? It's Bonnie Wanaga. Sorry about that. Yep. And yeah, this came out of going to a number of Vecuda meetings in which three or four of the CUDs are actually being staffed by Regional Planning Commissions and they seem to be doing the grant management and etc. And maybe they're all startup kind of organizations but it seems to me they have somebody to take care of details that we're having sometimes trouble taking care of. So it was worth doing the outreach. So that's underway. Ray and Siobhan are working on the project, the description and how we're going to get it out. And then let's see what else. And then so then the other part of the business of the business committee is we've been working on trying to meet our January deadlines for putting out our fees. So we've got three our fees that have been drafted. One of them has gone through review and revision on poll inventory and make ready work. The second RFP on design engineering construction is drafted and being circulated for review comments we do today. And then the third one is on operations ISP work and that one's been drafted and sent out but I think the due date is later this week. So we're hoping the committee is hoping to have some recommendations for the board in mid-January so so that we can better understand what art off means to the to the district. What any other activities might impact what we've been doing whether it's COVID related or not. So we've been moving, you know, the concept that Ray has Ray and I have been working on is putting out these RFPs as in the first one especially is an indefinite quantity contract in which we would get qualified vendors who would be available to us for a number of years and we would put out many bids to get their actual cost proposal to do the work on any of the inventory as well as helping us with getting the utility to do all the make ready work. So that's the first one. The second one we're still, you know, discussing and working on but I think we're making some progress and I am trying to think of whether there's one other thing that we discussed at last week's meeting and at that time we didn't know whether the extension was going to happen on the COVID money. So, you know, what we talked about tonight will be more of that in terms of feeding what the business committee needs to think about and do. Tim, is there anything else we covered that you were there for? No, I think that touches on, yeah, victims, the RFPs and the PM. And I can take questions on that. The other thing, I mean, and Tim may be covering this, the canvassing work. Are you going to cover that, Tim? I can or yeah, we can talk about it now. There's a couple things on canvas. Anybody have you lead on that? Okay. Any questions for David or folks from business development? Okay. Thanks for that, David. So, segueing nicely to Tim, Project Manager's report. Yep. So, things obviously be winding down for me but let's see, I'll go. No particular order. We did get kind of the handoff from COOS Systems. So, I did set up David and Chuck as admin to start to look at that going forward and understand how we can use that software. Obviously, you're well underway with the canvassing. David sent out the metrics. They've made over 2,000 phone calls and have been ramping up with a few more callers to hit the phones and following up with people. Upwards, nearing 300 surveys having been completed. They will be doing starting literature drops this week. The intent is for them. I had given them email addresses thinking that the email addresses every once was the Gmail. However, that was not the case. So, Chuck is helping with that. So, they'll reach out prior to them coming to your neighborhoods to let you know that they'll be doing literature drops if you're interested in participating or just communicating that they will be out and about. The intent is not to knock on the doors but just to leave the door hanger and the trifold. And they'll also be starting a text campaign and they're optimistic that they can get to get to the 4,000 plus residences by the end of the month. Let's see. Website Chuck's giving the updates there. He's definitely taking the lead. The application, I did hand off some draft language for that. David gave an update on the RFPs and then I did create some checklists just for considerations when creating and some language for RFPs and contracts. Those are items I've got. Thanks, Tim. Any questions for Tim? Yeah, right. Yeah. So, does anyone feel a little bit squeamish about them doing texting to folks in your districts and your towns? Is that okay, you think? People going to be annoyed? After the last election cycle, I mean it's... I'm good with it. Okay. Does anybody else have any reluctance about texting in particular? Jeremy? No, I had something else. Okay. So, let's have David and then Jeremy, if nobody else has any thoughts about texting. So, I forget what the number Tim said, so the number of people that have filled out the survey based on what they've done. But we've got over 600 people filled out the survey. So, some people who posted the survey link on their front porch form, people are filling it in. I've sent out a summary, I believe, to everybody. I forget who I sent out the summary to. But this literature drop is another opportunity to let people know that this is coming. And so, if you could put something in your front porch form, little update, and link the survey again. I mean, there's no harm in having other people fill in the survey besides the 4,200 people have been trying to target. So, I really strongly suggest sort of a front porch form notice. Agreed. Jeremy? So, I got some pushback from people in my town, from people in Plainfield, about this, about going up to people's houses in general. And I don't know how they would feel about literature drops. So, what I'm wondering is if I put out in front porch form saying, hey, we're going to do literature drops, they're not going to knock on people's door, they're not going to interact with people, they're just going to hang out the door knockers and leave the literature. If you don't want that to happen, then please email me and I will pass your address along. Do you think that that is reasonable? I think so. I mean, if those folks understand our canvassers get that information and they just scrub those from their list, I mean, that's easy peasy. Okay. I mean, my instinct is that there's only going to be two or three people that are really upset about this and that nobody's going to care that somebody sets something on their doorknob. I mean, if you get a fuel delivery, I got a fuel delivery yesterday and somebody had to walk up and stick the tag, stick the bill in my door. No, I get that, you know, it's, it was something that popped into my head that people are maybe a little bit extra touchy about people showing up at their houses and wanted to throw that out there. The other thing is, are they going, if they have a survey response from a house, are they then not going to drop the literature there? Is that already scrubbed from their lists? It should be. Yes. Yes. Yep. Nick and Connor have confirmed they, so they will not go to those that they have contacted the phone. And if you, and Ray, you posted something in chat too, but why don't you vocalize it? After the first front porch forum notice went out, it generated some feedback and somebody drafted this particular response for that as a follow-up. And it seems to answer what we're trying to do this time here. And so you might want to modify this and put it out in front porch forum like tonight, tomorrow. And perhaps people who don't want to get, you know, their door knocked on or whatever, as somebody indicated that they're not supposed to then go to the house. So no harm, I don't think. Right. I mean, and there were, I mean, to be fair, there will be, there may be times where somebody has filled out the survey and for whatever reason, their address isn't quite up to date or, or, and they complained like, well, I filled it out, but they still came to my house. And I think there will be, there may be a little bit of that. But yeah, hopefully if you can send something like this out, yeah, and Jeremy, if you want to modify it. So they say, if you say, if you just don't want to be bothered with any of this, just send me an email and then poof, they go away. I think that's fair. I just want to be kind of cognizant of not wanting to irritate people and give them the option to opt out. And then what goes along with that is that we need to stick to that. So, you know, if we get responses, you know, the canvassers need to be pretty clear that they're not going to show up at those addresses. So anyway, and I would, I would bet that the COOS software has some of that CRM ability where you can essentially, you know, check the box and it's like a don't, don't bother them. Dr. Stern. Yeah. Any other questions for Tim? Or about canvassing? Okay. Moving along. Grant funding update and cares extension options. So I alluded before to, I invoiced the state for the second part of our funding, which is basically entirely for the canvassing and the website, the communications and outreach portion that we're doing through the end of the year. So we should see that, that check soonish. The bigger deal though is that the bill that has not yet been signed by the president, but we expect to be extended our deadline, extended the CARES Act fund deadline. So I had a chance to talk to Rob Fish this morning and have a little bit of insight into how this might work. And one of the, one of the main reasons I called this meeting tonight was for this agenda item. So I'm kind of looking for, looking for some input, the marching orders, really kind of marching orders to then kind of kick over to business development because some of what we're going to talk about will have to do with the projects that were, you know, that we're thinking about that were underway. First of all, now that the ARDOF blocks are allocated and there's funding going to them imminently, this, the CARES Act funds and actually probably any state funds from here on out will not be eligible if they're in an ARDOF block. I don't think that's so surprising that they don't want organizations to double dip if they're already getting federal funds. I don't think that affects us too, too much. We have to wait for the state. So this will be joint fiscal and this will be DPS themselves at different levels, figuring out how the extension will actually work. It may not be an automatic extension where they can just take previously allocated funds and then essentially press a one-year snooze button and then we take it from there. DPS is hoping, they're hoping that that's the case. They would very much like to see approval coming from the legislature saying just extend it, go from there. If that's the case and that's kind of the way that I think the wind's blowing, at least from what Rob is saying, any project that has already been approved that we're kind of sitting on could technically still go provided that it's not modified. If a project needs to be modified, probably not going to be able to go and just ask them like, oh, can we tweak this? From what Rob said, it's going to be closed down the old grant and start a new one and reapply with new numbers, new addresses, who you're serving or whatever. And keeping in mind that, and I'm trying to remember the turn of phrase that he used, but these funds should be for projects that are not budgeted. So if we were already allocating funds or already planning on building something, this isn't something to sweeten the pot. So this would be for unbudgeted expenses. So we'll have to be clear about what portions of projects are coming from which allocation. And that could be pretty awkward and that is going to be kind of threading a needle in terms of financing. One of the things that Rob said is that I don't know that this is official, but I think he got the sense that it was not terribly likely that they were going to fund fixed wireless, additional fixed wireless projects, that they'd be funding fiber projects. So going back and re-looking at our fixed wireless project that we had looked, that we had talked about back in August, September, October, as I understand it, those are probably, I don't want to say definitively, those are probably not going to go. So we technically still have two funding requests that have been approved that are still kind of sitting in limbo and one of them's in more town, the others in Northfield, Roxbury. If we can make one or both of those, if we can piggyback one or both of those onto a larger project, like the project that we're thinking about with using the VitaMoney, if we can partner these, then we could conceivably make a better overall project and a less expensive overall project. The thing is though, keep in mind that any of these residences that we say that we're going to serve have to be first, they have to be served by December 2021. So if things go long in terms of poll audits where we're screwed or we would have to eat the cost in any case. So there's some complexity, we'll say, there's some complexity in deciding how to proceed from here. So it seems to me like we could probably work with ValleyNet and get the Roxbury Northfield project rolling. They seem willing to continue with that. And then the Moortown project, I think we would have to go back and look at the maps and see, because we don't necessarily have 100% buy-in from Waitesfield, Champlain Valley, I think we need to, I know David, you were thinking about talking to them again and to get a better sense of what their timeline, what their costs are and to verify that the grants, the thing that we applied for and the funds that we applied for actually are grounded in reality. As if they're not grounded in reality, it's again, it's us that gets to pick up the slack there. So again, if we can as much as possible talk obliquely about our kind of strategic vision for build-outs and such, I'd love to hear what you have to say and how you think we should proceed from here. So I see Chuck first. First a question and then a plug. The question is what, I forget and this has probably been talked about a bunch, but does Ardolf regions have a comp, do Ardolf regions have a comparable deadline? My understanding was that it was a longer deadline, is that right? Yeah. So Michael, you had a question too. So if you want to answer that and then... Sure. You want to do your plug first, Chuck, or what the answer is? Yeah, my plug is let's go build that more time. I'm shocked to hear that. So I have a comment, but I'll answer the Ardolf question. The Ardolf funding won't probably occur until late in the year. The deadlines for build-out are 40% in the first three years, 60% in the second, in the third year, in the fourth year, excuse me, 80% in the fifth year and 100% in the sixth year. So it's a slow process in terms of obligation. Many of these may build more quickly, of course, but those are the deadlines. So I want to speak to the Moortown one and then I have questions for Jeremy and his conversation with Rob. As I understand it, the Moortown project as revealed by Weston when he did the survey of the polls was that he discovered there were a lot of non-polls that quite a bit of it was underground and that the cost would be prohibitive, most likely that the burden would fall on us because the grant wouldn't cover all of that. And the WEC was not enthused about doing it. And so we have all these intrinsic problems with the Moortown. So that brings me to the questions I have for Jeremy and his conversation with Rob. When Rob said, if you're going to change your projects, you're probably going to have to turn the funds in and reapply and start over. I'm wondering if there is some flexibility. If we're not throwing out Moortown, if we're just modifying Moortown a little bit, maybe that would still fly. But if we're not saying, oh, we want to go to Cabinet instead, or oh, we want to do fixed wireless instead, I can see why they'd say that will fly. You've got to reapply. But if you just want to modify the Moortown project to make it viable, maybe that's possible. So did you get anywhere on that with Rob? Yes, we did talk about that a bit, maybe not kind of framed in that exact way. And my impression, and again, this is my impression of his impression. So there's a lot of impressionistic attitudes going on right now. And the answer was if it's different, you'll probably have to reapply. So the good news is we already have the first application, but if things change, we have to go at this kind of de novo. And if the finances are different, if the players are different, if the addresses are different, that's different enough that my read and Rob's read was that it's a new application. So I mean, I don't know that it's that much extra work, like I said, especially since we're going to go back, we're going to take the Word document, we're going to change some things here, change some things there, we're going to increase the cost almost certainly, and resubmit it. Something else I didn't mention is that it appears for these funds that really it's only us competing with us to get at these funds. Seriously, because Northeast Kingdom is already exhausted, they've already maxed out their cap. EC fiber also has, as I understand it. So there's no other CUD right now ready to pull the trigger and be guaranteeing building fiber by the end of the year. So he wasn't saying like, oh, it's yours if you want it. It's not that simple. I mean, we still have to show that these are sane projects and such. Yeah, so Michael, and then I have Jerry and David. So I'll just just a quick follow on. So I'm in favor of withdrawing that application and rewriting it. I think that we are likely to be successful and we can write one that it's appropriate to our needs. Okay, Jerry. Thanks, Jeremy. You know, I'm forever the optimist, but I do want to throw some caution here. We are doing about 65% or less of what we ought to be doing on a regular basis. I really think that our efforts from the small group that makes an effort, our efforts should really be focused on the primary goal. And, you know, we're losing Tim. We have to fill that gap. We have three RFPs out there that aren't ready to hit the street. We've got a lot going on and there's a lot flapping in the wind. And I'm feeling that the, you know, the vessel we're navigating here isn't responding to the tiller. And I'm a little concerned about, you know, jumping at these opportunities. There are so many things that are going to come across that we have as options. But I'm thinking that we're not, we really need to focus. Let me put it at that and I'll stop. So Jerry, just from your point of view, if I'm hearing you right, you'd be reluctant to go after the CARES Act funding and would prefer that we stick with going after the match funds and the VEDA loan and just go at the straight pilot project without being encumbered by these other kind of deadlines and funding sources. Did I hear that right? Yeah, that's what I'm pushing forward. You know, I could be mistaken. Others could think that this is such an easy sidebar we should pick it up, but I still see it as a sidebar. Okay. Thanks for that. So yeah, I'd love to hear more if the folks agree with Jerry or not. So I have David, then Jeremy, then Chuck. Okay, so my pitch is actually the whole idea of reapplying and making it part of our phase one project is probably doable. The other thing I want to note, Jeremy, did he talk about the other state money that's available January 1st for CUDs to match VEDA money? Because we can start moving pretty fast. Yeah, so we didn't spend much time talking about that. I mean, I mentioned it as we were talking kind of adding up and sort of describing all of the different funding sources. So we've got the VEDA match, the VEDA money, that there's connectivity initiative money in there, there's CARES Act money in there, and then that's just where that's the state stuff, right? So yes, I mean, that will be there. But again, I mean, so I think Jerry's concern is, can we get those folks at those addresses turned on in time? So I have then, unless you had anything else, David, I have Chuck then Ray. Yeah, I guess to respond to Jerry's comments, you know, it would be nice for our overall cash flow picture to have some of this money come with strings instead of an obligation to pay it back. And, you know, so that is one benefit to consider. Good point, Chuck, Ray. So question, how much money we're talking about? Or for what, for the CARES Act stuff? Yeah, we approve a $250,000. So we're not talking about a lot of money. No. Okay, so I mean, it's not a lot of money. And frankly, you know, there's opportunistic money, which is what this is. And then there's the veto loan. And we should go as you should go for every dollar we can get. And all this stuff is going to run in parallel, all the paperwork is going to run in parallel, the work's going to run in parallel. And at some point in time, we're going to actually have people working for us to do these things. And with Michael with regard to write it, write it the way we need to write it. And it's going to take us two months to get to a point, three months to get to a point where we're actually doing something about it. But let's get the paperwork in, let's get approval, and let's get the funds. So yeah, so $250,000 isn't, you know, isn't that much. But I mean, in terms of our first, our pilot projects, that's, you know, five and a half percent. And if somebody walks up to you and says I'm going to pay for five and a half percent of your project, I mean, I think that's, it's, it's, it's not nothing. Michael. I disagree with everyone who thinks it's small amount of money. I think a quarter of dollars does matter. We should take it seriously, especially since it's not alone. I forgot my main point, though. And basically the problem with CARES Act money was the way it was implemented last year, this past year of 2020. It was made available back in April. It was passed into state legislation in July. Grant applications weren't due until August. Money wasn't awarded until October. And then supplies were hard to gather and contractors were hard to gather and there were problems. And suddenly it was this math dash. This time we have 12 months. And so I don't see why it should be a distraction from the other work we're doing. It can go parallel, like Ray was saying. And therefore, there's no reason to turn it away. It's a valuable thing for CD fiber. And it's, it's going to advance, advance our constituents. So we should go for it. And I don't, and if David's right, that it can be tacked on to the VEDA project. That's a good, that's one good possibility. It could go somewhere else that might help future projects. So I'm just in favor of continuing with it. Okay. Any, any folks who haven't heard from yet, any, want to weigh in on this? So like Tom or Alan, John, Henry, R.D. Jeremy? One thought that I had was if there are problems with working with Wadesfield Champlain Valley, because that sounded like that might have some issues. I wonder about expanding what we do with Valley Net. Because that seems like a much easier kind of thing to get going. We say, hey, build this for us. And here's the money. You know, and I wonder about seeing what they could do in an area that's maybe contiguous with them or, or somewhere else, if that's worth looking at. Well, and I think David has more to say on this, but I mean, this is something that the, that business development is looking at and putting out the RFPs for. I think, those are more for the, for the big project. But I think, I mean, if this is going to be anywhere near the big project, then I think that's probably information that we can, we can gather as part of that process. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like, it sounds like we need to keep these very separate. So having two separate projects would be easier rather than tacking this onto an existing project. And I wonder if maybe we could use some of this a little bit strategically to cover, well, no, the, because we can't use it for areas that were one in Ardolf. So never mind that goes out the window. I was just thinking about thinking, trying to think sort of strategically where we might have problems caused by Ardolf. But I don't think that'll work. So never mind that. All right. So Tom, then Ray, then Michael. Yeah. Having sat in one of the business committee meetings, you know, David's comment of, you know, if funding is going to be coming down the road, new administration, there's talks of another round of stimulus being heavily considered coming in March, maybe, that it would be awfully nice if we had a quote unquote, shovel ready project ready to go, that we could just have, you know, a ready application and be a top, you know, winner for that kind of funds. I get what Jeremy's saying with, you know, maybe going with Valiant and being able to spread a little farther than what they had before. But the fact we already have a project, it's an interesting sound. Given that we already have a project that has already, you know, been awarded, and maybe going back with that same project with slight modifications if necessary. But it just feels like that's a stronger route to us getting something on the ground going. And then it's us being able to say, look, we have another continuation past that ready to go already scoped. It just feels like a stronger route to me to be able to then be in a great place for when other shoes start to drop. So are you saying Tom, for the Rocksbury project that's already ready to go? I'm not saying for the Moretown project that I think the Rocksbury project, as is, sounds like a good one to go with. And I'd say with the Moretown project as well, continuing along the path we've already looked at for that. That small quarter of a million, but that small quarter of a million will cover, you know, a quarter of a town. So that gets us somewhere. Yeah, it sure does. All right. Ray, then Michael. Two things. Mike, Rob, Fish, join us at a future meeting. If we invite him, he'll show up. I think we should do that, or at least maybe to a business development meeting, David. So it seems to me that every time we've talked about this in the past, we've been talking about it. Maybe this is a different funding or something. But we've been talking about underserved, underserved, underserved, you know, teachers and students and telehealth and all this stuff. Are those conditions still applicable here? And if they are, are we trying to do something different from that? It seems like when we were trying to approach that before, and I heard what you said about fixed wireless, not withstanding, that the way we were trying to address that was with fixed wireless. So we were going to put up 10 towers or pick a number. And then it finally get down to like four towers and one tower. I don't know what happened to the whole thing. But do the same restrictions apply? And if they do, how can we just tack this on to an existing, you know, phase one, for example? So yeah, David, if you want to answer that. Yeah. So the these two projects we're talking about right now, the fixed wireless projects are CUD projects, they're not connectivity initiative projects, which had all the restrictions on verifying speeds and all that. This is purely money for CVFiber to build a fixed wireless project. I mean, a Fiverr project, two Fiverr projects. So they were different rules. I think they're different rules. The other thing I think you're getting at is that time has moved on. I mean, we are ready to move forward with our bills. So we ought to be thinking strategically about how do we wind a revision to these two projects we got awarded into making our future work. If not, are we, you know, doing the least problematic solution? But we do need to move forward. And I think that reason I asked the question about the money, and I think having more discussions with Rob about the potential for $400,000, we could start using that money to do the pole inventories and all the things we need to do to have a shovel ready project. And that's what my main goal is, is getting our phase one project going. These other projects can go on while we're doing that. These projects are going to require the similar kind of work. But the way we were talking about doing is we weren't going to do that work. The, you know, Valley Net or Waste show telecom, we're going to do the heavy lifting. And we're not sure yet, you know, whether Waste show Champlain is even potentially interested in doing it anymore. We do know that WEC is definitely interested in working with us to make fiber happen. And, you know, to the extent that they could give us a price on what it would take to do the fiber in this more town project. I mean, it's not going to be cheap, but maybe we should find out. Instead of doing the 55 houses, we do 25 houses. I don't know, you know, it's one of those things that we need to do some more background on. Clearly, all those residences, we had enough priority addresses in both sites that they became eligible projects to meet the COVID requirements. So that's what, and Ray, in terms of some of the, for the whole board, the priority for the COVID money was to serve priority addresses. So there are students at home or healthcare telehealth needs that had been identified. The more town project had a lot more pluses than the Roxbury one because they had a lot more priority people either filled in the survey that the department created, and Roxbury didn't know about it. But when I looked at the data, the data in more town is pretty bleak. And Chuck knows that. But in any event, that's why we went there. So who knows? I think we need to look forward to revamping the proposal, talk to Rob and say, listen, we're going to resubmit. That's my recommendation. So that we get what we want as opposed to being, you know, four months later. I mean, this is the problem. I mean, time has really moved on. And, you know, things are changing. So. Thanks for that, David. Michael. Two points. One, it was already mentioned that the timing of this project and the timing of our phase one are different. This one has a deadline at the end of the year. And if we take into account, and we don't know what the legislature is going to actually authorize. But even if they give us the full year that the beds are giving us, we have to remember that this is about the pandemic. It's about getting people able to do schooling online and so forth. It's not something we want to stretch out a long time. We want to do it rapidly. So this is an argument against time with the phase one project, because that might slow down the CARES Act project. And we want to be able to get that one completed with Higgs. Because we've done a lot of background work towards all of these projects, even the fixed wireless one, they all happen. It's going to be a lot easier to get them accomplished. So that brings me to fixed wireless. I don't know if the department has made policy that they will not do fixed wireless. But keep in mind that fixed wireless still is the most rapid way to get service out in a large area. And especially since we now have done a lot of legwork, that might be a possible thing, perceived fiber. And the other point I want to make, and David, did you want to comment? Well, in the context of fixed wireless, the state hired a consultant to do an emergency COVID broadband plan. I don't know what it was really called. But in one of the comments that not only I made to them, there was no discussion in the short-term need, which is what that plan was supposed to talk about. It was a one mention of fixed wireless. One, in fact, you and I know know that fixed wireless can be put up in like four months. And it was, I don't know, the final plan has not come out yet. So I hope they address the question in the final plan. But it will be a point where the public service department shuts up or puts up on fixed wireless. Because I wasn't the only one who complained that the plan didn't discuss it. So we'll see. I mean, I think that will probably be the telling thing about whether they consider they still have $3 million in connectivity money to give out. So if they're not going to do fixed wireless, I'm not sure we want to get into the the fixed wireless game again. But it was, and it was interesting to see what, you know, I mean, the town of Calis town office has four one broadband speed. They can't operate that way. So that's why I get caught back up in fixed wireless, because that could be a quick cheap solution for the town of Calis. So, you know, these things that Rob and the department are going to have to sort out, in my opinion. Can I make my second point? Yes, I'm sorry. If you talk to ACPyper Valley net about what they won in Ardolf, which generally was 10% of what the feds said it would take to build a project, they certainly wouldn't consider that any grant in an Ardolf funded area was double dipping. Those are very small subsidies. They're subsidies that enable someone to take a project on, but they're not grants, like the kinds we're talking about now. They're not big funding. And I'm intentionally using another outfit besides mine to make the point. It applies to anyone who's won Ardolf, unless they won at a very high level, which almost no one did. So I don't know if the department has actually decided policy on that either. Every single town in the state would, well, no, every single town and CB fiber territory at least had Ardolf territory within it. And if we are going to not be able to fund all the areas that run Ardolf support, we're extremely limited. So I suspect that that policy is going to have to be fleshed out a little more in the dressed. I think Rob was talking about for the CARES Act funding. I thought that was what he was talking about. It might be worthwhile just to reach out to him and find out or advocate if there is a reason to allow the state or to have the state allow its grantees to have a bit more flexibility there. It would be, I mean, this was a very small portion of the conversation that we had today. So I'd say it would be worthwhile to reach out. So I have Ray, then Tom. So timeline, and Michael, I'd like you to do a check on me and David as well. Timeline, I'm expecting that we will begin poll inventories in March. That design work could begin May. That make ready could begin in June, July. That construction, that engineering construction could begin in September. Now, I don't know how far off that is. You might, you know, put some reality under that, Michael and David. But if you were looking at these other things, how do they fit in? If it's going to be fiber to the premises, it still has to do the poll inventory and the design work and the make ready. And if we're starting, if that's a sequence of events, then all of that is dependent, but that's the critical path. If we're talking about fixed wireless, no poll inventory is required, right? And I think you've already identified in your first application, 10 polls someplace. We can add money to that. I mean, what do we know? What we know is that our district is going to require fixed wireless if we're going to serve everybody, period. And some people are going to be on that forever. Some people will have that replaced by fiber to the premises. But that's probably going to be three, four or five years away. So fixed wireless is quicker. If we can get the money for it, we should be doing that. And that's a whole separate thing from this timeline I just laid out, which might be off by four weeks in any direction, perhaps, maybe more. So some reality from Michael and David. But that's what it looks like to me at this point. One sentence. I think you were too pessimistic. I think the fiber can be done quicker than that. And even though I love fixed wireless, I could argue that CARES Act fixed fiber project shouldn't delay the other one. They could be done in parallel. They could be designed in parallel. The poll inventories could be done in parallel. And I think it would be faster than you described. I hope so. But fixed wireless is not dependent upon any of the other stuff, right? Sure. We can do design engineering on fixed wireless in March if we wanted to do the the RFP for it, right? Sure. Okay. Then perhaps we should do that. But Rob said it's not likely that the CARES Act funds will be, will be allowed to be used on fixed wireless projects. So I mean, we could apply for it, but from what he's telling me, they're funding fiber. Just to clarify, our fixed wireless proposal was made pretty much to the connectivity initiative money, which is separate from the CUD money we're talking about for fiber to the premise. So if they'll fix wireless and the connectivity round that they're probably going to put out again, which we'll have to go through all over again, which is, you know, reviewing consolidates proposals, doing Comcast proposals. I hope they tighten up the rules this time. I mean, it was crazy. But anyway, that's enough. I'll shut up. Thanks, David. That's a good point. I was just fixated on the CARES Act funds, but you're right. That's a different bucket of money. Tom. I think it was just a quick tangential question for Michael. What are the consequences for an ARDOF winner not serving their chosen, or their awarded block? The census block groups no longer exist as far as ARDOF is concerned. They were just an artist as a tool in order to get bids. So now, state by state, winners have a total number of locations within census block group geography that they're obligated to serve, and they have to serve at least 95% of those locations, or, in answer your question, pay enormous fines, sometimes a million dollar fines, big fines. There are ways to appeal to the FCC to waive certain commitments. It's not easy. Sometimes you can get it up cheap. I don't know if anyone would be doing that, but you should assume that at least 95% of the locations that were won by all the entities will be served in 60 years. Thanks. Okay. So it sounds like we still have, like, we're not 100% sure how to proceed. So I'm not sure that we made forward progress. So maybe let me take a portion of this then, and we'll try this out. Should we stick with the Roxbury Northfield project as approved, as written, and work with Valley Net to move forward with it, provided that we get an extension on the deadline? Because that doesn't require any other paperwork. It's not likely to be packaged as part of a phase one deployment or anything like that. You know what I'm going to say here. I didn't look at the map, but Tim, is your address in that bucket? For the Roxbury? Yeah. I don't know. What do you mean by that? Because we had to pitch a specific set of addresses that we'd be serving. I know what you mean. The original small block of Roxbury? No, I'm not anywhere near that. That's the corner near Randolph, I believe. Right. But it brings it ever so slightly closer to you. Yeah. Well, it's funny because I'm right on the line almost of Granville, and they're part of the other fiber company there, down 12A. So I'm not hearing anybody screaming about this. So I'm going to assume then that we should just roll forward. Do you have a format of looking for a response? Do you want to sort of vote, or thumbs up, sir? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, if you want to do thumbs up, I mean, if you have things to say, I mean, I'm kind of thinking that this is not controversial. So I was hoping that you'd kind of just give a temperature sense. We're already approved for the money. So how much money? 90,000. And we can get as much to a 250? The other project was to whatever the difference was between 250 and 90. So 260. So this is 90,000 for a specific set of addresses. And we wouldn't be changing that. The project is what it is, and provided that Valley Nets willing to move forward with it, I mean, I think we should continue with it. So is there anybody, maybe I'll ask you this, is there anybody that objects to this? The things that we shouldn't? Okay, well, that's easy then. All right. So let's, well, we'll move forward. I mean, we'll obviously need to negotiate something a bit more formal with Valley Nets. But I mean, that's, you know, we'll tackle that when we get there. The next question is, should we try to bundle or separate another project that's, you know, contiguous with or maybe not contiguous with, you know, a pilot project? Do we keep it separate or put it together? Instead of more town or alongside? So, well, the question would, the question is, in addition to our pilot project, which already has a rough area, do we want to, do we want to try to run one big project that includes CARES Act funded locations? Or do we want to run our pilot project through with our previously, you know, understood rough area from the feasibility study, and then have a separate, separate timeline, separate project, separate bucket of funds with a project that could be contiguous, but could be somewhere else. So we could say, you know, we're gonna start this project originating at Tom Fisher's house and get all of your neighbors and everything. I mean, there's nothing that prevents us from choosing a different location. I mean, you could build my house out here. Right? That'd be exciting. Well, it needs to be for, for the CARES Act funds, it needs to be for certain households, right? So, yeah, I'm just using that as an example. And there are, there are addresses around me, including my own house that would be, that would be eligible. But let's see, Chuck, then Michael. While our feasibility study routes may need some adjustment based on ARDOF outcomes, there's already been a lot of work that's been put into those feasibility routes and the viability of them and, and why some are beneficial to others. Secondary to which route we go after first, I personally would be in favor of leveraging this money to build toward that first route because I just think it helps de-risk the project and helps us get there a little faster and easier. And, and, you know, if we can, if we can take the Vita money, which probably has fewer strings and certainly people who know more correct me if I'm wrong, but if we can take that aspect of the Vita money and reallocate it toward, you know, kick-starting engineering of, of, you know, phase two route because we have this money in hand as well to go towards whatever the phase one route is, I would be in favor of that. Michael. And then Jeremy. We owe the town a more town consideration. If we're going to alter the project and pick a new one, we should probably look in that town first because that was the plan. There were problems with it. There were problems with Wayfield Champlain Valley, not liking the, or problems with WEC, not liking the underground. It wasn't going to cover all the unsurpassed in more town. We may end up with another one, but I think that's where we should start and may be able to rebuild what we had there with less effort than starting something fresh. And without talking about phase one, there may be some symbiosis there too, but all of this is going to be probably discussed in greater detail after January 29th. Jeremy, then David, and then Tom. I mean, I guess my feeling kind of going back to what Jerry said was we've got a lot on our plates. So whatever we can do that takes advantage of this money with the least effort to us as possible, I think is kind of the way that we should go. But that said, you know, if there's some way that we can use this strategically to, you know, like if there are areas where the art off results are going to cause us big problems potentially, and we can use this money to kind of alleviate that, that might be worth looking into as well. Right, which certainly kind of dovetails, I think, Michael, with what you were saying. I mean, having more information after the 29th and such. David, then Tom. The other part about Morton, I mean, we are talking about having fiber at the, oh, we have fiber already, I guess, at the Morton Weck substation. So coming up from the other direction might be an alternative that we could look, we should look at in terms of this sort of reconfiguration. So I have Tom and then Chuck. So I guess I'm hearing kind of a general trend towards bundling trying to do one larger project. So where exactly this happens, it sounds like we want to stay in Morton. And that makes sense, I think. But do we want to try to run these projects in parallel? Or do we want to try to run these projects together? I mean, so that the stuff that has to be delivered by the end of next year would be the beginning part of the larger pilot project that's like, you know, a three-year effort. So I just want to make sure I'm putting that back out there, because I think that's a decision point that we've not really made. So I have Tom, then Chuck. Yeah, and I'll echo Alan's comment in the chat there. That, you know, we are, I've lost count, two and a half years into this, and we are 20 to 40 heads looking at each other on a computer so far. We are spending money. So that's something that we didn't have a year or two ago. But we aren't actually doing anything with it other than, you know, getting people to shuffle paper for us. So the sooner we can get to one or two wins where we are actually doing something for the community, I think that's where we should go. The easiest way to get to that and get us the first couple steps so we can start then leaping, I think I'm in favor of going there. So I guess in general, that would put me in the favor of looking to see what can we do to start going on phase one? We've already got a lot of work put into that. And, you know, if we can help some people along the way during a pandemic as kind of a nice place to start, then I think that's fantastic. Okay. And Chuck, you're up next. I wanted to summarize what Alan and Jerry had in the chat. So Alan, I'm not going to read it, but he's not read it all, but he says, we should have a sharp focus identifying one project that we want to see through. So if I'm hearing you right, Alan, if we do Roxbury on the side, if that's not going to slow us down with our initial phase one project, we should just do the phase one project and not worry about going after the CARES Act funds and trying to kind of wedge it into part of our initial project. Does that sound about right? I'll see if I can get this connection to work. Can you hear me? Yep. And indeed. Okay. What I worry about is, I think we're being, we're being thrown around by the circumstances of what's been happening politically on both a state and a national level. I mean, we're like a bunch of Mexican jumping beans at times. You know, we're trying to get this pot of money and that pot of money. And sometimes it looks like we're going to get it. Then it looks like we'll maybe get it. Then it looks like we could get it if we can spend it all within three months, but that deadline might be extended. But yeah, if they extend it, there might be restrictions. I think we're kind of getting caught up in a circular situation where we have a lot of opportunities, but they're very limited in many ways. What I think we have to do is decide what's best for our getting to the goal that we have for our CUD and starting and focusing on a project that's the first step in getting there. If there's anything that comes up that looks as though it can be added on, and it's a reasonable project that doesn't have a lot of restrictions and deadlines, I think then maybe we can handle more than one thing at once. But I think we're really starting to get stuck in doing nothing because we're trying to do so much. We're considering everything we might possibly do that possibly could bring a few more dollars to us. And I think that's a bad situation to be in. So let me, I'm going to try to try to say what you said again in a slightly different way. So we should focus on the phase one project and not worry about the kind of time committed funds that come with the CARES Act money. We should just say let's do phase one right. Let's build that over the next three years. And if we have some, some not terribly encumbered source of funding, we should go after that too. Yes. I think what we have to do is make sure that whenever we jump for something that's not directly the phase one that we've identified, we ought to go through a process of making sure we can justify spending our attention and time on a project that's possibly tangentially related to what we're really trying to do. But we don't want to go after it just because there's money there and it might work. It has to somehow fit into the plan that we've got to build out in a certain area that will then start giving us the revenue we desperately need to really get serious about the build out throughout the rest of the communities in our CUD. I mean, we're really stuck in not having any of our own revenue that we're producing at this time. It makes us dependent on other people. We have a tin cup and we're going from one place to another rather than trying to figure out how we can start making money ourselves that we can then use to grow the business. Sal and then can I follow up with that, Jeremy? Just, just one, you know, we're, we have the veto loan that we're looking at and we're not ready for that. We're not, we're not prepared to do that. And that's the surest thing that's the, that's the big thing that we need and we're not ready for that. We really need to focus on getting in position for that. Okay. So, if we want to talk in any more detail, we should probably go into executive session. Do folks think that we need to do that? Not today. I don't think so. I want to, I'd like to make a motion that for the 20, whatever the non Rocksbury project is, we reapply and say, we're going to build the, we're going to work this money into our phase one project period. And if they don't accept it, they don't accept it. And I just think we need to tie the two together and move forward. Okay. So David has a motion. Is there a second of David's motion? I'll second it. Okay. Seconded by Alan. So that, that seems somewhat in, in opposition to, to, to what Jerry is saying and to what Alan was saying. I know. That's why I seconded it. Get it out there for discussion. All right. Fair enough. Okay. So it's, I think we have one of those nice motions where we've, we've had the discussion before the motion. So I'm not sure that, is there anything else that folks, you know, that you want to, you want to add to this? Do, do we want to take on the, the obligation to serve, to serve folks using the CARES Act funds along with our pilot project? I mean, Chuck, you were, you were up next, Chuck, then Michael. Yeah. A few comments here. The first comment sort of relates to the, the more town line of thinking, which, you know, we can table a longer discussion on that, but I do just want to point out that Weck seems to be really coming around to the idea of, of, you know, working on broadband and doing what they can to make that work. So because that, that substation is right on the other end of that more town projects build, we have the opportunity to build from either direction, either leveraging Weitzfield telecom or leveraging Weck to, to still hit the same addresses. I know that doesn't change the complexity of the actual engineering physical build given we have a lot of underground, unfortunately, but that, that, you know, that might be helpful and that we have multiple parties, we can, we can engage on that topic. But on the broader topic, I agree that whatever CARES Act money we go after should be synergistic toward whatever we prioritize as phase one. I think that's a simpler way to say what I said earlier. It is money. It's, I think it's a substantial enough amount of money to go after and, you know, that would help unlock future opportunities for us without a ton of additional effort, as long as we are putting it toward an area that we know we want to prioritize right off the bat anyway. Okay, so, so we have a Michael up next, but again, David's motion was to essentially just, just request this funding to supplement phase one. My instinct is that we have, I think we'll have to be a bit more specific than that. Oh yeah. But okay, go ahead, Michael. I think I support the motion. I understand Alan's concern. I think that we did chase shiny objects in CARES Act money at the end of the year. And there wasn't enough time to achieve it. And we ended up like a puppy chasing his tail instead of getting somewhere. And that's frustrating. And we don't want that frustration to carry forward. And I think that's what Alan's expressing. Maybe that's only a part of what he's expressing. But it's still significant money. It still can be close to and tied to the phase one projects, but not specifically part of it. Therefore, completable faster. And I think that's the way we should go. So I'm going to vote in favor of the motion. Okay. Thanks, Michael. Anybody else have any thoughts about David's motion? Jerry? Yeah, just just one more thing. And, you know, I apologize for DMB and Debbie down. But I'm looking at this from a resource perspective and somewhat of a management perspective. It's not a question of whether or not it's a nice amount of money. It's not a question of whether or not these folks could or should be served. It's a question of whether or not CB fiber has the resources to get this stuff done. And ourselves, this small group of people on this one screen, get this done in time and also be able to get our phase one implemented. We don't have enough resources. There aren't enough people working on this. And we're, you know, we need the next item on the agenda is a project manager. So, you know, I don't think we're in position to take advantage of these opportunities that are out there. So, so, so Jerry, am I interpreting that that you would you would not vote in favor of David's motion, then? I would like to focus on phase one and let this CARES Act money pass us by at this point in time. Okay. Jeremy? Just a thought. I don't know. Would it be possible to use some of this money instead of for connectivity, but to do something else that we need like hire a project manager? No. Okay. Just a thought. No, it has to provide service to the to the addresses by the end of the year. So, I mean, it could be part of a bigger project, but it's the ultimately needs that the rubber needs to hit the road and people need that service by the end of the year, right? So, aren't we really asking for the business development committee to prepare the appropriate application in line with David's thoughts? That is that it's supplementary to the phase one project and for us to see this before it's submitted? Yeah, I mean, it's it's ultimately we would task you to business development to go and do the do the legwork. We don't want to do this with the whole governing board. Right. So, it's really the sense of the board then that we think this is a pretty good idea, but we want to see the details worked out and come back to the board and then then the board approves it being being forwarded as a process. Yeah, if this motion passes, then yeah, I would expect that to be the logical sequence. Anybody have any additional thoughts about this? So, I mean, so I have to say here hearing Jerry put it that way, I'm actually starting to lean towards not going after the additional CARES Act funds aside from Roxbury and just kind of keeping it simple. So, the money is important, but and I guess if we're hiring people then it's going to be them that gets the job done, but yeah, I don't I don't know. Tom? To raise point and Jerry's, the question is then, you know, do we have the resources available to do both of these things at the same time? And so asking those folks on this call, who would, you know, be tasked or would be, you know, heavily involved with deciding who would be doing that work? What are your opinions? Are you asking are you asking Ray and Jerry? Yeah, or the business development committee in general, or any folks who can help out? I'm volunteering as well, but yeah. My feeling is that, you know, that we we're going to have to be doing this work for the phase one project anyway. That's why I made the motion the way I did. I think it's just one part. I mean, the public service department may reject the whole idea, but my standpoint, I'd rather not, you know, I'd rather have it be consistent with what we're trying to accomplish this year. And to me, getting $250,000 to make that happen would be great. So in any event, all that, you know, implementing phase one this year is work period. And as a core group working on that, we'll have a project manager, hopefully, and we'll have some other money to work with too. So I'm easily, that's why I'm sort of proposing doing it just so you get something done in our real plans. The lift of the application work itself is not that much burdensome compared to the rest of project one that has to happen anyways. So I'm here. The application is probably the easier part than, you know, getting the contractors and getting the agreements with the parties we need to do all this work. That's going to be the work. Very much so. Okay. So we have a motion. Ultimately, I think, you know, the sequence is going to be then, then this gets kind of headed back to David, business development is going to flesh this out and we'll see what this looks like, approve it in early January and send this to DPS. Yes. Anybody else that feels like they have something to add? Okay. RD? Briefly. Is Jeremy, is this a go, no go moment? Or are we going to, does this just take us, does this motion, if it passes, just take us to January? Or are we stepping off the cliff tonight if we, if we vote in favor of this motion? Oh, I guess I wouldn't say it's a stepping off the cliff. I mean, it's a, it's an indication about whether we want to pursue the additional CARES Act funds for, to supplement our phase one, our phase one project. So a couple of things could happen there. You know, business development writes a proposal or writes a contract, sorry, a grant application and it comes back to the board and the board here says that this is crazy and everybody's changed their mind or it's bad and we say no. And at that point, then it doesn't go. The other alternative is it gets submitted and DPS says nope and then we don't have it anyways. So on the other hand, it is a no go moment. So if we say no to this, then we're essentially saying that we're not going to pursue the CARES Act, the supplementary CARES Act funds for part of phase one. And then we can get on with doing phase one. Does that answer your questions? Great. Thank you. Okay. Sure. Henry? Um, yeah, I have, I have a thought, something I wanted to mention, which is that I think that it's essential to do a diff on the eligible locations and the, and the FCC art off locations and see what's left. And I really wonder how that will impact the planning for phase one. And, you know, it seems to me that the other factor that may factor in here is that um, the CARES funding can't go to RDOF, then that, how does that affect, you know, our build out versus if we can go in RDOF areas for our build out, which doesn't have the same limitations. So these are both things that really hinge on understanding how the RDOF is going to impact our, our phase one activities. I'm sure David could put the map together for us and that that would be really useful. I also wonder how these people have five years to, to build out these RDOF things. And, you know, there was also this question about whether if we got in there before the people that were assigned an area via RDOF, we'd have an opportunity where once they built into that area, we wouldn't. So I'm kind of curious about that as well. So, I mean, they have, do they have dibs on it for five years and we can't touch it or, you know, I mean, you know, what's, that's I think all part of our strategy and what we want to do in phase one and how we want to build out. Well, right. And I think that's going back to Michael's point about that we're not going to, you know, until the information about how the, how the RDOF blocks are divvied up, we're not going to have a sense of that just yet. But yeah, but I think we're going to have to take our phase one kind of rough sketch. I mean, we got that, we got that last, what, May. And so a fair bit of new information, including all the stuff in the COOS database in the survey, whatever, that's come to light, that's going to change things, I think. So yeah, well, I think we'll have to do that. But that's hopefully going to be part of the application. Right. That's, that's what I'm saying is it's a prerequisite for resubmitting an application, which is is going to be a different scope than just Roxbury is what my latest understanding is, right? Yeah, yeah. So the Roxbury project is already approved. So that and that can, that can go forward, that can happen in parallel, and that's not going to require that much effort from the part of this board. It's the the bigger phase one project and how that these additional funds could work there. And I should point out that just because some entity one, an RDOF block doesn't mean that if we, if we get there first and we are building fiber there, I mean, there's nothing that's nothing prohibiting us from building there. So we could beat folks to the punch and then if they want to offer service and they want, you know, to contract with us to do that, wonderful. I can do that. So I have Jeremy and then Michael. I don't know. I think that it's enough money that we should at least continue to pursue it. I would also be willing to be one of the folks helping to prepare the revised application. So at least from a manpower standpoint, count me in. Got that, David. Yep. Crush me. Sign me up. So it's a quarter million dollars. Nobody's bribing us to do something we don't want to do. If there was a quarter million dollars telling us we need to serve Timbuktu with fixed wireless when we want to serve more town with fiber, then we shouldn't take the money. But this is money being offered to us to do something we're chartered to do. We're supposed to bring broadband to people. And we're supposed to emphasize fiber and use fixed wireless where we need to. I think we should take advantage of this green money that's not alone and augment what else we are already doing. We shouldn't chase the Chinese object if it's leading us away from our mission. But this is our mission. And so I don't see a reason to turn away from it unless it ends up having too many strings. It did last time around because the time was too short. It doesn't now. And so there's that. About two things. One, Jeremy, it has been divided up. It is public now. We can openly talk about who won what. We're not allowed to talk about strategies yet. We're not allowed to talk about post auction market structure. That's a phrase that XCC wrote. But who won where is now allowed to be discussed even within the consortium. And the business development committee is already well aware of all that. All the members of the business development committee attended the last meeting. And in terms of building and overbuilding, ARDOF implies an obligation. So the winners must serve those locations. Whether other entities come first and build or not. And so if other entities come in first, there will be overbuilding and there will be dilution of both entities' market. So that always has to be taken into account. But that's the kind of stuff. In detail, we can talk about at the end of January. All right. Okay, Jeremy, I'm going to give you the last word here in the interest of time. I want to get this thing rolling. Never mind. Okay. So I'm going to do this because I'm not 100% convinced that this is unanimous. We'll just do a quick roll call if we could. And so for David's motion to go after the CARES Act funding and essentially have it supplement the phase one project, we'll start with Ray, I or nay. So real quick, Jeremy, can you also record this? I'll try to get it. But my connection has been dropping the intermittently. So yep, I have a sheet of paper in front of me. So I'm recording these. Okay. Okay, Ray. Yes. Okay. Chuck. Hi. Michael. Hi. No. Rd. Tim. Sullivan. Okay, we'll come back to you, Tim. David. Hi. Tom. Hi. Hi. I see you now, Tim. I was indisposed in the bathroom. So I missed what we're talking about here. Did you hear David's original motion? Yes, from like five to 10 minutes ago. Talk. Yes. Yes. I'm okay with agreeing with David's motion. Okay. So I'll take that as a yes. All right. And I will, I will abstain. I'm still torn. So the eyes have it. All right. So business developments, you have some marching orders anyways, and then we can, we'll figure out Roxbury with Valley Net and we'll have some contracts and things to do shortly. Moving on to... The only one that I missed was Michael. Was he, were you and I, Michael? Okay. Thank you. Sorry. No problem. Project Manager 2021. So I want to recognize Tim Shea, our current project manager. This is his last meeting with us. I want to thank Tim very much for the work that he's done, round of applause and such. Very much appreciated all of the work that you did and getting us, keeping us rolling through all this. That said, we have to say goodbye to Tim. And I was hoping to have, I had exchanged an email with Siobhan about the process of seeking out a new program manager, but I think our project manager, but is there anything else business development folks want to add about the search for the project manager? Otherwise, I think I'll probably just continue that talk with Siobhan and we'll go from there. You could pass on the name that I emailed you from, from Harry's. I passed it on to Siobhan and I did. Thank you. Yeah, I saw the resume. Go ahead, Ray. Yeah, so Siobhan and I are working on it and I'm holding the pen. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Well, so let's, let's move on and do a, we'll do our round table. We'll do this from, I'll do this from the bottom of my screen. Jerry. Nothing for me. Thanks. All right. Jeremy. Nothing. Thanks. Okay. John Russell, if you want on me. Yeah, I do. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Great. I think, you know, I'm just an observer tonight and I, I really feel like where the board is bogged down and isn't moving forward. It may think it's moving forward, but this whole discussion for the last 45 minutes has been about one subject that David tried to bring to a conclusion, but we still had the same discussion. And so, yeah, you had, you had your vote and you've agreed to do these things, but there isn't any way to do it. There isn't, you know, you don't have a method to do it. And so that's, I think that's what's missing in most of these discussions of the last few weeks were really bogged down by, by people offering us money and bogged down because we can't be in the same place. That's my, that's my thing. I'll, I'll hang up now. Okay. Thanks, John. Henry. Yeah. Just one quick question is has Fred completed the updated feasibility study with Duxbury in Washington and is that available for us to see it? Yes. He has completed it and I will send it out. Let me see if I can find that, that email. I will send it out to everybody. Thank you. You're welcome. Tom. There's a quick question on the stimulus package that may or may not get signed. It looks like reading the link that was put up at the very top there that the number is now around 300 million. Is that for the entire nation to be broken out? Does anybody know how that works out as far as, and then assuming some amount of that comes to Vermont? I believe there was a comment from Rob Fish earlier, you know, we should start getting our heads together about how we want to, or what we want to say to legislature and so forth around ways that Vermont might spend that money. I don't know how fast of a timeline that's on, but the 300 million for Vermont. Wow. That's massive. Okay. This seems like 300 million for Vermont. Wouldn't that cover every single town in the 300 million for the whole United States? Okay. That sounds more realistic. I mean, we might get a couple million. Okay. Nevertheless, I was just wondering, is it something that we should start putting any time or devotion or thought into going in front of, you know, shovel ready some points? I was passing back for my wife who works at Vermont Legal Aid that, you know, various headlines. Her thought being that she works for the healthcare advocate's office that the money particularly devoted towards health, teleconnect stuff, the idea that a company might get a giant check from the federal government and then build something out, but then charge their customers the same rates they charge nationwide had a real catch in her throat as well as her superiors. So I think they're going to be speaking to the state legislature about that. So I was just thinking, you know, what other similar thoughts might we want to have on what we want to say about that? There we go. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Sam, anything that you want to add? Okay. David. I just want to wish everybody a happy holiday. I know it's going to be tough then not to see a lot of people usually see. And it's been great working with you guys this year. Let's hope next year is so much better in many ways. Yeah, you're here. Thanks. Thanks, David. Tim. Sullivan. He town mute, I guess, huh? I just, I haven't been able to attend the last few meetings just because I'm either traveling to Vermont on that night or traveling to Rhode Island on that night. So I've been trying to catch up and I just keep abreast of all the emails that come through. I try and give our town an update every time I know something, but I think we're due for another blurb for the towns or the front porch form type of things to give an update, you know, very short update as to where we stand in a concerted effort. That's a good idea, Tim. I see Chuck nodding. So I think, and we're also doing the canvassing there. I don't know how much of that is done in Roxbury, but I mean, that's part of the broader picture there as well. Artie. Thank you. I'm just coming up to speed. Thank you, Jeremy, for sending me the feasibility study. I haven't studied it in great detail yet. So I'm still getting my legs under me. You did mention at the last meeting that Evan Carlson was going to be offering or organizing some kind of to you. I'm eager to participate in our and they hopefully that will flatten my learning curve somewhat. I learned recently that consolidated owns fiber optic that serves Cabot and Cabot Village. And I presume also the AT&T wireless tower on the hill across from mine in Cabot. I don't know what else it serves. And I'm not clear as to what the significance of that is for Cabot for my town. As I glance at the study I see, I think we're on the salmon at the feasibility study in Root. And I'm not entirely sure. Can I have you for a second, Artie? What are our relations? So talking about portions of the Root and the color codes and where things are is not public. Thank you. I was not aware of that. I would be eager to have a private conversation about the significance of the feasibility study for my town and for that oversight. Last of all, I would be grateful if you could bunch all of the agenda items on which you expect action at the beginning of the meeting. Sometimes these meetings run on rather late and I would appreciate at least the opportunity to bail at some point when my presence is not required to maintain a quorum. Let's see. Michael. Thank you, Tim. Shae, appreciate your work. Do you miss us yet? Not yet. Consolidated have Scriber all over the place, Artie, and most of it currently serves remote terminals for DSL and some of it is reserved for big clients like AT&T cell towers. But that's about to change. We all should be very aware of Consolidated's plans are. They just got an infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars. They sold a lot of their shares to a big equity company and they intend to do a very major fiber builds all over New England and their 23 states. So they're going to be a very big player and things are going to change. We'll all have to be aware of it. Thanks for that, Michael. And if you haven't seen the Artoff map yet, I mean, that shows where Consolidated did win some blocks there and some blocks in CV fiber territory that we should definitely be aware of. All right, Chuck. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, everyone else for all of your hard work. Happy holidays, everyone. Thanks, Chuck. Tim, Shae, last words of the year? Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you and certainly wish everyone well. I do think you guys are on the cusp of really, you know, making some significant progress. I think the RFPs will be helped to find your future and certainly the money will be close at hand following that. So where it does seem like you've been spending for a while, I think you're well on the way and have set yourselves up for success and wish you well. And look forward to actually, I'm in the Artoff block where Consolidated won. So we'll see. Hopefully, I don't have to wait six years, but hopefully join high speed broadband infrastructure soon myself. But thank you all and happy holidays. Thanks, Tim. Ray? Yeah, so Q1 I think is our quarter. I think next year is going to be the first quarter is going to be we're going to get a lot of traction for what we're doing. Tim, thank you. Appreciate all your help. I'm sure that we did move the chains while you were here. Thanks for some of your adult supervision. I'm sure that as a PM you thought your job was part referee and marriage counselor. We needed that. So thanks a lot. Happy holidays to everyone. We'll see you on the other side of, I guess, 31 December. Thanks, Ray. And yeah, and thanks to all of you for putting in the work and showing up for these meetings. You know, at the beginning of last year, we were still meeting at the elementary school and seeing each other and periodically eating pizza and such. But I think we made a pretty decent transition and hopefully. Yeah, I think I think Ray's right. Quarter one is going to be the is going to be the big the big spark. And so yeah, have a wonderful holiday everybody and see you in January. Happy holidays, everyone.