 So I have six o'clock. Um, I'd like to call the March 9th, 2021 governing board meeting of C.B. Fibers to order. Uh, are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Please no additions. Yeah, potentially. Yep. But what do you have in mind, Jerry? I have the bookkeepers invoice. Okay. I would like to add so that we can get her paid. And bring that up during the Treasures report. That sounds great. I think we do that. Did you have a clerk report on there? Or do you want to skip that for this meeting? If you have something to report, I will, I will. Give you a slot after the Treasures report. Jeremy, what do you think? I mean. Yeah, it's pretty quick. I think I'm supposed to report every month. So. Okay, David. I have another item on developing a. A memorandum of agreement of contract or something with easy fiber valley net for the Roth. Northfield Roxbury project. Okay. Is that a report back or an action item? No, that's an action. Okay. And that's my notes here. Just a second. Okay. Anything else to be added to our. Quite busy agenda. Okay. So. I'd like to introduce Lucy. I see you down there. Lucy. I don't see Katarina here. So. And Catherine is absence. You are the voting delegate for Washington. So thank you for, for attending. If we could do a quick round of introductions. Just so Lucy knows who we all are and what we're doing here. So I'm Jeremy. I'm the chair of. CB fiber and represent Berlin. And actually Christian, if you would, we'll circle back around to you at the end, if you could give us a brief intro, that would be great too. Thank you, David for that. Phil, we'll go next. We get from middle sex and vice chair of the work. Thanks, Phil. John Morris. John is muted and from our field. Jeremy. Oh, yeah, me. Okay. Hi, I'm Jeremy. And the alternate. Jeremy. Hi. She, her, I'm the delegate from orange. And I sit on various committees. Thanks, Sean Allen. I'm Alan Gilbert. I'm the delegate from Worcester. And I'm on finance and policy committees. Thanks, Alan. Josh. Oh, I'm Josh Travis and I'm the delegate for the town of barriers. Thanks, Josh. David. David Haley, the. Don't hear from the town of Calis and chair of the planning and development committee. Thanks, David. Rd. Rd delegate for cabinet member of the communications committee. Hi. Thanks. Tom. Right. Thanks, Tom. Right. I'm from Northfield and I'm one of the finance and PZ committees. Michael. Hi, I'm from Plainfield on the delegate. And I'm on the planning. Jerry. Jerry. I'm the treasure. I'm also on the finance committee and on the planning development committee. Nice. Chuck. Hi, Chuck. Delegate from more town and I share the communications committee. I'd like to point out that both David and Ray are modest. They also serve on communications. They're not. As an. He's very. Well, for listening to me, he's wrong. Peter. Henry next. My name is Henry. I'm a study on the delegate for. Thanks. Henry. Catherine. I'm from Washington. A member of no committee. Can. Yeah. I'm from Montpelier and a member of the planning and development committee. All right. Lucy, I introduce you as the alternate. If there's anything else that you want to tell us about you, that would be great. No, that's, that's good. Sorry. I had myself muted earlier. Alternate from Washington. Thanks, Lucy. And Christian. Hi, Christian Meyer. With the CDRPC for all of a little over a week now. My background is transportation planning, but I'm excited to be working with this group. I think there's a lot of overlap. Certainly from my point of view. And just want to express two points. One, just thankful for the opportunity for central Vermont regional planning commission to be working with you. And also, Bonnie wanted to say that she hoped to be here. In person, but this is also the night of our commissioner, our board of commissioners meeting. So it's going to be a pretty tight concept, but looking forward to this. All right. So thanks to all of you. Everybody who's here in this meeting. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be here. I couldn't do it without all of your help. So I very much appreciate that. Any public comment. Any other comments on items that are not on the agenda. Jeremy, do you want me to talk about big budget now or at the end? Maybe if you could just. Just drop this here. So, so the federal legislation that's the 1.9 trillion dollars will have 1.2 billion coming to the state of Vermont. And I think it will probably be decided by the legislature. Later in the session or in the summer session. Because they're going to have to determine the spending of 1.2 billion. And they're not going to do that quickly. And the ideas that are being circulated. I think there is no question. That of that money. That there will be at least a hundred million dollars sent to broadband. And. And I think it will probably be decided by the legislature. Later in the session, and they're not going to do that quickly. But again, from the sentiment from the governor's office and from the legislature, there is going to be a significant portion. And I think it'll be at least a hundred million dollars. It could be two hundred million. It will be dedicated to broadband. And the CUDs will be very, very important recipients of that money. So it's just going to be up to us to help the legislature understand specifically how we can use that money. But again, I think it's going to be a significant amount of time, but that's an addition. There are also line items in that 1.9 trillion. That have to do with health and public safety. And so those will also be carved out. But it turns out getting money straight to us. There will be money. 99% Thanks for that. Can any other comments. About items that are not on the agenda. Okay. Moving along. Yes, I do. I just know that you passed out materials, which included the draft policy. Committee charter. Yet I don't, I don't see that on the agenda. Policy committee charter. I'm looking at your email of. The mark fifth, it says materials for Tuesday's meeting. Okay. Okay. So I meant to send out the finance and audit committee charter. I wasn't making this the policy committee charter. So I wasn't sure that the policy committee had approved that or had it. So both the, the finance and not a committee charter is also in the same unit. Oh, okay. So that's probably why I didn't include that there. So. Policy charter. I will put after the finance and audit committee charter. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being with everybody. This is, this is a gigantic agenda and we will not get to all of this. We will have another meeting in two weeks. It's not, it's not going to be avoidable this month. So if that sounds like an apology, it's, it's not, it's just, just reality. Thank you for that, Ray. I, I apologize for the. For the oversight. Any, anything else that needs to be added to the agenda before we. I'm going to move that we approve the consent agenda, which includes the approval of the February 9th minutes. And the two bills that we've already paid for the, I'm sorry, for one bill that we've already paid, which is our insurance through Philadelphia insurance. And then to approve a stipend, not a stipend to approve a budget for the treasurer to buy postage and supplies. Second. Up to a hundred dollars. Thanks. That's a terrible breach of protocol. The second before even the sentence is done, but okay. I think that's cheating. I had to be first. I had to be first. All right. I'm the chair and I'll rule in order. So we'll, we'll move on. Any, any other discussion on the consent agenda. Okay. So all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. So any opposed. Abstentions or roll call requests. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thanks everybody. Treasurer's report. Jerry. Yeah. And I can make this pretty, pretty quick. We got our 2020 financials quote unquote from the, from the bookkeeper, which is the kind of the aggregation of everything that was done for 2020, our 2020 financials. We've already seen the deposit details in the check details. That's exactly the same as what I had presented last month, I believe she pulled together a balance sheet and the profit and the law sheet that I would like to present to the finance committee first before we bring it to the board. There's, there's no problems there, but I just think it's appropriate. I just got it today. So yesterday. So I think it's appropriate to bring to the board. I just had a little surprise is it's all, it totally in line with what I presented. Last month. Our, our bank balances are right now for the checking account. $83,000, $83,964.95. And in our savings account, we have to have two accounts. We haven't spent very much money other than the paying for the insurance bill. We really haven't spent anything yet. We have the $240,000 grant that should be coming due pretty soon. I just wanted to bring that up only because that money is obligated. For specific purposes. So that is not going to be for our operating revenue, nor for our build out construction other than for the area that is targeted for. And we need to have the folks served from that money by the end of December. So there is a deadline. There's the call back. There's all that business. So I just wanted to bring that up. Despite the wonderful information from Ken, we're still moving forward on the, on the veto loan would be a wonderful thing if we didn't need it, but we can always pay it back fast with grant money if we do. But anyhow, we're, we're, we're, we're moving forward on the veto loan. There are a number of things that you'll hear about tonight. We're going to be moving forward on the veto loan. We're moving forward on the veto loan. There are a number of things that you'll hear about tonight, particularly the MOU with WEC. We need to get our, our work plan and our final financial projections coordinated for that. And we're on the path for that. The last thing I would like to bring up is we, we did get a. We did get a, an invoice that I had mentioned earlier from our bookkeeper. The first invoice that she has sent us. And that invoice is for. $496. And I would, well, I can't make a motion, but I would like someone to make a motion if we could. Please approve that. That invoice in tonight's meeting so that we can, we can get her paid. She's been doing good work for us. So moved. Second. Okay. So moved, moved by Chuck, seconded by Siobhan. So $496 for the, the bookkeeper. And Jerry, could you just send that invoice out to the whole board at some point? Oh, sure. I sent it to you, Jeremy, but I'll send it out to the, to the full board. My problem. I'm sorry. I must have, I would afford it that time. Things slipping through the cracks, I guess. Any, any questions about this? No, no, no. Tom. Is there something that is going to be recurring fee? We can move into the consent agenda. And it would have been the consent agenda if the, if the agenda hadn't sort of crossed the, the ether webs about the same time Jerry got the invoice itself. But for sure. Chuck. Right. Right. And I would like to bring up one more. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that, that this wasn't in the consent agenda. I apologize. There's also a, there's also an invoice for clerk services from Jeremy Matt. From January and February. At $150 a month for a total of $300. I would also like to see that. Move forward and with this meeting so that we can get Jeremy. So can we friendly amend the previous motion? Chuck and Siobhan to include the $300 or Jeremy Matt. Okay. That's. That's approved. We don't have to make another, another motion. Anything else about paying the bookkeeper for 96. And paying Jeremy Matt for clerk services for 300. I just do have a question is a 496 going to be kind of the ongoing ballpark amount that she costs or was that a bunch of different costs and it's going to sort of settle out a little bit lower than that. Yeah, that's a really good question. It'll be less than that because that, that was for all of the work that she had to do to reconcile 2020 and to get all those 1099s out on time for 2020. So her, her carrying costs, if you will, from month to month will be substantially less than that. But I suspect that at the end of the year or the beginning of the next year, you know, it'll, it'll be a larger number again for this, for this reason. Thank you. Because we have to get those 1099s out. Okay, Jeremy. So just a quick question for Jerry. You pointed out that you were not able to find a check for the $300, $320 invoice that I sent prior to this current one. Is that included in this? No, no, it's not. That was approved in the January 14th or January 12th meeting. Right. Okay. Yes. I'm sorry. Thank you. No, that's fine. That was, that was approved, but not paid. As far as I can tell. I don't believe I wrote that check. I mean, I can, I can look back here. Actually it's right here. Let's see. It certainly hasn't been through the banking system. No. So we will include both, but both of those amounts, Jeremy. And so that should be coming. Okay. Any further discussion on these two bills for 96 and 300. Okay. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Abstentions or roll call requests. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Anything else Jerry. No, I'm good. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Jerry. Close report, Jeremy. So I've been working a little bit on trying to get the minutes straightened out. I got a large dump of about a hundred files from back up. And most of those are filling in gaps in our various committee minutes, which is fantastic. It's going to be a chunk of work to go through organize. Clean up, get them on the website, et cetera. But I'll be working on that. I did check through. There are a few holes filled in in the governing board minutes, but we are still missing minutes from five meetings, I believe. And there is one there. We have no minutes. We have no notes that anyone's been able to find. And we have no recording. So if you wouldn't mind taking a peek through. Your emails and just check to see if you have any of those missing minutes. I sent out an email. Maybe a week ago. A few days or a week ago about this. That's my report. I just wanted to say that it seems curious that they're all clustered in the tape same time area. And I think that's when we have the delegate. Who was writing them out longhand taking the minutes. She took over for back. I can't remember her name. Susan. And so I'm wondering if that's why we have that cluster. That they might be handwritten and passed out on paper and not on computer anywhere. That's an interesting, that's an interesting idea. That's probably explains it. We could reach out, certainly reach out to her. And see if she has any, any records of it. Or she transcribed them or she has the physical copies still. That could be worthwhile. Yeah, I think it would certainly be helpful to be quicker to work off notes, then try to go back and listen to. Your recordings. Yeah, I think it was Susan Martin. Yeah. I believe. Okay. From Woodbury phone. I'm taking. So Jeremy, if you still have her email address, if you want to try, try her and see if she's. If she's in possession of any of these, that might be, it might be good. Okay. I will, that says good. Thank you. And I will do that. And I'll see. I'm not sure I do have her email. I didn't. When I just checked email, so. Jeremy, I'll send it to you. Okay, perfect. All right, that's all I had. So let's see, moving along. The planning development committee report back. David, this is yours. Yeah. So there's quite a few things here and I'll try to be as efficient as I can. The Poland inventory status. We received 16 hour fees. We have now narrowed the group, which is Jeremy Matt. Ray. Out there and Jerry. I'm missing them. Oh, Jerry. In myself. And we go down to four. And now we're preparing questions to go up to those four. And then we're going to move on to the next slide. And then we're going to move on to the next slide. And then we're going to move on to the next slide. So we can get some clarification on what they actually said about some of the things. But we got some pretty high quality material, I believe. The next item that I'm going to discuss from the committees. We've been working on an MOU with WEC. Regarding what our agreement will be with them as they. Go to borrow the $22 million and need some sort of commitment on that. So you're going to see an end item later on about getting some money for a lawyer to help us with that. But it's moving on pretty good. There. There's a meeting tomorrow with Ray, myself. And WEC committee on this. At 10 a.m. 9am tomorrow morning for two hours. And we'll see how far we progress with that. The board wants to take motion action on their loan. So we're going to move on to the next slide. And then we'll move on to the next slide. The next slide we're going to move on to the next slide. So that would be for the month. So this, they've had some urgency and are moving along too. So their, that's for that one. The next item is a WEC Fiber line from East Montpelier substation to Maple County substation, which will be just to be a line that we can tap into for over a hundred people. and WEC to urge them on along with that project. It's a project we would have to pay for. It's about eight and a half miles. And then the next thing from us is the possible joint EC fiber, CB fiber grant application with WEC to do a generalized high level design for the whole WEC network, which we have to make high level design for our whole network. But it's important if we can find the money to do that. So I don't have anything right now because there's no money to even apply for. But that's something that might come down to the pike. That's sort of my report. David, when would that money be necessary, do you think? The high level design is the sooner the better the next month. OK. Yeah. And we'd be sharing the cost. I mean, it wouldn't be all our contribution. So we have a proposal from Fibersmith, I believe, to do it for $180,000. So that's my report. I think on the next, any other questions on my report? Henry. Oops, sorry. I should be doing the answer. Is that considered middle mile fiber? The which one? The line from Montpelier to Calis, sir. Well, if middle mile is defined by something, you can take drops off of yes, if it's a distribution fiber. Basically, those are going to keep half of 144 fibers. And WEC is going to get the 72, the part of 144. And WEC needs one tube of that, which is 48 for us. So that should be more than adequate for our needs for going north. Yeah. OK. Thanks. Any other questions for David about the information he's presented and not related to the our action items that are imminent? OK, let's continue along. But do you want to do the EC-Fiber Valiant, the Norfield MOU, David? Do that first? Basically, late, I think on Friday, I got word from Valiant and EC-Fiber saying, yes, they could do it by the end of December. But what they want to do in this days, and we have to be very careful how we craft this MOU, they want to build it. And basically, they will become EC-Fiber customers until such time we had an ISP. And we could transfer the ownership and the customers over to us. Because they don't see any way that they only have another way of doing it, actually, I guess. So crafting this MOU that explains all that is what's helped, and this is going to come up again. I don't feel like I'm in the person that should be drafting MOUs. I'm not a lawyer. I tend to like to make things too skinny, and I probably need more detail than I tend to want to put into something. But anyway, I'm looking for the executive committee, finance committee, maybe to take on that task. And I can send over a draft of what I've been working on. That's all I know of this point. I think there's, in terms of the funding and giving the money, I don't want to give them the money until we have this sort of closed. But we have the money, according to the extension that we received this week, right, Jeremy? I haven't seen it yet. But it's going to be in my mailbox eventually. It was in your mailbox. It should have been there. OK. I haven't seen it. Anyway, that needs to be done. And I'll discuss with those people later. But yeah, that's a status on that particular thing. And I know, Jeremy, you've had some conversations with ValleyNet on this. And so it looks like both of them had to agree to do this somehow. So that's the way it came. That's the way it is right now. And it's a total of about 50 houses that are being passed in the two towns. So it would be nice to be able to broadcast something soon. Yeah, I think it's mostly roster. Gibson's in Northfield, right? Yeah. So that's that one. Any other questions on this one before I let Ray talk about the poll inventory for phase one? Oh, that's from Jeremy. So was this actually an action item to be able to actually send it somewhere? OK, I can put a motion in the two motions I'm pasting in the chat box. OK. So I made a motion in the executive finance committee's directed to execute an agreement with EC5 or ValleyNet to provide FPP in Northfield and Roxbury as described in our CARES grant agreement with the Department of Public Service. OK, I will second that to continue with the discussion. Can we choose one of those committees so that we're not too many cooks in the kitchen? I don't know. All right, so go ahead, Chuck. Process-wise, the executive committee doesn't technically exist yet. So I don't know if that means we need to table it if that's where we want it to go. Well, it exists by statute. OK, great. Fantastic. News to me. So I'm happy to go either way. Other finance committee members or executive committee members, please pipe up now. Chair, I think what I'd say here is that I think that it might be appropriate for the finance committee to make a recommendation to the executive committee. And perhaps if we took a first cut at it and then send it to you, because it's calling now, for example, to execute an agreement. And I think we need to put something together first that recommends exactly what the terms of that might be. And so if we could modify the motion, David, to the move that the finance committee review and recommend an agreement with UC Fire Revalier to provide a FNTP in Northfield and Roxbury, as described in the CARES grant agreement with the Department of Public Service. And then we'll take it from there. So I agree with the friendly amendment. But did Jeremy get that down and change? So maybe we can keep this simpler, keep the motion as it is, and just leave it with the executive and finance committees to execute this. And we'll say the finance committee takes this first when you're done with this, hand it off to the executive committee, and then we'll just execute there. Is that OK? More for you. So at least we have the spirit of doing it. Jerry, if I could just add in. Yeah. I think that's kind of the process, right, that it goes through the committees before it gets to the executive committee for execution. I think that's if we can maintain that process, I think that will serve us well. OK. Any other thoughts on this motion? All in favor of, OK, Michael, just in. Just to say that Kingdon Fiber and Annie Cape-Rodman are entering into an MOU in a similar vein. And I would be glad to consult with the finance committee as to some of the terms that we're working on that might be useful for this one. I think that'd be extremely valuable. Very much appreciated. OK, anything else on this before we take a vote? Henry? Yeah, there had been mention of Kingdon Fiber being involved in this. OK, all right. I assume that's been worked out, so I don't need to pursue that final questioning any further, I guess. So for this particular project doesn't involve Kingdon Fiber at all. It's just too early. Oh, OK, thank you. I agree with Val and DC Fiber. And that was how it was proposed in the grant in the first place anyways. It was going to be with them down there because they had the capacity to actually do the work. Oh, wait. Sorry, miscommunication. In terms of the joint venture to do the pre-engineering, I hadn't heard Kingdon Fiber involved in that. And there had been discussion about them being involved in that. So that's clear. Perhaps, but that's not the motion on the table right now. We're really just talking about approving or the Roxbury-Norfield project. So I just want to get that out of the door. And this is a great opportunity to proceed. Well, so there may be another chance to talk about this in a bit, but let's nail this down first. Anything else about Norfield Roxbury, MOU with Valley Net, DC Fiber? OK, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, abstentions, or roll call requests? OK, motion passes unanimously. Moving forward, that feels really good. Pull inventory for phase one, David. Ray is going to present this. OK. Let's see here. Sorry, hold on a second. I'm confused. David actually pasted two motions to that chat. The second motion hasn't come up yet. You'll get to it. OK. OK. I'm just walking through this chart. So David was talking about the process, or talking about the polls inventory results that we're having. And as a result of that, the expectation is that in April, the CD5 will be in a position to actually bid out phase one for the polls inventory work. And so once those bids come in, we can obviously, the board will be making a decision with regard to whom to award the contract to, for example, and we're going forward. But we have to include within that request for bids is the definition of phase one. And so at this point, the Planning and Development Committee is making a recommendation to the board that I'm going to paste this in here. And it's going to seem a little less precise than perhaps you might have thought, but here we go. The Planning and Development Committee recommends the board approval phase one is consisting of 127 miles plus or minus. You may recall, that's the motion, you may recall that we've had discussions in the past about identifying with specificity in a public meeting exactly what those consisted of. And what I can tell you is that this 127 miles consists of the number one recommendation and feasibility study and the adjoining service groups. So together they consist of 127 miles plus or minus. And this is what we would like the board to approve. And then when the request for bids go out, the actual definition of that will be made available to them so they can make an appropriate bid. So is there a motion to approve in a second and then discussion? Well, so I'm going to take this, Ray, as you moving it. So is there a second for this? Second. OK. So I actually saw RD raise his hand first before you said it, Siobhan. So I'm going to give RD a chance to second that one for you. Or was that not a second RD? OK. All right, he's got a chance this time. OK, so moved by Ray, seconded by RD. Any further discussion of this? OK, that's encouraging. We're going to get done in time. I feel it, I feel it in my bones. All right, all those in favor of this motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, abstentions, or roll call requests? Motion passes unanimously. We have a phase one poll inventory. So no act during abstain. OK, Michael is going to abstain. So if we can have the record showing that, that would be good. OK, anything else on poll inventory for phase one, Ray? No, that's it. OK, very good. Moving along, funding legal assistance for the WEC and CB5 by remote youth, David, it's back to you. Yes, so the planning development committee was discussing this last week. And we decided that we really needed some help with drafting that the WECs lawyers sent us a draft MOU based on their interpretation of how it ought to work with all the partners. We took a look at it and said, you know, we need to make this a little tighter for us. And having heard Christa shoot speak at the Cuda meeting last week, I was convinced she was the person we needed to help with this. So I reached out to her last week and she's agreed to help us edit this MOU that we got from WEC. And so proposing the motion that I put in the, for those who don't know Christa shoot, she used to be work as the business person for the Vermont telecommunications authority back in the day. She's now a, oh, she's a lawyer who basically works at the state of New Hampshire. But she does, she's been consulting with any key broadband and I think she was in Crosbury, but she has a history with Crosbury and she's dying right. Anyway, so I'd like to make a motion that CD5 retain Christa shoot for a amount not to exceed $2,000 to provide legal services regarding negotiating an MOU with Washington Elector Co-op regarding the leasing of fiber and all their territory in CD5 communities. Second. Okay, moved by David, seconded by Ray. Any further discussion of this? Any questions for David about this? So I don't see any questions. I'd also like to throw my endorsement behind Christa. She gave a presentation at that Bakuda meeting and she knows the story and she's well poised. It's not the sort of thing that we're gonna have to explain stuff. She's gonna know what she's gonna know what's what. So I feel extremely comfortable moving forward with this. Anybody else before we vote? Okay, great. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed abstentions or roll call requests? Motion passes unanimously. Very good. Still moving forward. Okay, let's go to the adoption of the finance and audit committee charter. All of you would have received a copy of this from me and possibly earlier weighing in as Ray has drafted it. It's come out of the finance and audit committee and as far as we can tell is ready for, is ready to go. And I think Ray just posted it in the chat. It's long, but it's there. It shouldn't be too surprising. I'd like to move the adoption of the finance and audit committee charter. Second. Okay, moved by Ray, seconded by Chuck. Any further discussion or questions? Artie, I'm gonna unmute you because I was getting some feedback from your, hold on a second, some feedback from your phone line, so go ahead. Are you kidding me? I can, I'm gonna meet one or the other because I'm broke up. Okay, I'll mute my video, mute my phone on. Perfect, okay. I have two questions. First of all, in the charter makes no provision for voting procedures and since volunteers are being invited to participate in the committee, subject to committee vetting, will they be voting members of the committee? Good question. I think that once they become members, I think that they are voting members of the committee. Okay, I don't know if it's necessary to make that clear in the charter, but thank you. Second of all, shouldn't the committee be reporting to the treasurer? Isn't the treasurer, doesn't the treasurer bear not ultimate but at least penultimate responsibility to the organization's finances? So shouldn't the committee be reporting to the treasurer? So the treasurer's responsibility is to lay down the statutes and they're really quite extensive but the finance audit committee oversees the work of the treasurer. Okay, I understand. And the treasurer in addition is not a member of the board. Oh, all right, I understand, thank you. That answers my question. All right, and I can also point out that whether or not the members of the public are voting members can be decided by this board when they get appointed. And those members are appointed by us here, not by members of that committee also. I see Tom Fisher and then Chuck. Yeah, you just say what I was gonna say. Okay, wonderful, Chuck. I wonder if the treasurer is subject to the committee, is it appropriate for the treasurer to also be on the committee? I think the treasurer is on the committee. So is the question whether it's appropriate for them to be on the committee if there's over some involved? Right, I guess it does that generate some sort of conflict. Maybe. Maybe I could include the treasurer to be an ex-officio member. Okay, so hold on, let's have Jerry weigh in and then Ken and then Jeremy. So the first thing I wanna say is we're getting some odd feedback from somebody. So if you can mute yourself, if you're not speaking, that would be appreciated. All right, that's called a three-empty between that now. Okay, great, thank you. And I'm sure Jeremy, Matt, thanks you. No, I think there would be situations where the treasurer would have to abstain from voting. It may be the case that as ex-officio, the treasurer doesn't have a vote, but is a member of the committee. I could see either one of those working, but I think the treasurer needs to be an integral part of the finance committee. I think the voting for the treasurer is appropriate, but I think there are also times when the treasurer needs abstain, that's fine. Fair enough, I've got Jeremy, Matt, then Ken, then Siobhan. So I was just gonna say, in terms of volunteers voting, I would personally think that it would be a good idea to give volunteers a vote on committees. I mean, the ultimately governing board is gonna decide on these things, but it makes people feel more engaged with what they're working on if they're able to vote on it. So, I think we'd be more likely to get volunteers that would help out if we weren't excluding them from voting. Fair enough. So I have Ken, then Siobhan, then myself. Yeah, I'll just re-state it. I think having the treasurer be an ex-officio member seems consistent with the role to me. Siobhan? When the finance committee was originally constituted, and Rama was the chair, we had this discussion. It was determined that the treasurer was serving ex-officio and did not have a vote. That's easy enough. So that all seems reasonable. I don't know if that's encompassed well enough within the charter as it stands. There was another question that came up, and that was how the chairs of committees are selected. The way that that's been done in the past is when the committee was constituted and people were added or subtracted, that this board actually delegated a chair rather than the chair being elected from the members of the body itself. So, Ray was elected in a committee meeting, and I don't think there's any problem with that, but the motion was that that was going to be temporary or provisional, I don't remember the wording, until May when we have a reorganization. So I would propose, not that we have to have a motion here or anything, but I would propose then that we as an entire board reappoint the chair or appoint the chair when we reorganize in May, if that's amenable to everybody, then Jeremy. So, I'm pretty sure that the statute as written says that the finance committee will own its chair and vice chair. So, if that is not how the board is doing it, then I think the charter needs to be edited to say that the chair or vice chair will be appointed by. So, can you find where it says that? I didn't realize that that was in statute. No, I'm sorry. I seem to recall when I was reading over it. Am I wrong about that, Ray? Yeah, I don't think there's any mention in the statute with regard to the election of the selection of chairs for committees. No, I'm not talking about the statute I'm talking about in the charter. Well, in the charter, there's no mention at all with regard to the selection of chair or vice chair. Okay, never mind, I'm sorry. I've got too much on my mind right now. I'm getting stuck in my work. It's not something. And an open to the friendly amendment that says membership shall include the treasurer, parents, ex-officio, closed parents if the second is also amenable to them. So, who is the second on that? The second is that Chuck, is that okay to add treasurer, ex-officio? Great, all right. Michael. I just wanted to backtrack quickly. Jeremy, I think all volunteer members of committees should have votes with the exception of the treasurer and the person being that the treasurer is overseen by the committee that he or she is sitting on and ex-officio. Sounds good, anything else on this with the recently amended charter? Okay, it looks like we're at consensus. So, let's vote then. The motion to approve the charter for the finance and audit committee with the previously noted amendment for the treasurer being ex-officio member. Please signify your support by saying aye. Aye. Opposed abstentions or roll call requests. The motion passes unanimously. Okay, policy charter. We have a policy for each charter as well. Just a clarification on the friendly amendment. Was that ex-officio without a vote? Yes. Yes, okay, just want to make sure. Thank you. So, policy charter, you all should have had a copy of this as well. I will move that we adopt the charter for the policy committee as presented. Seconded. Okay, seconded by Phil. Any further discussion? Chavon? I don't think the policy committee needs to meet every month. I think it needs to be on an as needed basis. That was changed. Oh, was it? Yeah. Oh, that must be looking at it on one, I'm sorry, I didn't recirculate it, but yeah, Ray was doing the drafting on that. And because of the nature of the work of the policy committee, it's really kind of intermittent. So we changed it to not have a set meeting date or reporting on a monthly basis, but to do that as needed basis. So other ones, it's very much in line with the template that we just saw. Yeah, that was, okay. It's the one I was looking at had it, so. I didn't see anything to do earlier, wait. Okay, good question. Anything else about the policy committee? Tom? So the charter notes that they will put forward or create and put forward policies. Do we have anything related to making sure we're following our policies being present at the main board meeting or speaking up when something is over a certain price amount or whatever, or is that just something we're gonna watch on our own to try to stay above on? Good question. We kind of have to be very self-policing about that. And if we see ourselves moving away from something to jump in. I mean, we have talked about having an annual review. And if we're seeing that we're not following, I guess we have to ask ourselves the question about are we just not policing ourselves or has practice really deviated from the policy and the policy needs reviving at that time. But we talk about policy and watchdog per se. Right, I mean, we can continue to use the policy as a sort of a touchstone. And I think, like Phil said, you know, as we, if we seem to be going for our field, it makes it easy for someone to say, well, wait a minute, this isn't what we agreed to. But I mean, we can always ask the state ethics officer to help us with that. I was not trying to create a police force. I was thinking more about the fact that we have, you know, 40 members and alternates and we have, you know, five different committees going in lots of activity and just want to make sure we're all balanced and engaged. Yeah. So, we could appoint Tom Fisher as the policy officer, policy police officer. So I'm thinking of that. I will personally make you a badge. Yes. You'll get a badge. Go ahead, Ellen. We have folks today who are taking on that role. He was the one who got us to look up all the policies and get them connected at one point. There are a heck of a lot of them. So, I mean, almost anybody could become this police officer without a lot of training, I think. So, I think we're kind of sad. We just have to police ourselves. And I think Tom is probably going to tell us when we've gotten off the path. Michael, then back to Tom. I think Sheriff Tom should put together a packet of all the policies as passed throughout the time that we've existed. And present such packet to every new delegate or alternative delegate who arrives to our board. And that should do it. All right, Tom, it sounds like you've been vol untold. Do you want to have anything else to say before you take on this, weigh your responsibility? Be careful what you wish for. No, but I mean, I'll seriousness, I mean, I don't know enough about the statutes and everything else. I'm thinking, you know, I don't know what the best solution is. I really don't think it's somebody policing everybody else that is not going to make me feel friendly. But at the same time, I mean, do we have a method in place or something like that? And we don't need to sit on a site where there's more time to go on agenda tonight. But just something to think about, there are a lot of moving pieces and we don't want to make stupid mistakes that end up costing us down the line. So the stupid mistakes that we make when we violate our own policy, those are self-inflicted wounds and they're also self-healing wounds. I mean, that's on us. When we violate statute, that's much more serious and that's something that I would say it behooves all of us to read the statute. There's actually not that much there, thankfully. But in terms of what our obligations are, it's pretty clear. But there's a fair bit of leeway in exactly how we get to operate and how we choose to do things that it's not likely that we're going to trip over, we're not gonna trip over anything illegal, probably. One of us is likely to catch it and to call it out. And it's partially my job and partially the various committee chair's jobs to make sure that we're doing things on the straight and narrow when it comes to public records, open meetings, laws and that sort of thing and the clerk also. Alan? And I think it's fair to say that Jeremy Hansen is very receptive when people point out that maybe this is a violation of statute. I mean, it's not something we take personally, we just try to make sure that everybody is doing what is required of us and we're working together on that. Thanks, Alan. Anything else about the policy committee charter? Great thing about these charters is if it turns out later that it's they're deficient or too much, we can modify them again. So, all right. I think we're ready to vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye, I agree. Okay, opposed, abstentions, roll call requests. Motion passes unanimously. Thanks everybody. Moving on to the finance and audit committee call for volunteers. And there was some, so I will hand this up to you Ray in a second, but there was some question about whether we actually needed board action to do this or whether this was sort of our kind of default posture is that if we find volunteers and they want to serve, hey, let's bring them in. I've long advocated when I talk to people, they're like, well, how can I help? Well, you can donate when we're ready. We're happy to have you loan us money. You can pre-subscribe when we're ready for that. Or you can join one of our fine committees so I'll hand this back to you then, Ray. So the purpose of this was a single pull, I think, been a couple come to mind immediately. One is it sets up a process by which we actually solicit and we're looking for people with subject matter expertise. Okay, I mean, that's a different thing than somebody wanted to, you know, hey, listen, I'm really interested in the stuff and I'd like to help if I can. No, I don't have any expertise in anything, but I'm happy to help. We need people who have GIS background, project management background, legal backgrounds, accounting backgrounds, and those are the kinds of folks I think we're looking for trying to solicit here. And the other is this set of a process. The process being that when people have an expression of interest, that that expression of interest actually goes to the committee and the committee reviews the people's expressions of interest and their backgrounds and things and then makes a recommendation to the board for the board of appointees. And so I think that this has value for at least those two reasons. And I would commend this to you. I think we've already done this for PDC. I think we've already done a communications committee. This is the one for the finance and audit committee. And I know that the policy committee has something in the queue. It apparently isn't available tonight, but and so I would move the adoption of this by the board and look for a second. Second. David, Healy. Okay. So moved by Ray, seconded by David. So again, this seems to me the sort of thing that a chair of a committee can probably just do on their own. So I'm happy to make this a formal motion and approve this and all, but I should, I would hope that chairs feel like if we wanted to seek out additional help through whatever means that that's certainly not bumping up against any sort of power structure that the governing board holds. So yeah, I'm definitely voting yes on this. So I see Phil and then R.D. and then Chuck. Yeah, I mean, we and I have been back and forth on this and I kind of played the antagonist in this and that my sense was it wasn't the process piece and it ought to be up to the committee. But again, with some of the correspondence I had with John Morris, he said, what's the harm? And I agree with him. It's not, you know, it's not a big thing either way. I just didn't feel that we needed to do it. I agree more of the idea that the chair and the committee itself can do that. But, you know, I'm not necessarily gonna vote no. Okay, thanks Phil, R.D. I'm not hearing you through your phone anymore. We are, you can hear me now? Yep, you're good. Got it. Considering that members of the committee are going to have access to some sensitive material, it seems reasonable to have some level of vetting for volunteers for the finance and audit committee. So I think the motion, the proposal is appropriate in referring expressions of interest for review. Okay, fair enough. Chuck? I'm going to disagree with that. We're not talking about delegating the authority to appoint further members to the committee. Anybody who volunteers in this capacity is going to simply be someone who is given a task by that committee. And I think it should be left up to the where with all of the committees to, you know, figure out how to engage and delegate appropriately. And certainly a volunteer of this capacity, the committee is going to need to decide what information is appropriate and relevant to give that volunteer in order to do their job. And certainly there could be scenarios where perhaps an MBA is required because there are sensitive materials required. But I don't think we as a board should be in the business of saying no to volunteers that any committee might put out. But what I do see here as process-wise valuable is the call for volunteers. And I think based on the authority already delegated to the communications committee, that matter could theoretically be taken up by the communications committee. Certainly more than all going to be taken up here as well. But I think that could have also been taken simply as a communications committee item to help make that call occur. Just my two cents. All right, thanks, Chuck. Jeremy and Michael. So just one thing to point out. This or the motion that or what Ray posted that volunteers will be recommended for appointment to the committee as committee members. So they would then be voting members of the committee. The way that you were saying it, made it sound more like we were just saying like, oh, hey, Mr. CPA, can you look over these documents for us? It was a little bit different than being a voting member of the committee as well. I mean, I'm fine. I think it's good that they're on, but anyways. Okay, thanks, Jeremy. So Michael and Alan. I like something that already said. And the fact is that all of us at different times in committee work and on the board, come into contact with sensitive information that belongs to CV Fiverr and needs to be protected. As a board, we go into exact session to protect some of it from the public record. As committees, we can do the same thing. But all of us have the knowledge of some sensitive information by having read certain reports and studies and knowing plans. And we function very well and have for a long time, a high honor system where we all generally have a sense of what we can say out in public and what we can't. But maybe the policy committee could be charged to develop some kind of policy that includes a general NDA that we all sign, that determines the kinds of things that we need to protect, to protect the U.C.U.D. So I know it's a little off topic, but I think we might want to talk about it. I know we could put it in the next meeting if you want because of the agenda. No, I think let's just kick it over to the policy committee. So, Phil, if you could just chew on that with your folks a little bit. I'm going to go on to Alan and Jeremy next. I'm going to step away for just one second. So we have to remember that anybody who is on a committee, a member of a committee is a public official and is therefore subject to all the provisions of the open meeting law and also to access to public records. So we don't have to reinvent all those safeguards that are in there about non-disclosure agreements and all that other stuff. What we do need is to make sure that when members come on a committee, they realize what our policies and our rules and regulations and so forth are. But that's already in place. We just have to make sure that people are familiar with it and they understand their responsibilities. And I think that anybody who has served on a committee, a public committee or public board or whatever, realizes that that's the case. Ray, I had one question of you. I just want to make sure that I have straight in my mind what this call actually does. There's nothing obligatory in the call. It is simply advisory. Is that correct? That's correct in the sense that the call goes out. If people have an expression of interest, the link, as I envisioned it and I sent out what I thought might have been an appropriate call subject to each committee's tweaking of it, that if you're interested in the finance and audit committee, we're interested in these subject matter experts and other things that are cited in our charter. Here's the link to the charter and here's our email address if you are interested. And yeah, and we get those expressions of interest and sift through those, maybe talk and interview some folks and then the finance and audit committee makes the recommendations of the board for the board to make the appointments. That would be the problem. Or make no appointments. We could go through all of that and decide that there isn't anyone there that could add the value that we're looking for, for example. I'm glad you explained that tonight because I actually, when I read this thought exactly the opposite, that we just wanted to get more people on committees and I was thinking, oh my gosh, no, that's not what we need. We really need to target the skills we need and find people who can fill those positions and help us out. So if that's the intent and I understand that now and hopefully others will as well, I appreciate that. Okay, Jeremy? No, nothing. Any other thoughts about the call for volunteers from the finance committee? Does your hand go up, David? Nope. Okay. Okay, there's a motion on the table. So to approve this call for volunteers, please signify your support by saying aye. There's a motion on the floor, not the table. Okay. Sorry. That's all I'm doing. I'm just... We have a new chair fallen. It must have fallen off the table onto the floor then. I didn't notice. Aye. Okay, so a bunch of... So signify your support by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, abstentions, roll call requests. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Okay, moving along to the executive committee charter, I'm gonna hand this back to you, Ray, and I wanna point out that this was something that we had agreed to or set up or tasked Ray with. This was something that was a Ray's own initiative. So why don't you take it away? So you've assigned the credit of the blame, right? Thank you. Right. Yes. So there is an executive committee, but what we haven't done is provide for it what we've provided for the other committees. That is, what are the responsibilities and what are the authorities? And kind of delineating that board is deciding what's going to happen, but there's some such tremendous detail involved with actually implementing those things. It requires a great deal of coordination. And so the purpose here was to charter the executive committee to take those things for action. And so I passed this up before. You've had an opportunity to read it. We've had a lot of feedback. One difference on this is that the membership changed. I did originally have the treasure around there. It turns out that the treasure can't be on there. It has to be members of the board. The treasure is not a member of the board, for example. And I think in an original graph, I also had the clerk on there. But part of the thing here is to keep it as a small group as possible. The chairs, the people who can call their own committees to action and to coordinate between committees. And it felt like they had, they were probably most likely to be the people who had more of the details in their head than perhaps even some members of the committee as being the appropriate people. So that's this. And I'll make the motion if there's a second and then we'll go forward. I'll second it. David? Moved by Ray, seconded by David. I'd like to point out something. So there's a question about should the clerk be on the executive committee and the treasurer is ex officio. So it's true statute says that the members of an executive committee shall serve staggered terms and shall be board members. Give you your statutory link there. So they shall be board members. That's not, so if they're a member, they have to be board members. So the treasurer can certainly come to the meeting, but they are not by statute allowed to be on the committee. The clerk on the other hand by statute is an officer of the district and probably should be on the executive committee. The clerk is the delegated custodian of records of the district, which has other obligations under the municipality section of state law. So that would be the only recommendation that I would make is that the membership shall include the chair, vice chair, clerk and committee chairs. Any other thoughts on this charter? I'll accept that as a friendly amendment if David will. I will accept that as a friendly amendment. Jeremy's one where we need to go to. So I just thought Jerry and Chuck did know we're asked if the treasurer is not an officer. The treasurer is an officer, but cannot be on the executive committee. So this also, Allen, you're probably going to ask the question that I'm about to ask, so go ahead. Well, probably not. The clerk, by the way, does not have to be a board member. This stuff gets really crazy. The clerk often is a board member, but it doesn't have to be a board member. So you want to remember if you say you're going to add the clerk to the executive committee's list, you got to make sure that the clerk is a member of the board because the clerk possibly may not be a member of the board. It's not required by the statute. It's just weird. I think it probably is a good idea to have the clerk as a member of the committee, but there might be times when the clerk cannot actually be a voting member of the committee, can obviously sit there and take notes and even be part of an executive session if he or she meets the criteria of people other than a board member being included in an executive session. And the treasurer can attend executive sessions in the same way. There is specific language you have to meet to show that somebody other than just a board member can be in the executive session. But this is just one of those things. I have no idea what the legislators were thinking about when they drafted some of this stuff, but it is the law. And so we just really should make sure we're not making any mistakes. And that's the only reason I'm piping up. I'm not endorsing most of the stuff, by the way. I think it's really kifui, all the regulations. It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm just trying to say what is required of us. Okay, so I have a couple of things to add and then we'll get to Michael. First of all, we should probably be explicit here about who the chair of the executive committee is. Does the executive committee elect a chair? Same discussion that we had before. That's what I thought you were going to say, Alan. But so if the chair of the CB Fever Governing Board is the chair of the executive committee, we can probably just state that explicitly there. We can also change the wording, could, could change the wording, so that it says, jungle the chair, vice chair, the clerk, if they are a member of the Governing Board and the committee chairs. Because couldn't it be that the committee chairs might also not be members of the Governing Board? So, I mean, we could probably put, put that like weasel language in there. I also want to point out something that I mentioned, I don't know how recently I mentioned this. I certainly mentioned it within the first year of our existence, but because we're in a municipality, I haven't looked at the process or the legality, but like other municipalities, I think we have the opportunity to change our charter. So we could change, essentially change the state law as it applies to us by adopting a charter and getting it passed with a vote of the members of the various municipalities in our district and then have the legislature approve or not something that only applies to CB Fever. And Alan, I mean, I saw you smile and raise your hand there. I think it's possible. So we could do whatever we want, right? It's definitely possible, but believe me, you do not want to go through the legislative process of trying to get your own charter changed. It's the government operations committees are just, they are the very definition of roadblocks. So I, getting back to your first point in this part of the conversation, I do agree with you. I think it should be stated that the person who has chosen to be chair of the board will also be chair of the executive committee. I mean, I think if you don't want somebody to be chair of the executive committee, you probably should not be voting for them to be chair when the board does this organization meeting in May. So I think that's the check on who becomes the chair of the executive committee. It's the same person as the chair that person you're voting on. And that's a good point. Michael. I've added that language in the chat room. The chair of the governing board should be the chair of the executive committee as a friendly amendment to myself. If David does support us as well. I'll support that if I may amendment. Okay. Sounds good. Michael. Okay. So you thought Jeremy Hansen was being silly, but that's exactly what I wanted to say. We might find a community member who is extremely talented and extremely dedicated and extremely willing to help on one of our committees. And after a period of exemplary work, the committee says, you know, you make the best chair for us. We really could have a non-board member as a chair, a committee chair. And so I think instead of being specific as to different positions being members of the board, I think it should be a blanket statement. I think maybe Jeremy was getting at that in his suggestion. And the only problem is if we disregard a non-member chair, then that committee is not represented. And so we would further have to say that the committee would elect a representative to the executive committee. And this is getting all too silly, I think, because we really are doing the committee. But I think that would be the best way to make the objective that we're talking about right now. All right, so I see Chuck, then Jeremy, but I want to put something else out here, is that we are, even though there's 20 towns, we are a small, agile organization. We don't have to sort of build in every eventuality here. I think if we approve this as it is, get on with our life. And if we come to a situation where we have a committee member who is not a board member and we need to make this work differently, we're gonna, we'll call it something other than executive committee and we'll re-delegate the responsibility there so that we get around statute. We'll figure it out. So there's a lot of what-ifs, but I don't think we need to be as rigid as House or Senate gub ops, no offense to their respective chairs. Point of order, I'm sure you meant to say we will find another way to accommodate the statutes. Okay. Yes, but I'm not a lawyer or that diplomatic, but thank you, Alan. You can tell that you are once upon a time the executive director of a well-respected organization, lobbying in the state house. So, as kudos. Chuck and then Jeremy. I was gonna make a very similar suggestion as Michael was saying. Why don't we change the language and just say at least one representative from each committee? Jeremy? I was just basically real with you that maybe we just take a hand down the road and figure it out if it becomes a problem. Again, like our Vermont legislature, modeling good behavior. And Ray. The last amendment would be the membership shall include chair, vice chair, committee chairs and a clerk if a member of the board. And I think that meets the objectives I heard earlier. I'll accept that as a friendly amendment if David does. That doesn't get, I would not accept the friendly amendment that was the last thing of making the thing crazily any member of the committee. No, this is not. No, just listen to the chat. Look at the chat. Fine, I agree to that. Found a amendment. Okay. I think we should, we could live with the way it's written. Okay. Any further discussion on this? Okay. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, abstentions or roll call requests. All right. Motion passes unanimously, if not grudgingly. Moving along, status of RFPs. Where are the various RFPs? We have one for, we talked a bit about the poll inventory. We got a bit of feedback about that. The RP for the project managers. Can somebody give a report back of that? Yeah, I think I could do that in less than a day. You want us to? You can. So the RFP went out on the 1st of the 22nd of February, I guess it is now, and the proposals responded back on the 15th, which is next Monday. And they're being reviewed by members of the PDC and the recommendations will come forward to the board and for accreditation from the PDC. Okay. Do you have a sense of what you're hoping for the turnaround time for that to be? So the 15th, would those be ready in time for a March 23rd governing board meeting? I think the answer to that is would be yes. So, obviously it was like a good response, right? And hopefully we have a dozen dozen of these things and identify the leading candidates for it and make a recommendation. So it's a matter of getting the PDC of a meeting between now and the 23rd, which I think David has in mind. So the short answer is yes for the 23rd. Very good. Okay, any, so I don't think any of the RFPs, we heard about the poll inventory, so this should really been the PM thing. Moving along, communications committee report, Chuck. Great, I'll keep this really quick. So as of our last meeting, there were just a couple of things that came out of it. First and foremost, the update that was sent around the board. So everybody, thank you for sending those on to your respective committees. A process update, we did authorize Tim Sullivan and myself to be kind of the gatekeepers of website changes as they are requested and getting them prioritized and being the face in front of our developer. So she has not a single point of contact, but a single-ish point of contact. And last but not least, I did want to just call out that thanks to everybody's due efforts, we were able to collate all of the missing minutes and agendas and thankfully we haven't been around as long as some of the other committees. So it was an easier effort for us, but we now are fully up to date with all of our past agendas and minutes on the website. And that is it for communications this week unless anybody has any questions or comments. Anything for Chuck? David? Do we have enough money to continue paying our consultant? We paid our retainer in advance to which I don't believe we have used up the number of hours we've discussed. I'll check in with her prior to the next communications committee meeting and provide an update. Thank you. Cool, anything else for Chuck? Great, thanks for that. Clerk's type and revisited. This is something that generated a bit of a discussion last time around. And the question was now that we're offloading some of the responsibilities of the clerk's office on to CBRPC and paying them for that. Thanks, Christian. What is the role of the stipend for the clerk? Should that remain? Should that change? Should that be something that our esteemed clerk is paid for expenses as invoiced or something? What say you? Anybody have any thoughts about this? Is he ready? Yeah, I don't think he was paid enough in the first place. I know all the work that he's been doing and shouldn't have paid a lot more than he was paid. My view of the world is it's really a modest amount of money. The clerk's role is going to oversee a lot of other work as well as maintain the records, et cetera. My view of the world would be to retain at least the current stipend. And so I move that we retain the current stipend. Okay, which doesn't actually require a motion. Is that exactly how it is right now? Okay. If anybody has any thoughts that we need to change or do anything different than what we've done previously, I'm happy to hear about it or any other thoughts. Siobhan? I mean, if the current occupier of the seat feels strongly about it, they could donate it back to the organization, I guess. But I do agree that we need to be paying the treasurer and the clerk a stipend. That there was a reason we enacted that in the first place and that reason didn't stop being valid. And I should also point out that it is perfectly within the rights of the clerk or the treasurer to not send an invoice. But I appreciate the work, the ongoing work that lives in both of those positions and would, I mean, most other municipalities of this sort certainly pay their treasurers and clerks more. If not have full-time jobs for them. I'm thinking, for example, of the small towns, so like Worcester, where Katie does everything that leaves laying around. So, Jeremy? I appreciate kind words. And I was more just throwing it out there. Didn't want to, you know, keep taking the site that the people thought that it wasn't appropriate. They didn't want people to feel like I'd be upset or leave the clerk position if everyone decided that well, we're paying CDRPC now. So that was sort of my aim is for bringing that up. But yeah, just so, thanks for the kind words. Thank you. Anything else on this? Or are we good as status quo? We're good. I'm seeing status quo. Moving along, Bolton and other potential new towns. I forwarded you an email that was from Rob Fish about some of the aid, some of the federal money that's coming down the pike, and some of the state money for that matter that's coming down the pike. And his suggestion was that if we're going to get other towns on board for any other towns into CUDs, we should probably consider doing this fairly soon. So I think here's his exact words. I encourage you to get on the agenda now for any towns in your area that are not part of your CUD and have unserved addresses because that will open up our ability to use those federal or state funds to help them. The reason I have Bolton on here is because I talked at length to a volunteer in Bolton, not initially about Bolton joining CBFiber, but somebody who's really dialed in, who's already done a survey and reminded me a lot of the work that Henry did in Duxbury before Duxbury joined CBFiber. She has 200, 300 respondents, knows who the people are, what they need, where they are, and seems willing to do the work. I mean, they are contiguous with us. It's kind of a Western stretch into Chittenden County, but there's no other adjoining CUDs that makes sense for them there. So I guess I just wanted to put this out there is do we want to go, so even knowing that these towns that we're adding at this point are probably not really front burner at this point, because we're making plans based on feasibility studies that don't include them. What do we do about a Bolton or another town? I'm thinking like, not that folks in the Mad River Valley necessarily need it, but I'm thinking again, like, Waterbury, which I kind of got tired of asking Waterbury if they wanted to do anything, so I just kept hearing nothing. But should we consider Bolton? Should we actively move with Waterbury? All right, I see Siobhan, then Ken. I think we should go after Bolton and surround Waterbury and put pressure on them. Come to us, you know you want to join us. I know people who live in Waterbury who want to join, but not enough to actually go to a meeting and say that, so there's that. Well, I'm perfectly willing to go talk to a select board. All you need is somebody from Waterbury to get me on the agenda. I mean, I have a Ken presentation. I can talk select board, talk, and doesn't matter, conservative or left-leaning or whatever, they generally understand the value. And we're coming to the table at this point. We're coming to the table with a lot. So the question here, though, is that is this something that we want to do? You know, what about Huntington? That's right next door. What about Buell's score? What about the Mad River Valley, the rest of the Washington County? So I see Ken and then Tom and Michael. Does indeed Bolton share a boundary to many of our member towns? Dustbury. That's the thing, it is the roots and maybe it's appropriate to have islands that don't have connections. But right, if we cross, if we can get from Dustbury to Bolton, okay. Yeah, I think route two goes through there, doesn't it? Yeah, it doesn't go through Dustbury. Well, sort of, it's north, right? You get the Bolton from Richmond and Dustbury. Okay, so then Huntington there, Watesfield, Buell's score, Warren. Yeah, I mean, these are all other towns that have sort of, that have some logical connections here. So you have Tom, Michael, then Henry, then Jeremy. Do you have any further feedback on why Rob Fisher made that particular suggestion? Because of the, because a lot of the funding is going to, he expects, I think, that a lot of the funding is going to come down into CUDs. Again, the thing that Ken mentioned at the beginning was that the legislature has to decide what to do with this big pot of money. And if he's saying that there's likely to be $100 million, the legislature's current position is to have that stewarded by the CUDs. And for towns that aren't in CUDs, it may be a harder lift for them to go at it one by one. Whereas if they were part of the CUD, they sort of can get, we can think about them as a bigger picture sort of thing. I just don't know if that makes sense for us at this point, but I think that was Rob's motivation there because we will sort of, not that they're block grants per se, but that it would make more sense for towns to all work together. See, Michael, Henry and Jeremy. So I haven't read the congressional bill. It's 900 pages, but I think the way they're doing it is they're going to give money to states and local governments separately. Local governments be towns in our state because counties don't do anything in our state. And that will be true for towns that are members of CUD as well. So our constituent towns, like Plainfield and Calis and Northfield and so forth, may or may not share that money, the E-Fiber. But there is the reasonable possibility that if they want broadband, they see C-B-Fiber as a useful vehicle to be more efficient than them doing it alone. And so I think what Rob is saying is get some more of these towns into these CUDs so that they can be together in more force and more efficient. That may not be in the interest of every town. So that's one thing. Secondly, I personally think that we have one of the more manageable, right-sized CUDs in the state. We're not going to be 55 towns like any broadband and we're not six or eight towns like Lamoille. We have a really good size that works. If our board keeps growing, I think it's gonna get less efficient. And if towns are sort of far along, I think it's gonna be harder to design and to satisfy those far-flung towns who come in later. I'm feeling a little conservative about what we have now. And then to counter my argument that I just made, you can, even if a town is non-contiguous, we could still serve them because there are other ways to pop up in another town without running direct lines all the way to a bunch of towns to them. We can use Velcro or First Light or other ways to pop up in a town. So Island Town, if you're those goers, the only one that wants to join us, all three people who live there, we could serve them as long as there's a mid-mile route out there. So those are all my points. So that's interesting about the money going to the individual municipalities. I think that certainly changes the approach and the philosophy about it. So just got a direct question. Didn't we vote on a maximum number of towns, like 23 or 25? Did we actually do this? I remember we talked about it. I don't think we actually said that. This is for you, Ray. It was before you. It wasn't before me. I was here when we had that discussion and I was not in favor of the idea of capping it. I think we actually left it and looked to see what opportunities were presented as we went along. And this may be just such an opportunity to add Bolton or to add Waterbury, et cetera. I think that would be useful for us getting the money. Actually, we don't want the towns. You can imagine the legislature getting $100 million and saying, you know what, let's say there's gonna be some towns that need money too. We're gonna set aside 20 million for them and we're gonna divvy up the rest four of the CUDs. Frankly, the fewer towns that are out there are independent and more likely we're gonna get a bigger chunk of the change by the world. But I think we'll build it. All right, so I've got Henry next, then Jeremy, then Ken, then myself, then David. I think that it's good to get more towns. You know, in terms of Bolton and Waterbury, I've thought about them quite a bit. And, you know, Bolton has fiber coming into it. And Waterbury has, you know, a lot of cable. And so I think, you know, the likelihood or the perceived need is gonna be different based on what's coming into these other towns that we're entertaining. However, you know, if we don't care about overbuilding, then, you know, why not include them? And, you know, if we get into agreements with utilities like Greenmount Power or, you know, with other providers, then, you know, maybe there's, because Champlain Valley Telecom is coming into Bolton. And so we could connect into Champlain Valley Telecom from Bolton to serve Duxbury, for example. So some of these things depend on, you know, our agreements with other providers and contractors and utilities. But overall, I support getting more towns. But to consider the factors I just mentioned when we add towns. Okay, thanks, Henry. Jeremy, Ken, myself and David. Yeah, I was just gonna ask kind of a point that Michael brought up was, you know, are we gonna start getting unwieldy if we start adding more towns? And are we gonna have trouble maybe making quorum? You know, if we start adding more towns because sometimes it seems like we have trouble getting there. Anyway, that's kind of my thought or my question, rather, for people to think about. I'm just coming, how many, so we have, let's say we have 14 out of 20 towns represented here right now. Just for the record, Ken? Yeah, I just wanna be clear about my understanding of this federal money. Vermont is scheduled to get $1.2, $1.25 billion. Of that, $300 million goes to municipalities and the mechanism for the municipalities, and that just, so you have a sense, that's about $500 per person if indeed it's spread out on a per capita basis. But the mechanism for the use of those funds is very much an open question. What I was talking about in terms of the $100 to $200 million is a distinct, state money, in other words, of not the $300 million, but of the remaining $900 plus million. The discussion is more than $100 million of that would be specifically allocated to broadband expansion. Thanks, Ken. So I'm next on the list. So my thought is that rather than so kind of splitting the difference, also kicking the can on the road like we did before, is that let's decide when the towns come to us. I have not heard back from the woman in Bolton. I asked if I could get on the next agenda, but the agenda for the last meeting in Bolton, they're select orders last week. So if they are interested, if they want a presentation, I'll give a presentation or somebody can and we'll cross that bridge when we get there. So that's kind of the status quo, but if everybody was like pushing for, let's go and grab the last couple of towns to make a nice contiguous block in Washington County, that's, I think we can do that too. All right, I've got David next. I looked at the map, but the third of Bolton has fiber from Wastel's airplane and Waterbury is a 100% cable. And so in terms of a business case, unless there's a mandate that we do, that the money is spent on 101 and Waterbury is not a great case. And Bolton, if we need to, I'm not a big fan of adding more towns myself. So I just want to point out that I mean, they are connected with Wastel Telecom and if that would help, that's very, who knows, you know, there's some potential there. But right now, I'd say we don't need that. Anybody like you just said, they haven't come to us. Great. Okay, any last thoughts before we move on? Okay, moving along, email hosting. This was something that we talked about previously. I don't know, did we ever get, do we have any quotes? Do we have any amounts of what this is gonna cost Chuck? I do. So there are a few different models we could approach in how we try to tackle this problem. One of the first mechanisms we do is we could go out and just get an email hosting provider. And there are lots of great email hosting providers out there, but that always starts to beg the question around document storage, document retention, document sharing, you know, how are we actually sending files and so forth back and forth to each other as we are emailing? And really, when you start to layer on the document sharing piece of it, the two big players remain, Google and Microsoft. And on top of that, it is my personal opinion, given the specific needs of this board to be able to share documents in a way that doesn't tread on open meeting law and open meeting law issues, that Microsoft is probably the better of the two candidates because they have the thick clients, the downloadable clients where you can actually still create a file and send it to people, have them edit it and send it, you know, send back comments and stuff like that. Whereas everything in the Google Cloud is very much shared. You can still do things there where you make copy for each person and send it out to them, but it's a little bit bigger, I think, of a burden. So let me start with that as sort of the context of which I did my exploration. The other thing I'll say is for neither of those two providers do we qualify as a non-profit. That said, they both do have governmental specific programs that we probably do qualify based on the letter of what they've written, but I haven't been able to muster any quotes from the corresponding teams on the government side. So I do think there's a little bit of additional work to do here. That said, if we go after their business class tiers, the first way we could structure it is we could assume everybody on the board gets email, everybody on the board gets the document sharing and everybody on the board gets a license to the desktop applications in the sense of Microsoft at the very least. And I'm assuming that we have 40 people on the board plus three other people, a project manager, a clerk and a treasurer, although in reality that will come down by one, it sounds like. And so the pricing for Google is $12 a month. So we'd be looking at $6,192 a year to cover all of the aforementioned people. On the Microsoft side of things, that almost same price, $12.50 a month or $6,450 a year gets you the downloadable clients as well. However, there is an opportunity to save a little bit of money there. If we have a number of people who already have access to the desktop apps or don't need the desktop apps for the course of their day-to-day business, there are a number of alternates that aren't really participating in those sort of document sharing and changes and could be relegated to using just the online tools for Microsoft. So if we were to assume that we only needed half the board to have the more advanced licenses that get you the desktop apps, we could bring that cost down to about $4,500 a year. Now, again, this is their business enterprise pricing. Whether government becomes more advantaged because they want to help governments out or whether because of the slightly more sophisticated retention needs, it becomes slightly more expensive, I don't know yet. I'm hoping I will have that information if we were to have another board meeting within two weeks time or whenever the next board meeting is. But I do think we at least know that the ballpark of what we're talking about isn't huge and I for one would advocate that we go ahead and take the step to formalize our email, formalize our document storage, have the correct data retention policies and so forth if we can secure the funds which sounds like at least in the near term horizon shouldn't be too difficult. Okay, so we'll definitely have this on the next agenda but if there are things that you want or the things that you're what you want us to think about as we're putting this together by we I mean Chuck, please feel free to pipe up now. So I see Michael and David. Maybe I'm alone in this but I think it's bananas. I really think that we can't afford that. I think that's just way too much money. I don't know that we need all the document retention features you're describing. I think we can create those on our own servers or on Google drives or whatever. Cloud Alliance and Kingdom Fiber buy email boxes for 50 cents a month for a customer and we give them away free to our customers. And you're talking about $12 a month that's 24 times what I'm paying. I just question why this little organization needs to spend that kind of money. David and then so. So Chuck, there may be one other option. I know that the state of Vermont when it signs contracts with software vendors or even computer vendors, municipal governments are often able to take advantage whatever the state of Vermont's pricing is. And so maybe reaching out to do that. And I'll disagree with Michael because I am tired of Google. So Mark. Okay. So Michael, the question is that that's just like what? Like often SMTP then you just have a VM or something that's running Linux and that just is your mail host? Well, we don't run our own server. We contract and provides us the service. It's an IRMAP, it's an OPOP. They have a web host and it's a client mail that you can put in any, you know, any email client on any platform. I'm not suggesting we use that one in particular. I mean, we could use, there are free services like that are encrypted like Proton Mail or there's all kinds of signal. There's all kinds of good mail clients out there. And if we don't need to have this kind of business-y setup that stores documents and files and just want email and then we want to protect that email in folders, we can do that. And Proton Mail would not be free if we're using our own domain. If we're continuing to use email addresses like Gmail like we're currently doing, then you can do it for free. But if you wanted to have aliases or if you wanted to have your own domain name then it is, they do have a plan but it is cheaper than $12 a month. But yeah, I definitely see your point. Let's see, Phil. The YouTube, I just put that through this for the town of Middlesex. The issue for us as a public entity is that we need to comply with both federal and state regulations around especially email retention. Now the whole document piece is nice because it helps with managing some of that but all of our communications as far as doing business need to be able to be discoverable in terms of legal hold. We might get sued, we might not but if we do, we need to produce those communications within a certain period of time or we're gonna find ourselves in a very, very difficult situation. And so the kinds of things that Michael's talking about are certainly possible to use as long as we have another vendor that notes everything through it and it's then retained and it's retained for 10 years, I think it's maybe the minimum with those kinds of things. And that's where a lot of the expense comes in. Particularly companies like Google and Microsoft have been doing this for a long time. We were doing this in schools starting 10, 12, 15 years ago. And it is a fairly big expense but we do have an obligation under federal and state law to do this. And we've hung off this long but I think it's something we really need to address as we're moving forward. So Phil, I would be interested as a recovering select or a member of myself the federal requirement for retention and what you're talking about. I've never heard of that. I'm not familiar with that. I mean, so discovery and the event of lawsuits, I can understand that. But public records, as long as you're not deleting documents, I mean, that was how we... I don't think you didn't delete it. Sure, okay. So in the truth, we're gonna shoot holes in it really, really quickly. If they're looking for something that you don't have, you said, but I never believe in anything. Prove it. I'll send you the citations. Okay, that would be helpful just so we can be completely clear about what the requirements are. And it may be possible that there's a way to tweak a mail server to do this. Somebody else has been looking for a cheap solution to this in the past, I'm gonna guess. Phil, could you send us to include those on me to me as well, please? Yeah, sure. Jeremy? So a couple of questions. Would we then be requiring all board members to use their official email addresses when doing CV fiber business? And the second question is then, say someone leaves the board, the whoever is managing this would then be able to get those emails. So that would cover the case of, oh, Rama's not on the board anymore, but someone gave us a public records request for all of Rama's emails. We could then provide them with all of Rama's emails without having to say, hey, Rama, give us your email again. Correct. Okay. Any other thoughts for this as we move forward and have this on the next agenda? Yeah, sorry, Jeremy. One thought. So I guess, Chuck, in terms of value, there's email addresses, there's access to the word and Excel and all these other desktop apps. What else is included in the HireTier? Like for example, I think a number of us have, okay, a number of us have access to the desktop apps elsewhere. So if all we're getting is the desktop apps, then maybe it's not, maybe we could even trim it down further and just like get email addresses for me because I've got word otherwise. Yeah, that's a great question, Jeremy. And the primary thing you get other than just email and the slightly more complicated scenario of email with the compliant retention policies and able ability to put on litigation holds and things of that nature. You also get the shared drives, the document repositories where you can put shared files and those also have retention rules the administrators can put into place. Now, my understanding mirrors fills that the retention policies on documents is not quite the same as the retention policies on email, although what exactly the nuance difference is there? I don't know and I'm not an attorney. So, I think we have more research to do but primarily what you get in addition to the desktop apps is that sort of shared folder, shared drive concept on top of it. I see, okay. To Michael's point, there are other ways to do that that's a lot cheaper. I mean, you can set up a web app server on a random Linux box somewhere and have a shared folder that people can access but it's not quite the same. Okay, Siobhan. Does it come with Teams? It does. All right, so it looks like we have some information. We'll have some more decisions to make at the next meeting. It occurred to me. So thanks for letting me know, Ray, that we missed an item, committee appointments. I know Phil Saccini had wanted to be on the finance committee. So we can nail that down too but Ray, you thought that somebody else was looking for appointments to other committees? Yeah, my recollection is too bad it's here because you might say no but my recollection is a long one to be added to the finance committee and the PDC and perhaps he could agree or disagree at this point in time. I did say something to that effect, unfortunately. So we have Tom and Phil Saccini both Tom and Phil for the finance committee and Tom on the PDC. Is there any other appointments that we need to make at this point? Who's going to make all the badges for Tom? We've got a lot of cardboard here and spray paint. I think my kids have a whole art section downstairs. They can put that up. Yeah, get some mosh posh and glitter glue and stuff. You're going to love it. Okay, so I'm going to move that we appoint Tom Fisher to the planning and development committee and the finance committee and Phil Saccini to the finance committee. Second. Okay, my motion seconded by Siobhan. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed abstentions roll call requests. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving on to the four weeks around table Jeremy. So if the governing board is appointing the chair and vice chair, should that be voted on here? I think we're just going to, we're just going to keep the finance committee where it is until May. And when we re-work, we'll read that out. Yeah. Okay. So we'll just do a round table, Phil. No, I'm done. Thanks, Jeremy. I just want to say thanks to Christian for showing up and for taking notes this meeting. And just when we get the draft done, send it over to me. I'll look it over and we'll go from there. Hopefully fairly soon because we do have a requirement to send out a draft, I think within five business days. And I'd like to send the draft of the board first to give them any chance to make changes. So, there, thank you. And on that note, I will send you an audio recording. This doesn't record video, but I will send that to you within the next 24 hours. And if you want the video, then Orca will have that up in two to three days. Audio, I think will be enough. I heard you repeat all the motions in seconds, so that should be what I need there, one or two. All right, let me try to get ready. Great. The chat is also saved. Yeah. Siobhan? I think that's a setting though, actually. You can go through the settings on. If you go into the settings, you can have it save the chat transcript. Yeah, it should just create a text file wherever it's configured to do so. So again, my document is just something. Yeah. All right. Alan? Okay, Alan's passing. Josh? Yeah, I'm just going to, just let everybody know, I'll make the entire work that I am in work teams with our current insurance provider. We have to wait for applications so that we can rework our insurance policy to meet the needs of the CEO as they move into our future endeavors. So once I have some of that, those things and costs solidified, I can come back to the board with that. We can move that as an agenda when I'm ready. I can present that and then it might also give us an opportunity to revisit and maybe perhaps review what VC5er has for their insurance carrier, depending on what kind of quotes we come back with and that coverage that is offered to us. We are a bit limited based on the fact of our municipalities. So I'm in what carriers are willing to do this or that. So that's why I'm digging up that little bit of an update. Okay. Thanks, Josh. Tom? Yeah. Probably not the next meeting on 23rd, but by the April one or either one of the guests, it might be good for us to appoint a subcommittee on the transition just so that we're not, it seems like in a little bit of time to that, may be a new appointee on the board. It's kind of a massive way of calling if you're wondering what that is, acting out of all this story, just thought. Okay. We can definitely revisit that as we get closer. Ray? Well, I think I can get 100% agreement on this, though I already spoke in too much so I don't say anything more. Okay. Thanks, Ray. Michael? Hi, everyone. Hi, Michael. Thank you. Jerry? Nothing for me. Thank you. All right. Lucy? First night. I'm just taking it all in. All right. Thanks for joining us, Lucy. We do appreciate it. Henry? Sorry, I've been multitasking at this meeting, but did we enter into agreement with CVRPC? Quite some time ago. Yes. So CVRPC is now taking our minutes and doing some other admin tasks for us. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Now we're seeing the minutes at least and some of the other admins, so we're good. Yep. John Russell. John is muted. If you have anything to add, John, in the next 30 seconds, we're happy to hear it. All right. So thanks again, Christian. Everybody can see Christian's email address there. If you need to contact him for whatever reason, I would recommend that as tempting as that is, that you don't. If you have requests for him or for CVRPC, that you do it through David and Jeremy. So please send any requests that you have for them for admins through David and Jeremy. So on that note, I will declare us adjourned at 8.04 p.m. Have a wonderful night, everybody. We did it on time. Amazing. All the way. We will see you in the next on the 23rd. Bye-bye. All right. Thanks, everyone.