 C. V. Fiber governing board meeting to order. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Yeah, I noted that you had approval of the October 13th meeting minutes. Those have already been approved. So I think maybe you meant the October 20th meeting minutes. Yes, yes, I can, I can do that. We can do that instead. So. So October 20th instead. Yeah. Okay. I'd also like to move up because Tim has a. A timing issue, although I don't see him. Tim said he has a timing issue. He has to leave. A little early. I was going to move the project managers report. Up after the consent agenda. Okay. And, okay. Any other additions or changes? Okay. Okay. So this, this says we go to eight. I don't really, I'm looking at these agenda items. I don't really feel like we're going to hit eight o'clock tonight, but. Don't curse it, Jeremy. All right. Well, sorry. It's going to go super long. All right. All right. Public comment, any comments on items that are not on the agenda. Okay. Hearing none. I'm going to move to the consent agenda. So I move that we approve all of the items on the consent agenda, which includes the October 20th meeting minutes as presented and the payment of bills for the clerk for two months that I sent. I sent you that the second invoice. Just a few minutes ago. And for our project manager, Tim. Frank Moore second. Okay. Okay. I heard Frank first. You look too comfortable. Frank Frank is poised to get things done. Yes. All right. Any further discussion? All right. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed abstentions or folks wanting to take a roll call. The ayes have it motion passes. Thank you for that. The next agenda item is for, um, this is a statutory obligation for us to, um, Hear from any of the municipalities that have questions. Jeremy. Yes. Didn't you move Tim up to this after the consent agenda? Oh. Yep. You're right. Thank you very much. Tim in, in the interest of making sure that you don't get put too late or whatever. And I know you have other things to do. Um, could we do the project managers to report. Right now. Sure. Thank you. My notes. So let's see, um, things that, uh, been working on, I don't necessarily, as you put in the agenda, I don't think there's any, um, Decisions that need to be made, but giving an update on what I've been up to. Um, it did work on the, um, Um, the specifications for the marketing materials and the logo design. And we have kind of three separate tracks going there, um, With potential providers for those materials, enhancements and such. Um, I did send out some initial logo designs. However, after consulting some experts, um, Chuck, in particular, uh, Um, specifically focuses in that area. So I appreciate everyone's feedback. However, I think we're going to, um, Kind of up that, uh, to working with a company. Um, that specializes in that. So I've been working with them a little bit or they're getting ready to work with them. Uh, I have been, uh, beginning to fill in the sections for the Vita application and working with, uh, Young as far as what the expectations are there. Um, so I've been starting to work on drafting some language and pulling together those requirements for the, uh, Vita application when that comes to fruition. Also, uh, worked with weight field, Champlain Valley telecom and EC fiber to pin down kind of the terms for the, um, respective Duxbury potential projects and the Roxbury project. Based on, or excuse me, more town, more town, sorry, more town, not Duxbury, uh, more town, um, For those, uh, respective areas, uh, based on the favorable outcome, uh, the public service department. I did, uh, work on drafting the interval report that will be, uh, discussed this evening. Um, did some research on the kind of, uh, Opportunity with the USDA. Community connections grants and kind of what the stipulations and where that might be a fit or not for, um, For, uh, CV fiber. And have also, uh, Initialized the, um, kind of laying the groundwork with, uh, COS systems for the demand aggregation software kickoff. And getting things underway in working with them as well. Uh, those are the, my, my list of. Activities that have been, uh, Taking my time. So. Does anybody have any questions for Tim? Okay. Thanks very much, Tim. Appreciate it. Um, so moving on to the next item, the budget and annual report hearing and approval. So again, this is our, this is a statutory obligation that we provide the budget and the annual report to all of our towns. And then ask for their feedback. And sometimes that feedback comes from the elected officials in those towns. Sometimes that feedback comes from, you know, some of us here. So if it does anyone have any feedback that they've received, Chuck? Uh, actually that is slightly different than feedback we received because we have not distributed this. There's a portion in this where it invited people to attend our November 10th standard meeting. Uh, in order to provide said feedback, I would like to make a motion, um, to have that have Tim update that to our next meeting date before we distribute it. Okay. Okay. Great. Well, then I guess people have, uh, I've seen it. That's great. Yeah. So, so, so this, what this draft, um, um, um, so that we would meet the statutory obligations. We took the draft annual report. I should say I took the draft annual report that Tim had put together, um, made a couple edits, sent it around to all the municipalities. Um, And I haven't heard anything specific. I don't know if anybody else has heard anything specific. I don't think last year we heard anything other than, you know, asking for some clarification about. Something or the other, but, um, I would be happy to take any of your feedback on the annual report. And I apologize for the lateness. I should have CC'd all of you on that as well. Not just the, the town clerks and mayoral people in the area. But I don't, I don't think, um, I don't think that there's anything too. Surprising in there. At least there, there shouldn't be. So, um, we can, uh, we still do have time. We can still delay this if we wanted to solicit some more, um, Some more feedback. If you wanted to do some additional outreach or chew on this a bit more. We still have the time to, um, We don't have to approve this right now. I was like, I guess what I'm saying. So this is the kind of to itch that statute or scratch that statutory itch and, um, make sure that we held the hearing. But, um, if there's any additional feedback, if you want to hold off, we can push this off to the next meeting. I think we just have to have the budget passed by the end of the year. So any, any thoughts either way, Chuck, would you still like to like to sit on this for a week or two or a month? No, I, it's already been through a number of revisions through the communications committee. Um, I think most people had an opportunity to weigh in on it and we were pretty happy with it. I think the, the date was my only concern. And, and if it's already been distributed to that particular audience, then that doesn't matter. So I'm good with it. Okay. Alan. Jeremy, does this report get sent to town clerks as well with the invitation to have it printed in the town report. If the town clerk has. Desire to do so. That is typically what, what we've seen in the past. Because all the towns are members of this district. Not all towns choose to do this, but I know Berlin, for example, does, I know Barry city does. But yeah, if Worcester is putting together their, their annual report, you know, attaching these three pages, I think makes a lot of sense. And they could take it as is, or they can reformat it somewhat. But I think that's, I think that's reasonable. Yeah, I think it might be a good idea, because I think the way that most people are getting information about our work is either through the updates on front porch forum, or when they go to town meeting or get their town report. If there's something in there, they'll, they'll read it. And I, I seem to remember last year there wasn't anything in our town reports. So I've got to figure out, I'll, I'll talk with my time to see if I can get some space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think most, most towns people read their town reports. So since this is a report of the past year, we have a good reason to be there. And I think people would like to, like to have it. Thanks. Yeah. So one of the things that, once we approve this form, formally approve it, I'll take off the draft language. And I will send it out to the entire distribution list. And I'll, I can include a note saying, you know, in your town's annual report, but I think doing that outreach individually. So going and talking to Katie is going to be a good idea to make sure that something actually happens with it. So David, then Chuck. So I got an email today from town of Calis wanting to know when I, when are they going to get their one page summary of CV, fiber activities for the town report. So Calis has a one page limit on organization reports. So I will extract from this report and provide that to the town by, I think I want it in two weeks. Okay. Yeah. So that, and that's, yeah, depending on the town in a Berlin has their kind of deliverables, deliverables are due like the first week of January. So depending on the town, it's going to be worth reaching out to your clerk and finding out the best way in the format and any length requirements. Okay. Chuck. I was actually going to point out the same thing as David more town also requested a one pager last year. And we'll certainly do so again, because the books are a little more expensive to print. That said, they were willing at least to, we usually have a table of a denim material and, and, you know, the charity materials of charities we might get to and so forth. So we did print out the full. So that might be a good, that might be a good option. Should you be space constrained and then whichever, so whoever ends up writing that one pager, if that's you, David, if you could send that to the rest of the board, then so then we can kind of steal your work or Chuck, if you're going to do that, whoever's going to do that. I see. Tim, you have your hand up. Yeah. I'm happy to take that on and do a, you know, consolidated one pager and send that out. Perfect. And then we can all sort of distribute that out to the town clerk says we need to. So I'm going to assume that we'll approve this and we can send, we'll send both copies, the actual approved full budget. And the actual approved annual report and then the one pager for kind of broader distribution. Sound like a plan. So I can, can I move approval of the. Budget and annual report. And the one pager so that we can have a discussion about them and then act on it. Or is it premature to do that? I'm going to second that. I'm going to say, let's go ahead. Okay. Yeah. All right. So, so we've talked about. Okay. For that be rephrased just a little bit. In the form of emotion for the minutes. I move that we approve the. Budget and annual report that have been provided. And. For Tim Shea to create a one pager. Condensed a version of the annual report. For distribution. In the town warnings. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anything else that folks want to say about? Any feedback on the report or the budget? I think we. I think I have a question, Jerry. Yeah, go for it, Jerry. Thanks. Just, just clarification. What's, and I may have missed this somewhere else, but. There's the revenues. There's new customer deposit. And there's data revenue. What are those line items? What's the difference? Okay. So let me bring that budget up. So a new customer deposits. This is going to be the money that folks put down for starting service. Data revenue is revenue from internet service. Bone revenue is from. Them getting phone service from us, which is essentially a pass through. For a voice over IP solution. Okay. So the data revenue is the internet. Internet revenue. Right. And then we expect that there's a certain percentage of folks who will also want. Phone service. And we will offer that. Right. And we will offer the customer. The customer equipment. To allow them to, to have that voice over IP solution over their fiber connection. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Alan. Jeremy, if, if I could suggest a technical correction to the Shaban's motion. I don't think we want to use the phrase town warning. In our. In our motion. It's the town report. That we want the information in. The town warning is the, well, you know, this as well as anybody, Jeremy. It's, it's the official announcement of motions. Of things that will come up for consideration. For the town to vote on a town meeting. And I don't think we want to create the impression that we're going to be asking people to vote on things. Which, you know, could possibly lead to something if they see it. So I accept that as a friendly amendment. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. That sounds good. I just worry about, I just worry about stuff like that. Fair enough. Thanks to that, Alan. Yeah, as well. One of those things I, I knew what she meant. And I, yeah, that it would have been. Better to phrase the other way. And Jeremy, you, I assume you, you have that revised in the motions there. Okay. Anything else on. Anything else on. Anything else on. Anything else on. Annual report budget. Or Tim doing the one pager. Okay. Hearing nothing else. Let's vote. Michael on mute first. The, the last point about revenues. Kind of assumes that. CB fiber will be the. Is that. In our budget to be the ISP or to work with an ISP. Well, we, we still get the revenues and then we pay for whatever it's going to cost to actually serve that. Then you have the, um, You have those costs down below. ISP operations is down in the expenses. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not looking at the. Document. Yeah. So, so there is a, there is an expense. That so we take this money in the way the budgeting has to work as a municipalities. We still have, we have to track all of the money that's coming in and whatever form. So loan proceeds. Grants. And then this revenue, even if because it's going to be coming into us. We would then be paying. The amount of money that we have to be paid for contract at ISP or whatever. And perhaps we're going to have some sort of different contractual agreement down the road. And it looks different than that. This is, this is what we've talked about as being the, the model that we're proceeding with. So. We can certainly change things or ship things around. I think the underlying. orders of magnitude for costs and revenues though it should be that should be basically right. Thank you. Sure. Anything else. Okay. Let's go. Let's go to vote. All those in favor of approving the budget annual report and instructing Tim to do the one pager signify by saying I. Hi. Any opposed abstentions or folks who want to do a roll call. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thanks everybody. Moving on to the finance report. I sent you the VCCU bank transactions. There shouldn't really be anything too surprising in there this. The most recent, you know, the most recent thing of any interest is, you know, Jeremy Matt depositing the $150 check on the 14th. Otherwise, we're sitting on the, a fairly big portion of the, the cares act funds from the $100,000 grant. We just, we spent an additional, we approved $10,300 in our consent agenda earlier tonight. So this number you can imagine going down by 10,300 as well. I have a question. Yeah, go for it. The bottom line there before the expenses today. Is that what's left? 19,000 and. No, look at the top versus current balance. It's on the front of the first page. Very tough. Okay, okay. Do we have a date by which that has to be spent. December 30th. So if you, so if you just said anything else you were muted, I saw you sort of lean back and that's what I thought that that's like the gulp in my throat. Because even the state is scrambling about December 31st. Yeah, so if we are not going to spend some of that money, we have to give it back. So I'll, so, and it's very likely that we won't spend it down to the exact dollar and maybe we will but if we don't, we will be writing a check back to the state. Or, you know, having them, or, you know, doing an ACH or something to have them claw that back and then plow it back into other things that the legislature has, you know, has in the wings ready to go. Okay, I saw you had your, your hand up. Yeah, we should, we should confirm whether the date is December 20th or December 30th. Those are the two dates that the legislature has used and the department is used. The date was in case they thought the money wouldn't be spent they would have 10 days to get redistributed to other agencies that could rapidly like human services or something like that. So I don't know whether that applies to our particular brand or not should confirm that. I'm going to pull up the, I'm going to pull it up right now. This is worth, this is worth nailing down here rather than kicking it off later. So we have to provide short reports on the 30th of each month. So December 15th, we will get the final $10,000 if we, if we need it, looking for dates. Okay, I think this is it unless otherwise authorized by the commissioner of finance and management, any monies appropriated from the CRF shall revert to the CRF to the extent that they have not been expended by December 20th, 2020 to enable reallocation. Thank you, Michael. I'm going to paste that back into the chat. Oops, not going to let me, not going to let me paste in the chat, whatever, but I think you get the, you get the sense of it so. Yeah, it will revert back to that fund at the state of Vermont on the 20th. So we get a check. It's funny, we get a check on the 15th and then we have to hand it back. If we don't spend on the, on the. Further clarification, I've been told that if we know we can spend it by the 30th, we do not have to revert it on the 20th, but that is, if money is going to be reverted it has to be on the 20th. As long as it's all expended by the 30th, they're fine. Right. We don't think we spend it by the 30th, we have to turn it back in by the 20th. Right. Which is interesting because if they're dispersing us, you know, an additional $10,000 on the 15th. By the time that gets to the treasurer's office, the check is cut, it's going to be passed to the end of the year by the time, you know, I see it in the mailbox. So that's sort of typical of me going. Yeah, I would very much like, like to have this as a direct deposit, but as far as I know they don't, they don't support that maybe that's a Tim maybe would you follow up with Rob and see if we can set up a direct deposit direct debit arrangement for these kind of time crunched End of the year stuff. Well, Dale. Thank you. All right. So, good question. All right, anything else on the finances. So for the bank transactions or anything else. If you're talking Frank you're muted. Okay, you're talking to someone else. Okay. All right, so no real approvals needed there so moving along. Project managers. Okay, that's all right. Thank you. Thank you. I'm wondering obscenities at the bureaucracy. So Henry, I saw you had your, your hand up. Is this about the finance report or about the communications committee coming up next. The finance I was wondering. Okay. Okay. No, no, we've not contracted him to do that. And maybe Tim, if you would reach back out to Fred and see if he'd be willing to add. Doug's program to the feasibility study and just give us a quote about not only how long are not only how much but how long he expects it to take. Well, Dale, thank you. Thank you, Henry for that was a definitely a dropped ball. We have it in the budget to do that. So that's part of that $100,000. Michael. So in regards to that. Have we just entered into an agreement with EC fiber to. Do Washington. In which case that study would be redundant. We're not redundant, but actually. Unnecessary. No. We haven't. David. And Tim, Tim has been talking to EC fiber. I mean, basically was splitting Washington down some ridge. In Washington, in which part of it will be. EC fiber and the other part will be CD fiber. And that's what the discussion has been with them. So we'd have to point that out to Fred. In our, you know, scope with Fred, we have to tell him where. Where the boundary is, which. If Tim, you could find that out because there's a couple of ridges in Williamstown. Right. Well, there. I mean, in Washington, sorry, runtime. Yep. I know what you meant. Okay. Okay. So anything else on finances through the end of the year. Okay. For this next one, it occurs to me that I should have offered all of the committees a chance to update. So. If we could maybe just call this the committee update, but maybe we'll start with the communications committee, then go to business development. And then I don't think policy committee has actually met, but we do have a. Phil had a kind of a wish list to take from there. So start with communications committee. Chuck. Great. Yeah. So last meeting. We mostly focused on two areas of activities. One being the annual report and getting that in the state that we're talking about. And then we also focused on, you know, some of the funding options that you are seeing it now today. And the other talking about the marketing plans. And how we are going to go to market. With the, with some of the cares act funding options. We've been talking about in the grant funding options we've been talking about. Now that said, at the time, the money had not come through yet. Open question there for me is to. I think we've been talking about that for a long time. For our proposals, but before I get to that, we did essentially kind of talk about some things conceptually, but. Decide to table taking any action until we knew there was money to back up said actions. The other thing to note is we do have some in-flight design work already going. And. As Tim indicated, we have a lot of work to do. We've introduced some great print materials, door hangers, things like that, that go out and a couple of really clever ones actually that I think people around here will appreciate one, including a headline is your internet slower than SAP. I love, I just love that. However. The logo work I thought was not up to par. And so I have actually helped Tim engage with. A lot of brand and identity work. They're a very professional group of people who are also reasonably cost effective because they're sort of a coalition of freelancers that do it together rather than a tried and true agency with a ton of overhead. And so I pulled them into the mix, Tim, and they have ongoing discussions. But right now we're still just kind of sitting on the whole button waiting to make sure we have the money to pay them. I'm getting the thumbs up from David. So what I'd like to go ahead and do is make a motion. For a spend of up to $2,000 to come for that money to work on brand and identity. Is there a second? I saw David Healy second that. So $2,000 for brand and identity. Okay. And that those funds are coming out of the second bucket of Cairns Act funds. So that's to be correct. And it was indicated as one of the items we would proceed on in, in the request for funds. So it was clear. It was part of a larger kind of marketing package that I think the, the total amount was 20,000. Is that right, David? I don't have it in front of me, but I think you're right. redesign uh and and other things that are sort of dependent on this getting done first. Okay, any other discussion on this or questions for Chuck? I guess uh I have one. What does your timeline look like? So this is the first request. Are we going to need to meet next week or the week after so that we can kind of get the rest of the uh the funding out the door? Unless we want to pre-approve a package probably um though uh I think the business development committee is kind of running with some of the other aspects of it particularly the canvassing project um uh but for the website scope of work and the marketing print materials uh you know if we want to go ahead and approve the full package right now that would certainly streamline things uh but note uh actually let me let me ask Tim to weigh in because he's been managing that process on the on the RFPs. Tim where are we on that? Yeah so uh we do have two interested parties that would work together on the website and the marketing materials so um I think yeah kind of packaging them up as an approval for a not to exceed which fits within the proposal that we sent to the to the public service department probably makes sense to get things moving they they've been teed up they've already sent you know some ideas but uh um and they've been notified that you know things are close but I think yeah getting an approval tonight would would move things along quickly. So my my question to the rest of you is do you feel like you want to to approve the whole bucket and kind of let Tim and the communications committee um kind of handle this and take it from here or would you rather meet again next week um and then so we could you know be approving these things a bit more uh onesy twosy. I say give it to him tonight. I was going to say um and I I realized we need to get the money out the door so um I don't want to hold things up I just want to make sure we're not running a foul of our own policies around doing RFPs over certain value contracts and that kind of thing. So I think the $2,000 doesn't run a foul of that but we should yeah I mean if we have some if we have a bigger um we have a bigger bucket of money we should probably be publishing an RFP and actually have a process of vetting those folks. You know Jeremy the other thing is you got this money for five weeks how long can we delay but we should that's true but we should at least have some sort of open process so that we so that we get a public advertisement out there. So we know the folks that are interested but maybe there's some other folks interested too. It can be a streamlined process but as a public entity we do have to at least then we need to streamline it but we need to move. Yeah so so let's let's try to let's approve this then what's the not to exceed and what's the what's the deliverable that we had in the the grant request I also don't have it in front of me. So I don't have the amount in front of me however the scope was outreach and communications project project helps build CV Fiverr's ability to engage and communicate with the district and potential customers it has three linked elements when completed they'll become a key part of our education and subscriber management efforts to serve telehealth needs remote learners and remote workers and I can I can paste this for people as well provide the district with the necessary information understand the needs for telehealth remote learning and remote work we want to make sure the information collected will provide the needed guidance to the district to effectively meet these needs using this information we'll incorporate it into an expanded and revamped CV Fiverr website to better communicate our offering and needs the last element is to subscribe and purchase a software package that will assist us in managing our customer relationships tracking who we've contacted and combine this data with the identified needs. Okay so for all of the outreach and communications assistance which includes the canvassing and whatnot that that amount was 60 000 I don't know how you had broken that out or how you'd imagine breaking it out but if if if I'm hearing that 20 000 of that would go towards the work that you're talking about right now Chuck then I think that I will move that we I will move that we delegate responsibility to oh it's the right way to put this I move that we approve the expenditure of Jeremy real quick we do have a motion on the table right so are we now amending that emotion yeah I made the motion for two thousand dollars um can I just retract that motion in in light of where we're going sure if that if that makes sense okay I retract my prior motion is that everybody amenable to that screaming okay all right so do you do you want to make the motion then Chuck uh with the the new scope and the new dollar amount not to yeah I'm sorry I'm just I'm trying to desperately find the full dollar amount here so bear with me just a moment and David if you happen to know how to get to it that would be helpful if you could take a look as well yeah the only number I have right handy is the 60 k for all those tasks and then we're actually like we're using five thousand dollars from the previous round as well into that bucket and and so David I guess the question I would have is based on the canvassing RFP how I want to make sure that is a success so what what amount of the funds need to be allocated for that tim for c os and and you know I would argue that those should be the things that we allocate money towards first and use the remainder for the marketing activities because we'll be able to dial that I think in and out based on exactly what we want to accomplish a bit more I had said oh it's the canvassing I had set aside 20 000 and and then yeah and c os to stand that up is uh about 5 000 does that include the monthly fees through the end of the year well this year yes but not next year okay so we're at 25 out of 60 000 um I thought I remember seeing a more broken down budget as we were kind of passing this back and forth I did too so so tell you what so given that given given that the amount we've already been talking about doesn't put us above the pool that now seems available I think we can just constrain it at that at that point and frankly if there's an opportunity to spend some more for a good reason we can always come back and ask for it then so I make a motion uh that the communications committee is allocated up to 20 000 to spend on branded identity website revamp and other marketing collateral to be distributed to our community second okay moving things forward Yvonne got that one all right so um any other questions or comments about this motion looking to get this out the door what's the review it what's the review process like for some of this like I like I don't really have a problem from the expedition expediting of funds and everything else but you know the messaging and the general trend and the whatever it's not like I want to get into the weeds in detail either but it'd be nice to see I have some in ball on this in terms of you're just going to go off and start a new campaign and we as a board of just completely delegated authority right to the communications committee but go ahead Chuck my plan was that the communications committee would have to have uh votes and agreement on anything we do and then we would present a package back to the board um in order to get approval on kind of the general themes and and some of the obviously the logo is something we should all feel pretty good about and and so I would want everybody to weigh in on stuff like that so um definitely a review coming back through the board okay okay oh I mean continue I mean as long as that's like there then I'm kind of good so okay so real quick Chuck could you post um what exactly you want to spend the money on because I was going by a little bit quick yeah sure and sorry about the cars driving by so good all right uh lauri you had your hand up before yeah I just I just was curious what is the um the policy uh on the you know minimum or the maximum expenditure that doesn't require you know multiple bids and whereas this is this already triggered with 25 000 and then and we're assuming that there are going to be soliciting of multiple bids just wanted to clarify that yeah so I I thought it was 5000 I think that there was a couple thresholds um but yeah so I think bidding we're certainly with 20 000 we're certainly hitting the threshold for bidding so if there's if there's if we're going to be having 20 000 dollars go out the door then yes there should be a process whereby we at least have some advertisement to the public so other interested folks have a chance to weigh in but I'm gonna I'm gonna count on the communications committee just to keep things moving moving forward rapidly and Tim I'll I'll count on you and respectively sounds good yep and we are breaking that 25 up several different ways so but we'll do 20 or 25 I I moved 20 and that's what I'm putting in the text here okay yeah it was 20 okay any other questions the other 5k was for canvassing and that's the other 5k was for canvassing and that is going to be a separate approval sometime later yeah and that's going to be bigger than five yeah so canvassing was 20 20k 5000 dollars was for the c os software oh okay I'm sorry I missed that derp thank you it's all good okay anything else on this request from Chuck and the communications committee I did just put the text in the in the chat in case everybody wants to give it one last review or yeah let's take a peek thank you very much Chuck appreciate that okay everybody's ready to go with this all in favor of Chuck's motion please signify by saying aye opposed abstentions or folks who want a roll call excellent communications committee you have it anything else that's it from us thank you okay business development David I believe you have news sure the I'll cover a couple things here the grant funding update and the business development we were notified today or last night that we are well on David what sorry real quick grant funding update is the next agenda item correct but I'll so the cover okay yeah let's let's move on to that because it all it's all connected it's all connected okay so we heard from the department of public service the last night of this morning that we were approved for the the round two funding that we put in there now for those who are not familiar with what we put in we put in money the community the communications package fiver to the premise in Roxbury Northfield and fiver to the premise in more town they approved all of that whether we can spend the more town money is debatable because basic I'm going to pretend that we still can do it even though it may not happen the easy fiver says they can do the Roxbury Northfield line that we asked them to do for us and Tim has been negotiating with them on that and of course of this you folks missed the opportunity to rewrite this grant application five times as each day more than that you know each time they wanted us to add three other words to each section so that it was compliant with the legislation and I tried to fight back saying that we put that in our original grant application so I mean it wasn't like or anyway that's what over the damn I tried to stay nice to the whole thing and so it was rewritten a lot and poor Jeremy and myself had to go back and forth with the department at least at least a half dozen times um then yesterday we heard from Rob saying that oh if you could do more five at the premise we have more money and I'm not exactly sure what I want to do without what we should do with that since it's unlikely that we can make it all happen this year anyway the good news I sent an email to Rebecca which I can't remember her last name it's Congressman Welch's office this afternoon and she'll write back to me on an extension date and evidently it's Welch's highest priority to get an extension on the COVID funding attached as a rider to any bill he can find so so what you wanted me to do is you wanted me to send a series of bullets of what couldn't get spent if we didn't get an extension so I'll do that tomorrow morning so there's I mean there is some hope I don't know how cranky the Republicans are going to be in the Senate but if I know the way Congress works I mean they slip a one line into some of the bill that the Republicans want it probably happens but anyway that's where the extension might happen and we could then do the the five at the premise with the money we have I think that's sort of my update with the business development committee's meeting Thursday night we got I put out an RFP for Canva saying we got one official bid back and then a second possibility came in yesterday that well well the business development committee will look at it and will decide on Thursday night which way to proceed but I'd like to get authorization to spend up to 20,000 bucks out of that money to do the canvassing I'm not sure we're going to need it all but I'd like to have that authorization to have somebody with my commotion to that or I can make a motion that the business development committee that sounds like a motion to me David okay do you need some more language uh some motion that the business development committee be authorized to spend up to 25 or 20,000 dollars of the cares money for the canvassing effort yep that's it okay I'll second that dumb question do we do we have the money yes all right well hold on hold on so we don't have it not checking account have yes so you need to define this word have so so do we have the cash flow currently available to pay this bill should we need to yes we will be presumably once we do the fully executed grant agreement which should be coming this week probably tomorrow actually I might even see it tonight the fully executed grant agreement then it starts that you're talking about SAP Chuck this SAP-like process of getting the check in the mailbox at which point the the moment that I see it in the mailbox I am immediately in my car and driving over to the bank that's just because I'm because we will need to pay bills but I think as long as the folks that we're dealing with understand that the the we have the money for it as long as you define have in a particular way so but we should be able to we should be able to meet our financial obligations the the larger portion of that grant request was for the fiber to the premises stuff which as you might imagine is a rather larger rather larger outlay those we could not absorb on our own with what we currently have in the bank the outreach communication canvassing stuff we can okay so we have a motion and a second on David's request for $20,000 for canvassing the RFP went out we have one and a half responses that will be chewed on on Thursday night any questions feedback Henry yeah I just had a comment which is that I think that the each of the town delegates should be involved with the canvassing activities and that the company that selected be informed that they'll be coordinating or participating with the town delegates as they wish to participate so in other words I would like to be involved in the canvassing activity in my town for example so David and Tim can you communicate that we may have some delegates who are interested in participating to whoever we select excellent so and if any of you are interested in doing this I'm sure we'll be sending out an email with contact information from the folks doing the canvassing and then you can reach out to them directly so if they're going and hitting ducksbury on some Tuesday then you can know you know someone to talk to you about that then okay anything else on the 20,000 okay hearing none all those in favor of the canvassing outlay of $20,000 please signify by saying aye aye opposed abstentions or folks wanting a roll call vote hearing none motion passes unanimously you you have it business development committee anything else on grants or business development stuff David I can't think of anything right now in terms of other grant opportunities I haven't been paying attention to too many I'm happy that we have a new potential president that we may get some infrastructure money next year which would be the best of our worlds I don't know that's all that for me all right let's do Chuck and then Jeremy and Michael Chuck Jeremy Michael but David in in the conversations around the more town line and you're thinking that that may not be feasible being cautiously optimistic put it that way right is the problem there that um Weitzfield telecom sees it as risky to be able to complete the project by the timeframe required correct but they're more than willing to do it is there anything uh I or fellow more townians can do to apply pressure on them that you think would be helpful or should we let the process um work work it out there may be a couple things but any Michael probably knows that getting contractors out there to run fiber is not that easy right now right Michael um well this we're talking about more town yeah they do their own work they do their own work so they said that would be the pressure point when you get them to let you hire somebody else to run it run the fiber because we would only fiber I think Chuck what they did they did express that the make ready conditions were uh much more involved than what they had hoped as far as uh tree work and a lot of the lines being um inaccessible or difficult and so that complicated the timeline in which they could meet the expectations okay so you get the more town chainsaw crew out and you guys can go trim along all the rights of way just so or that that's like chainsaw helicopters that come through have you seen those oh wow that was incredible yeah um so Michael I do see you down there but uh Jeremy was first um so yeah I was just gonna ask we've got these two projects um it sounds like they're maybe not at the stage where we would approve them um when do we think that is likely to happen and are we gonna have to have another meeting to vote on the terms that Tim is is hammering out with Whittesfield and EC fiber you definitely have to have another meeting yeah yeah in particular with with the Roxbury stuff so the moment that we know that we can pull the trigger I expect that I will hear from Tim and and EC fiber and we'll be able to move forward and when I have that I will I'll call a special meeting it'll probably be reasonably short but it'll be one of those 24 hour notices so I'll just make sure we get it done right quick and then so they can hit the ground they can do their make ready work and start start rolling okay thanks sure all right so there was a question or a comment in the chat so so the governing board adopts policies budgets and makes contract awards not committees committees don't sign contracts so um I will typically sign the contract on behalf of the governing board but we have authorized we have authorized the committees as the governing board we have delegated that authority to the committees to enter into and negotiate those contracts so that's uh something that we have done in the past and we've uh delegated that to individuals even in the past will the contracts come to the full board after before they're signed no probably not I will sign them I will sign them as the you know as the cv fiber legal representative but I'm going to leave it up to the to the committees to sort that okay all right so I'm going to add Sivan I'm going to add you to the end we have Michael so I just want to circle back to um deadline extensions of the CARES Act money um a couple things one David did you get the impression that Rebecca Ellis needs to hear from as many people as possible about uh items that may not be completable by the deadline she would like to know that I'm sure you have some of your own right I think if all the CUD would put their list of what was problematic to her she might appreciate it okay um so the the broader comment I want to make is that if if this fabulous extension does come to pass and I am not optimistic but if it does and it is a significant period of time it could really change um what we prioritize what's cv fiber prioritizes what the department prioritizes um projects that we've decided were just impossible to do suddenly become possible and so we should be prepared to be flexible if the money is still available so that's my comment okay Sivan you're muted um so if people were really interested in input on these contracts and things they could attend the committee meetings right yeah okay so and Chuck will be announcing the committee meetings and stuff right okay okay and similarly business development David will be announcing those meetings and as a matter of fact this meeting coming up on this Thursday I expect that you're going to do quite a lot of work on this subject in a couple days okay anything else um anything just just to call something out there um we actually have some of the marketing stuff as a line item in the agenda on this Thursday's business development committee meeting so you know one of those scenarios where the lines are pretty gray here as to where responsibility of one committee stops and the other starts so I would encourage anyone who's interested in the marketing facets to also attend this Thursday's business development committee sounds good uh anything else on grants funding moving forward Tim I have a quick question for you the additional that additional source of funding from usd a role development did you get to any get any sense of whether that makes sense for us to go after in terms of supplementing the infrastructure like the veto loan and the other stuff that we're looking at doing next year it you know it could be a fit the the big thing is you know coming up with a contiguous area and then they do have some funky criteria as far as free service um for certain community spaces for up to three years that you have to provide the other is anywhere within your area if they find um any service higher than than 10 they don't approve it and they come out and field check things prior so it's something to be mindful of when you're drawing those those areas it's probably similar to to drawing the the voting zone so um it's got a few you know funky but it is uh you know it is a grant that could fit based on some of the some of the money that that would be available all right Jeremy I mean I guess one thing that occurs to me is what would happen if we applied for an area and then say wireless came in and in the meantime built there and serve that area at faster than 10 would we then get in trouble for something that was not present maybe even when we were doing the construction yeah I don't I didn't get into that much detail I don't know I mean you know that has to be submitted by the end of this year and then they wouldn't make decisions until probably second quarter of next year though clearly things could transpire in there that are outside of our control so I don't know the answer to that um I didn't ask that to them all right Michael you have some experience with us USDA grants how would that work my experience with them is that they base their decisions on the conditions at the time of the offering of the funding and not the time that you commence doing the work so that the rules are established in advance and then you stick to those and if someone builds something afterwards so be it it doesn't affect the grant and those are the nominal conditions not the actual conditions given that I mean no no it's never no never that way it's it's it's the conditions that they list and their rules which are based on whatever predictions they're on at the moment okay Henry I might have to ask my question I always ask and know that there's chance that no one's going to be able to say anything but um are doff and can you say whether or not we bid on anything um no no there's a there's an extended there's an extended period of time where that silent rule is is maintained so well you know well we'll all hear about how everything shook out when everybody can hear about it and when is that just so I I won't bother you again Michael do you remember the the date of that there is there is no date at the date the the occasion will be 30 days after the close of the auction and the long form applications are due due to be submitted but we don't know what the date of the close of the offer will be so we can't have a date yet okay I think in the last meeting you said that could be you know January or February of next year is that correct possibly I did say that and I think that I I have learned since that it will be sooner than that um based on the schedule the auction is proceeding at so probably it would be the end of December early January or something like that would when the quiet period would end okay thanks for thanks for continuing to ask that Henry it's uh it's good to know oh all right in December next time they probably want to wait till the January meeting unless we have a last minute you know December 19th meeting or something before we have to you know pour the pot of gold back into the state pot um all right anything else on grant uh grant or other funding so tim said he's uh working on the vita stuff um the department of public service is not even uh as I understand is not finalized the process for requesting the matching funds yet but they they know that we're all kind of ready to to get that and it's going to be it's looking like that's going to be right around the beginning of the year okay um I think that brings us to the end of our agenda I'm just going to go in order of the video that I see here for roundtable um Andy I'm good thank you Frank I'm good thanks Frank shavon um fine thanks uh Greg uh thank you David for all the work and Jeremy on that application it's great we won something now we gotta spend it Jeremy oh I'm sorry uh a little distracted I just wanted to thank uh Michael specifically for helping me convince the town of plainfield to get this public router installed so that I can actually be on this meeting right now because otherwise I wouldn't be able to do it with my home connection you know um you know I always got a whole bunch of stuff going on and there's not enough bandwidth so anyway thanks Michael appreciate it story of our lives right David you're up next all right josh I'm also thank you cut the right now uh I almost said thanks all right right yeah my question in the chat was your funding bucket for a project manager in 2021 is there a process for extending Kim or Richard in RFP what are we going to do we really only have a couple meetings if you know at the end of the year what's in the pipeline for funding and this is probably not a question we can answer now but it's something that you do address soon so there is no funding for 2021 if it gets extended then then we may have options um otherwise we're looking at the project funds for the the Vita loan and the matching funds for a person to act in a similar manner as you know as Tim with that project to essentially drive that project general contractor sort of sort of person um is there a process for extending timber issuing an RFP sure let's make it up I mean it's like any other contract that we might um that we might engage in or extend it's something that's going to come before the governing board and that we have to decide how to go how to go from here how's that great that's it for me all right thanks right uh Jerry hey I just want to give kudos to Jeremy uh you know doing this out of your car man I'm with you I'm with you 110% thank you so much really appreciate you all right I gotta get it done somehow right all right Chuck you heard my voice enough thank you all right Tom yeah uh thanks everybody for all your work I wish I could do more to help but I really appreciate all the work you guys do all right Tim I'm good okay John Russell you muted yourself we didn't hear if you said something so if you have something to add please feel free to unmute and go from there Michael um Jerry made my comment I was gonna say that I really appreciate Jeremy working from the subway I'm kind of used to it I used to bring up the salt thing from my car so yeah sorry what was that nothing nothing just hang on to that strap so you don't fall down yeah exactly the ocean handle all right Henry I I really appreciate the you guys working all those iterations on getting the grant in and thanks very much for that and I just wanted to let you know that I'm going in for rotator cuff surgery in a couple weeks and so I may be offline for a while I'm gonna have my alternate try to start attending the meetings but before Thanksgiving I'm having the surgery so oh no I'll get well soon I'll be your cover quick thank you yeah yeah here's to a smooth and uneventful surgery good luck Larry I'm all said thank you thank you for all your work sure um so I I wanted to put my thanks out there to the folks at the Department of Public Service for putting in an insane number of hours and even though it was irritating with all of the changes that they were asking us to do I can't imagine what it was looking like you know with them juggling you know however many of these things and saying nope you got to do this the Fed's way they say we just want to get this done we just want to do our jobs but they were on top of it and responding to emails at bizarre times and working lately into the night so they're not here to hear this but I just wanted to to put it out there thanking Rob and Clay and that whole team for moving this together and helping us to get to get at these funds and with that I will declare us adjourned at 7 10 p.m. and it was it was early I was uh I'm like a profit right I got my my profit beard going on I was just gonna say it's the beard thanks Jeremy all right yeah see you later everybody thanks everyone have a good evening everybody