 Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? I would like to add a quick one right at the beginning about the potential of Walden. We talked about this a bit before, the potential of Walden joining. Just to get everybody's sense of whether that's something that we should encourage or proceed with or what have you. Okay. Okay. Well, yeah, we'll have an item to discuss in a moment. Okay. Hearing no other additions or changes to the agenda. Let's move on to public. Actually, you know what? No, I do have another one. I have some bills that we have to pay. We'll do that after the discussion of Walden. I'm sorry. I need public comments and items that are not on the agenda. Okay. Hearing no public comment. Moving on to Walden. I was approached or I got a call over the weekend. I only got the voicemail message today about the possibility of Walden joining. They had a select board meeting last night, so I didn't get this in time, but Michael, I heard your vote of interest. Any other thoughts, Michael or anyone? Well, oh, I'm sorry. Were you asking me or something? Yeah. Well, you or anybody else? Well, one comment I'll make is that Walden has a rec substation located in it. And for a few other network reasons, I think it's possibly a strategic town for us. And they're hesitant to join the NKCUD, but they need someone. So, and they tie in really well with Cabot. So I think we should support it if they're interested. Yeah, the other Jeremy, I talk, I talked to Lori Augustiniak, who's part of the CCA here in Cabot and lives in Walden and asked her about it. And I got some reluctance and weirdness a little bit about that, but I let her know. So I don't know where, you know, some of the people who've been been talking and expressing interest, but I think it makes a lot of sense to. Okay. Any other thoughts about Walden one way or the other? Is there maybe I should say, is there any reason why we shouldn't go with them? I mean, aside from the ever creeping larger requirement for a quorum. And that sort of thing. I mean, we needed 10 for tonight, which which we got soon enough, but any. So my hearing kind of general silent consensus that we should kind of just see what they want to do. I will, I will take that not not hearing any sort of major objections or whatever. I will give them a call back tomorrow and see what the plans are. But Jeremy, I do this is Ken, I do think might want to have a kind of a checklist with regards to what we're looking for or what some maybe threshold attributes are. You know, Michael mentioned that they, they might fit well with within our, you know, they have assets that might fit well within the system. That's great. But if we could, if we could maybe a little bit objectively prior to the next town coming in, identify what it is that is consistent with our build out that I think that's going to be helpful. Do you have any suggestions for criteria that we should be looking at in particular or just ask them to make the case. Yeah, I, there, not, I can't word them very well but a lot, but some of it's going to be system. Another words, what part relates to our relationship with Washington Electric. If we firm up that relationship, and they have significant Washington Electric distribution geography, that would be one so it would keep us from going, you know, south. I think it goes much further south than Roxbury. Anyway, so that that was that's one of them. And it may be something about their relationship to other CUDs if they, if they're geographically close to an existing one I think we might want to be asking some. That makes sense. I don't have to get it some more thought but I think God didn't give it that thought next month. The other one I have the the sort of included that or not but you know we could use that as a factor, given that it's more expensive the less dense it is. I'm sure. I do say it doesn't have to be but it was another possibility. Any other thoughts. Yeah, Michael. Yeah. Yep. The other thing is there are very few potential expansion towns left. The ones the ones that border us are either Waysfield Champlain Valley, telecom towns, or AC fiber towns, or any case CUD towns or LaMoyle County towns. There are two left that haven't joined a CUD that border us. Stowe and Waterbury are two that are still possible. And I generally am not inclined to either of those but you know if they apply we should consider them on sort of on the basis of Ken's criteria. I kind of have that many more applicants. And I think Walden has been on a tightrope for about a year thinking about which one they wanted to join, if any, because they weren't very active about it. Is there somebody on the phone that wants to say anything? I see a caller one. Jeremy, this is Alan. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you Alan. Go ahead. Okay, great. I came in just a few minutes late so I hope I'm not, I hope I didn't miss something, but it seems to me one of the things we want to consider is whether there are any providers already operating within a town that is also asking to join us as a CUD. That seems to me a really important consideration and what made me think of it was the example of Stowe because Stowe already has several carriers who I think are providing pretty high-speed internet there. But it's something we ought to know before we make a decision about whether to add another town to our roster of responsibilities to get high-speed internet everywhere in the town too. Fair enough. Siobhan? So Walden, I'm looking at a map. Walden is next to Hardwick and Danville. Aren't they in one of the other, like the NEK one? So do we know why they are thinking about us rather than? They're typically associated with Cabot in a lot of ways, but they must be associated with Danville. I mean, they, you know, it makes sense to be in one of the other. My actual worry is that they aren't in one of the other. They should be in one of the other. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, thanks. Anything else on Walden? Okay. Let's see. Moving on to some bills to pay. I will forward you the invoices at some point later tonight. Again, an invoice from Peter Blum. Let me go and find that. That was to do the work, the drafting of the wireless application. And that is in the amount of $5,387.50, five, three, eight, seven, 50. And that was approved up to $6,000 by the executive committee a week and change ago. A week ago, Friday. And then I have $108, I believe it is for the LinkedIn resumes that we got. You pay per resume. And I set it as close to $100 as I could. Unfortunately, it was almost totally a bust. We'll talk about that more in the, in that agenda item about the executive director. So, yeah, what else am I looking at? Jeremy Matt also submitted his monthly stipend for the clerk stuff that we have been paying him. And then a question about, actually, you know what, not a question, I have a note here for myself. I think we submitted the, we submitted Fred's invoice and deliverables. And we're just waiting to hear back from, we need to hear back from DPS in terms of the broadband innovation grant, and we'll have that ready to go. Fred has another invoice, though, that will be coming due for the wireless work. The wireless study was 22-ish thousand, as I recall. I have not opened the bank account, haven't looked at the balance lately. Were we going to wait until we get the 100,000? I mean, we made his contract contingent on 100,000. So are we going to wait until we receive that to write that check? We may have enough cash in the bank. It would be close. Any changes? Then what if we don't get it? It's what's our, I mean, are we guaranteed that? Yeah, well. There will be hell to pay if we don't get it. Okay, then yeah, I don't have a problem. Well, I think if the conditions that you had with him as it was contingent, then we should stick to that. He agreed to it? Okay. All right. Not only if he comes up. Okay, David? Yeah, why haven't we gotten the 100,000 from the state? That's a little weird. As I understand it, it's all like the federal rules and encumbrances that go along with doling out that money. We had to submit different documentation than we had to for the broadband innovation grant. So we had to submit a, what a W9. Correct, yeah. And they had to know about, you know, what our, you know, what last year's income was and these sorts of things. As far as they've told me, they have all the information that they need from us to proceed. So as far as I know, they're working through whatever sort of bureaucracy and process that they've got on their side, but we should be seeing it soon. Okay, so I'm going to move that we approve the payment of Peter Blum's invoice for $5,387.50. And my forthcoming request for reimbursement in the amount of not to exceed $108 for the LinkedIn job advertisement. Second. Okay, moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Yeah, I think whether we told into your aisle it was contingent or not. That $100,000, that's no bearing on their work. It wasn't like to be a IG where they had to produce acceptable submission for the department before the money would be released. If we happen in the account, we should probably pay them. Okay. So I wonder if we should amend it to include that one as well. Or if you can wait, if you can wait one minute, I will just go and look and tell you what our balance is. Yeah, that's a good idea. Okay, so if you can stand by, we won't have to have any sort of contingency plan. While he is looking that up, I would just like to point out that in my short tenure on this board, there are already been a couple of opportunities that have come up rather last minute that required cash to take advantage of. And so, you know, keeping some cash on hand for such opportunities is probably wise. Agreed, but that $100,000 is overdue. We should see it any day now. Okay, so I'm looking at a balance of $29,449.50, 15 cents, I'm sorry. And so then minus Jeremy Matt's stipend, the LinkedIn reimbursement, and Peter Blum's $5,300. I think we would have, we'll have enough to pay $22,000, so shall I just. I have a calculator open if you want to list out the amounts. Sure. Okay, 29449.15, that's for our current balance, minus 108, minus 5387, and 50 cents. And let me look up Jeremy Matt's invoice. Stand by invoice. Hold on. $300. How much does that leave us Chuck? What was the amount on the interim? I think it was 22 even. Let me. Okay, if it's 22 even, that would leave us with $1,653.65. Okay. Right away, advance some half of it. Okay. Thoughts? So it's $20,220. I think paying half would be wise, but we don't want to bank out. Sorry, with the amount paying in in full would leave us with $3,433.65. Okay. And as I'm as I'm looking at this, there is also an outstanding invoice to give us some clarification about the RTC, which I'm still waiting on some clarification about, but there's, yeah, there's at least $5,000 going there. Do you have any idea when you're going to give that clarification? Let's see, I think I asked, when did I ask David, like last week, beginning of last week? So I don't know. I mean, we could probably pay the we could probably pay the $5,000 and then sort out the, you know, the second invoice we got, which I wasn't expecting to get. We may have been miss-built is what is what I'm saying and I'm trying to we're trying to sort that out. If we if we sent Fred a check for half, then that would still give us a buffer to pay the the $5,000 for NRTC. I will amend the motion to advance into aisle and even $10,000 towards what we owe them. Second. Second. Okay, there's been a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion on the amendment? I think it's a reasonable step. Okay. So we have an amendment on the table to amend the original motion to add a 10,000 payment to interisle again, hoping that we're going to get the $100,000 rather soon to pay the remainder. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor of the amendment signify by saying aye. Aye. If there are any opposed or that would like a roll call on that, let me know. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. The original motion now is to pay to reimburse me for the $108 not to exceed for the LinkedIn ad $5,387.50 to Peter Blum and $10,000 to interisle as the first nearly half of the outstanding invoice. Any further discussion on that? Okay. Hearing none, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody like a roll call for that? Okay. Motion is unanimous and passes. Thank you very much. I will get those out probably tomorrow. Okay. Moving along, let me get back to my agenda. So the next item for the agenda is a subcontractor policy. Subcontractor policy I sent to you earlier today. I got a couple of a couple of suggestions, one from Jerry Diamantidis, who's not with us tonight. He suggested to take items kind of modified his suggestion and I took items two and three under requirements and I made them an A and a B under one so it was more of a stylistic formatting. And then I added another bit to number one. Just thinking about the different sorts of subcontract, subcontracting that might happen. And in number one, I have a line that says all contractors shall disclose any and all subcontractors and consultants quote subcontractors, and I added a phrase here material to their contracted work to the CV Fiber Fiber Governing Board. So some of this language was borrowed from a policy that Ray sent to me. And I thought that that was that was pretty good. I did get some feedback saying they disagreed with portions of it and thought that we should go more with. Let me go back more with like the language that we did with the broadband innovation grant. I don't, I don't have that feedback in front of me. So the broadband innovation grants, I'm going to paste the quote into the chat. And if it looks like we should keep this shorter, something more like what I just posted into the chat. If we should do that instead, we can certainly modify this and take a crack at it. Next meeting. Otherwise, I'm happy to hear any feedback that folks have. Yeah, Siobhan. So what somebody else proposed was that we do just this language that you pasted into the chat instead of what was in the draft that you've sent us. I think to substantially replace it with something like that. Okay, I'm not in favor of that. I like the one that has been drafted. I prefer it. Yeah, I agree with what. Why? Well, I think this is a little, my comment was a couple of them and one of them and we should have a contracting policy of which there's a subcontracting element to it, as opposed to focusing just on subcontractors. And I think I need a little more work from this. And then I took exception to the clause regarding somebody who was a CUD discipline person, never being able to get a contract. I don't think that's needed. And I think it may open us up to some issues later on, but you guys, you know, I don't want to do things in the heat of the night. But I think we ought to be careful when we do those kinds of language. So I don't think we would be adopting it, not withstanding the date I put at the end there. I don't think we're adopting this tonight, but I would like us to consider this as like a first read. So if there are edits that we have or any other feedback that I can incorporate, I would be happy to hear them. Michael? I read it really carefully. And my first impulse was to edit it, amend it. And I amended it the best I could, but ultimately I wasn't happy with it. I think it opens up a bunch of vulnerabilities for us. It also is overly regulatory for us. I mean, there are circumstances where there will be contractors who have subcontractors that we don't really need to be reviewing. And it's just adding more encumbrance on the board and on the contractors. And I know the initial impulse, I would probably eliminate that clause as well. I forget which one it was. I think it was number two. C2. Yeah, and I think making things mandatory as opposed, you know, there's a lot of shouts and musts. I think if we're going to keep it, it needs to have more flexibility. But I'm leaning towards David's suggestion that we have a comprehensive contracting policy that this is part of and is more general. Our initial concern was about proprietary information getting out. That's another issue separate from this. And there's other ways of dealing with it, I think. So I'm not, although there's lots of craftsmanship in the thing and then I amended it and made it even prettier, I'm not partial to it at the moment. Tim, I see your hand. Yeah, I just wanted to ask, would this be best to, I mean, it's a good document and good revisions, talk and everything. But would this be best with a legal expert kind of inking this in a more protective way for both contractors and subcontractors? If we want to pay someone to do that. I just didn't know if it was in our best interest to make sure it's not forgetting about anything that could leave the organization vulnerable. So if, I mean, if someone's willing to write the overall contractor policy and incorporate this in there or some variation, I think we need to have one of those. And I think we need to have one of those immediately. I mean, within the next few weeks, because we are going to be engaging in a contract, hopefully quite soon. And I'm hoping that we can have elements of this, even though it's not a current policy that covers everything incorporated into any new contracts that we sign with, for example, you know, the new, or potentially new project manager. So if anybody wants to step up and do some of that work or go find a template or modify something that's out there, yeah, please, please do that. This is, this was my, this was my crack at it. And yeah, feel free to run with this and go in whichever direction you like. I saw your handshub on. Yeah. I guess I'm going to address the gorilla. It's there. It's not just about proprietary information. It's about ensuring a certain level of comfort with the people who are going to be working on our plans and our actual work. And I think it's a valid concern that if somebody's membership on the board has been rescinded for cause. That they've kind of, that we shouldn't be obligated to work with them if we don't want to. And that we shouldn't want to work with them because they were rescinded for cause. And, and I'm concerned because it, I feel like it's naive to think that we wouldn't necessarily be targeted. Because we're unimportant or we're small or this is a little state. I think it's, and I don't see this as necessarily, but I get, I do, I appreciate the, does this put us in a strange legal situation? I don't know. I know that. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm done. Yeah, I'll be even stronger in that I don't like the document when we have a relationship with a contractor and it will use the recent experience as the example. We hired Fred, and I think the product from Fred was excellent. And I don't know if the person we're not avoiding talking about by name was contracted to Peter, but also the product by Peter was excellent. And one of the things about, about, you know, providing a contract is we want to vet that organization and the work that they do. And in both cases, if indeed he was contracted, subject to both cases, and I don't know if he was. They knew damned well who they were working with. And the product that we received was a high quality product. That's what I'm interested in. I do not want to micromanage contracts, because we had a history and I believe me. I'm not going to, I'm not going to defend the individual that we're not speaking of. He's a pain in the ass and David and I have been working with him for more than 30 years. And he's a pain in the ass. But, but contractors, you know, we're a small world, and if he can provide them a service and allow them to provide a quality product. I'm, I'm not going to get in their way. So, I, yeah, and I read this in it, and I'll say it reads petty. Because I, especially if people understand what we're trying to do, it's petty, and we got to get over that part of our history. So, I definitely do not agree with the direction of that document. So, if I can address that because I that petty comment is, is addressed to me, and that's fine. But I think, I think there's an honesty gap. I would say what's more petty is when you have behind the scenes emails saying make sure that Jeremy's not CC'd, make sure that Jeremy doesn't know I'm working on this. You know, that, that's petty. And I will not defend that individual for being petty. Hold on. But, but Ken, you were part of this. You were engaged and you were not sharing information that would have, I would have expected you to share, frankly. So there's an honesty gap. And this is, this was my attempt again. Let's massage it. Let's modify it. This is my attempt to make sure that we have, we don't have honesty gaps and that we don't have information gaps with the people that we contract with. Yeah, I don't feel that I was being dishonest in any way shape or form. I received that email as you did. And he, he, I'll say, he put that clause in there as he does so many times because he wishes to avoid being exposed. And I've seen that literally 100 times and you're right, I don't go telling everybody that the pieces of work that he's involved with. He, as you folks may know, he has crafted much of the legislation that has directed our work. And I have not told a lot of people that he is crafting that legislation because I know their reaction, you know, that that's four strikes against him and therefore four strikes against the product. I'm a great believer in looking at the quality of the product. Michael. Let's suppose that I'm going to pick on you Greg, Greg Kelly and the, the powers that be in Barry have a falling out. And they remove him from our board out of spite, even though we think Greg is a cracker jack great guy and we would like to keep working with him. This policy would forbid us from doing that. And that's what I was looking at when I was looking at it. I wasn't looking at it in terms of the individuals. I was looking at it as policy and how it works and whether it's appropriate or not. And that's what, that's why I had an objection to that. It's mandatory and it's very specific and I don't, I, I don't see the value of it in a policy. I can see when we're negotiating with a contractor, we might have certain requirements for that contract, particularly if we know of some relationships. But to have every contractor come to the board and say, I'm going to use this, this long maintenance crew and this cleaning crew and these people who look at polls and these people who do that. It's cumbersome and I don't know that it's necessary as long as we get them to promise to protect our information. And, and, and we have the right to request information as opposed to require that every subcontractor be voted on by the board. I just think it, I don't have an objection to us having some control over subcontractors. I just have an objection to going that far. I guess that's what I'm at. Okay. So I can, I can agree with that. I can agree with that. I would be happy with just clause two, because I'm talking about, we're talking about somebody who did harm to the board. We're not just talking about, oh, we don't like him or, oh, he's icky or he's a pain in the ass. He did us harm. And that has consequences. And one of those consequences should be that they don't get to work with us. They don't get to work with our contractors because they harmed us. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you. No, other way around. Reverse that. Can I answer that? And I respect that the problem is you're over focusing on the harm. And you're generalizing the benefit you still may get from the individual, even if they're just like, and it's hard to generalize that in a way that you do in a policy document. And they're putting us in a weird spaces organization, and you're also empowering the individual you just like, because you're over inflating their negative value and threat. We need to focus on what we're doing as an organization, the work products, and the contracts we have and generalized processes in place that lead to success and move on. I have really been struggling with how to express this in a way that doesn't immediately set all of you on edge. I've kind of touched on this in the past in meetings. But in my opinion, it is continuing to work with people and not giving them consequences for their actions that makes them continue to behave in such ways. And continues to let them to harm because as long as they can make themselves useful, as long as there's a few people who are willing to stand up and say, yeah, you know, he's kind of a pain in the ass. But boy, he does good work. It gives them permission to keep doing those things that they do. And this is not just, you know, this grant is kind of, it's not like he was talking to someone or anything. But when it was discovered, you know, I was at the meeting, several of you were at the meeting when this was discovered. And I remember what happened and what was said and what wasn't said. There's never been any expression of regret in writing for what happened or anything, no attempt at restitution. And so I see no reason to think that there's any change except so this is so he does good work, but other people do good work. Is he the only person who does good work. It's, I just feel like if there's no consequences for this, then it just it doesn't never mind. We will, yeah, Phil, and then we're going to move on to the next thing. I have to agree with Sharon about this. I think that, you know, continuing to use someone or either directly through a contract or subcontract who falls into that category is kind of like positive reinforcement for bad behavior. And it's certainly nothing that I would support and would prefer to see the kind of policy that Jeremy's actually drafted here that's that doesn't have a lot of shouts and do's and don'ts. Remember policy can always be waved or it can be modified if in fact we feel that it's too stringent but we, you know, we do have to start somewhere and I generally like that first draft is one. Yeah, the term that maybe needs to be changed a little bit, maybe needs to be depersonalized, but I think the intent of it is the right place for us to be. And I see David shaking his head. Okay. So, you know, so I, David, yeah, I just say we're all we can all have our own opinion. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I think Jeremy, as you said, this is probably a first 3D we're going to do some work on this and bring it back for final consideration at another meeting so we can all sit on it for a while. Okay. Thanks, Phil. Let's move on discussion of state and federal funding, including auctions and line extensions. This is an item that Alan wanted me to bring up and I, and I will just briefly mention. You probably all saw that the northern border grant that we applied for. We did not get that. The wireless grant that we applied for is being counted is being included in round two. If it is not funded. I was told explicitly it will be, it will be funded, it will be reviewed for round three. I will tell you the amount. I did not. I sort of collapsed exhausted after a crazy long day on Friday. Let me see if I can find. Oh, find that 425 I think 465 it had to be bumped up because the numbers that when I when I re ran the numbers with Fred's model. It was it was slightly different. I just did the dotting eyes crossing teas and I found out it wasn't 425 when I went back and ran his the capital expense spreadsheet thing that he had. So it was a scaled down. So the project team agreed on a scaled down proposal that was not quite so ambitious and that would only require us to work with cloud Alliance. It only had us putting up our own polls so not citing any sort of actual not putting any radios up on polls or structures that were owned by other entities. These would be all all brand new. Alan anything else that you want to talk about with this I have a couple other kind of fill in the blank sort of thing but I Yeah, let me just you can hear me. Okay. Yep. So I asked Jeremy to put this on because I've begun to worry. As the VT digger article sort of suggested that the CUDs are either inadvertently or inadvertently being used as fall guys when something might go wrong with how this is going to work out for the state. I think it's a scenario that if my worst nightmare has become true, it could lead to CUDs falling apart simply because we begin to feel like we're skeletons with no meat and yet people still are going to be picking at our ability to put some meat on our bones. And I feel that way because of I think what I've described before is going on in a portion of Worcester where there's an individual who's started an effort to try to get at least 10 people together to encourage Comcast to extend their lines, pass their houses so they can connect up the Comcast and use the $3,000 incentive from the state to get $30,000 to Comcast. And those are exactly some of the addresses that I know we had hoped to pick up when we do a build out on West Hill in Worcester. So when I think about a specific circumstance that's happening in my town, when I see that VT digger has actually put together an article and they posted online that flat out said the CUDs are feeling really squeezed and like they might end up having a more difficult job than anybody realized. It really made me begin to think that is this an existential moment for those of us who are trying to use a public mechanism to see that broadband is provided to all rural areas and are part of the world. You know, we haven't even talked about what the impact of the Spacelink program which apparently is moving forward as far as I can tell what that might be on the whole thing. All of this boiled down to me. Whenever I get to a point like this, I try to make myself think if I were a journalist what would I write as a report of where we're at right now? And I think that actually would be a practical thing to do because I feel like we need to report to our communities what we've been up to, what we've learned, what we're trying to do. You know, it's news that we did not get the Northern Borders grants. It's news that we're applying for the wireless grants. It's news that we're continuing with our plans to still try to provide service throughout our area. But I think we need to get the word out and to let people know that we still exist and we're still operating and we still have the plan that we've told them many times before we have. The last thing I wanted to say is I actually didn't realize that there were two levels of auctions going on. I realized there was the FCC federal auctions but I didn't realize the state was also running auctions. And I have to tell you, I have just become so cynical about the state's ability to carry through on a mission of providing high speed Internet to all parts of Vermont. This has been going on for almost 15 years now and it just doesn't seem to be getting any better when mechanisms are set up that really make it difficult for public entities like us who are committed to the public responsibility of getting Internet to everybody when our job appears to be made more difficult by the rules of some of the grant programs or auctions that the state has set up. So I'll stop. That's why I wanted this item put on the agenda. If nothing else, I think we ought to figure out a way to have something drafted that we can all use to send out to community members via front porch forum or something like that. So I have two quick things before I call on Ken and Michael and Chuck. The first of all, the journalist that wrote this digger article was citing an old, old set of comments. This is something that we sent in in response to the emergency broadband action plan, which the department put together quite quickly. And that was supposed to inform how the legislature was going to react to this and our response to that also informed how they responded to this. I suspect Ken will be able to provide us a bit more context in terms of providing information out to our communities. Again, all volunteers, you know, last week was more than a full time job doing this for me personally, and I'm sure it was for several other people as well. And there's not that much more, you know, blood to be squeezed out of the stone. That said, Project Manager. Sounds like a wonderful first thing to get the Project Manager acquainted with the communities and say, hey, we're doing these things. Put something together so we can make sure that everybody gets this out to the community, you know, by Friday or whatever sort of arbitrary deadline we put there. So Ken, Michael, then Chuck. Yeah, so the Telecom advisory board met today and tomorrow the Public Service Department will release the first round of awardees. And I encourage you all to take a look at that list and be encouraged by it. You know, I can't provide the details, but be encouraged by it. I think it positions our application. You'll get a sense of the relationship between our application and those applications that are awarded. Second is, and I don't know exactly when this is, but hopefully within the week, the department's also going to provide a half million dollars to a consultant to help with emergency planning or recovery planning. And one of the emphasis in that activity is to support CUDs. One of the topics, and it's kind of my pet topic, is the relationship between establishing stronger fixed wireless solutions and the ultimate build out of fiber. And I'm hoping that this consultant can work with the CUDs to help us recognize a path or a strategy or some principles to allow for and encourage that medium term path where folks may be getting improved fixed wireless signal, but not to the conclusion of them getting a fixed solution, a fixed wired solution. And then in terms of the auction, the auction has no basis. I mean, the auction was an idea. There is no funding and I don't think the Public Service Department is going to pursue that auction unless they get 100 million dollars, which they're not going to get from the legislature for sure. If they get it from Congress, I think reopens the question as to what the auction auction really is in the relationship to CUDs. I do believe the Public Service Department has a commitment to CUDs. Again, the line that I appreciated Commissioner Tierney voicing was that the CUDs can play the same role that the national level carriers played in terms of telephone service, we are the carrier of last resort. And what that means is we get the public subsidy to provide connections to all of those places that are economically challenging to assist. So again, I think she carries that philosophy with her that that's a role at CUDs play. And so I think some of the pieces, you know, they're working towards but I'm not nearly as discouraged by some of the recent activities as I've been with activities a few months ago. So again, keep your eyes and ears open for the announcements tomorrow. But again, I'm encouraged by what those announcements represent. Okay, Michael. And also I posted something in the chat if you want to take a peek at that. So, I understand Alan's frustration. And, and unfortunately that's sometimes what journalism can do. The purpose of that article that got widespread view was to advance the idea that the NEK collaborative is pushing forward and wants to have some influence on some policy. And so they brought up as both Ken and Jeremy said, they brought up some old policy that may may become real at some point, and pointed out that that policy is probably not best for the communities. That it's not best for the CUDs or the small providers that it might advantage the big providers. And that's what I believe Alan was seeing and was worrying about. I think the purpose of the article was to influence the policy makers, the legislators to move away from that. And it probably had some of that effect. But it also had some errors in the article. You know, those of us who are really in the know about this stuff, often see that there's some misunderstandings. Reporters are not experts in all the fields they report on. And they do their best. And so that article wasn't a perfect representation of the situation. And I'm sorry it had a depressing effect. There may be a reverse auction. It might be really wonderful if only community based providers can participate. Or it might be even better if CUDs are exempted from it or given direct grants, which is something we recommended in the legislature. We'll see. We don't have the state, as Ken said, we just don't have that money. So it's not going to happen. That auction is not happening until Congress appropriates billions, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure. And until the Senate flips, that's not going to happen. So we have to wait. I share Ken's optimism. I think we are moving in the right direction. It's frustratingly slow, but we are. And I think there's going to be, it's not just fixed wireless, it's going to be a lot of fiber coming soon. That's all. Thanks. All right, Chuck. I want to echo Alan's sentiment. But in doing so, I want to point out that I was actually planning on calling together the communications committee next week for explicitly that purpose because it's high time we do another update out to the community. And so look for that coming. Those of you who are members of that, it will likely be later in the week since we do also have another governing board meeting early in the week. But I do want to get something out by end of next week. Early following that address is what we've been up to because it's been about three weeks, three to four weeks, I think, since we sent the last one out. Chuck, let me go ahead and draft up something short that could just be a starting point maybe for us to discuss when you call the communications meeting. You know, while I have this stuff in my head, it might be helpful just to have something on paper to talk about. That would be an absolutely fabulous guiding cornerstone for us to have that conversation. So thank you if you if you are able to put that together would be much appreciated. Yeah, sure. Just give me a couple of days once I get back to back in state, I'll I'll do it and it won't be long. So don't expect much, but I think it would help just to have just to have some some footing under us to begin a discussion. I can do that. Thank you. Thanks, Alan. David. Yeah, Jeremy just posted the link to the governor's budget that he submitted today. And he included in there $2 million for grants to CUDs to be used. I didn't say what to be used for, but we certainly could use it to start our force build. Yeah, that was kind of for matching instead of the NBRC money. Right. So, so kind of a kind of a whiplash of funding right now right like, oh, no, now we're depressed that we didn't get that funding but surprise, we may end up having the funding to to run it after all. So not not all this lost. All right, anything else that folks want to talk about with state and federal funding. I think it would be valuable, given the, the governor's, the budget that I posted in the chat. I think it'd be valuable if you have a favorite legislator or three, make that call. Because the budget's going to get crafted in the next, well, they get that we get back a week from today, and how long are they in session for what two weeks, three weeks, if that. It's going to go fast so get them, get them on the phone, you know, and tell them how important it is that we, that we especially CV fiber get access to this, especially because we did not pull down the northern border money and this is going to set us back quite a bit I think. So, yeah, put on your, your advocate hats and, and do that if you would please. All right, next appointment of an executive director, or maybe going back, Siobhan. Sorry, I just wanted to say, what exactly am I asking to be part of it. I didn't really understand this budget. Sure. Thank you. Sure. So, so, so the governor proposed a budget to the legislature came out today. And some of the some of the things that are listed as is quote unquote governor's initiatives. These are things that he says he wants to spend in the budget should the legislature approve it. And he has $2 million set aside specifically for and I quote from the PDF that I linked there for grant distribution to CUDs for broadband. And I think. Where is that in there, though, I'm not page two. Oh, okay, no mind answered. Sorry. There you go. So that that page two. And yeah, so they hopefully will approve that because that's going to let us that's going to let Kingdom Community broadband that's going to let DB fiber it's going to let a lot of CUDs that are poised that are close that are ready to be able to use that and really start building. So it's very, very encouraging to see that that message. I just hadn't scrolled down. I'm what a newbie error. I'm sorry. So it's all good. It's all good. All right, appointment of an executive director. And so I will turn this back over to you, Siobhan in a second. I don't think that we got the information to you all fast enough to be able to have you make a make a good decision about this. Maybe I'll just talk about how Siobhan made this work. Thank you for all of your work with that by the way that was a lot of stuff done very quickly. Siobhan called references. Siobhan set up all of the all of the interviews. And we kind of talked out all the applicants that that submitted resumes to us and Siobhan and I and Greg sort of individually back and forth or whatever kind of decided on three. And those, those are all local folks and they're all honestly, I mean, and I'll let Greg and Siobhan, you know, talk about it too. I think they were all good candidates. I think we would be served well by any of them. Siobhan has a ranking because she was the only one to have seen all three of the interviews. I saw two and Greg, you also saw two, right? That's correct. So sent you the should have gotten the the resumes and such. So yeah, Siobhan, if you want to take it from here. One question. If we're going to get into names or any qualities, we should be an executive session. That's that's true. So I was actually just about to say that. Should we go into executive session? So do we need a vote on that? Or do we say we're going in an executive session because we're talking about personnel matters? Yeah, so and then there has to be a vote. Yep. So, so I move that we go into executive session subject to one VSA 313 sub a sub three. Let me paste this into the chat to discuss the appointment employment or evaluation of a public officer employee. In this case, our project manager, we will make any sort of final hiring or appointments outside of executive session, which we may get to that point tonight. It's totally possible. My instinct is that we probably we probably won't unless one of them jumps out at you and you're like, oh yeah, we definitely got to go with them. This is Alan motion to go into executive session for the reason cited by Jeremy. All right, I will second that then. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed or that want to do a roll call? Okay, and we are in executive session. So if those folks paray are and Sam Rosenberg. Thank you, Sam and Orca. If you could disconnect now, I don't expect we'll have any action at the end of this. I will I will resume my recording afterwards, but I'm going to go stop the. All right, so we're going to give three minutes starting now to let folks. Let folks come back in. I started the recording. The meeting is unlocked. If anybody would like to rejoin us. They can. Yeah, go ahead. You're going to make sure that somehow we'll be able to see the interviews online. Solve the problem of our not being able because I agree with people who have said it's important for them to actually see the person talking in an interview. That's true for me as well. And I would not want to make a decision or even say I can't choose among them without seeing the interviews. Okay, so just to go to meeting records audio only. Yes, so that's happening there. I still want to at least be able to hear that. Just I want some I want some real contact either through voice or through visual images of the person speaking, because to me body language and the way people speak is really says a lot about them. Tom. Just a question about executive session and chat as far as if someone joins back in as the chat blank for them, but they don't see that we have names listed and so forth. I move. Good ball. I believe they only see the stuff that comes in after. I want to volunteer to drop off and join back in. Yeah, why don't you do that we got a couple we got a minute or so. If you can. I'm just getting the email out just a moment. So, David. Yeah, the only thing I think we ought to need we need to figure out as a group is does this poor person respond to 20 people or is it the executive committee or is it the director. So, so this is this is something that actually got asked in one of the interviews, and the way that the job description was was written is that it would they would respond to the executive committee and or the business development committee would probably one of the things that I said that we would need to do fairly quickly would be to make a concrete decision about a contact policy what's what's the process. So we can't have every one of the delegates sending the person things to do. I mean that happens with town administrators. That's kind of okay when there's five select board members, but when you have a larger city council or something you don't you don't just do that. What's the, what's the verdict Tom and or Chuck. Okay. Yeah, I cannot see anything. Great. All right. All right, so we will wait another minute or two. And as far as what gets recorded. Does the chat show up somewhere that we are saving that for like during regular public portion of the meeting. And so we can tabs on where to stop recording and where to continue recording. Yes, I mean I whoever the organizer is for the go to meeting or whoever the current presenter is gets a copy of the of the chat log and actually it's possible. You have a copy of your of the chat log. If you go it would be in your. It would be in your windows would be in your documents. So just your what that folder being as an rtf file. If it's not in there then it just lives with the organizers and for the record it still says the round three proposals are still set at, although they haven't updated since last week. It's August 21st question for Ken. You can. Did the advisory committee approve the CCI project in Elmore and Wolkett. If they didn't, that it has impact on our wireless project. That's why I'm asking. I can't tell you, we, we approve the same list that the public service department provided us. But take a look at it tomorrow. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm aware, I'm aware of three that were approved for so I thought maybe the list was out so. Oh, okay. Okay, so I think we've given it a solid three minutes. I think Chuck, you left or you sent that at like 738. I've got 741. So if you want to go ahead with your motion, that would be awesome. Okay, motion to table further discussion around candidates for the project management role until next week. Okay, and second, okay, race seconded any further discussion. Okay, all in favor. Opposed or anyone wanting a roll call. Okay, so we'll schedule another meeting for next week. So that is August 25th. Same bat time, same bat place, although it would be a different meeting room. All right, let's, let's, we won't bother with the round table. And I move that we adjourn. Oh, hold on. So, so it's moved in seconded David's going to get the last word. Well, I, we didn't bring up, we had a meeting with work last week and I'm saying we're making progress. I think they're getting closer. But I think they're probably going to end up just running the fiber and not doing any connections. The good news is they need fiber to go to every house so they can keep the meters and the whatever. So it's an interesting hybrid that we may end up building while working with them. Anyway, I'll leave it there. Cool. All right. Anything else? All in favor. All right. Okay. And unless they're opposed.