 this proposal forward or not? So anybody ready to move this question? So I have a practical question. Who are the members of the Business Development Committee? I'd say David, Michael, Ken, Jeremy, Greg, Jerry, and Shabon, I believe. Andy, do you recognize yourself as a member of the Business Development Committee or not? Well, that's a great question. I don't know. I probably not really. Let's have a motion from somebody on the development. I move that we recommend to the governing board to move this proposal to the Public Service Department. Second. Discussion? I think that the proposal is incomplete. That you're representing to use approximately 30% of towers that we don't have the rights to. So I would second it or support it if it's modified to say as we anticipate being able to negotiate for these. Yeah, I think it's Jeremy. So just to reiterate what I said before, I just I think the risk is too high. Okay. Any other comments? All right, let's take a vote. All those in favor of the motion? Henry, down there. Okay, Henry. You're muted, Henry. Just a quickie. So is this Thursday, which is the third round of funding, is that the last round of funding or what? I mean, so I mean, you have this deadline, what is there going to be another round? And that's okay. Any other, I think we should would it be okay to amend the motion to say that we will revise and discuss with, you know, I don't know how to work that out without the collusion thing, but to make sure that it's I think we can write an app proposal. Okay, good, Michael. As the motion is now, I would have to vote no. If the motion is amended to say that we recommend to the board that we pursue this proposal further and give a certain body the decision making power of weather to submit it on Thursday at 4.30 so that there's some time to discuss a variety of aspects, including the one Greg raised and others. And maybe I could support it, but as it stands now, I would not support this proposal. I think there's too much, I mean, leaving the possible threat to my own company out of it, which is possible, you know, it's real. There's a lot of, we're basically saying we're going to spin up a new whisk in a couple of months and run it and compete with everyone else in the marketplace. And I don't see that as a practical plan. If, however, something can be worked out with other providers and doesn't have to be client alliance, other providers, maybe this is a viable thing. But as it stands now, I can't support it. I think we need to get the proposal in so that we can figure that out if it's something that's viable or not. That's kind of my feeling. The department's going to ask that very question, how are you going to do it? And we don't know, it's not in the proposal. It's got to be modeled. All right, any more questions? Not questions, comments. All right, let's think about Ella's in favor of the motion as amended. What is the amendment? No, there was no amendment. Can I hear the motion? Yeah. So what's the motion? The proposal to submit the proposal as is. Yeah, that's the motion before the body right now. I'm not going to make the amendment probably inappropriate for me to be the one to amend it. Point of order, if we're not doing unanimously, it has to be done with a roll call. Yep, let's do a roll call vote. I guess we just asked the question. Does someone want to pose a specific amendment? Well, I mean, I thought I sort of did that, you know, we amend the motion to say that, you know, we'll work out the kinks. I don't know exactly how to word it, but yeah, because I think that I would need to understand the parts that need to be modified in order for it to be more acceptable. I mean, I understand and I didn't read it in detail, but I understand that there is a there and I remember pieces in there that there are many steps that need to happen that haven't happened yet. And I even thought the relationship with Cloud Alliance and with Detail was described in there as something that needs to be developed more fully. That's what I that's what I thought I remember seeing. I'm pretty sure it's something. So maybe I have a chance to see it. Yeah, so yeah, I guess I would accept a broad amendment recognizing that very few of us have had a chance to read it, that there may be some need to modify the proposal to be more clear about activities that are necessary for this proposal to move forward, you know, something like that. I can understand that because again, very few of us have had a chance to read it in detail. So so and I think that is also the intent is to make sure that by Thursday it is a better product. So and I yeah, maybe the amendment is that on Thursday, the business development committee or a subset of the business development committee makes the final decision that the product has been refined enough to address at least some of the concerns and significant amount of concern that it is a more complete proposal recognizing it will never be a complete proposal. So that's a that's a vague motion, a vague acceptance of an amendment. Is that a second there? I can second that. Okay. Who is the body that's going to decide on Thursday? I'll participate. There's a project team, which I happen to be a member of, but obviously it was not kept in the loop. So I don't know if I should step stay out of it, but something like a project team could take that role. Okay. Yeah. Who was the project team? I mean, the other thing is that we're just recommending to the board. You know, this this is also going to come up in discussion in the regular meeting as well. So you got three minutes. Yeah, I want to move this along. So was there a second on that amendment? Yes, I second it. Okay. I second it, but can proposed. Okay. Then the amendment was to have go through again in terms of the proposal. So it reflects more of what we need to get clear about in terms of who is doing what. And I think the documentaries says this, but we should make sure and we'll move this amendment move this amendment and then we can have a vote on the proposal itself so we can recommend one way or the other. So let's have a vote, roll call vote on the amendment. Michael, you going to vote? I'm going to abstain. Okay. Ken? Yes. Jeremy? Hansen? No. Jeremy, Matt? Yes. Greg, Allie? Yes. Shabon? No. Jerry? No. David, yes. So we have one, two, three, four, four yeses, one, two, one, two, three, noes. So the yeses have it four to three. So the that was on the amendment. That was on the amendment. Let's have a vote on the proposed proposal with as amended. All those in favor going around the table again. Michael? No. Jeremy? Which Jeremy? Oh, Hansen? No. Okay. Jeremy, Matt? Yes. Ken? Yes. Greg? Yes. Am I missing Shabon? No. No. Okay. Jerry? No. David, yes. So one, two, four, four yeses and one, two, three, four noes. So it fails. All right. I'm going to not adjourn the business development meeting and we'll meet after the regular meeting because I want to go through those resumes and move on some hiring somebody. So I have a motion to adjourn so we can start the other meeting. So let's so so that we don't run a file of parliamentary procedure and having to re-warn the meeting. I move that we recess that we recess the business development committee meeting to the to happen after the regular governing board meeting. Yep. Second. Is it fair? All right. All right. Thanks. Quick question. Can the proposal that did not pass now be brought up to the board? Yeah. But we don't recommend it. Yeah. No recommendation. Right. Right. I think that would probably be appropriate. Yeah. Yeah. We can discuss the maybe maybe the board will come up with something. Right. Well, there's there's a lot more people to vote and there's a lot more. There's a kind of a broader discussion that can be had. Okay. So I see 601 and I see a quorum of the CV fiber governing board. So I will call the meeting to order. Our recording is already is already started. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? If this thing comes under the grant project update, I guess. Yeah. I think that's probably the that was the logical place that I thought it was going to live. Okay. Okay. So public comment. Does anybody have any comments on items that are not on the agenda that they would like to discuss? Hearing none. Just one item which is communications committee member addition. Okay. So let's let's put that at let's put that towards the end. Will you will you remind me of that Chuck? I will. I don't have my usual computer setup. So I don't have my dual monitors and lots of notes everywhere. So a bit more challenging today. Okay. So we will add a discussion of adding someone to the communications committee. The next item is Duxbury and Washington appointees introductions. So we have two two new members of our of our governing board. We have we had John, we phrase step down from Duxbury and we now have Tim Sullivan. He's here with us today. Thanks for joining us, Tim. I clarify. Rocksbury. Did I say Duxbury? Yes. Oh my God. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Rocksbury, Duxbury. They sound also the same. So close together. So Rocksbury. Yes, of course. Guys, Duxbury doesn't have the marble. Come on. Oh, there you go. And I and I screwed it up on the agenda too. So my apologies for that. Everyone from Rocksbury or Duxbury for that matter. And we also have another appointee from Washington. We have a Catarina Mac. She's the Washington appointee to CV fiber. There is a Washington appointee to EC fiber as well. As you recall, Washington joined both. So welcome Catarina. Thank you. Hello. So I think it would be worthwhile. We have five minutes in the agenda and we have some extra time. If we maybe all went around introduced ourselves. So your name, your town and we'll continue from there and Tim and Catherine once when you have a when I call you if you want to mention anything that you want to mention that might help us kind of put you in perspective. Let's see. I'm just going to go in order of my let's see on the participants list. Let's start with Helen Gilbert. You're on mute, Alan. There you go. Am I muted now? Can you hear me? Nope. You're good. You're good. Okay. I'm Alan Gilbert. I'm the delegate from Worcester. Andy Gilbert. Andy Gilbert delegate from Cabot. Chuckbert delegate from Moortown. David Healy. I can turn the right button on. Delegate from Calis. David Wendt. Hi everyone. I'm the alternate delegate for Duxbury. Thanks, David. Greg. Greg Kelly. Delegate for Barrie City. Henry. Henry Amastati. Delegate for Duxbury. Jeremy. Jeremy Madden. I'm the alternate for Plainfield and I'm also the clerk. I'm Jeremy Hansen. I'm the delegate from Berlin and the chair. Jerry. Jerry Diamantidis. Alternate from Berlin and I am not on the internet aspect of this just on the phone. John Morris. John Morris. I'm the delegate. Okay. John Russell. So, John, you're muted. John is the alternate from Worcester and we're to you, Katarina. Yeah, as mentioned earlier, Washington Delegate, new to the group. Thank you for the welcome and my internet has been going in and out, so I may drop off the video when it does. Ken. Dan Ken Jones. I'm the delegate from Montpelier. Michael. Michael Bernbaum. Delegate from Plainfield. Welcome to you two new ones. Siobhan. Siobhan Perica. Delegate from Orange. Delegate from Middlesex and vice chair of the board. Ray Pelletier. Delegate from Northfield. Tim. Tim Sullivan, representing Roxbury. I had been in contact with you, Jeremy, way back in 2017-18 about this whole project and I wish to be on the on this board back then, but I wasn't allowed or something back then, not by you guys, but by my own town, I think. But I've convinced them recently, so I'm on. I have a background in IT and tech and creative spaces and I'm a musician as well and I'm glad to be part of this. Welcome, Tim. Tom. Delegate for East Montpelier. Well, echoing what a lot of folks said, welcome to Tim and Catarina. We're glad to have you on board and hopefully with your help, we can keep driving this forward. So I'm experimenting with the consent agenda like we had talked about in a previous meeting. So we've got these three items, the invoice from Fred Goldstein, which was part of the contract, the some remote meeting software purchases. This is going to be either go to meeting or zoom specifically purchased for CV fiber with two accounts. So one of those would be for me and I was thinking David Healy have the other one so he could run the other meeting or if we decide that we need more later, we can add more. And then the approval of the July 14th meeting minutes, a lot of the feedback for that happens over email anyways. So without further ado, I'm going to move that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. Okay, I heard a second from Chuck. Any further discussion? The only thing I would throw in here is not zoom. Okay. It's just performance is even worse than go to meeting, believe it or not. So you like this better, Andy? Yeah, go to meeting performance much better than zoom. Ray? Just one question that has to do with Fred's invoice. Is payment of this invoice like the final payment for the work such that what it indicates is that we have accepted his product? It would suggest that yes. Any other questions? I mean we can also break this out if it's if there's not unanimous consent on any of these, then we can break this out and we can discuss it more. I see Michael. Following up on a raised question. Has the Department of Public Service accepted our business plan as submitted? I've not heard that back from them yet. No. Then isn't the final payment to anti-rile predicated on that? Of course. So the board is authorizing that should DPS write us the check, because if they don't write us the check, we don't write Fred the check. I mean that's how this worked previously. Okay, as long as we're not sludging the check in this meeting without knowing that we're going to get the funds. Well, the way the contract's written is that he doesn't get paid unless his work products get approved. Okay. So I'm totally comfortable with that anyways. Okay. All right. So not hearing anything else. I'm going to assume that we have consensus, unless somebody shouts out that they want to that they want a roll call vote on this. Okay. It appears we have consensus. So the motion passes. Moving on to appointment of treasurer. So it is with great joy that I would like to introduce you to Lee Youngman, who we have in the meeting here with us. Lee has agreed. Thank you. And has a background in being a treasurer and bookkeeping and wants to see us succeed. So Lee, I'll let you introduce yourself. Okay. Hi, everybody. I also really have been interested in this group since it was a fledgling group, but had conflicts as well. So I have been in a sort of finance world for my entire career. I was a banker for 22 years. I'm a small business owner. I'm the treasurer. For the town of Orange, I have kept the books for my store since 2008. It doesn't mean I know everything, and I'm sure there's way more that I don't know than that I do, but I am a fast learner and I kind of like numbers. So I hope I'll be a good addition to the team if you'll appoint me. All right. So I would like to move this along. And I move that we appoint Lee Youngman to be the CV fiber treasurer. I'll second that. This is Ken. Okay. Seconded by Ken. Any further discussion? Any questions for Lee? I confidence the organization just dumped 100%. Thank you. Any more woo-hoo's? We can record that. Lee rocks. Lee totally rocks. Woo-hoo! Lee's response to Orange joining this was, that sounds like a no-brainer. He's the most qualified person on the screen. Oh, I don't know about that. All right. Well, without further ado, let's put it to a vote. If anybody wants to put this to a roll call, otherwise I will assume that we have unanimous approval. Unamute if you'd like to weigh in. Otherwise, I'm seeing consensus here. And all right. So congratulations, Lee, and thank you very much for agreeing to join us. Thank you. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Welcome. So I will coordinate with you. I know you've got election stuff there in the town offices and stuff to do, but I'm, I will work with you in the next couple of weeks to try to sort of the bank access and that sort of thing. So it's not just me. Great. That sounds great. Thank you. All right. All right. Ken, was that a hand up or a wave? I was waving the lead. Oh, okay. Good. All right. appointment of treasurer, executive committee report back. So the executive committee had a special meeting last Friday to approve the spending of some money on a consultant to help us draft a draft and application for some of the COVID money for a fixed wireless proposal. And that at that meeting, and please correct me if I'm wrong, if I say the wrong number, we approved spending $6,000 to hire Peter Blum to do to do that work. There was some not to exceeds by day and an hourly rate of I think it was $150. We had that meeting, we approved it, and he's he's been been working on that. There is a bit more discussion on this, I think in a later item that we will, we will spend a bit more time on that, but that's really the main punchline of that executive committee meeting. Was there anything else, Phil, or anybody else that was there that we talked about that we should be mentioning? No, I think that was the just a didn't, didn't we also talk about the proposals that that CB Barbara had to review? Or was that not part of the agenda and not domain? I mean, we did talk about it. Yeah, so so it was it was talked about. It was a bit more informal. We actually have a dedicated agenda item in this meeting to talk about those as well. The line extension fixed wireless requests. So we will circle back around and talk about those and have a have a report back. I just wanted to be clear about in reporting what what transpired in that meeting. That's true. Fair enough. That did happen. I was I was driving so I was not maybe as attentive as I could have been. Okay, continuing to move along. Grant and project updates. We've got some grants in the pipeline. So we were awarded the $100,000 grant from DPS as the in a capacity building. I'm doing the paperwork and all of the all the legwork that DPS is expecting of us. We're doing that right now. And we are I think I haven't heard it that they need any more information. But because this is federal money, there's some additional hoops that we have to jump through. It's slightly different than what we had to do for the broadband innovation grant. So that should be coming down the pike real soon now. Ken, do you have is there any updates on when we can hear about northern border regional commission grants? Yeah, I don't know the exact dates. I believe it's in the 20s of August and there's two announcements. One comes from the congressional delegation and one comes from the governor's office. And they're trying to coordinate and it's in the 20s, I think the early 20s of August, those announcements are to be made. Cool. So we should know reasonably soon that it sounds like. Okay. So we had talked about Fred's invoice. If anybody wants to talk more about the for the business plan portion for the for the fiber project, we can talk about that. There's not really that much more to report other than you all should have a copy of it by now. So moving on to the onto the agenda item that probably generate a lot more discussion was the fixed wireless application. Do you want to take that, David? The business committee spent most of its hour talking about the draft proposal to submit an application to the Department of Public Service for the connectivity now money to do a fixed wireless build in the district. And the vote ended up four to four, so we don't have a recommendation to the board. Context to that for those who have not been familiar with it. We hired Fred entrile to do a fixed wireless assessment in the whole district and he completed that late in July. And we decided based on the work that would be worthwhile for CV fiber to submit a grant application under the COVID connectivity now program to build out emergency response to students and health and all the other requirements under the age 966 legislation. On Thursday or Friday, the executive committee agreed to hire Berkshire telecommunications which is Peter Blum to prepare a draft proposal to submit to the state and to submit to the business development committee for recommendation to the board. Yeah, the meeting last hour the discussion went on and it was pretty mixed feelings about whether we should take on this kind of responsibility in the next six months and I'll let the proponent who gave some pretty strong reasons to submit it to show that we're really something going in business and those who are reluctant to be followed with it. Most end-of-business side of things without a project manager, but I'll let it. The proposal itself for those who have not seen it, it's working on 16 towers would serve, I forget, with a number of un-served people that met the state's requirements. It would involve working on towers with cloud alliance and veto. Let's see what else I can tell you about the proposal. I'll let Ken Jones who was pretty instrumental in getting it together explain more about how we went about moving it. Yeah, thanks, David. We need to start kind of at the $100,000 level. In other words, we received $100,000 for the public service department. This is also COVID relief on money and it is must be spent by December and the outcome from that expenditure should be directed towards addressing the emergency and so the philosophy behind this work was that the only work that can be done to enhance telecommunications during calendar 2020 is to work on fixed wireless and so that was the reason that we asked Fred to expand his effort and he was paid out of the 100,000 and then as he finished his work and I think people agree to this, his work is a solid, solid piece that I think we can be proud of. I think we can learn a great deal from but in itself was not a proposal which is why we needed to hire Peter to take Fred's work and begin. This happened starting on Friday, today's Tuesday, but to begin the necessary discussions and partnerships that are going to be necessary to actually carry this out. Rightfully so, the discussion during business development had a lot to do with risk that this $950,000 project today we could not do it and we would or if we attempted to do it we would probably fail. So we need to do a significant amount of work between today, between the date that we are today and the time that we are approved to the funds and we again as a board would agree to move forward in order to develop the necessary partnerships because keep this in mind that putting radio transmitters on towers is not a business. We have to have customer relations, we have to have the backbone of being able to address the needs of those customers, we have to do marketing and so all of those and and I don't think us as a body are going to carry out those business functions. We will need partnerships in order to carry that out. So and I'll you know clearly my bias is to move forward on this and a reason is because I think it's adherence to our initial intent of the use of the $100,000. I think it provides us a great experience in understanding what it's going to take to be an internet service provider or to partner with and be the the organizing body over an internet service provider. What I also said during that meeting and we'll say it now in I'll say four weeks we may very well come to the point where we can't do it and submitting the proposal to the public service department is not a commitment to do it. It is a request for the funds and then if they agree to provide us the funds then we have to go through a grant grant agreement process and at that point we can quite legitimately because we are a new CUD on a new topic we can quite legitimately say no thank you please allow others to use these resources. So that that was what the intent was was to build this emergency emergency infrastructure to provide service to several hundred households for $950,000 and I'm all but I'm on end by saying one of the additional challenges that we did talk about at business development but it's something we're really going to need to wrestle with is what does it mean to have fixed wireless customers that ultimately we hope to be fiber customers and we start to develop that sort of transition and and and getting people to be cv fiber customers recognizing the down the road they will have even better service from a fiber fiber connection that isn't that those words not easy to say but the actual process of doing that is something that I think is going to be a real challenge but even with that challenge again I think this is something we should put forward and keep our feet to the fire for the next few weeks to really understand what it means to be an internet service provider. Okay so David and Ken, Tom? I was just curious under this, I isn't that a proposal yet but under this vision would it be cv fiber that would be isp or would we be what would the name that would be associated with this effort end up being? Oh no. Yeah that's I think that's a to be determined I mean I mean I think I have my preference that I've not made not made secret but I don't know that the actual business model the operating model has been decided yet and actually and hopefully actually I'm hoping with our business plan and operating model discussion that was requested at a previous meeting I'm hoping we can actually make some concrete decisions about that in that later agenda item because if we can make a decision about that then that can inform how we proceed if we proceed with this. So Michael do you want to take a crack at this because because you were you were on the other side of this at the business development meeting and have some concerns I think? I'm not sure I want to right now. Okay. Jeremy this is Jerry I'm sorry I'm not on the internet can I get a minute in? Sure yeah go ahead Jerry and then we'll have Ray. Thank you so I just I hope everyone gets the opportunity to read what Mr. Blum put together because it's an excellent document. And I would I would encourage folks to focus on the end of the document not the attachments but the discussion of the risks which are quite real and very problematic for us for us getting this potential potential grant but also I really want to point out that the time frame for executing this as as dire as the need is the time frame is extremely short and we are really not well positioned to execute and in some ways this can be seen as a distraction from what we are trying to do overall but otherwise it's also as Ken would I I think might say a step forward in getting us to where we need to be but I really encourage everyone to please read his document carefully and especially read the section on risks that he has at the end which is quite excellent and that's all I had I have to add. Okay thanks Jerry go ahead Ray. Though I was on the business development committee call so I listened to the back and forth I read through the document rather quickly but it is impressive and it's a tremendous amount of effort to take on but it's an effort that is worthwhile. People pointed out that there were risks involved and I think that's correct. I think there's people also mentioned that there were shortcomings, weaknesses in their proposal and I believe what they had to say that there were weaknesses in the proposal and that there were things that had to be worked out. I also understand this could be wrong but the proposal had to go in by Thursday so here is what I'm willing to support. What I'm willing to support is that we appoint members to a group to identify to scale it to determine kind of less than the risks that we need to to identify the shortcomings and how we can address those weaknesses and I think the members of that group waiting to David, Greg, Michael, Jeremy, Hanson and Ken Jones to make the decision about what goes in on Thursday. I think it was important Siobhan mentioned it and others then followed up and mentioned it and said we don't have to then go forward when they come back. We can decide at that point in time whether or not we have a project manager in place, whether we have other infrastructure issues addressed, whether we've addressed the weaknesses that we know that we have currently to work to go forward. So I could support appointing a subcommittee to make the decision about whether and what goes, get submitted and then for us later on to make a determination when the award comes back about whether we're in a position to go forward. That's where I'm at. So I would rather facilitate a discussion than have too much commentary myself. So I mean if we could hear from anybody else that has something to say I would like to do that. Do we need a second for that? There's no motion. Sounded pretty close to a motion. Alan? So I wanted to bring up something that has happened here in Worcester just in the last couple days. Jeremy knows about this because I contacted him about it and John wrestled us too. And it stressed to me how we're being pushed into situations where we might have to react to things that we didn't expect to happen, but if we don't react we could be put at a disadvantage either now or down the road. What's happened up here is one person who lives on West Hill Road, which is the dirt road back way that connects the Romney School in Middlesex to Worcester. Comcast has a connection cable obviously to Romney. When they built that cable they actually extended it further along West Hill towards Worcester. John can correct me if I'm wrong with this, but I think it comes basically to the Worcester town line and maybe 50 feet over something like that. And why they stopped? I have no idea. Why do you even build it? I don't know. Somebody in that area of West Hill has been reading or paying attention to what the legislature has been doing and has been making posts on Front Porch Forum that it's possible that residents of West Hill could get an incentive of up to $3,000 if they were willing to help work to have Comcast build out, to extend out their lines from where they currently are so they could get their internet service through them. And this person was essentially trying to drum up interest in the proposal and to see if she could get at least, I think her goal was around 10 people so they have an aggregate of $30,000. In some ways, I think John has said this to me and I think he's right. In some ways, we should be supporting anything that does provide fast internet to people who currently don't have it. I mean, that's really our mission as an organization. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that we're in a time when things are going to happen either around us, maybe not directly to us, but around us that will have an impact on how we are able to build a system throughout rural Vermont that provides everybody with high speed internet. So yesterday, I came back from a bike ride and I parked my car at the bottom of the dirt road that I live on so I can get the payment on the bike easily. And as I was putting my bike in the back of the car, a guy drove up in his pickup truck and it's a guy I sort of know here in Worcester, I can never remember his name, but he lives on another one of the hills here in Worcester, not West Hill or Hampshire Hill, but Minister Brook. And he said, hey, I heard there's interest and possibility over in West Hill, they're going to get high speed internet. What's the deal? Are we going to get it soon in other parts of the town? And I said, well, there's a lot going on right now and I tried to explain what the legislature had done and the grants that we've applied for and he said, well, what's the timetable? What's the plan? And he really wanted to know how we were doing and what we could do for him and people in this town who are frustrated at the lack of high speed internet. So I think we ought to at least do what Ray suggested, which was to move ahead with the idea that maybe we really do want to apply for this money and at least explore what the details might be. I agree the risks are relatively substantial. I was confused as to whether the speed that would be offered to most homes was 25-3 or something more like 57. So I wanted some clarity about that. I also noticed in the coverage maps there were odd corners of roads where the wireless might be built that could actually not reach certain homes. And I'm familiar with some of the homes or some of the addresses I saw on the map because I know exactly where they are and what the topography is. So I think where there's a risk in during wireless, it's not magical. It's not going to reach everybody unless it's a very, very high antenna, which I don't think based on the height that I saw, it is. I mean, we have trees taller than that height around here. So I think it's an interesting opportunity. I think we're going to find ourselves feeling like we're being pushed and we might not be ready to do a lot of these things. And I think we're going to have to face the reality that a lot of things are moving very, very quickly. And we might have to go along with the flow as best we can in order to stay viable as an entity that's trying to do a pretty big project in the long run. We might have to change things around here and there. I've never been very excited about wireless to tell you the truth because I'm afraid that people are going to see it as an excuse not to build fiber out into rural areas. It's just another, another sop to the rural parts of the state who have been screaming and yelling. So we'll give them, you know, 25-3 service and they'll be happy with that. I worry about that. So I hope that we can continue working on the idea of fiber to everybody like Eastie fiber has done. But I do think taking an initial step to begin to look at whether this is something really maybe we can do and should do would be a good idea. Okay. I have Chuck and Jeremy, did you have your hand up? Okay. You're, you're muted. So we do Chuck, Jeremy, and then Tim, if you have had something, go ahead, Chuck. Thank you. So I actually have had the, a similar experience as Alan in here in Moortown where we have a member of the community or actually a potential member of the community who has come in and actually made headway with Weitzfield, Champlain Valley Telecom in past forays that attempted to do that. They basically indicated they're not at all interested. However, he was able to drum up a large enough group of people raising their hand and saying they're interested that they have actually indicated to him that they will be willing to start doing some expansion in the eight to 16 months time horizon. In addition to that, the same individual posted to the group of interested parties about the Comcast being willing to expand and this $3,000 that's available. That has encouraged everybody in the community to go file a build, I think it's build a home ticket with Comcast, which is sort of the procedural process by which you officially indicate to Comcast that you would like to be considered for service expansion. And so, you know, I think, and I've been engaging with this community member quite a bit, and, you know, his heart's absolutely in the right place. But I am also conflicted because I really think it puts a fair amount of risk on our potential to build out. And I know he's going to watch this video a little bit later, so hi. But, you know, I just really want to call out that we, I think, need to move as quickly as we can to take advantage of some of these opportunities that are coming up. Because if we sit idle, the commercial players are going to beat us to market and really, you know, make the viability of our plans a lot less attractive. Okay, Jeremy. So, I actually had sort of that same thought myself of, you know, going after that $3,000 money because I've got crappy internet. I've decided I won't do that. I think that there's a better chance that wireless will come through. But I don't know. I mean, I do think that we need to move. And I also think that we could be cautious and that we could, you know, drag our heels and we wouldn't get anything done. At some point, we need to make the jump and we need to become an ISP or we need to hire someone to be an ISP for us. And I think that in some ways, this is valuable because I think it's going to push us to make that decision. I don't think we're ready to be an ISP, but I think that we could be ready to hire someone to be an ISP for us. I don't know. That's my two cents. I think that it is at least worth exploring more, although I do think that the proposal does have substantial problems that would need to be addressed, including relationships with some of the partners in the proposal. It doesn't sound like that was well thought out. Anyway, that's all. Okay, Tim. I agree with Jeremy Matt. Sooner than later, there's competition, I'm sure, sniffing arounds coming up behind you all the time that you don't even know about. I don't know how many other people have tried VTEL, LTE service to the homes. I was lucky and then unlucky enough to try it. I had it for about a year in Roxbury, but the tower was, I believe, up at exit five on 89, and I was crossing over two mountains to try and get it. They qualified me for LTE service. I was getting about six megabits download, which doesn't seem like much to this project, but it was certainly better than one to two with TBS DSL, which I went back to. The project turned out to be, for me, where I was a flop. They ended up having to take my equipment away and refund me some investment I had into it. Then the other item coming up, I am going to be a beta tester for Tesla's Starlink program, which is up in Vermont, or at least 44 latitude or 44.1 latitude, and all the way up to 52 latitude into Canada. I will certainly report my progress with that as I go along with Tesla Starlink, but that will be satellite internet, a form of LTE communication if I'm correct, low orbit satellites. There was another company called OneWeb that I actually did some side work for down in Virginia that was doing a similar project, and they almost went bankrupt unless they get some more backing right now, but they had launched satellites, as well Tesla has launched satellites already and are ready for beta testers. The lucky thing, great where I am now, I'm in down Rhode Island just to make this call, because TBS DSL is too terrible to stay connected all the time where I am. I'm at the third mile point on a copper line from the DSLAM, so I'm on gigabit fiber in Rhode Island right now, just to make this Tuesday connection. All right, thanks for that, Tim. So I see that the hands have died down a bit here, just to weigh in with my own two cents here. The original plan that we were picturing, if we go back to David's timeline, is that we were going to be spending August through the end of the year doing all of the early work for the first stage of the fiber construction. And I think this wireless project, I do understand Carpe Diem and sees the money available. I guess I just see it as a distraction that's a bit too risky. Is this going to get in the way of us actually going and building fiber? I mean, I'm hearing some folks say that it actually gets us closer. I'm not sure that I'm convinced about that. I think our time, you know, our volunteer time and the money that we do have on hand, is going to be better spent trying to get, you know, trying to knock it out of the park with the fiber build and not spend, you know, and not spend too much time, you know, with 14 towers or whatever it happens to be, which it's not, you know, it's not totally clear that we even have those 14 towers because some of those are Michaels and he was surprised to hear that these were proposed. So I personally don't believe that the project is achievable. I kind of feel sad saying that given how much we've spent on it already. I personally am uncomfortable with the risk, but I mean, obviously, this is the decision of the board. This isn't a decision of, you know, this isn't the, this isn't a dictatorship. So I get one vote like everybody else, but I would still like to hear from more people, if we can. I see Michael did sneak his hand up if you're still willing. So Michael then Tom. Okay, so I was reticent to speak to this because the previous meeting for me was kind of emotional. I was very taken aback by discovering the proposal without having been consulted about it. But I don't want to go there right now. I want to speak to a couple of things. First of all, the value or lack value of fixed wireless. Fixed wireless is a great technology and it can definitely deliver very good broadband with very good, if you use very good equipment. What's being proposed is better than 25 three, both in my proposal that I submitted last week to the department and the tentative proposal that we might submit on Thursday. We probably can deliver. First of all, it's not 25 three with wireless. You can do better than that. That's that's like a sub to DSL because DSL can't get much upstream. So we can do 25 eight or 50 and 15 or something like that. So this it's really it can be very substantial. Now, the whole discussion about there's two kinds of risks. There's the risk of trying to stand up a pretty significant project in a short amount of time without a business structure around it and staffing and that risk is very real. And that's what everyone's been speaking to. The other risk is what some people have spoken to, which is what is the long term and midterm impact of fixed wireless customers on the business case of our fiber projects. If people have 25, 30, 40, 50 megs, they're going to be reticent to switch to fiber unless the price is really cheap. They're going to say, Hey, maybe someday I want 100 or 200 or 500 megs. But boy, this is fabulous. It does everything I want. Why should I switch? And it's going to be hard to to take these customers and just migrate them into the fiber project quickly, early, which is what the business model requires for us to break up a few years. We need to achieve a certain take rate or penetration rate. So my conclusion is that fixed wireless belongs in our district, but it belongs there in a selective way. It should not go where we think we're going to build within the next two years because it's going to hurt our business case. It should go to the places that are going to be that are weighed down in our schedule or may be never serveable by fiber because they're deep in hollows, you know, you know, two miles down the road where it just doesn't make sense to run $30,000 a mile out to them. There are going to be some places we won't achieve 100%. We're going to achieve close to that, I think, over time, but we won't. And so there's a good reason to put fixed wireless for those remote locations and for the locations that are not going to get fiber for a number of years, even if we're doing well. That makes sense to me. I don't know to the extent that the proposed project takes those considerations into account. Maybe it does because I only got to see it five, 10 minutes before our business committee meeting. So I skimmed through it really quickly and I don't know the full content of it. But I suspect that it's more like the products that we got from Interile before, which is looking at where can we maximize coverage, where can we get the most priority and eligible customers under the department guidelines to maximize the value of our proposal to the department so that it will be funded. And that's chasing the wrong care. It's chasing the wrong breastring on the merry-go-round. What we want to do is further our own mission. And our mission is to get fiber to as many people as possible as quickly as possible and to make it viable in terms of the business case. I love fixed wireless. I have a fixed wireless ISP for those of you who don't know that. And I don't object to the use of selected fixed wireless in our district. I think that it's appropriate. I think we need to look again at that proposal deeply and figure out whether it fits with our mission or whether it fulfills the needs to get the funding. The funding is what's motivating the proposal. It's the wrong motivation. But if it's furthering our mission, well, then that's a better thing. I won't reiterate everything that happened in the Business Development Committee meeting, but one thing that's worth for the board members who weren't there to know is that there are currently three redundant proposals for the same area in our district. One that's already been submitted to us for approval and we as a district are recommending not approving it. Another that was submitted last week, last Thursday, and then this one. All looking at the same, not 100%, but a lot of overlap of individual locations. That's kind of crazy and it needs to be resolved. This proposal needs to look at that before it gets submitted. I'm not 100% opposed to submitting the proposal, but as it stands now, I am. I guess that's all I'll say for now. Okay, we got Tom, then Siobhan. David. A lot of things floating around in my head now. I like a lot of what Michael was saying there. In my area, most of East Montpelier, we're not under most of this plan and nominally we have 25, 3. The reality is that isn't really what we have. We're cut out a lot of what's available and I understand the people who have way less than even what I have. I understand the need to serve those people as soon as we can. This is in a national emergency, but during a national emergency, emotions are going to run high and another risk form that we haven't discussed yet is the PR, which leads into the customers or the competition rather down the road. I guess I'll just close. I had a question. I'm sitting in the back of my mind for a while now, which is I really appreciate having gotten a hold of the excel sheet being able to play with the numbers. That's been a lot of fun. One big part of that that obviously was not done was, okay, what if we put in numbers for how much grant money we get or other things and also what happens when you lower the subscription fees and increase the take rates and those kind of things. You can have all kinds of fun numbers where you can get down to like 25 bucks a month where we could blow everybody out of the water, but I don't know how realistic that is. I'm wondering if anybody can speak to what's the curve, what's the algebra there between increase or decrease in subscription rate and increase in take rate and where that sliding scale could potentially land for us. Anybody has any ideas on that? I would go to EC fiber to answer that question. They would know more about the price elasticity. If we pushed the price down to DSL prices, so $30, $40 a month, would people change over from DSL at a higher rate? Yeah, of course they would, but is pushing it that low. Can we even make that work given the cost per customer that we have to recover essentially with each drop? You should be able to do that in the spreadsheet if you like. There's also a cell that you can type in if you want to put in, if we assume that we get the NBRC grant for example, you can put that $650,000 in there and just without changing anything, just get a sense of how that changes, how long it takes us to get to capital positive or the equivalent, whatever measure we're using for success. So the question that I think that we're trying to answer though, that we're talking about is that the impact of the fixed wireless project, how much is that going to impact what goes in those cells and is that necessarily going to drive things down or up or not change it at all? I guess that's my question. I know which cells to manipulate and how it affects the result. I just don't know what numbers to put in there are realistic and if I drop it down to $25 a month but increase the take rate to 60%, is that a realistic thing to do or is it not? And I don't know if anybody has experienced that or if there was something we'd want to push back to in trial at some point, but the reason I'm asking is because where we end up with as a business plan and where we think we can land for that kind of thing has an effect on whether or not we think we should move forward with wireless now because if we think we can blow it out of the water in a year or two, then maybe it would have a different answer for what we should do today. Well, I think there's going to be a lot of guessing and making decisions based on imperfect data. So I want to make sure that everybody gets a chance. So right now I have Siobhan, David, Greg and Michael and Andy. So Siobhan? So I had one observation just from the conversations I've had with people in orange, they're not going to change. If they get fixed wireless and they're satisfied with it, they're not going to change. The only thing that would make them change is if we could offer them a lower price. Even if it's better service at the same or slightly higher price, they're going to be reluctant. It's going to be hard to get the take rate up. So if we're already offering fixed wireless here, bringing the fiber in later will be more difficult. The other question I had, which is going back to the point, one of the points that Michael was making about is this going to make it more difficult for us to execute our mission is this proposal, I'm just confirming, this proposal is about CARES Act money. And is this the bit that is specifically about getting the internet to the kids and the teachers? And is that part of the whole point of this? And so there's no way it's got to do with a specific plan or specific routes or anything like that. It's like, because they're everywhere. And so this is like a scattershot approach to just getting it out there. And so I don't know if it's even would be possible for us to amend the proposal to make it more friendly to our mission and our intentions for fiber. But I don't know if a day is enough to even consider that question. And so I'm kind of throwing that back out. Is that even something that could possibly be taken into account and looking at where this proposal is set up to even look for putting polls up? And that's it. Well, I mean, I think if we make, if we end up making some concrete decisions in the next agenda item, so the business plan and operating model discussion, if we make some concrete decisions, that could certainly inform how we choose to, choose to proceed. I mean, let's see. So I have David, Greg, Andy, and Michael. Okay. I, as Michael was talking, what he was saying, and one of the thoughts happened that went through my brain, if CE fiber is the mandatory fixed wireless proposal other than the one that are assigned to other vendors, we can say that this, you know, we're going to transition you to fiber. You know, you're a customer of CV fiber or partner of CV fiber, and we're going to transition you to fiber when we have it. My guess is we're not going to have fiber to a lot of places for three to seven years. So from that standpoint, you know, if we have customers on fixed wireless or some relationship with other fixed wireless providers, we can, you know, there's a trend, we could develop a transition plan. I'm not sure that, you know, a customer is a customer. If you are the ones providing the service, you know, how that service is delivered or the method that it's delivered is not always the, the same. So I mean, I see some benefits to trying this proposal and it needs to be refined. I think we can refine in the next two days. I think the department's going to review on it and get back to us. So there's not a lot of risk to us submitting it, but I'd like to submit something that was at least a little more thought out. I mean, it was put together in four days. It certainly could have some improvement looking at routes. As far as I can tell right now, the routes are not impacting too much of our initial build, but it certainly could be looked, re-looked at. Okay. Greg? So agreeing with David, in my previous telecom business, we did just that. We used wireless as a infill in a way and in the contracts, we had the right to convert them to fiber and the pricing was the same. So the customers didn't care. It was just so it's about how it's presented and contractually and pricing. So we sold it on the basis. We can give you wireless now and in six months, eight months, whatever the time frame was, we're going to bring the fiber to you and 100%, they all said yes because they want it now. So that and the point I'll make is that from the point of a tower, back going upstream, everything is the same between wireless and fiber. So all of the process and I'm assuming we're hiring an IRSP and not trying to become an ISP ourselves, but all of that process and decisions, do we do the building, do they do the building, the support, it's all the same. So the opportunity to learn is tremendous. So it's not 100% switch from doing it one way under wireless and doing it a different way under fiber. So as far as I can tell, this is money that is not to be repaid and it can be used very wisely and in alignment with our mission and forward us and really could get us going and I feel if we pass it over, it'll be harder to get other money. It does need to be used judiciously. Okay, I've got Andy, Michael and I think Henry you've had your hand up. Yeah, so I just reiterating some of David and Greg's thing. We want to capture these folks and not let somebody else capture them. I mean, my assumption is if we don't do this, I mean somebody else is going to. I mean, and that's actually what part of Michael's argument. So there's a little bit of a logical contradiction there. We're going to have a lot harder time converting a cloud alliance or another third party wireless customer to us than somebody we've already captured as a customer. So, and I also agree with just all the opportunity in terms of voting all the infrastructure and operating aspects of it. Yeah, there's a lot of risk in those things, but I'm also going to the big last point is I assume DPS has responsibility for the overbuild part of this. I mean, just we can't say, oh, we're not going to submit because somebody else is submitting and it's an overbuild. That's up to DPS when they dish out the grant money to work out the overbuild issues. You would assume they put some thought into that. And we also have the right to refuse anyways. So if there is truly an overbuild situation going on, ideally, we're the ones to capture these customers. Okay, Michael, then Henry. I'm going to just speak to side issue that Tom brought up that I think might be that's useful discussion. It's the relationship between retail rates and penetration rates. I think AC fiber is not necessarily a good example to look at. Their rates have been pretty consistent. They have increased the bandwidth for the rates a little bit over time, but they've basically been pretty consistent. And so they haven't really experimented that much with that. But interestingly, Detail Wireless presents an unusual comparison. They deliver, I don't know their prices at the moment, but they deliver gigabit fiber to all of their customers. And they don't sell it as 25 or 30 or 50 megs. I think they sell it as 1,000 megs. And it's for a particular fixed price and it's relatively low. And they got, because they're the incumbent telephone company, they just went to every house and anyone who wanted internet got that. And speaking with Michel Guitté a week ago, he complained that a lot of people, he had a lot of sunk costs in doing that. He had full fiber drops to every house, which is very expensive. And you may see AC fibers sells their installation for 150 or Cloud Alliance for 199 or whoever. The real cost is $7,800, $900,000 for a typical drop. And that sunk cost is hard to recover unless you keep your customers a long time. And Guitté said to me, we've been losing customers. People don't want to pay for all that internet. And we have all this investment in going to their house. And we're seeing that wireless is a better business for us because we don't have to do that expensive installation. Maybe it's a portable installation. They installed an antenna and a radio at the house. And if the customers quit, you take the antenna and radio and you take it to another house. But the fiber, when you do that installation, it's there forever, unless it's damaged. And that investment only works if you keep the customers. So circling back to what Tom was asking, Michelle was offering or detail was offering very low rates. And they got a really good penetration rate. And now they're paying a price for that. They don't have the average revenue per unit that a typical ISP does. They have the sunk costs and all those installations. So that's an interesting data point. And I don't know if we get the actual numbers from him ever, but it's the anecdote he gave me the other last week. So there's a danger of trying to capture the market with really low prices and then not being able to make the business. Okay. I'll have Henry go first and then Tom. So I'm relatively new to this, but my question here is more general. It's the fact that the public service department is very much interested in promoting CUDs. We're at a disadvantage compared to the commercial providers. The commercial providers are having a hard time deciding what they can build out before the end of the year. This whole CARES Act money is is fought with issues for everybody. And, you know, the question is, how is the public service department going to come to our aid since they've stated that we're the preferred provider for rural expansion? And it doesn't have to be that we have to go after this CARES money or will there be other money that we'll be able to access when we're ready for it or not? And, you know, are they going to be consider our proposal favorably or give us the opportunity to do this fiber build because of our legal status as a CUD? Does that give us any benefits? I just don't see how we're going to compete with the commercial providers when we don't even have an executive director and, you know, haven't decided whether we're going to be our own ISP or not and some of these other things. So that's my general question. Is there money, other money that we can get when we're ready because of the state's, you know, dictated policy? And then there was just one other thing in case this doesn't come up is the line extension thing. There was a line extension for Duxbury WCTV and I was just wondering how there was other things addressed regarding the other line extensions, but I couldn't find anything addressing the WCVT Duxbury line extension proposal. So just in the interest of just keeping us on track for time, we're already quite a bit over. I kind of anticipated that. We actually have a separate agenda item to talk about line extensions and the fixed wireless requests that the department has got. So if we can suppress the pause button on that for a moment. I want to hear from Tom, though. Thanks. And actually, Henry was right along with my thinking which was, I mean, I appreciate that comment on having sunk fixed costs there, Michael. And it's, I guess, given how quickly things seem to be changing in the capital, I know it's another type of risk. It's a risk of trying to play the future of what is Congress going to do, and that's pretty risky. But if we have a way out of those fixed costs or at least a way to reduce them to a significant degree, then market penetration and reduced rates seems, it serves not only to help us in a competitive way, but much further with our mission as well of trying to get this out to people who really need it in order to keep their businesses going in order to have their kids be on line. So yeah. All right. Any other, any other thoughts? How should we proceed from here, folks? I mean, let's go back to Ray's motion that wasn't a motion. So, so Ray, do you want to, can you formulate your motion again? So it's in the chat room. My motion is to create a group to review the proposal, scale it to reduce risk and serve likely fixed wireless customers of the district, understand assumptions and organizational infrastructure requirements, and decide whether to submit on Thursday or not. The group consists of Dave, Greg, Michael, Jeremy, Ken. Second. Second. So you're going to open comment on that? Yes. So the one in my first count. Yeah. So no Michael on that committee. I think there's a conflict of interest. Would you take that as a friendly amendment, Ray? Does Michael feel like there's a conflict of interest? I do. So I'm going to strongly oppose that because I do feel strongly there's a conflict of interest. Okay. I'll accept it as a friendly amendment. All right. Chuck, Chuck, you seconded that. Is that all right? That's fine with me. Is there somebody else that wants to be a part of it? It would be good to have a fifth. It's a two-day commitment, folks. Jeremy? I can do that. All right. Thank you, Jeremy. So can we friendly that again, Ray and Chuck? Yes. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you, guys. So to restate Dave, Greg, Jeremy, Jeremy and Ken. Are all the folks whose names are in that list, are you okay with that? Yes. Okay. So it's moved and seconded. It's been gently amended. Any further discussion about this? Yes. Michael. Yes, Sandy. There is a conflict of interest. I don't have a problem with not having decision authority in that group, but Dan will better be talking with me about it because this proposal is counting on my assets and my cooperation. If you want to succeed, I want to help you succeed and you better not freeze me out like I did for the last two weeks. So that's... Don't disagree. Yeah. I don't disagree with that, Michael. Yeah. I don't disagree. And I think Greg will represent you well and I think some other folks will represent you well. I don't know. I don't know what the mechanics were with that. So more than that. I mean, I think that Michael needs to be part of the discussion just not... Sure. Sure. Yep. I mean, if we're using his assets, he needs to be included in that discussion in my opinion. You can't represent me well without knowing what I can do, what business arrangement I can accept. So I have to be part of the discussion. I don't have to be part of the decision. Yeah. I would agree, Michael. 100%. Yeah. That's the crux. Yeah. Yeah. We can't be on both sides at the same time. We do need to negotiate with you and have a clear agreement. We only have two days. So we'll be right on it. Oh, awesome. Hi. So let's do this as a roll call. So we have raised motion. I'm just going to do in the order of video on my screen. I have this written down. Jeremy, I can send this to you or I can post it in the chat. John Morris? Yeah. Okay. John is a yes. Michael? Abstain. Andy Gilbert? Yes. Chuck? Yes. Ken? I'm not a voting member. Oh, or am I because Michael abstained? I would probably be better if you voted. I mean, he didn't recuse himself. So his abstaining vote. Yeah, you're right. Thank you for that. Okay. Greg? Yes. Siobhan? Yep. Yes. Yes. Okay. Allen? Yes. Henry? Yes. I guess I maybe didn't need to do this after all, but it's a good way to spend the time. David? Yes. Right? Yes. Phil? Yes. Okay. We have unanimous. Thank you, everybody. Okay. So raise motion passes. Let's move along to the next just as complicated agenda item. I am confident that we can plow through this. And as long as you all are willing to make decisions, which I see a decisive career in front of me, David has a beer, Tom has a beer, it's decision night. All right. Business plan and operating model discussion. I have some concrete questions for you all. It came up earlier. Are we going to be our own ISP? Are we going to hire somebody? We're going to hire somebody. Hire somebody. Hire somebody. Okay. Is there anyone out there? So we have talked about this in previous meetings. Is there anybody out there that thinks we should spin up our own infrastructure? I mean our own office and back office network stuff and whatever. Wow. I love that consensus. Siobhan, I see you. Perfect. Siobhan, we got a new job in retirement. No, because I want to have a voice on the board. So the only thing is I worry that over time, if we're making sure that we are in control of policy and what's being done in our name, if we're the ISP, then we control that. If we hire somebody to do that, I don't know how much control we retain over that. I don't know how answerable they are to us. And that may be a lack on my part just from lack of experience because I'm a state employee, have been my entire career. So I don't know how businesses work in this kind of situation. But my concern is serving everyone in my town and serving them well and at prices that everybody can afford, not just the people like me who can afford a higher rate. And that's really important to me. And whatever model makes that possible is the one I want to go with. And at this point right now, if we want to go fast, hiring somebody who's already doing the business, but maybe with the understanding that eventually we'll take this over, maybe the way to go. But I don't know. I don't know. But I'm ready to go with let's hire somebody. I'm not objecting. I'm just saying I've got thoughts. And I'm done. Okay. Appreciate your thoughts, Chuck. Any thoughts of yours? Yeah, two thoughts come to mind on this. And one of them actually, I think a good segue from what Siobhan was saying. And that is, I actually think it will be hard to decouple down the road. And sure, we could make that decision. But that's a big decision that has huge impact on customers, has huge impact on the established business relationship with a potential operator. And I think we'd need to be considered essentially nuclear option only. And so I just want to call that out because I think that will be highly problematic to do that. The second thing I would just like to point out is if there's any way we can get Watesfield, Champlain Valley Telecom into that conversation, they are just such a wonderfully customer centric organization. And they really try to do right by their customers. And one of the reasons they haven't pursued doing extension of their territory to date is they wanted to make sure their existing customers were taken care of first. And I just really fundamentally appreciate how much they care about doing right by their customers. And so I don't know if they'd even be interested in this. I'm sure some conversations have been attempted in the past to that effect. But any way we can get them to the table on that, I would strongly encourage. Okay. Tom. It's been a couple of weeks since I read through the business plan. I'm trying to recall the pluses and minuses laid out. And I was trying to remember that I think one of the major pluses of owning was as money might maybe become available down the line and significant portion from the state, that we would maybe have greater flexibility of what we do with that and what it means to our bottom line and what rates we can charge and all that, where that might get a little bit trickier if we were going to somebody else. Am I wrong in that? And if so, how? Well, I think it can be a little bit of both. I mean, it's however we arrange it, Greg. Yeah. So having been an ISP, there's two parts basically. There's the business side and then there's the technical side. And I would advocate we're contracting out everything to start, but we can't absorb the business side, the customer service in the future should we choose to. But the technical, I think we would always want to contract out. So no decisions need to be made at this point. Well, I think we need to start at least heading ahead in a direction. I mean, I think we can make a course correction, but I think at least in so far as conversations like should we build and own the fiber or should Washington Electric build it and we lease it? I mean, that's part of what was in the business plan. My instinct, and you can all shoot me down or support as you like, my instinct is that I see Ray mentioning paying for the capital stuff with grants and I agree. Let's get the grants. Let's go build a bunch of our own fiber. And if we have some, WEC has some fiber that's nearby that we can lease from them later, that we can pay for an ongoing basis rather than having to front all of that ourselves, I think we can do both. But I think in the short term, I think we look at our $4.7 million project that David pitched to NBRC and that we're looking at pitching to Vita. Let's go with that and let's build it. It'll be ours and we'll supplement that then with whatever WEC builds and whatever else we can sort of scrape together from whatever other grants that we see. And this is sort of just kind of studiously avoiding the wireless element, which I think we'll have to circle back around to. But because we won't be eligible for the municipal bonds for some time, leasing from WEC or leasing from someone else may be our only way forward in the intervening two years. So I guess I would like to see if everybody is roughly on board with that sort of that idea, if we can move forward with that. And then I have another concrete question for you, Ken. Yeah, so I almost agree entirely. The thing is our cost of capital is going to be fairly high to the extent we have to go even to Vita. And certainly we can pursue grants, but I guess my dream is that the grants allow us to do the drops. So that WEC has a reason to do fiber for its own purposes along the poles, but they don't have the reason to drop to each of the addresses. So we use our grant money to do the drops and WEC, who has a low cost of capital, do the fiber, that sort of teamwork, and then we lease the fiber. That sort of teamwork to me, especially at the outset, is a dream sort of connection that I would like to strive towards. I really love that idea, and I think that could make that could make it a much more cost effective project. I think, and just to be that guy, can you get WEC to agree to that in the next few months, the next six months? I mean, will they, will they bite, will they say, yes, let's go and do that? Oh yeah, yeah. Well, but I mean, for the folks who have been our liaisons to WEC, do you have a sense that WEC is ready to move? And if we sort of plop this down in front of them and said, we want to build fiber next year, yay or nay? What would they say right now, Michael or Greg? They've come a long way. They've not said yes yet, but they've come a long way in the last six months in the favorable direction. So it's possible. And in recent discussions, I think they're leaning more towards the model that they don't want to be ISP at all, that they would be willing to run the fiber. So they're getting cooked. If they were asked today, they would say nay. And yes, I agree with Greg, they've come a long way. The chairman of the board is all the way. He doesn't have the whole board behind him. The staff is scared. They would love to do it, but they're scared that they're going to lose, they're going to lose money and the members will end up having to pay to cover that and it'll drive rates up. They're real scared. They have a feasibility study that's almost complete from NRTC. And NRTC's numbers are doubly expensive compared to interisals projections. Doubly. And that's scaring the bejesus out the staff of WEK. Can they be brought around? Yes, they can, but it can be brought around in the next two months. I would be very pessimistic about that. How will the auction we can't discuss turn out? That could change an awful lot. We just don't know who's going to come out ahead there. There's a lot of different possible bidders, and we just don't know. And frankly, I think as much as we all are anxious to make it happen now, that auction is going to be such a determinant for who's going to be triumphant in the market next year and for the next 10, that decisions about who should be the ISP and whether we're going to partner with WEK or not and how, we need to kind of wait until January or February to find out how that turns out. And that's tough because we don't want to wait. We're all really, we've been at this for two and a half years and we're anxious, but that's such an enormous, you're going to have such an enormous impact that I think that's something we ought to consider. Well, and it's again, it's not a binary decision. It's not we can choose combinations of these, Chuck. This is more a question to those more knowledgeable than I. I do know WEK has some fiber already. As an example, there's a substation two properties away from me that is shown on the maps as having fiber. Does that mean that they have infrastructure along some of those poles and we could theoretically pitch doing drops in those kinds of places on the sooner side while the, whether they're willing to run new fiber question gets answered down the road. It's, it's the wrong fight. It's the wrong place. It's on transmission poles. Yeah. Okay. I thought that might connect substations. It's part of the Velco network in a sense, even though WEK, Velco built it for WEK and they only built it a few places so far. And we need to be on the WEK distribution poles. The ones that go to houses, to do drops. And as tempting as that sounds, it's, it's not the right fiber for us. It will be useful to us because of backhaul between towns and that sort of thing. Okay. So, again, keeping an eye on the time, I still have one more question that I want. I would like to have an answer if we can manage this today. Can we decide which, which routes we want to build first? Can we say executive discussion, executive discussion, yeah, executive session for that discussion or not? Maybe, but, but every, well, hold on, but everybody has a copy of the feasibility study. If I say, I think we should start with the blue and yellow. We're not violating anything. So that's, except that we have some reason to believe that certain parties are now in possession of our proprietary information. Yes, that's true. And by talking about that publicly, we are explaining that. Okay. I mean, I just, I picked those two out so we could easily do any of the other ones. I mean, this, this, this decision is going to be based in part on who we choose to be the ISP that we contract with. If we're going to work with Valley Net, there's a more logical option. If we're going to work with Waitsfield, Champlain Valley, there's a more logical option. I mean, you know, we could certainly work with either one on any of these, you know, given backhaul. Is that a decision that you all want to make? I mean, we have to make it at some point. If we're going to start putting together the Vita application, if we do here in August 20s, whether we get the Northern Border Grant, or do we sit and chill and wait until we hear about that? What do you think, Craig? Well, I suggest we wait until the next meeting. This funding for wireless may have some impact on that decision and also whether we got that funding. It says none of us had any time to read it. We really can't speak to it at this point as to whether where we would want to be deploying wireless would have some overlap with fiber. Okay, so for those folks that are doing that review in the next two days, I would say just be aware then of where we have the other proposed routes. And let's look and see what the, or those overlaps or not happen to be. So will all of you be ready, willing to make that decision at the next meeting? We set up an executive session. I see Andy smiling. I'm not sure you are. You're muted. Yeah, sure. I think, yeah, as much as we can make decisions, realizing we might whatever, but yeah, I'm comfortable with pushing the ball, especially if we're getting funding approved. I mean, yeah, so we're going to have to make these decisions. Okay, any other conclusions that we want to come to? Any discussion about the business plan and operating model? Henry, I see your hand. Yeah, just one comment. And we're Green Mountain, Duxbury's mostly Green Mountain power. So I imagine there's other towns that aren't in the WEC service area as well. I just wanted to throw that out there. That is true. And that will need to be accounted for in our longer term plan. And also, go ahead, Henry. Also, you know, saying that it's going to be whatever blue and yellow, does that, including the fact that Washington and Duxbury have been added in? Your sound cutout. Can you say that again? Does the feasibility plan now include Duxbury in Washington? No, it doesn't include that right now. I would suggest that those towns be included before that decision is made. Well, so let's be clear, not all towns had a pilot area. Oh, okay. Had coverage. So my town, Berlin, for example, wasn't there. Well, so I mean, well, there are portions. I mean, it is covered in portion, but in terms of, you know, there's other places that are also not covered. So, but given that we have the information that we have at present, you know, if we're able to update the feasibility study that looks like Duxbury or Washington look like, you know, tantalizing targets, then yeah, heck yeah, let's move forward with that. But I think, again, given the information that we have, and sadly, Duxbury's late, you know, late coming to the game, I don't know that we will be able to fully account for, you know, any additional information that we have from Duxbury or Washington. I feel bad about that. But I think we have to make do with what we have right now. Any other thoughts about actually, so how do you get a pilot? You say that there's some towns that have pilots. So how would I pursue that? So, so Henry, let's let's take this offline. We can talk about the feasibility study and then we'll, and we can sort this out and see what that would look like from your perspective then. David? Yeah, I just want to make sure that Jeremy, Jerry hasn't said anything, but he sent out a matrix analysis of some of this stuff. And if you haven't looked at it, please look at it. And it looks at pros and cons of different things. And I know Jerry did not get a lot of feedback on that. I got no feedback on it, but you know, people are busy. When did it get sent out? And also, where did I put my copy of the business plan? One of you stole it. So here's what I'll do. I will send that out. I will send that out for everybody. So business plan. Now, do you want the feasibility study or the business plan, Chavon, or both? You're muted, Chavon. Sorry. I can find the feasibility study. I can't find my copy of the business plan. I don't know what I did with it. I'll send a copy of all of that out. And then Jerry's decision matrix. Is that what we called it? I think so. Yeah. Okay. I will send that out as soon as we're done with this meeting. Thank you. You're welcome. Anything else on business plan operating model? This was a requested agenda item. Okay. Moving along. Line extension fixed wireless requests. So I think Jeremy, are you the spearhead for that one? Or the folks reviewing that if you want to give us a quick overview, Ken? I'm going to be submitting it. I don't know if I'm spearhead. Maybe that's something that we should have figured out is who was the lead on that, because it did seem like, you know, too many Indians, not enough chiefs in this particular case. I don't know. So, yeah, why don't you go ahead, Michael? Can you explain that item? There's no fixed wireless in the line extension program. So I'm trying to understand what you're talking about. Okay. So we had, because CUDs have the ability to weigh in on proposed line extension, line extensions in their territory, and fixed wireless and fiber builds in their territory. I wanted to, you know, the folks that are sending stuff to DPS to report back on. So if you want to mention the, you know, tethered arrow stat and how we are responding to the various requests that we're getting from DPS, if you just give a short summary, that would be great. Sure. So, or David could. David. So the request, the request for proposals came from the Department of Public Service. And for some reason, Jeremy and myself with the two people they were sent to, I inadvertently thought there was only three other people on the committee besides myself. And at Chris, there was no chair and no lead on it. But anyway, we got five proposals, two from Waitsville Telecom for fixed fiber to the premises, the 26 houses in Moretown. We got a proposal from Consolidated Communications for 300 plus fixed fiber to the premises in Elmore. We got a proposal from Topsom Telephone for 20 something fiber to the premises in Orange. We got the arrow stat RTO proposal for, I don't know, 700 premises in Calis Middlesex and wherever the balloon could reach. And then we got VTEL had a proposal for Washington and in Summon, Duxbury Middlesex. And I prepared a map on the ones that I could map. So I crafted a list of criteria, Michael Berenbaum improved the criteria for how we should review these. In any event, we said anybody that was going to provide fiber to the premises, we weren't going to object to. And the fixed wireless one from RTO, the Durageable proposal, we felt pretty uncomfortable with since it's only up 95% out. It's on a 2,000 foot tether. It was going to be based at the Kent Historic Site in Calis. And so when I saw that, I went to the select board at Calis and asked them, they had an opinion on this. And last night at the select board meeting, they unanimously voted to oppose such an idea. So we put, that was one of our criteria. So we put that in, it's probably our only, only, that is the only one that we're objecting to. What? Jeremy? That's the only one that we're objecting to, I believe. Right. So we got, Jeremy's going to submit the letter to the department, objecting to that one. So we should get another batch of them today or tomorrow. I haven't seen them yet. So that's sort of the update. Oh, David, do you have the exact, would you be able to forward me the email address that I should be sending this to? I think I sent it. I sent it to you this morning. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that I had that. Okay. And then you, Jeremy, is it okay if you are the lead on this? Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, which one? No, Jeremy, Matt. Okay. Seeing as I am submitting. So when I send this in, I will have them, I will ask them to email new things directly to myself and then I'll distribute it to everyone else. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Moving along, audit quotes. Greg, do you have an update on the quote from Bachelder? I don't have the firm numbers, but I spoke with her on Monday and she promised to have it for us tomorrow. And so I'll forward that to you. Okay. And just for folks coming in late to this, this was a, to, for us to get an audit or a financial review in anticipation of needing that to apply for the veto loan. Okay. Thanks for that, Greg. All right. Next meetings, we are, Jeremy, we're doing. And we jump into the communications committee item. Absolutely. Go for it. Okay. I'll keep this short and sweet. I'd like to make a motion to welcome Alan Gilbert to as an official member of the communications committee. He was instrumental in writing that last round of press release that we put out. He has a great grasp on the issues, much better than I do. And I think you would make a great addition to the committee and help steer us in the right direction. So the motion is officially worded. Motion to add Alan Gilbert to the communications committee. I second. Okay. Who is the second? Is that Phil? Okay. So motion by Chuck, second by Phil. Any further discussion? Alan, you okay with this? I'm happy to serve. Yay. All right. Anybody else want to get on in this party while we, while we have the agenda item? Not everybody wants. Okay. So if you want to do a roll call vote, we can do that. Otherwise, let's assume that we are all approving. So unmute if you'd like to vote no. Otherwise, I think we have unanimous consent and it's unanimous. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Alan. Glad to see you stepping up for that. All right. So next meeting, do we want to meet in two weeks? We will have more information about the Northern Border Grant. We'll have more information about some of the other funding. Is everybody okay with, let me find the dates, the 25th? Ken? So I have a question. The business development committee is going to meet again immediately after this meeting in order to consider resumes or not meet again. We'll continue the meeting within recess. Sorry. And so my question to the body is what decision, who is going to be making the decision on who gets hired for that position? Does it need to come back to the full board? Which case I would ask for perhaps the possibility of an emergency meeting fairly quickly. Well, so we could authorize the business development committee. We could grant them that power to make that to make that hire or not. Or we could recess this meeting, go into the business development committee meeting. So you're going to have to find yourself in the fair though. So let's see here. Let's do it this way. So business development committee is going to meet. Should we have a meeting sooner? Like next week? Just a short one just to talk about hiring an executive director? Like a one item, six to six 20? Yeah. Any objections to that? Yeah, it's a possibility that we're not going to recommend somebody. So we may need another week together more applications. You may not, we may have, morning a meeting for next week may just be wasted. I don't know. Can we cancel? We're going to have a meeting and then have it just immediately ended. Yeah, it's easy enough to cancel a meeting too. I mean, that's that's much less onerous. August 18th at 6 p.m. And then we can decide if we're going to have another one after that, or should we right away schedule for August 25th? Right away schedule for the 25th. Go for it. Is that a motion, Siobhan? I move that we schedule a meeting for August 25th and for the 18th. Okay. One topic of the agenda for the 18th being the hire and with canceling if we don't have a recommendation and blah, blah, blah for the 25th. Okay, I hear a motion. A second? Second. Okay, Phil seconded. Any further discussion? Okay, that seems pretty easy. So I don't know how this will work if we have a meeting next week, because ideally I will be on my honeymoon and I am not sure if we can get someone else to take notes if we do have a meeting and I am not in town. Or yeah, we'll sort that out. Go have fun. Aren't you going where there's Wi-Fi? No, no, no, no, no. I'm not even committed. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So moved and seconded. I don't think anybody's going to argue with this. If you'd like to argue with it, that's fine. Otherwise, I'm going to assume I'm not hearing any screaming. I'm going to assume that we have unanimous consent. And so we do. Okay, so our next meeting is on August 18th and then another meeting after that on the 25th. All right. Sorry, I missed it. Who seconded that one? I did, Jeremy. Who said I did? Phil. Was that Alan? No, Phil. Okay. I'm sorry. My audio is kind of cutting in and out and I'm having a hard time recognizing people's voices right now. I apologize. We need hand waving in addition to just yelling because you can't tell who the hell's talking. The 16th room cameras open. Okay. So, hey, I'm talking about it. Okay. Well, Ray, you can't spend the video with you. Okay. All right. We're good with our meetings. Let's hope. So let's move on to a round table. Alan? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting meeting. We obviously have a lot of work ahead of us and I look forward to it. Okay. Andy? Oh, yeah. Just echo that. And Michael, I didn't, you know, again, agree all the respect in the world for everything. We just got to do it right. You'd be a partner. So that's why I had to say that. Chuck. Nothing today. Have a good week, everyone. David. David Healy. I'll see everybody in the re-assay. BD meeting. All right. David went. I'm here. Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Good to attend my first meeting. All right. Greg? It's getting exciting. Henry? I'm interested in what's going to happen over the next few weeks and looking forward to us moving forward. Jeremy? Well, welcome to the new folks and thank you very much to David and Michael and everyone else who's been putting in a ton of work on these things behind the scenes. So thanks. John Morris. John Russell. Okay. I saw him flash his mute on and off. I read that as a pass. Ken? I really appreciate the discussion tonight and the fleshing out what we recognize as some of the challenges, but I think it's a great group. I appreciate being a part of it. Michael? Both the meeting before and this meeting and the meeting to come are roller coasters for me today. My commitment to CV Fiverr is deep and abiding and I want you all to remember that. And Andy, I love you. I know that you meant no offense. I didn't take offense, so everything's good. Phil? Oh, Phil just dropped off. Okay. We'll come back to him if he rejoins. Ray? So a few years ago in Costa Rica, I went white water rafting for the first time. And so I think that we have been in like class one rapids for the last year and a half. We're about to go to class two and it's going to be rough going and we're just going to have to ride it out and not fall out of the boat, not kill ourselves. So I think we can do it. All right. Yeah. Siobhan? So I had something in my head. First of all, Jeremy, congratulations, and I wish you all of the best. I've got a lot going on in my head right now that I'm very kind of wound up and content at the same time. It's very strange. But I really do appreciate all of the hard work that all of you put into this and all of the thought that you put into this. And I guess that's it. Tim? Glad to be part of the group here. Seems to be a lot of fun people and very intelligent people. I'm glad to see all that and look forward to staying on board for quite a long time and see this thing through. All right, Tom? Yeah, in addition to congratulations to Jeremy. Also, thank you, Jeremy, for sitting around that NPR Planet Money episode. That was an interesting cautionary tale. Hopefully we are in a different political setup here in Vermont than they were experiencing in that story. But still, it was good to have both eyes open about what's out there and what we could have up against us down the line. So, yeah, thanks. I tend to be the worst-case person. Yeah, there you go. All right, Phil, once you connect, do you want to add anything? You're muted. Yeah, I'm back. There you go. You're good. Okay, yeah, my program just closed suddenly and I had to come back. I think everybody said anything I would add to, so I'm good to go. And I would like to add something. I didn't make it an agenda item. It will be an agenda item in the future. I think we need to have a subcontracting policy. And I think we have some issues. We have some trust issues I think we need to resolve. And I would respectfully ask board members to please don't keep secrets. Please don't try to hide things. We're only going to get this done if we work together and push the same direction. And the fact that we had somebody who we kicked off the board who is now behind the scenes doing work for us and we didn't know about it, please, please, just loop us in. We need to know these things going forward. But I think we also need to take a long look at our policies and our contracts to make sure that we're not surprised by something like this again. And if I haven't already talked to you about what I'm talking about right now, please feel free to give me a call and I will happily chat more about this. But I'm going to move that we adjourn the governing board meeting and reconvene the business development committee meeting. One second. Can I get a friendly amendment that I get to go to the bathroom, please? Sure. Sure. Yeah, so we'll start at eight. You'll have a couple of minutes. I'm not going to go through the whole process. I'm going to assume that everybody's good with this. So yeah, once you take your two, three minute bio break, return back here and we'll hand it back up to David and talk about some, talk about some resumes that we got. Resumes, yep. Thank you. Thank you, worker. I'll drop off, Jeremy. Thanks, everyone. Sounds good. We'll see you in a bit. I may have to drop off too, David. I'm going to make you an organizer in any case. If you want your part recorded, you're going to have to click the record button separately. I do have the recording going up until this point, though. Okay. So I'll hit it. Still recording. Okay. Thank you. I wonder if I go, though. I wonder if I go that it's going on. Okay. I'll pay attention to it. Yeah. I will let you know before I go. I'm not just going to drop off. Okay. I just have something else eat-ish. Sure. Yep. While we're waiting, I just have a question. I just looked at the VTEL spreadsheet and there's all these locations in Duxbury that are listed in there. I wasn't aware of this and I'm wondering if we want to recommend to go ahead with this anyhow and I mean VTEL isn't even in our we're in consolidated territory and there's all these locations in the middle of consolidated territory with no VTEL there. They're a fixed wireless provider, so they're independent of consolidated. You don't have VTEL wireless there? Because we do have VTEL wireless over here in Moortown. Well, I mean we're in the mountains. I don't know where they'd even put them. You know, they're saying on Hamilton-Sump Road and I don't know where you could put a tower for that. So their tower to serve Duxbury and Moortown is actually on Bolton Mountain. I see. So it only hits, it only hits the west facing slope. Yeah, I can tell you I have neighbors who use VTEL but I attempted to purchase their highest end antenna and get it placed on my property and their text came out and walked all over the place and couldn't find a spot and they're like you must be right in a gap or something. Okay, thank you. Henry. All right, is Shabon back? Nope, Shabon's still going to break. I want to speak to Henry for a second. Somebody in Duxbury requested that we set up service in your town and we came out with a trailer and a tilt-up mast and set up an access point up at the top of Campbell-Sump Road. Okay. And managed to get service to a lot of places and then just as we were about to pull the trigger and set it up, Comcast came along and kind of pushed us out and so we never did. But I can tell you about the names of the people, you know, do you know Pat Zachary, for example? Yes. Maybe. Okay, right up at his property, that's where we were doing it. Okay. All right. Thank you. I think we're mostly back. So we're back to looking at resumes and Jeremy sent out four resumes. I reviewed all four of them. I saw one that was really okay to me and one that was so so so. So can I point something out? We actually have one of the candidates in the meeting with us right now. If we want to talk about personnel and hiring, we may want to go into executive session. Okay. Well, I mean, otherwise, Orca is going to continue recording this. And Sam did say earlier that if we just asked him, he would go. But it is being recorded by Orca and us right now. I guess if Sam is willing to leave the meeting, that would be great for me. I don't think that's right. I think we should go into executive session because it shouldn't be recorded on Orca. Okay. I agree. So how do we do that? So I'm going to move that we go into executive session to discuss. So we need to find competitive disadvantage or something like that. First personnel topics also part of the list. Yes. But and so you can just jump straight into personnel discussions. You don't you don't need to find that. I mean, if you're negotiating a contract or if you if there's a legal, you know, there's a lawsuit involved that we don't we don't want to discuss in public. But yeah, so I'm going to move that we go into executive session to discuss a personnel matter. Okay. Second. Second. All those in favor? All right. Bye. So does that mean Sam has to leave the room? Yep. So anybody who's not on the business development committee, unless the business development committee wants those folks to be here. Okay. Sam and Orca need to jump off. And I don't have a problem with other members of the non-business committee being at present. I would encourage anyone who is a delegate or an alternate is invited into the executive session. All right. So Sam, I just want to thank you for joining and getting a taste of how we operate. So I assume we'll have a follow up conversation soon. All right. And so we'll give them a couple more seconds and then I will just I will just boot them. Sorry. So Jeremy, I had to be asked. Am I am I on the business committee or not? You can you're invited to this executive session. Okay. All right. So Jeremy, I get if you look at the text, the chat room that John Morris did not get the resumes. Oh, I sent it to the whole board. I sent it to the distribution list, John. I can send it to you directly if you'd like. I'm just wondering if he's not on the distribution. Oh, or maybe you know what? I only sent it to the business development committee. That was Yeah, John. I just double-checked. John, you're not on the business development committee email list. Neither is Tom. And so, you know, both of you, if you want to be added to that list, Henry, actually, I think you're not on that list either. So if you want to be added on that list, ping me through private message in the chat with your email. Just remind me what your email is and I'll get you spun up on that on that mailing list. Okay. So I'm going to disconnect Orca.