 Yes, we do. Thank you, David. Okay, I have about six o'clock. I would like to call the January 11th, 2022, regular Governing Board meeting of CV Fiber to order. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? I don't have the agenda in front of me, but if it's not on there, there was this bit about updating our towns for town meeting on CV Fiber plans and I didn't know it was on there, but I'd like it to be if it's not. Thanks, David. Yes, it's an item called town communications, reports and ARFA funds. We will definitely be covering that tonight. That's something that lots of folks want to talk about. So thank you. Anything else? John. I see there are two items near or one item near the end of the agenda that says possible executive session. I'm wondering if we could switch that around with the election of chair because I'll have to leave the meeting when you go into that executive session. Possibly, I mean, I just put that at the end just to make it make the transition easier so that if we do elect a new chair, it's not half and half or part and part. We could put the election of chair right at the beginning of the agenda, Jerry, and we could just knock that out right away and I could just hand over the reins. If you have a preference. I'm on mute, first of all. Yeah, I'm actually not sure that the WEC discussion is going to go into executive session because there's a meeting tomorrow with WEC and I'm not sure that there's so much additional information that's gonna drive us into executive session. David, what do you think about that? And I think it's mostly an update. Yeah. Okay, so it sounds like if it does look like we're gonna go into executive session, we'll sit on it, do that and do the executive session right at the very end to accommodate. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. Okay, not hearing anything else. Is there any public comment items that are not on the agenda? I do not have anybody here in this spacious place. Rather cold outside as you might have noticed. So folks aren't motivated to show up here for sure. All right, moving along, meeting minutes approval. Jeremy, we have some meeting minutes to approve. Yeah, that would be the meeting minutes. So motion to approve the minutes of the December 16th, 2021 meeting minutes as drafted. Second. Okay. Moved by Jeremy, seconded by Siobhan. Any further discussion? Any objections to the motion? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. No other meeting minutes. Let's move on to Treasurer's report. Treasurer, what do you have for us? Okay, I'm here to report that the ending cash balance is $870,000, $212. That's essentially all grant funds, most of it for pre-construction, and about $28,000 for general funds. General support, which also includes grant funds. In the last month, we've spent about just under $90,000 basically for pull inventory and high level design and the end of the project manager. Good. Any questions for Phil? Phil, would you go of the 680,000 spent on high level design? No, no, about $44,000, $45,000 spent on high level design. So $70,000 ending cash balance, just under $90,000 spent in the last month. And most of that's for pull inventory and high level design. Okay, thank you. Thanks, R.D. Anything else for Phil? Okay, great. Thanks, Phil. Moving along, clerk's report. Anything to report, Jeremy? Nope, I've been keeping up with the minutes. I also have been collecting the, yeah, I've been working on some stuff, but nothing really to report mostly just minutes and then also trying to get the agendas in a single folder as well as well. All right, sounds good. Thanks for that. Project manager's report. Mary? Yeah, so we're moving along on multiple fronts here. We are completing area A, the five towns of area A, we're finishing up the pull inventories there. We're awaiting a hard drive from Tilson. David, you haven't received the hard drive from Tilson yet, have you? No. We're awaiting the hard drive from Tilson. We're also awaiting invoices from Tilson too, by the way. And we have, Apex is out there right now finishing up the work in Calis. And we expect that to be done, whether permitting within the next couple of weeks. And then of course, we're moving into areas B and C and we have some work orders that have been approved and we're ready to go with notice to proceed over the next couple of days. We'll send out notice to proceed to the two firms, Tilson and Apex, that are divvying up to 12 towns that are gonna be in area B and C. We also have ongoing our high level design that is approximately, let's call it 85% complete, perhaps they have run over on time. We were supposed to be finished at the end of the calendar year. They're now asking for mid-February for a finalization date. Some of us are pleased with that. We'd like them to perhaps be finished at the end of the month, this month, which would be more convenient for us in our workings with NRTC. David has been in contact with them. That of course is paid by grants, but we have the extension for that grant which brings us out into June. So we have no problem. We really shouldn't be worried about the money to pay for that. Also the poll inventory for orange is also in one of those similar grants, but we have the extension out into June. So we're not concerned about the grant funding following up on that. I think I'll let Ray talk about what we're doing with NRTC and Waitsfield Telecom. I'll let that fall over into the Operator and the EPP. So unless there are any questions, I think I'll raise out. Okay, any questions for Jerry? Sounds good. Go ahead. Jeremy. Jeremy, Jerry in areas of B and C, can you break out area C if not tonight? Can you break it out and send it to me by email? I would be interested to know where we stand in area C and whether it's Tilson, who's going to be doing the, for whom the work orders have been issued in area C. In other words, who's going to be doing Cabot? And when is there a timeline for that? Yes, I'll get that to you, R.D. I could put it up right now, but I don't want to hold up the whole group. Got it. Thank you. Yep. All right. Thanks, R.D. and Jerry. Not hearing anything else or seeing any hands up. Let's move along to public use of CV fiber internal email lists. Chuck, I believe this is yours. Yeah, hi everyone. If you recall, a number of board meetings ago, we had voted at the board to allow the public to email our email lists that we use for communications and things of that nature. And the reason for that at the time was that it was rather difficult for the public to actually get in contact with a specific committee if they wanted to do so. Now, since that has happened, we've had a couple of things occur. The first thing to occur is that we have had a couple of instances of some people replying all that we would really like to not be able to email those groups in that kind of capacity. The other thing is we have enhanced our website such that the contact page on our website now has the ability to reach out to specific committees directly. So if you want to reach the communications committee, you want to reach the planning and development committee, you can do that right on our website. We also added the ability to reach each town's delegation. So if you want to reach just the Northfield delegation or just the Berlin delegation, you can do so. And so between both of those things happening, the communications committee brought up the topic of whether we thought it was appropriate for those email lists to actually be publicly accessible. And consensus across the communications committee was that we think we should make them for internal use only once again. And the reason for that is, one, it will prevent external third-party spammers from being able to send messages to those groups, which is good for security measures. And two, it will prevent any communications that do include third parties. It will prevent them from replying all when we may not want to do so, in particular when we're warning meetings. So that is the current thinking on that. Before I put any sort of motion forward to the table, I would just want to kind of stop and take the temperature of folks and see if there's anybody who drastically disagrees with that viewpoint and would like to argue for keeping those email lists open. Jeremy, you have your hand up, David. Yeah, so I think that's a very good idea to close those lists. I don't think that we need to have those available to the public. The other thing that kind of goes hand in hand along with that are the Google groups. I've gotten a number of emails that have ended up in my spam box. Whoever John Jeff is, can you please mute when you're talking about your PowerPoint? Okay, so at any rate, I think that we should get rid of the Google groups because when someone sends email to the Google groups versions of our CV fiber groups, it ends up in my spam folders. That's just one other place to look for messages. And then the other thing is it's just more work for Chuck or whoever or myself to maintain two redundant sets of groups. So I think that the Google groups should be completely closed down at this point. Thanks, Jeremy, David. You're muted. You're muted. You're not talking about taking away the contact on the website. Because I have to tell you, I've gotten three emails from the website. No, no, the idea is now that we have that contact on the website, keeping those email lists as publicly accessible is relatively redundant. We will still keep the town-based aliases up. So, you know, callus at cbfiber.net will still be an email address that is publicly accessible that anybody can use to email their callus delegation and so forth. So we are going to keep those live. And in fact, those are part of the mechanism by which the website operates such that we only have to update one place rather than updating multiple places should delegates turn over. Yeah, I think this is a great idea. I mean, I think this is going to be the, I think it sounds like the least amount of work and kind of the most amount of benefit. We still have distribution lists for folks to contact and we don't run into all the other side effects of the way we have it set up currently. So yeah, I think we should do this. Any other thoughts on where the other? So why don't you go ahead and make your motion, Chuck? Great. I hear by move that we make our email lists for internal use only. Actually, let me clarify that a little bit. I hear by move that we make our committee-based email lists for internal use only. Second. Second. Okay. Moved by Chuck, seconded by Siobhan. Any further discussion? Damn it. We can. So let's sort this one out and then maybe we can actually, we'll have another one to get away from the public notice list on the Google groups, but first for this one, with the internal committee mailing lists. Yep. So I'll go ahead and make a second motion that- No. Both of this motion first. No, I kind of- Okay, yep. I'm sorry. All right. So are there any objections to adopting the motion that Chuck made? Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously. You were saying, Mr. Burt. Yes. I want to call out before I make this motion that there's actually two elements of this. One, there is the committee mailing lists that we have on Google groups. And that is incredibly clear-cut for us to go ahead and retire those and just move to using the internal at-cv-fiber lists for committee mailings. However, the public notice list is a little bit more complicated as Microsoft does not support creating a large-scale list like that in quite the same way that Google groups does. So that one I would actually propose, we maybe table and have some more research done by the communications committee to come back with some proposals on how we handle that. But in the meantime, I will at least go ahead and make the clear-cut motion of I hear by move that we deprecate our Google groups' committee and board email lists in favor of the at-cv-fiber comparable lists that we now have in place. Second. Second. Woo! Great, Jeremy got that one. Moved by Chuck, seconded by Jeremy. Yeah. I gotta have fun somehow. That's right. So we live in a cold place. We have to make it warm, right? Any further discussion on this? Any objections to the motion? All right, motion passes unanimously. And so Chuck, if you wanna just kind of noodle around and see if you can find a way that makes sense that we can do that all within teams and we'll figure it out down the road. Sounds good, thank you. All right. Okay, next one is Elmore, CV-Fiber, and Lamoille Fiber Nets. Yeah, Ray. Other than me. I see Ray has his hand up. Chuck, I think it's probably, they just checked the CV-Fiber.net and all the committees have Google groups as their email list. Can we go in and change all those? Sounds good. Okay. Yeah. All right, yes, David. Elmore. Elmore is now officially part of Lamoille Fiber, what are they called? They got their new name. They got their new name. Anyway, they have agreed to take on Elmore and they have respectfully asked us not to do a poll inventory and not exactly show what we do with the money we got for that at this moment, but so they are going to be actually a split CUD. They're gonna be 89% Lamoille and 10% NEK Broadband. They're splitting the town up based on what electric utility services that part of town. So that's how they ended up doing that. So I don't know if there's any formal thing. They've never formally requested to leave CV-Fiber and whether that needs to be done or not. Jeremy, I don't know if you know the answer to that. Yes, they need to formally, the select board needs to formally request to leave and it's in statute the process. Okay, I'll connect with them. Yeah, so I mean, it's basically the same process, but because we haven't essentially, we haven't invested any money there. It's a rather simpler process than if we'd already put in infrastructure. Jerry, you had your hand up. Do you still have a question or something to add? I just wanted to talk about the formal aspect of this, but you covered it. Thank you, Jeremy. Thanks, Jerry. Linda. David, did you hear anything about Waterbury? No. I haven't heard anything either. Okay. Thank you. So Lamoille Fibernet, you had talked to them at some point, Linda, right? Right. Yeah, we sent our paperwork over, the select board signed the paperwork and everything, it went over way before Christmas, way before. You may want to drop Val, whatever Val's last name is an email. If you don't have it, I can send it to you. I think I have it. Yeah. I just expected to hear a response one way or the other. They seem, yeah. They need to be provided. Oh, thanks, David. Lots of stuff moving right now. So that's not so, so surprising, especially because they're not, I don't think they're as far along as we are. But that, I think in terms of the funding that we've looked at or that we've gotten and the formula, if Waterbury does go partially with Lamoille Fibernet, that formula has to change then, right, David? Or are they locked in? They were at this point, they're still in our, in our, we're getting credit for the 289 locations. Okay. Well, I guess that's good, right? Yeah. All right, so we'll stay tuned with that. Okay, anything else on Elmore? Great, moving along. Executive director position. Not sure who's taking this on, Ray, maybe? I think Jerry or David. Yeah, this is Jerry, we can start it, but I see Linda has her hand up. Linda, you have something? She had her hand up before. Oh, okay, and now you're on mute. So we're moving forward with the executive director position. There's been a working group that has pulled together a job posting and has been working with the executive committee. I believe David is going to bring up a motion shortly. Our intention is by early April, hopefully, to have someone on board, maybe earlier. And we are a small, there's a group of about seven of us or six of us, I believe, that are going to go through the process of looking through resumes and doing the interviews and checking the references and doing all of that follow-up work. Okay. And David's going to make the motion now, but I do want folks to know and this is totally my fault. We put a posting out on LinkedIn last night, two nights ago, in advance, got my meetings crossed up, so I apologize for that. So I also apologized to everybody that got all that spam until we figured out how to turn that off, what a mess that was, but we got that under control. But we're really looking forward to doing this because the workload on the volunteer folks is brutal at the moment and we need to do it. So I'm looking forward to getting somebody on board. I'll pass it over to David to close the loop on this. So did my motion get pasted into the chat? Yes. Okay. Anyway, so the motion is whereas CV Fiber requires a full-time executive director to be responsible for carrying out strategies and objectives for the successful development and operation of the CV Fiber community network with contracted partners, engage and collaborate with community members and other communication union districts, utilities, organizations and state government. Whereas the CV Fiber 2022 budget has a provision for the position of executive director, whereas CV Fiber has received a pre-construction grant award from the Vermont Community Broadband Board that would fund the position of executive director, moved that the executive committee recommend that the governing board approve the position of executive director and authorize the executive committee to publish a job announcement, manage the recruitment and interview process and further make a recommendation to the board for the appointment of an executive director. Second. Second. Okay, so a quick point of order. This motion is written for the executive committee, David. This is not a governing board motion. It says move that the executive committee recommend. Yeah, yep, you're right. Yeah, so modify that to recommend that the governing board approve. Okay, yeah, I think we can, I think that was the kind of the prior step. Yeah. And so we just need to massage this. So now the governing board is actually taking action on this because the executive committee has already talked about this. We had a special meeting last Thursday. This is something that we spent some time with. There's not really, I mean, again, there's not really any surprises with this. This is kind of the next logical step of we put it in the budget. We've talked about it, the ads gone out, the ads being paid for. And so we're now authorizing the executive committee to actually go and do the process and they'll come back. They'll get feedback from the team. Executive committee will then recommend the executive director, you know, hopeful appointee to the governing board and the governing board, all of us here will then approve that when we get that far. My main question is do you have a sense of a timeline? When do you think we want to pull the trigger on a successful candidate? So Jeremy, before we get into that, do we want to fix the motion and then figure out a second for the minutes? Yeah, delete the executive committee piece. Yeah, I can fix that. So basically the governing board authorizes the executive committee to do X, Y, Z in this. Okay, so I second unless you heard someone else first for Christian in the minutes. No, that's fine with me. Okay. Jeremy, there's a second section where it says executive committee to further down in that motion. Right, so the governing board approved the position and so we're also authorizing the executive committee to do the Java announcement, manage the recruitment and reprocess and they will then come back with the recommendation. I think the clause, the executive committee recommended that. That's what the bit that struck and everything else should remain the same. Yep. All right, so I see. Okay, so that was you Jeremy, I see Jerry then Alan. Yeah, you had asked about a timeline. So we're targeting early April or earlier, hopefully to have someone on board and we're thinking that sometime in the second half of February to close out the acceptance, I'm a little hesitant and I'm always willing to take commentary and help here. I'm a little hesitant to put a definitive date as of right now because we just don't know how things are looking and what we're gonna get. Yeah, I think typically these things ramp up early and then Peter out but I'm just a little hesitant to put a definitive closing date as of right now but we can change that as we start thinking about it. We will wanna make that announcement and also while I'm on that, we will need to modify the website so that it's not just RFPs, it's RFPs and job posting and then we can provide that kind of information on the website but that's a discussion for offline later on. I'll stop now. Thanks, Jerry. Jeremy, you still have your hand up. Did you have something you wanted to add? Oh yeah, I mean, we've got 113 mostly spam responses to the LinkedIn ad. Five of those actually followed our instructions and included a cover letter and a resume. So that's where that is. Thanks Jeremy. Alan Gilbert, did you have something? I saw you had your hand up briefly. Yeah, I did have my hand up but you guys figured it out so I don't need to say anything. Okay, thanks Alan. David. Yeah, I just wanna suggest besides doing our announcement in these various media links and stuff, sometimes the best sources of people we know and so you probably ought to be putting it out to anybody you know or even putting it in front porch forum just to let people know that we're doing this for one and then if somebody in your community is qualified all the better. Yeah, that would be great. Christopher. Yeah, on that same point that David just mentioned I just wanted to sort of double down on that and say it's super easy on LinkedIn to just share it on your profile which I did as well which will get it out to a lot more people. Yep. So yeah, could somebody actually, I mean, if you haven't seen it, seen the posting on LinkedIn could somebody actually paste in a link in the chat here and maybe some folks who have LinkedIn accounts that they care about that they can then share that long? Yep, I'll do it. I'll have the link and share it in the chat. Thank you. Okay, so we have this, so we have the motion, right? Any further discussion about this? All right, any objections to the motion as amended? I don't hear any objections. The motion passes unanimously. Thanks for that. Moving on operator negotiations and executable project plan. Oh, I guess I'll talk to that and then Jerry can jump in as well as David. So we have been working on the operator contract. We've had a couple of rounds now with our attorney with regard to that. And my expectation is that tomorrow we'll be sending that off to Wadesfield Telecom for them to kind of consume and process this before they get back to us. The second part of that, the second part of that operator contract, one of the exhibits has to do with the compensation package for an operator. And that's still left for us to parse and to learn more about. We have begun discussions with Mission Broadband. We have received their contract. We've passed it to our attorney. We've marked it up a significant amount and we felt like we need to really talk to them. They provided a lot of consulting services and we need to get more concrete with regard to what they can do and kind of reframe the contract into a retainer agreement with various work orders where we identify the specific things we wanna get done at a specific price. So we have a conversation with them tomorrow afternoon, that's Jerry, myself and David. Friday, the next bit has to do with the executable project plan. Friday, we have a three hour session with NRTC in the morning and we'll have a couple more sessions next week of a similar length. And it looks like we'll be doing two to three sessions a week at Infinitum for the coming month or so before we can get the executable project plan put to bed in a certain position where we can make some, start doing the initial project plan. So that's kind of where we're at. Jerry, David, anything you wanna add to that? Yep. Any questions for Ray or thoughts about operator executable project plan, anything like that? All right, well. Jeremy. If we are anticipating of bringing an executive director on board sometime in the next few months, hopefully, I presume there's some way of integrating the executive director into these negotiations, these sessions with NRTC. Absolutely, I mean, that would be, that's actually part of the job description for the executive director is to basically to be the interface between the executive committee and all of the contractors that will be working for us. It's quite a full-time job. Yeah, exactly. And is it an easy handoff from the executive committee, which is now essentially the interface? Is it going to be an easy handoff to an executive director? Well, we're gonna try to make it as smooth of a handoff as possible. I think that's part of the perhaps unstated criteria that would be used when we're evaluating applicants is how smooth can a handoff be and how well do we think we can work with this applicant? That's, I mean, maybe that is a stated criterion, but it's certainly something that'll be in the forefront of all of our minds when we're interviewing folks and reading resumes. Thank you. David, you're muted. The executable project plan is a living document and to the extent that it becomes the Bible for CV Fiverr and the contractors, it helps the executive director actually launch himself into the project. So I'm pretty excited. I think timing is probably pretty good. Very good, thanks for that, David. Yeah, hopefully we can make it as easy as possible for this new person to come in and hopefully they're capable enough to accept the baton and keep on running. Okay, anything else about operator negotiations executable project plan? We're looking at like a seven PM finish line here folks. This is great. Right, town communications reports and ARPA funds. Where are we at with all of that? So I think perhaps I raised this topic and you should have, all of you basically, all of you should have received a work product that David and I put together for the town report to submit to your board of select men that would have gone into the town meeting materials, which how that's going to be held now, I have no idea. But I do understand that in some communities, if you're meeting virtually, they'll mail it to you. So maybe they're going to see it anyway. So please do send that along. Yeah, hopefully you have done so already. There may be some deadlines for that. The other part is that we're looking at how we could engage other residents in the different towns, the Vermont Community Broadband Board wants to know how we have engaged the residents in the town. And so that's part of our construction grant application, for example, in addition to the front porch forum, twice a month that we perhaps should be considering. The other is that we're looking at taking the town reports and emailing them to those who have subscribed to our newsletter or responded to our survey by town in order to get them excited about what's coming up, as well as to make them aware of the ARPA funds that we're going after from the state, as well as the availability of ARPA funds from the communities. And you may recall from the town report that was passed out, the money that's, the money up to about a million and a half will be matched by the state for, so that's an additional million and a half that we perhaps, because the towns were committing it, that we were otherwise we're not going to get some sort of incentive. But beyond that, we're committing to spending the money in the town so that we have that commitment as well. So we're gonna get back, we're gonna talk about this, I think, perhaps in the communications committee, but I think that we're gonna start sending that out. I think David's already committed and wants to send it to the folks in Calis, and we'll see how that goes. That could be our first experiment, see what kind of feedback we get. Anything else, Jerry, David? I guess I just want to put out there that I'm hoping that those of you that are delegates or alternates, if you haven't already that you have, please take in this material and send it to your town clerk and make sure that they know that it exists so that they can include it in the town report. If they haven't solicited it actively, I'm just gonna ask each of you to make sure that you kind of drop it into their laps, if you can. Linda. I did drop it into the select board in Waterbury's lap. I also got it into the Waterbury Town meeting report and I sent out like a piecemeal of it to Front Porch Forum this week and got several responses that were very positive about, oh, this is a great update. They are for funds. Really, we needed to ask for them from our select board. Oh, maybe we should do that. That kind of response. So I'm encouraging all members to do such. Thank you. Thanks, Linda. Okay, anything else, Cheryl? Power D, go for it. Just, I've also been, I submitted a report to my town for the town report. I had a December 7th deadline, but I'm sure that I've sent in a modification and I'm sure that will be acceptable. One of the things I've done on a separate track is approach the select board for an ARPA donation from their ARPA pot. Now, do I understand correctly that our ARPA donation from Cabot will be matched by a VCBB? Is that correct? And is it also correct that any money that we donate from our ARPA pot has to be spent in Cabot? Okay, so both, I see Ray nodding. Well, just to make sure we're clear. The most money that CV Fiber is going to get is a million and a half to match. So suddenly we had $3 million worth of contributions that still only match up to a million, that still only give us another million and a half, right? So there's that. And will the money be spent in your town? The answer is yes. Okay, thank you. Those are two points that I haven't made to my select board because I wasn't certain of them. And now I can make that pitch again. There was one thing that has kept us from kind of closing the loop in all this, and that is that we don't have an MOU in a finished form. And one of the reasons for that was that we didn't have the final rules from Treasury. Those were just promulgated, I think, earlier this week or the end of last week so that they're now available. And I think that between the two or three, four attorneys that are looking at this, we might be able to pull something together maybe by some time next week. So I'll be poking them for that. Okay, so will delegates get copies of this MOU that we can present to our select board? The short answer will be yes. Okay, thank you. All right, thanks, R.D., thanks, Ray. John Morris, I see you have your hand up. I just wanted to raise the point that there's a deadline for the match of, I think, April 15th. Well, the good news there, John, is that as a result of some pressure, we managed to get that change to 15 September. Oh, that's great news. Yeah, and we don't have to have the money in pocket. It just needs to be a letter of commitment. Great. Is that synonymous with the MOU, a letter of commitment? I don't wanna go on a limb and say that that would be the same. I can't imagine that the town would want anything less than understanding the full arrangement between the parties. And so I wouldn't think so. What the RFP says is a letter, is a commitment. And so maybe I think the commitment is the MOU, and hopefully we'll have Vikuta and the attorneys figure that out between now and the next couple of weeks. Okay, Alan? The other thing that might work is simple record of a vote by the select board to allocate the funds. I mean, that's what I got in Worcester, and I'll be using that as the proof that the town has agreed to allocate $50,000 to the VARPA funds. And I'm sure that will meet things, RD. Got it. My instinct is that we can get select boards to kind of soft commit to, yes, we're gonna do this and then what it actually, the actual shape of it in the MOU later. I mean, whether they'll actually do that or not, I mean, I think it's gonna depend on the select board and their appetite for uncertainty. I mean, I think certain select boards are certainly more motivated than others to just get on with this. So I have Siobhan and then David. Yeah, the orange select board is absolutely, they're ready to commit, they wanna commit, they don't know how much, but they need a document, an official document requesting a specific amount of money so that they can say, yes, we'll do that, or they can consider it so they can do their due diligence and determine and then a document that makes that commitment. So that's where we are. They've been anxious for this since last June. So yeah. Well, maybe Phil's here, we can talk to Bonnie about sending them an invoice. What do you think, Phil? Yeah. Maybe not just yet, but David. Yeah, I mean, zero is what I thought. I know that the Regional Planning Commission, Central Vermont Regional Commission and the leaders of these towns has been going to a few towns, including the town of Woodbury last week. I tried to reach out to the two delegates from Woodbury, never heard back from them, but they have a formal application process and a formal committee that is making recommendations to the select board for a later vote. I don't know how many other towns are working it that way. It's something I know that CDRPC has been recommending. I don't know how many other towns have done this. I know Calis has not done this. I was told in Calis we won't deal with opera until we get our town budget done, which is now. I mean, they haven't finished their town budget. They're in trouble, but I have a feeling that's what's going on in a lot of towns is just getting the regular budgets completed for town meeting. Right, anything else on this? Reporting to the towns, ARPA funds, et cetera. Okay, moving along. Let's talk some more about WEC, the agreement with WEC and our relationship with them. And we'll see if we need to go and do an executive session, but it sounds like we probably don't. Ray, do you want me to take it? Well, I heard you're sighing, so I thought. Anyway, the long saga of working with WEC to get to an agreement. Anyway, so we met 10 days ago to restart, we're calling a restart process about how to go forward with the RUS loan that they're trying to get and how they can meet their need, their commitment to make that thing work as well as accommodate with the three CUDs need to do, which is now we have money. How do we best use the money and not borrow? So it's an ongoing discussion. And the bottom line is that we have agreed in principle that we will provide whatever services they need for smart grid and smart metering in the context of an overall network that we're building. So tomorrow there's a second go round, hopefully making progress on this. And setting up a time schedule by where they would use their money for construction between the three CUDs. It's clear that NEC broadband needs all the money they can get, so they're willing to go first now, where we don't need WEC's money at this point. We will need it in probably year three. So that's where that is at. And I'll try to keep everybody posted the next time we after this meeting. Ray, do you have anything else you want to add to that? That sounds good. Yeah. All right. Any questions about WEC? I mean, I think one of the reasons that the shape of this changed, I think is in part because they got a new head honcho that first of all and second of all, when we started talking to them we didn't really have the bucket loads of money that we are ending up with now. So as we started to make our plans some time ago or we ended up in different places. So it's, yeah, I mean, not that much has changed just in terms of which part goes first. So all right. Anything else about WEC? I'm just going to take a little bit of chair's privilege here and mention that even though we have the central amount regional planning committee room reserved here, it's incredibly likely that the legislature in the next week is going to allow municipalities to hold entirely remote meetings. So we may not actually have to have a person at least until the pandemic is declared over. I think it's actually maybe for the rest of this calendar year. I forget what the, how the bill is worded, but in any event, we may not have to do this. The only thing that changes if we do all remote is that it must be recorded. So that's really the main difference. So the next agenda item is the election of the chair, which as I mentioned in the December meeting goes my intention to step aside and let someone else take the helm of this so that I can go back to doing my research and doing other work and spending more time with my kids and such. Jerry did meet with the select board in December and they agreed to sort of swap the positions and make him the delegate and me the alternate. And so I will, I'd like to conduct an election of chair to replace me. So this is sort of weird. I don't think we have to go strict Robert's rules here, but because I'm not standing for the election, I'm happy to just conduct this. So can I take any nominations for chair of CV Fiber? David. I'll nominate Jerry DeMantidis for a chair. Second. So Robert's rules says that you don't actually need seconds for nominations, but I will take a whole host of seconds. That sounds great. Are there any other nominations? Okay, not hearing any. Chuck, do you have a comment? No, I have a nomination. I'd like to nominate Siobhan. For chair. I just want to make sure that the nomination is for chair. I respectfully decline. Siobhan looked horrified. I really appreciate that, Chuck. Thank you so much, but respectfully, really, I do not want this position. I have seen this position. I have looked into the abyss. I wanted to give you the nod, Siobhan. Thank you. All right, thanks for that, Chuck. Do we have a position of official seconder? Well, she is the official second. She's the vice chair. I would say, it would save a lot of work if we just designated Siobhan as the seconder. You can just change it to rules. All right, Tom, you have a comment, your hands up? Yes, just wondering maybe as we're going next, but if you can explain what the process is gonna be by which we're going to do the election. Well, because there are not multiple nominations, I will direct the clerk to cast one vote on behalf of the body. If there are objections, there's not really a process for that because elections are just votes. It's not a yay or nay. It's not a motion in the same sense. So you won't actually have to do anything. If you want somebody other than Jerry to be chair, you ought to nominate them. Literally right now would be the time. So thanks for asking that, Tom. All right, are there any other nominations for chair? I'm about to close it, okay? Motions are closed. I will direct our clerk to cast one vote on behalf of the body, declaring Jerry DMTD's chair of CV Fiverr. There you go. Now you get to run the meeting, Jerry. And so we have two more agenda items and I will step back. Hot spot campaign. Yes. Yes. How about if we do this round table and I'll take the, I'll start with my chair privilege here to thank Jeremy, you know, to go from a concept, truly, a concept with a guy standing at the door with a clipboard asking for signatures to get on the ballot at a town meeting to an organization with a multimillion dollar budget and a path forward that has thousands of people excited is an incredible feat. So my round table is thank you, Jeremy. And how about if I go around the room as I can see you, David? I want to thank Jeremy for all his hard work and I'm sure he's going to be looking forward to seeing the future success too. Chuck, you're next on my field of vision. Yes, here, here, Jeremy. Thank you for all you've done for us. We wouldn't be where we are today without your tireless efforts. So thank you. Tom, Fisher. I think it's going to be a common refrain. Thanks, Jeremy. Can I get you, of course, to everybody else who's been working early on these various contracts and the projects in the field? Go ahead, Jeremy. Didn't we do all this in December once? Do I have to go through this again? Yes. Yes. Siobhan, go ahead, please. I'm just really glad that we're progressing, that we're continuing to move on and just really proud of all the work that we've all accomplished. And as a whole bunch of really good worker bees and I'm really glad that Jerry has taken this on, not in a small part, because I'm glad I'm not feeling obligated to do it. Because I would. And if nobody else would do it, I would feel obligated to step up and then there goes my quality of life. But Jerry, I don't think Jerry has the same personality flaws that I have. And so I think he's going to be able to maintain and even keel a little better than I could. But I'm very excited about where we're going and what we're doing and I'm going to shut up now. Thanks. Alan, what would you like to say? So I'm a railroad guy and I often think about railroad analogies and something like this. We're not a promontory point yet where the two locomotives are cow catcher to cow catcher. But Jeremy, you've really gotten this off on a great path in case the railroad, it was two different paths, but they did meet. But the work you've done is I think equivalent to what Leland Stanford did where the Central Pacific Railroad and building tunnels through the Sierra's. So thanks very much for that. Thanks for building fires under us and I hope you keep doing that. And Jerry, I wish you the very best. I know you're an incredibly capable guy and we're going to get there. I really feel this year especially is going to tell the world that we can do this. So best of luck in helping us prove that. And Jeremy, thank you again. Thanks, Alan. Didn't know you're a railroad guy. We're going to have to have a sidebar about that someday. Jeremy, Matt. Yeah, thanks, Jeremy. Amazing work. But also I just wanted to point out how, well, the whole board in general is now working together. I remember the first few meetings that I showed up to, they were just interminable. They went on and on and on and on and on and round and round the mulberry bush. And now we're like, we got this. We're done like what an hour ahead of schedule. This is great. So just thanks to everyone for all the work that you put in. This is great. Chris, Shank. I was thinking that everybody was thinking Jeremy, Matt. So I've been, you know, lost. You know what I'm just kidding. You're one. So that's good. I like it. I mean, so first of all, I'd like to say yes. Thank you. Thank you, Jeremy Hansen. Sorry, Jeremy, Matt, but sorry. Thank you, Jeremy Hansen. You know, I've been here a short period of time but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Your leadership, you know, shows through. Second of all, Jerry, I've enjoyed working with you already and I look forward to working with you more in the future. And third of all, and for the second hour of this meeting, no, I'm just kidding. That's it, that's all I have to say. Jill, would you have something, please? I'm just joining the course here. Jeremy, thank you for your hard work. It's clear from why I first started, which really has been that long. Six, I don't know, is it six months? Nine months? Nine months. And it's clear. I think I'm really impressed where we're at as a volunteer board. It's quite amazing. And it's because of your leadership. Thank you. Ray? Yes, I wanted to point out that we have an hour left to go on our agenda. So Jeremy, just hang in there. As daunting as the work is in front of us, we know what's in front of us. We know the things that have to be done. This is really the end of the beginning and we wouldn't be here but for Jeremy's work. It's harder to get something started and have it quicken and have it actually take place than it is for us now to go forward. As hard as it's going to be, it's harder to get something started that's this monumental, a $50 million, 1200 mile broadband network for 55,000 citizens and 20 communities, 21 communities in central Vermont. That's amazing. Thanks, Jeremy. Jeremy, Matt, do you have your hand up? Yeah, I do actually, just a real quick question. I just wanted to confirm that now that you are chair of the board, you are also chair of the executive committee. I believe that's correct. Okay, just wanted to double check that. Okay, let's see, who's next? David Lawrence. I don't think there's much more that I can say compared to what everybody else said but I do want to just say on a personal level as somebody who has been a remote internet worker in Middlesex since 1997, I cannot really express the depths of my gratitude that somebody really took this bull by the horns and made this something that's really gonna come true. So that's, I will always appreciate that. Yeah, feel your pain, man. David, when? Just gonna concur with what everyone said. Thank you, Jeremy and Jerry for stepping up and thank you all for your work. All right. Jonathan Williams. Yes, everyone, just echoing everyone's sentiments and thank you very much, Jeremy and Jerry. Sure enough, Henry, how are you, Henry? Yeah, I really want to thank you, Jeremy, for the breadth of the skills that you brought to create this thing and the fact that you took it to the point where it could be launched on its own and that is a perfect time to step down. I think a combination of your technical skills, your management skills and your leadership skills really combine to make you a great leader for the group. And I hope that you'll still stay involved and impart wisdom to us as we proceed. And Jerry, thanks for taking over and continuing and I see all of this as being rather seamless. Thanks again. Thanks, Henry. I do hope we continue moving in as seamlessly as possible. R.D., have I called on you yet? Not yet, no, I'm happy to chime in. I'm personally grateful to Jeremy for throwing me a rope time after time to help me scale this incredibly steep learning curve. I feel I've gotten an education and a valuable one and I'm personally very grateful to Jeremy for all the time he's given me. Thank you, that's great leadership indeed. John Walters, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to say, I don't know how the other CUDs are doing it without a Jeremy and I'm awfully glad we didn't have to find out. That's great. Henry, I see your hands up. Yeah, I just wanted to ask Jeremy one question. What is your research project gonna be that you're gonna go back to with all your free time? Which one? I mean, I've got two or three different projects. One, I was telling Ray about this earlier today. One is actually about using organizations like CUDs, special municipal districts for whatever, for stuff I can share with you when I'm done. I'll share it widely, but now I've got some stuff in crypto and some stuff in election security. Who is it with the phone number 5975? That's me. Oh, okay. That's all I see. I check in with video and audio on my phone. You got 55 minutes left if you wanna take up some more time. Is there anybody that wants to say something that hasn't had the opportunity yet? I think I've run through the list, but I'm not 100% certain. I'd like to speak. Yes, who is that, please? Linda. Linda. Go ahead, Linda. I work with a lot of organizations that are run by volunteers, but I've never seen the dedication in those that I see here. You guys are all really hard workers. That's how you got where we are right now. It is a pleasure to be among you and I've learned so much in short time from you. Thank you so much, Jeremy, for all the work you did to get us here. And I wanna thank Jerry for stepping up because we really need you now. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Linda. Well, if is there, Henry, I see your hand is up again or is that residual? Residual, okay. Well, I think at 7.06. Does Jeremy have some last words? That's a good idea, Ray, thank you. Thanks for that. No, not really, aside from thank you all and thanks again, Jerry, for taking it from here. I will stay involved. I am gonna be here. It's not like I'm disappearing, but while I'm not gonna see Fiber anytime soon, I'm gonna be super excited. And I definitely wanna be at the kickoff, ribbon cutting, whatever, when we connect the first person, whichever address that happens to be. Absolutely, absolutely. Anybody wanna make a motion to adjourn? Is that? Don't move. Second. I guess so. Real quick question actually for Jonathan Williams outside of the meeting. Are you now the official delegate for Berry City or are you the alternate or what is your status? I'm sure, Jeremy, there's been no formal motion, but in lieu of us having a appointed delegate or alternate besides myself, I am the de facto delegate to the... Okay, fair enough. Okay, sounds good. Let me know if that changes, thanks. All right, everyone. Thank you. We see you real soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye all.