 I'd like to call the August 25th, 2020 CV Fiber Governing Board meeting to order. I'm going to start the recording. It's recording. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Yeah, a couple of quick ones. I was wondering if we could approve the August 11th governing board meeting minutes. And then also, I noticed that you didn't have anything on there for round table. Oh, okay. Meeting minutes for August 11th and round table. Could you tell me when, when did you send out the agenda? What's the time stamp on that so I can find it? Please. August 23rd at 12, 13 p.m. So it's basically the same agenda as we had at the last meeting. Any other items to add or anything to change on the agenda, Michael? Yeah, the ad hoc group that's reviewing the submissions to the Department of Public Service to recommend approving or disapproving projects. An interesting theme has arisen about our general philosophy of whether we, whether our goal is to further the service as quickly as possible in this pandemic time or whether we are looking to protect our business case so that we can be successful. And those are both really good points of view. And I wonder if the board ought to discuss that a little bit to give our group a little guidance. I think we'll have the time for that. So let's add that, let's add that towards the end because I think that may meander a little bit. Just the definition did last. Anything else, any other additions or changes? Moving on, is there any public comment? Any commentary on anything that is not on the agenda? Hearing none, moving on. Let's do the August 11th meeting minutes. Does anybody have any comments or thoughts about those? I think those came out those came out, let's see what the day afterwards, right? They came out pretty quick. There was a revised version that I sent around by PDF on August 28th, August 21st, I'm sorry. Okay. And those had a couple of minor corrections that people had pointed out to me. Okay, well, I move that we approve the August 11th, 2020 meeting minutes as presented in the most recent update. Second. Okay, that's a second by Siobhan. Any further discussion? Okay, we'll just do this more quickly. We'll see you all in favor. Hi. Hi. Hi. Does anybody have a post or would like to make that a roll call? Please let me know. Hey, the ayes have it. Moving on to the subcontractor policy. Alan brought to my attention that we actually have a policy committee. I'm going to move that we table this until the policy committee has a chance to work with this, maybe working from the draft that I sent out and the draft that Ray sent out. Thanks for that, Ray. And come back to us by the next meeting. Who, so we'll talk about that, but can I get a second for that? Second. I heard Ray first, I think. Yep, yeah. All right, so that was Ray's second. The other discussion that I would have here is I don't know who's on the policy committee. I think Alan is, who else is? Ray, Siobhan, anybody else that would like to be on the policy committee? Phil is on it, he's the chair. Phil, okay. Actually John Morris is going to do it. Maybe by accident. Say that again, Ray. That's why John Morris is he in go up. There was an accident or do you want to be on the policy committee? I would like to be on the committee. Okay, so we will, we'll appropriately appoint you after this, that would give us five. I think we, I think we've lost via attrition other members of the policy committee. Okay, not hearing anything else, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Anybody want a roll call on that? So this was a motion to add John Morris. Nope, no, this was a motion to, to table the subcontractor policy until it can be vetted by the policy committee. Okay. Sorry, I got a little bit behind up my nose. All good. While you're writing that down, I move that we appoint John Morris to the policy committee. Second. Second. Okay, I heard Phil on that second first, the second first. Any further discussion, Ray? I'm not sure I was officially appointed. So maybe just a reconstitution of all the five folks who indicated their interest. That's a, that's a terrific idea. So we will reappoint John Morris, Alan Gilbert, Ray Pelletier, Siobhan Pericone and Phil Hayek to the policy committee. I will just, if you're okay with that friendly amendment, Phil, we will just stick with that motion. Yes. Yep, good. So that was John Morris, Ray Pelletier, Siobhan Pericone, Phil Hayek. And who is the last one again? Alan Gilbert. Alan Gilbert, okay. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. Okay. Anything else on this? Easy peasy. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Anybody want a roll call? The ayes have it. Thank you very much. Moving along, grant and funding update. So this is a, so some good news. I have the completed executed cares funding. I don't even remember what it's called now. It's some sort of long acronym, the $100,000 grant. The $100,000 grant has been executed. It's been signed by the commissioner. We're waiting to, at this point, we're waiting to get a check. I followed up immediately after we, they executed that contract. And I said, Hey, remember that other grant that we have? The second half of the broadband innovation grants. And they said, Oh, yeah, we've been busy. I was like, well, okay, great, but we have, you know, people to pay. So they, they're going to track that down, hopefully, and give us an update, give me an update tomorrow. Check my mailbox just before this meeting, just in the event that it snuck in there, you know, while I wasn't looking. But so hopefully soon. So we'll have the, we should have the second half of that, the broadband innovation grant, plus the 100,000 for the larger CUT grant. Any other updates on grants or funding that we should talk about? Yeah, David. Did we get the check from the Vermont community fund for $10,000? That we got quite some time ago. Yes. And that was, I deposited that the same day and that the balance that we talked about when we were working out what we could pay and what we couldn't last week took that $10,000 into account. Have we already talked about Northern Borders? Or is that something that we should discuss? Well, we mentioned it, we mentioned it last week that we didn't get it. Okay. And that the department didn't get theirs, which was going to be going to, it was going to be going potentially to the CUDs for support. And I actually looked at the list of places that actually got the grants. And I think I remember Ken saying something about a lot of it had to do with the match, but I saw the town of Fletcher got a rather large pot of money for extending internet up there. It was like 450,000 or something. And it wasn't even to as many people as we were talking about. So I mean, that's obviously it's the decision of the folks who are working out the points and such. But so as you hopefully recall from last week also, there is a $2 million amount allocated by the governor in his kind of current budget. And there is actually, hold on, there's a meeting of Senate finance on Friday, which is likely going to discuss this. And again, this is the opportunity, a lot of us are in Washington County, and Cummings is the chair of Senate finance. It would be worthwhile if you know her or you're comfortable contacting her to let her know what you think and your house reps too. It would not be a terrible idea to let them know that we could really, really leverage some of that money in order to do the build out much, much more quickly. So what was that $2 million funding? That was an item that was included in the governor's budget. So they kind of passed a partial budget back when the legislature was in session, but because they didn't know how the pandemic would work, they're coming back, I guess we're back today, the legislature's back today for a couple of weeks to approve essentially the rest of the budget and to look at what to do with the rest of the CARES funding. So there's $2 million specifically earmarked in the governor's budget for funding communications union districts. It's not ambiguous, it's not going to any other ISPs, it's going to communications union districts. David? Yeah, last week's House Senate Information Technology Committee meeting, there was some distress on the part of committee that the governor was not allocating any of the remaining CARES money to CUDs. I don't think much is gonna happen from that, but I just wanna let everybody know that the legislature seems to be more in our court than the administration. But keep in mind, CARES funding has to be spent by December 31st, so it's better to get it from the governor's FY21 budget. Yeah, we certainly have a lot more flexibility with that. Hi, this is Alan, can people hear me now? Yep, I can hear you, go ahead. Okay, good, no, I have nothing to say, I just, I lost the internet connection completely, so I'm on the phone right now. Okay. All right, thanks. I just wanted, I asked that question because I was unable to attend the last meeting and I just wondered if based on kind of their response, there was a discussion about us accelerating us making decisions about what the organization is going to look like and what it's gonna own and all that since it seemed that part of the reason why we didn't get it was related to the fact that we are still not mature enough in their eyes or whatever. So I was just wondering if that was part of the topic of discussion as to, you know, make kind of formalize our organizational structure as soon as possible. So we have had a little bit of that conversation. I think we need to continue having that. I think one of the things that happened though, and it was a bit of a whiplash, you know, 24, 48 hours, we found out that we didn't get the Northern Borgers money and then we found out that this other funding may be on the table, may be available. So I would say, I don't know that we need to change our tack too much unless we find out that the governor's, you know, $2 million earmark or what have you is not available. If that's the case, then yes, then we need to change, we probably need to change our approach somewhat or at least rethink what our, you know, immediate six month, one year goal is. Well, either way, I mean, it would be useful to try to, you know, even if we just did a comparison of the option, you know, and went through and said, with this kind of ownership model, you know, we could, we'd have these benefits and these drawbacks and kind of go through a rational process, hopefully leading some to some decision process because even writing any kind of new grant without giving the business details is gonna be an impediment possibly. Anyhow, that's all I have to say about that. So we have had this conversation and various different permutations and as far as I know, we have settled on an approach and Jerry Diamantidis sent out, I don't remember when you sent it out, Jerry, but kind of a decision looking at the lease versus own model, but working, particularly about working with Washington Electric Co-op and whether they're gonna run the fiber or not, but particularly about the fiber projects, less about the wireless project because I think we, you know, if we get the funding, we have a reasonably, it's a, I don't wanna say straightforward, but we have a reasonably good understanding about how that's gonna look in the short term. So, yeah, so I'm seeing David posting in the chat that as part of the application to Northern Borders, we didn't have the business plan done. So we weren't able to just hand them to hand them that. But yeah, there have been some decisions made. And if there are some specific decisions that you think need to be made, Henry or anybody else for that matter, I would say, please, let's put it out there and make sure we get it on the next agenda, at least have a chance to talk about it. I'm just trying to catch up. I'm, you know, that's all. Okay. Okay. Anything else that we should talk about regarding grants or funding? Jeremy? Yeah. So I had to turn everybody's cameras off because my connection's too slow, but- Oh, my hand was up, I'm sorry. Okay, so I may be mistaken, but I think the Fletcher project was a construction grant as opposed to a matching grant for a loan. And I think that was, that's more appealing to NBRC in general. David, is that correct or? I was just- Okay. So I'm just making that aside. And one other comment about the Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday and on Friday, there are gonna be public hearings on the governor's budget. And that, we all can participate in that. We have to sign up in advance to be able to speak, or you can just watch, just like a committee hearing. So there's three different hearings on Thursday and Friday. Nope. All bear on the two- I'm on call. Sorry, can we have the internet? Okay. Anything else about grants or funding? All right, I'm gonna meet you briefly, Jeremy, because you have a lot of noise coming in from your side. Okay. David? Yeah, have you heard any more from the Vermont Community Fund on the $250,000 they were talking about a month ago? I've not heard anything one way or the other. Has anybody else heard anything? I'm gonna go with no. Do you, can you refresh my memory? I don't remember too much about that, David. What was the plan with that? Rob Fish told us, told at the Vaikuta meeting that the Vermont Community Fund was seriously thinking of just giving another $250,000 to the department to distribute for advancement of CUDs. And I haven't heard anything back from that, but I assume the questionnaire that Rob mentioned this week that somebody has to fill out, I assume it's you, Jeremy, has to do with that. I think that questionnaire will probably support that money. Sounds good. I will, yeah. So hopefully I'll have something to report back at the next meeting. Okay, so let's move on to appointment of an executive director. It seems like we weren't able to get a good recording of the one interview, but again, we should probably go into executive session to discuss this. Let's see. The philosophy about us doing the approvals of the projects would normally come at the end of this, but I don't really wanna kind of kick Orca off and then ask them to come back. And we have some other folks attending who are not on the board. Let's move up the discussion about the philosophy about approving projects or not. Do you wanna resummarize what you were saying, Michael? Sure. There's a competition between really good ideas. One is that there's a crime need for internet, as we all know, and the COVID money is out there to that need and to build at least 25 megs, much more to a lot of locations. And so it's easy to make the argument that those people who would benefit from these projects should not be denied. And then the countervailing argument is that we're proposing a business that needs to at least break even in a certain number of years in order for us to get continued funding. And if we approve or not disapprove proposed projects that might jeopardize that business case, we're creating a conflict for ourselves. And so they're both good arguments that both make sense. And it's tough for those of us who are in the ad hoc group trying to make those decisions and we are having that discussion. So I thought it might be useful if we got averted out a little more at the board. I didn't ask anyone else before I said it, so there it is. So that's the issue. And I'm curious what other people think. All right, Jared, may I see you have your hand up and you are kind of the lead on our responses to these CARES money projects, so take it away. So yeah, and Jerry also noted in the chat that he would like to clarify his position because I'm kind of on one side and he's a little bit on the other. Jared, did you wanna go first because that's the order that Michael, you go first because you had it first in the chat. Okay, thank you, Jeremy, that's fine. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that we are as an entity, as a municipal entity, trying to provide the highest quality, most reliable internet service to those that are underserved and which half of us can't even be on the screen for that reason, right? We're in the middle of an emergency where these proposals are bringing folks from really, really bad internet to at least something, some of them even, to fiber to the premises within the next 16 weeks. And my sense is that we aren't gonna be able to bring internet to these folks for 16 months, if not longer. And if it makes a bump in our business plan, well, then it makes a bump in our business plan, but our business plan isn't a profit maximizing plan, it's a service maximizing plan because we're a municipal entity. So I think that that's the perspective we should be taking and I'll leave it at that. Thanks, Jerry, back to you, Jeremy. So I very much agree with what Jerry said that our goal is to get people served. My concern is that these for-profit companies have shown that they're not really interested in expanding unless someone gives them free money to do it and if they make it harder to fulfill our mission of getting everyone service then we're kind of, a few people are getting immediate benefit, but it's gonna make it a lot harder for us or it might make it a lot harder for us to get to everyone in the longterm. So if we go out of business or if we're not able to get to people then those people are maybe never gonna get served or won't get served for many, many more years or until Starlink comes through if that even ends up working. I don't know what the right answer is but that's kind of my concern. I've been living at my house in Plainfield for over 10 years now and Consolidated has done a little bit of expanding but my internet is still crap here. Charter has done absolutely nothing. If they expand where they're saying they would like to I think it might cause a problem for one of our routes and I don't know, I don't think that they're gonna expand any more in that area and I think it's just gonna make it harder for us to get to some of those people that are on the fringes and that Charter is just, they're just not gonna do it. They're for profit and they're always gonna be people at the edges that they say like, yeah, they're too hard to get we're gonna leave them. Whereas we'll get there eventually even if it's with a wireless tower to someone who's way, way off the grid. I don't know, that's my point of view anyways. Ray, I saw a couple of comments would you like to verbalize those? Yeah, so our raison d'etre is to serve the people on the fringes that we, I think that's our obligation with regard to whether or not or whether this might impact our revenue streams downstream downstream is something that we can adjust downstream. We're all of us are competing right now for grant money and we should suck up as much grant money as we can possibly get to do the CAPEX. And that's what these internet service providers are also trying to do. But reaching these people on the fringe including people in Plainfield and elsewhere is why we're here. John Morris, did you wanna verbalize what you had in the chat there? Sorry, it takes me a long time to get unmuted. No, I don't think I need to expand on it. I just, my feeling is, I guess I'm feeling similarly to Jeremy that doing the short-term fixes seems like a nice idea, but it shouldn't get in the way of the permanent solution. Thanks John, Siobhan. So I guess that's my question and I don't know if this is even answerable, but if like Comcast expands into one of these areas does that mean we would not be able to continue if they stop? Do we know what that impact might be? Or is this all just speculation at this point? We don't know what would happen. I can probably answer that to a certain extent. I mean really what we're talking about is we're talking about a change in the take rate. Are the model that we have that we've built assumes a certain take rate for people who have DSL or are otherwise underserved and people who have cable? So the numbers that we've been working with for underserved folks is that we would have roughly 40% of addresses that we pass taking service. So the take rate for DSL typically is 40% and those are EC fiber numbers. So whether they're correct here or not, I don't know. When you get to cabled areas, the rate gets down to somewhere around 15% give or take. So it's just because for a lot of people cable is it's good enough. And a lot of the assumptions that we make and you can go back into the spreadsheet and go back into the spreadsheet and change those assumptions. You can turn and change the size of the project and change how much of the project is cable versus DSL and see how that affects the bottom line. Not that we have a bottom line in the for-profit sense, but in the sense of how quickly we can get to, and it's again, it's not cash flow positive but it's the equivalent given that we're not seeking profit. So do we in the short term, again, do we support these projects to get people decent service when it's reasonably likely that they will not support the greater effort when we get there? And Henry, I saw you had your hand up. Right. I think that was a really good point to make kind of where I was going. I would have phrased it a little bit differently. What's happening right now is that the state is giving the opportunity to the existing ISPs to cherry pick their build-outs to get the most for their dollar. And so that's something that we kind of need to build into our model. But on the other hand, I'm wondering, what is the public service department really, you know, they've wrapped, they rolled us into this process so that we can comment what would be comments where they would deny them that build-out, you know? Why did they include us? And what can we say that would prevent someone from building out? And what would we want to say to prevent from building out? Or do we just roll this into the model and because less of reduced take rates or adoption? And I think to a certain extent we don't have to, it doesn't have to be us kind of in a Boolean sense, saying yes, no, we can give context and we can explain what we're thinking. It doesn't have to be, you know, strict, strong support or strict, strong opposition. But I think if you don't mind, Ken, I'm gonna pitch this over the fence to you if you wanna talk about what you have in the chat there. I think that makes sense. Yeah, so the department has a half a million dollars for emergency planning, which means that the product needs to be accomplished by December. And I think this topic is huge, not just for CV Fiverr, but for a lot of the parts of the state. And in part it's related to some of the fixed wireless investments that they agreed to in the first round. Those also will make it harder for some of the CUDs to get started. So, and another part of this is there is a recognition that our work is going to be subsidized. And so if we can formalize the discussion over the next few months to recognize in any case where the state provides resources to an existing ISP that makes it harder for CUDs to do the comprehensive work, then the philosophy has to be, then that subsidy is going to have to be greater for those CUDs. So, if we can influence kind of this short-term planning to really reinforce that point, then yeah, our model isn't just going to be a model where we look at our cash flow. It's going to always be a model where we identify the necessary subsidy to accomplish what we're supposed to do, which is to get connectivity for everybody. But I say that, it's not obvious that that's what the half million dollar is gonna be used for, but I hope that maybe the CUDs can pull together and say, because it's supposed to be emergency planning. So let's help us, they're spending $12 million on emergency investments. How does that affect CUDs moving forward? I think it'd be a great topic. And I would love us to really encourage the department to go that way. I think we know, I think I know who's gonna get the grant and it's someone who understands the Vermont situation, the grant to do the planning. I think they welcome this topic to tackle. So my question for you, Ken, about this is that, so what you're suggesting, if I can maybe paraphrase if I'm misunderstanding it, I'd like to know. So you're essentially saying, we'd like to make sure that they boost, the state boost subsidies for CUDs who are going to be building in previously subsidized areas. Right, yes. And you know, again, June said, and I'll hold her to this, she holds the CUDs are going to be the carrier of last resort. And that it means that we have a public not responsibility, but a public mission that has to be supported. So in our responses to the Department of Public Service, we should emphasize that we're suggesting they go ahead with the buildouts or whatever, assuming that this would reduce our take grade and that we would get compensation down the line to help achieve a break-even point for something to that regard. Yeah, I think that's fair, I think that's where we are. So maybe if we could just make sure we include a footnote and say explicitly, while we don't oppose these projects, there's certainly been discussion about these that will impact our take rate when we get there. That's, these specific locations are locations that we are thinking about in the short to medium term, and that we may need help covering these areas eventually. Jeremy? So, I mean, to paraphrase kind of what it sounds like, because there are other projects sort of beyond the one that is contentious, the one that's kind of contentious is a charter one, but there are other ones. I mean, so is this the board? I mean, if this goes to vote and all the rest, are we deciding that we're basically not going to object to anything and maybe just respond to the public service department with a single note saying that we don't oppose projects in our area, but we would like consideration for funding down the road? Is that what I'm hearing or? Well, I mean, I think it's, I mean, we're essentially, we're saying no in a kind of softer way, right? We're saying if you fund this, it's going to cost more in the long run. So if it's their decision that they want to fund it in the short run, they're going to have to come around later. And if we're going to serve these people, it's going to be more expensive. I mean, that's kind of unavoidable. Do we get Michael and then Henry? Thank you. So a couple of comments. One, the reason the department is following this procedure with us is the legislature instructed them to do it. And the reason the legislature instructed them to do it is the legislature clearly wanted to protect CUDs. They, the legislators really want to get service out to as many people as possible and yet they don't want us to be sabotaged. And so there is certainly that argument. If we look at the study that Interile produced for us you'll see that breaking even after three years which is the goal is really in the balance. It's really close whether we do or we don't break even. And if we don't break even, we're not fulfilling the Department of Public Services mandate and we're going to have a hard time going through the bond market later and asking and floating bonds because we're losing money. So those factors all matter. I personally am in favor of splitting it. Looking for the egregious ones and saying no and looking for the good ones and saying yes and the marginal ones we can tell the department, well, we're not so sure you make the call but I like this new idea that Ken floated that perhaps down the road they will subsidize us if they've subsidized someone else but we don't know that's going to happen. So that's a risk. So that's why I would say we should do both. There are certain, like I'll give you an example. There is a proposal to do Fiber to the Home in two whole towns and two CUDs, neighboring CUDs, one of them is us. And that project will cost several million dollars. Now, there's only four million dollars available in each tranche of the awards. And so if that, even though that's laudable, it's wonderful, Fiber to the Home. I mean, that's what our goal is. If that happens and then a bunch of other projects we want funded, don't get funded because the money got used up, that's an issue too. So I think it has to be nuanced, but I think it was really helpful to get a little more feedback. And I don't mean to put it down either, but my position is that we should be mindful of both objectives and try to meet them as much as we can. Okay. Kate, Henry? Yeah, no, I just to follow on with the direction we were going, this is ideally, but ideally, we would get a thing that says, Comcast wants to build out in CV fiber territory in this area, and we would then go into our GIS analytics and say, okay, well, if they do that, that would have a bottom line effect of reducing monthly income for those people that get served and therefore the annual impact would be blah, blah, blah. I mean, all I'm saying is that if we have the ability, we could quantify the impact that each of these proposals that get passed our way would have on us in terms of the potential income that we wouldn't get because they were being adequately served. So, before I get to your Ray, Andy, you had a comment in the chat that I would like to hear from you if you could, and then we can have Ray after that. Yeah, sure, I think this, I mean, this has all been great and it's a tough question, but I think one of the things we also get to keep in mind is that even with a short of massive capital injection, this is just gonna take a long, long time. So, you have to also keep that in consideration. It's just been a journey was given the example that's been forever in playing field, but it's gonna be another eight years before you get fiber, even in the best of scenarios with us for funding. So, I mean, you have to look at that from that perspective. So, not taking advantage of these short-term improvements and this funding material to at least improve its service as much as we can, you just have to do it and we're gonna have to take the hit and what it means to be whatever it is we are over the long run. If I can push back on you, Andy, real quick, just the question that I have though is that given that there's a limited amount of funding though, that we get kind of a sense of which ones of these are gonna be more expensive than others, how should, I mean, should we be weighing in on that decision? Should we be putting our thumb on that particular scale to get the solutions out there that are gonna be a bit better and are gonna be less damaging to us? Oh, certainly, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, but those aren't necessarily synchronized, less damaging to us and better solutions because the better solution, the worse our take rates gonna be if we try to come up with other, but you are right, like I mean, getting, there are some things, obviously if it improves the backbone, if it improves, you know, lowers the cost ultimately to then pull fiber to the premise, those types of things are very favorable. Yeah, those are really good considerations. Yeah, I mean, that requires some nuance. But then do we go by the kind of the utilitarian measure who's, you know, how many people are gonna be served? Or I mean, I mean, just any thoughts about these, I mean, these are, there's a lot of different ways that we can measure goodness, right? Sure, right, I guess ultimately it's just keeping some of the time, the temporal aspects of this in mind because you can't, it's really hard for me for us to oppose a project that because we just have such an endemic problem and in the end, it's a funding issue. It's, I mean, it's great the legislature created CEDs but they didn't fund them, you know? And so now you've got a 30 to $50 million capital project with without funding, that's somehow gonna magically rely on three years of EBITDA positive immutable bond market build out, it's gonna take 10 years. Everybody has said that to us. So you have to, you have to balance that to me. Enough Ray, Jeremy, then David. So what do we know? What we know is that the ISPs are going to be taking the low hanging fruit. That is an extension of their existing lines in a higher density area than the people who have the higher misery index. And perhaps the state shouldn't underwrite the entire cost of that line, perhaps they should be limited to like one third. Since they're gonna get a return on their investment sooner. Yes, it's not worth their investment right now to do the whole thing. It's a big capital outlay for five additional miles perhaps, but perhaps the state shouldn't fund all of that. They could underwrite and grant let's say one third of that. Meanwhile, the rest of that fund goes to where the misery is and which is our responsibility to address. So I think I'd be in favor of a little different formula here. They're a for profit entity. We're looking to recover our operational expenses in a capital account to replenish whatever is damaged. They're looking to make a profit. So let's, yes, you know, we want to get, there are the tremendous pressure to get something done, right? Okay, they're gonna do it. We're gonna spend the money on both. But let's open their eyes to, you know, what they're going to get out of it, what the ISPs are gonna get out of it and perhaps they should assume some of the risks and they can price their product appropriately. Meanwhile, you know, our business model is risky to begin with. And all of our capital expense needs to be grant money. That's the only way we're going to be able to afford sustain a business for operational expenses in a capital account. So some sort of a formula that says, yes, ISPs, we all underwrite a third. Send me your proposal. The rest of the money goes to the CUDs. We go to everybody. We put up our towers and our fixed wireless and we get the people who aren't going to get service. And at some point in time, maybe there'll be fiber out there and maybe we'll convert it over if they like the higher speeds or we won't lose it. Anyway, thank you so much. So I just want to point out that we're talking about the immediate decision that has to be made within days, not kind of strategic decisions about how states should allocate this stuff. This would be a good thing to talk about with the legislature and probably the legislature when they come back in January. But I have Jeremy and then David. Yeah, so I guess I definitely get your point, Andy, that we can't leave people underserved for 10 years. The ones that I'm leaning towards or that I would be inclined to reject are on one of our proposed routes. There's something like 70 some odd locate. I don't have the exact numbers. There are a lot of locations. It's a substantial portion of the orange route that just, you know, they're building right over a route that we would potentially like to build in the next couple of years. If it's a place where we're not planning on building, then yeah, I can kind of see that argument where, you know, okay, we're not going to get there for a while. So if you want to build there, go for it. But if it's an area where, you know, we're thinking that we might want to build soon, I don't know, I have a harder time harming the CV fiber business case. And then the other thing was that Henry had mentioned doing a financial analysis. And I liked that idea. Personally, I don't have time to do that. So, I mean, if someone else wanted to take that on, great, but I don't have time to do that. So anyway. Okay, David and then Tom. Yeah, two things. One, the department this time did not send out the addresses of even the charter sites. And one of the things that I want to add to the discussion is, you know, we have our own proposal in for fixed wireless and a good chunk of it does go to Plainfield. I have no idea whether our sites are the same sites Charter's talking about without their addresses. So from that standpoint, I'm at the point not hearing on our own proposal. I'd rather say no to Charter and Plainfield. We did get those addresses just recently, David. Okay, well, I need to check. I think I forwarded those to you. Okay. But that's the kind of work I want to do. And, you know, and with Jeremy's, Jeremy Hansen said earlier, I mean, this is a small pool of money that's going out. And I'd rather have it go to Card Alliance and CV Fiverr than Charter. So that's where I stand. Tom. So, you know, I think some of our raised comments there and not being fully aware of what the details are on these various plans. I'm curious as to like, you know, where do these plans from the bigger players hit on that misery scale? As far as like, if the state is helping to fund the CAPEX for some of that work, are they reducing their subscription fees? Are they offering some other, you know, reduced payment for those customers? That's not clear. So, so Tom, if they, if they're not, I mean, we don't really know, but if they're not, if it's kind of business as usual, would you be more likely or less likely to support some of these that would overlap with, you know, in our district? I mean, I would be less likely. I mean, the whole mission of our work here is to help, you know, provide high level internet for a reasonable rate for our customers. And I think that the hardest hit people are the people we're trying to hit right now. There's a reason they're the hardest hit. And I think if we're, you know, having the state or having these big players find ways to pay for their CAPEX and are then gonna charge the same rates, well, you know, kudos to them, but it doesn't help us all that much. Josh, I see you posting in the chat. You wanna put that in words? Yeah, sure. I just, you know, as someone who is, you know, compared to someone that's on the board here, and a lot of the people that are referring to over served in the town of Perry, I have multiple choices of some of these, you know, large ISPs and different things. I keep them from the state experience. They, these bigger ISPs, they're not gonna care about the end user. They don't care about their services about 100% of the time or even close to it. And there's just no regard for the end user. And I've experienced that in multiple different platforms. And, you know, we need to do what we can to get in there to help these people out. And I feel like even if in the short term, you know, someone like Targer or Comcast, you know, lays down and gets something under served, they'll still be wanting to take, you know, something like to be fiber up on our offering, as long as it's, you know, competitively priced because they'll know that we care with them or we're municipally owned and operated. And that means a lot to a lot of people. I think a lot more than even some of the take rates that maybe EC fiber was saying, but that's just coming from someone who is on one of these bigger ISPs and can't wait to get off. Thanks, Josh. I see a note from Henry. He says, as a newbie, I'd like to know how to get involved with the legislature and start to lobby. So we only have a couple of weeks and they're gonna be sprinting, you know, towards the finish line and doing most of the stuff via Zoom. I did send out an email earlier, earlier in the meeting about the providing testimony about the governor's budget. And also I think mentioned, I think I've forwarded the one, maybe that was in the same one about the Senate finance meeting. Those meetings are not, unless you sign up in advance and they have time for you, those are not typically open to kind of random commenters, but you could conceivably, you know, contact Anne Cummings and see if you could get on on her agenda at some point. But if we do that, we should be doing that with a common, with a common message, I should say. Yeah, at this point, I just wanna start listening. You know, I just wanna listen, you know, to the proceedings and see how it's going down. And you know, I would, yeah, I would wanna coordinate before I made any testimony or anything like that. And I just think it's probably pretty important based on what everyone's saying that we become activists with the legislature right now because it could make or break whether they're gonna support the CUDs or not. And you know, at a really high level. So I'm just kind of trying to get involved from that point of view. All right. I see a message from Lee. Yeah, I should, Lee, I should just put you on the board, on the board distribution list. I was see seeing you and I, thanks Chuck. You're taking care of it. Yeah, you can just add Lee to the CV Fiber board listserv. That would be great. Some of these messages we get from Rob Fish. He sends out a lot of emails in a given week. Sometimes it's like Senate finances meeting this time. This, you know, this committee's meeting this time. And some of it's sent to all of the CUDs. Some of it's sent to us. Some of it's, you know, updates on timing of stuff, but yeah, I will try to send more of those to the board if we can. Anybody want the last word on this? I think Jeremy and the rest of the folks on the review committee have a pretty good sense of where to go from here. I don't know that we need to make a formal motion or anything, but I'd like to move on if we can. I guess I'm not sure that I really do. I'm hearing kind of 50-50 either way doesn't really give us a whole heck of a lot of direction. So you guys are doing a great job. Cause it's a tough question. You're balancing it. Yeah, and you saw the input, you know, I don't know. Yeah, you're doing a good job. It's tough, it's a tough choice. So yeah, I think I'll actually echo what Andy was saying. I mean, that body was appointed to make these decisions. And it's not like we were given, you know, concrete specific, you know, specific metrics or anything like that. But I think everybody's, almost everybody's had a chance to weigh in and talk about what, you know, what we should or shouldn't do and thoughts. And I think it ultimately, it's up to the folks on the committee to make that decision. I like the, I like in particular. All the working group, not committee, right? Pardon? It's not a formal committee, correct? No, no, no, no, no, that was, yeah, I think you were, you're spearheading the responses, I recall. Yeah, okay. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, just in, so in terms of kind of compiling that input, and I think explicitly mentioning which projects are likely to cost more for us in the future, I think having that as a little, a little parenthetical is probably worthwhile. Okay. Okay, so let's, yeah, let's move on. Appointment of an executive director. So the, most of this is going to have to be done in executive session. So I'm going to move that we enter executive session pursuant to one VSA section 313 sub three to discuss the appointment or employment or evaluation of our incoming project manager. Second. Second. I think Siobhan was first on that. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? Okay. Anybody want to do a roll call? Okay. Okay. So the eyes have it. We are now in executive session. I will ask, let's see, Orca kindly, if they would disconnect. If not, I'll give them a minute or two and have them disconnect. And can we invite Lee into this discussion? Yeah. Yeah, let's make sure we have Lee and all of the alternates here as well.