 So I have six o'clock. I'd like to call the June 11, 2019 governing board on CV Fiber to order There any additions or changes to the agenda? Yes Can the people who speak tell us who they are. I'm sorry. I can't remember your name. I'm Josh Jarvis Thank you. It would be helpful for me. I'm just a person of people personally Sure. Yes. I'm Josh Jarvis. I represent very town, and I was just suggesting that we add in Okay, yes I'm Becca Schrader. I'm the second treasurer. I Would like to discuss the possibility of doing both for interest for a new member orientation. Okay, that was Something I have heard about from a couple other folks. So I think if we can talk about that maybe Under the rules of procedure. Sure Because that's something that we have to adopt every year It's a new member orientation and do that under Anything else? You know the comfy chair tonight, Phil? Not really. No? Like you're not really in the chair or it's not really comfy. So it'll be a bill of goods All right Fair enough. So a public comment any commentary on items that are not on the agenda Great hearing none Washington Electric Co-op fiber feasibility study Looks like Barry is not here. Steve if you're gonna Can you can I project anything on the screen? You sure can I'm gonna do it for my Mac or should I just give you a stick? Probably be best for you. Do you have it? We'll say this is VGA only Or if you can yeah, what if you want to try to give that to me it's gonna be a bit of a Do you want to so it's if you can come right over to the desk here if you want so that with the adapter Change the other display Yeah, just it should be in your operating system to change to Here we go Okay My name is Steve I'm here to give you an update of what Washington electrics Basically, there are actions have been in pursuing broadband broadband feasibility study and So let's just go to the next slide So we have submitted Economic and infrastructure development grant to the Northern Border Regional Commission. These were due about a month ago We asked for a total of $95,000 this includes Request and required 35% match And we can talk more about that in the future And the idea is we're requesting support for to do a feasibility study and an identification of an appropriate reliable business plan for broadband and the three purposes that we have it whacked or listed at the bottom Obviously, we need a fiber backbone or ring to our substations and going out beyond for operating the electric utility currently New years and then telephone lines to to our substations Also, we'd like to expand our fiber communication ultimately to Sartre applications to serve our customers And the whole state of Vermont in support of the 2050 plan And of course the reason I'm here is to talk about internet and telephone numbers So let's go I just want to put this in perspective after one of us is telling you what what we're up to this map was provided to us by Mr. Healy and It shows It's a nice slide because it shows Wex service territory, which is that sort of squashed bug-looking thing superimposed Top of the towns of central Vermont and also includes Shows you where the various regions of cd fiber Like green kingdom fiber and blue and ec fiber and purple so you can see that There is an overlap between Wex service territory and a lot of But it's not a complete overlap and if we go to the next slide and And here I just I just penciled in Wex service territory on a map of Vermont Many of you have I seen this map before if you haven't I will I'll explain it First of all Again, here's this this Outlines our service territory this map is Reports to show which areas in Vermont are eligible for USDA funding from their from the RUS their rural utility service and The hash marked areas are presumably areas that have already been served by USDA and may not be Eligible for future grants The dark blue are areas which are just basically unserved what we consider reliable internet speeds and the Sort of this washed out blue, which you may or may not be able to see But there are regions here and here here These represent areas which are which are partially served So you can see that a lot of Wex territory Includes areas largely in Orange County here, which are really unserved and anecdotally we know From discussing with some of our own members that indeed this this area in Eastern Vermont really doesn't Have a lot of service available to us in time. So let's go to the next slide, please so Just to update you with what we're up to right now we now we've submitted our proposal we're preparing requests for proposals to hire consultants to help us do the feasibility study and Identify a reliable business plan Let me come back to the second point in a second. We're also present time assessing Wex our own fiber backbone needs Just to so we can run the electric operation. This is obviously be the backbone for Internet service that we provide or interact with CDs like yourself But this is something we can do and are doing as we speak and As I mentioned in the first slide or first the second slide We are We need 35% matching funds and so we're presently trying to lock in our Our matching funds whack is of course providing some of its own money especially In-kind cost to supply personal paper personnel who would be doing various aspects of the feasibility study that and I'm sorry about that one of the things that's the problem one of the things that It strikes me that we need to do relatively early on in the process is Assessing our members needs and expectations with regard to broadband service Location within our service territory You may remember from that blue map Some areas are served Moderately, okay some not very well at all and we don't really expect an outside consultant necessarily to be able to provide the fine-grained advice what Take rates might be in various of our localities so This is a An immediate concern to us and I know that CD fiber has been Acting has been pulling its members in its towns as to What their interest might be in broadband so I for one am curious to know how that's going you feel the process is working well you get any information that you need Other ways that you feel it could be done More effectively So I think I didn't want to say too much More or less throw out a bunch of things which may or may not generate questions, but mainly I'll also let you know How we're proceeding to Tour I hopefully Receive a proposal an accepted proposal sometime in mid-summer and then acting on it for the rest of the year a target date of Having a business plan feasibility study by early next year So I'd be happy to entertain questions and Barry Probably a lot more detailed knowledge on some of these aspects You identified with your high-speed 100 bags one gig 25 I'm pretty sure it's not one gig I'm not you don't recognize as a board member I really can't speak for the utility I'm essentially a member so I can't really get into the I Don't I have that information available 100 meg I think it's sufficient Well, and 25 is even I Think I think we're going to go by what but if the same information you guys are Watch what I've heard from What the House and Senate is a hundred hundred In and hundred alleys is basically what everybody should be shooting Try to start with last but that's something That's our target Yeah, and I answer that from a technical perspective you get one gig of it to slow it down cost more Equipment, so you're defaults to do What do you use or not? Shavon from orange and so the the needs assessment or this feasibility study is this for You'd hang the wire according to what the legislation this year is talking about We don't we don't really know. I think this is a philosophy. We don't really know what our role will be per se That's what we have to assess but basically I think what we're all looking at is where he's going to have to be hung on the poles Just the conversations I've had with some of the people here about Educate me is We'll be looking at one aspect of running a wider in our elected space because that has potential Overall possibly be the best way to go. We don't we don't know that I listen to Michael and Jeremy and other people just trying to understand. I know where the wire is I know what a vibrates, but I can't tell you much more than that But that's why we really have to see I mean, you know co-ops around the country have been doing this over the last Some just do the backbone Some go all the way to the house some do combinations with third parties you know what we Don't know that there's many places that have CUDs Available to them, but you know as I said before our two words are David Healy call us And I have I'm on the agenda for later to talk about the board The business planning group was up to last week and one of the things we have been working on is maybe we ought to be looking at Where are the overlaps between all the planning grants and the study grants and and how do they how do you actually? Iteculate something that relates to each other so we're not duplicating effort or you know Enhancing each other's efforts is pretty much what we're thinking and we'll have a little paper on that at some point right Ken Tim Kearney of the ruling board of regional commission When this proposal was submitted or about that same time He said you know we're getting so many proposals submitted that it's highly likely that a lot of them are going to be Combined in some some form or another the century will avoid this kind of this kind of duplication makes One difference that we have Utility so we really have to take a look at how it interfaces We would have to do it even if you just came to it We will have to take a look at how it interfaces with our system In terms of which way we is acceptable for us to go and we have 41 times where you guys are 17 So we we're gonna need a broader, but we don't have to for instance And I don't know where you're at with the state But we don't have to go in fact we survey the 17 times that you found a few girls come out So, you know and if that survey is something we want to build on it Just add to we can go do the other times to find another way of doing it Let's make a program for me to Steve Have you guys pursued discussions with Delaco yet? Yes Barry would have to share it with you because he might know something We began discussions with them. They're what they're going to be doing is Surveying our our lines. There's a lot of questions obviously that I have to rely on you and others, but They're basically Talking to us primarily at this point about being able to hook up all our substations And the question that will come that we will still have to answer is How do we ensure there's enough capacity there to do everything they say there is I Talk to Carol along a little bit very briefly on the phone, but it's hard when You know, we're not we're not expert. I sometimes ask the question So before we get into anybody pretty anywhere on the phone And that's the big one What do we need to be able to make sure what we do it or anybody else doesn't that we had enough You Any other questions for Washington Electric folks You I won David he look cows Are you they were certain you're getting the money from the northern border? Okay, because I saw the RFP thing and I said, oh They said July 15th everybody know But Every grant submitted I've always been supremely confident. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, that's great I just want to say that CV5 we did not submit an independent borderlands project We did a letter of intent, but never followed through on that. So just They'll be talking about that later No, that's a short question. I mean we did we mentioned in This was fairly open and yeah, and we did we mentioned potential collaborations with CUD since obviously we overlap with CD fiber the southern part of our territory extends into east fiber territory. So It would make a natural Collaboration my own experience with collaborations But for them to be successful going over the rocky roads figuratively speaking Everybody know a collaboration works in the long-term when both sides get something out of it both sides need each other John yeah, something It just has very Is the feeling positive on your side that this is Has the potential to be an excellent fit for you and for at least the 17 towns and probably all 41 towns I I would tell you that I'm optimistic that we'll be able to Build some capacity, but I don't know because I'm not able to say because we haven't got there yet is We've been told that This is probably a $25 million investment. So what I'm what I'm convinced myself Nice to be just for myself on this that in order to make this work we're going to have to be able to have some significant grant funds and part of that to me is because I Know that easy fibers been Poking at people at 75 dollars I don't see that happening. Although. I don't know And in one of our most needy areas orange, which is also So I'm not going to see if there's funds out there that we can Get some room and training them What role we do when Other than making sure wires are strong Either inside or outside of the electrical area in our poles. I think we can we can be healthy on all of those I don't know the ant the final end answer until we get some room. I think one answer is We have to do this feasibility study. It's not it's not just a pro forma thing We have to check off or we'll proceed I think For everybody to be convinced enough that we can do this we need to have a positive Positive feasibility study Come out of this and so It's crucial for us to do this and we do it reasonably well Right. Hi, uh, repel here in northfield. Do you have a timeline for any of this? For example for the feasibility study for when you'd like to finish Uh, feasibility study we would like to complete in Early january of 2020 Think the bottom line is that we're going to go after any real grandmoney The cycle for the best Is the end of may of each year and I don't again This may be totally the study may came back and say hey, you can do this and everybody wants it And everybody will pay and there's a great look up, right? I'll take great but I just feel that we're gonna probably have to go after that money So we'd like to be able to make some decisions about doing it So that we could apply for something by that end of the day Otherwise we're another year ahead of us behind us, which could happen. This is not an instantaneous Tricks. It's got to be done. Well When we we can't afford to look wrong so Um, when you said that you could the shaman from orange when you said you couldn't see that happening You're talking about the 75 dollar install. Are you talking about because it's too much money I this is my Strict strictly my own personal feeling not based on anything. Oh, yeah If you went to any of my neighbors and said, well, who can't for 75 dollars? Exactly. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, that's exactly. I would sign up for 75 dollars Well, it's just that I'm happy in my business. I'm not depended on it. That's really You know when I I was at a national Annual meeting to all the co-ops and they have students who run a panel And every single one of them these were great high school and early college They said they wanted to go back to the communities, but they wouldn't they couldn't go back to the community unless At high speed internet as part of what they were going to do and The best time to go back was in the mid 20s when it would be entrepreneurial And this is a vehicle and that that really I didn't get hurt. I mean it was these were intelligent young people Who in a different world that I mean so I just But I don't want to leave the other people I'm going to give you the last question It might be off base, but Now that you're into broadband It does wash your electric co-op have any future insights as to cell service Uh, I don't want to go there Cell service No, I don't we haven't I mean that's that's I don't know I don't know enough whether cell service will be Offered through I know some co-ops offers cell service through But we have that's So that's nothing that You are looking at Thank you Okay, thank you. Thanks Steve. Thanks barry. Uh treasure's report like us. Yes So right now we have a total of 6,922 dollars and 82 cents And that's broken down 4,500 cc in checking 2,337 and 82 cents in our snowball fundraising account and 25 dollars in savings About a hundred dollars under that I think It's been a slow month So we also haven't I mentioned last meeting that we do have a monthly donor And that is it's $10 a month, but it is monthly. Um, and When we had our last meeting they had already given for may but they haven't yet given for June So you can add 10 bucks to that Did we fix the the thing with snowball and not believing that we were a nonprofit? Yes Pretty much. I mean they still haven't made the transfer But we are working our way through the management of convincing them that we should be able to have our money Great. Okay, any other questions for Becca? So also donations through the web are now working just fine If I happen to find someone who wants to donate send them to the website, that's the best way Yeah, the the website donations were always working as far as I know It was just the issue of getting it from that from that Collector from there to our bank account State they didn't believe that we were a nonprofit because we're not a 501 That's okay. Thank you. And then I've also been working with um, Alan Gilbert and working on trying to get Schwab to see us as a appropriate place where people can send donor-advised funds So hopefully once we get that process worked out with Schwab, we'll be able to them Duplicate that process if other people want to give that way as well Can we ask does no well charge us for They do so there's an option when people donate online whether they want to increase their donation Enough to take care of the fee or whether they Don't and then the fee is taken out What is the fee deductible tax deductible? If they choose to pay the fee I believe so. Yes, because it's still then They're basically giving an an additional donation For us to use to pay the fee So but still the least expensive way to send a job. Yes Yeah Do I see I end up completely imagined it great Okay, maybe just want to pass it back this way to towards backup Okay, the update of cb fiber rules or procedure I sent out the electronic version of this and I have a paper one that we can all we can all sign and I'm happy to walk through this Especially for the the newer folks who maybe weren't here will be adopted this last July I think i'm going to do that really the only changes that I made here were change Changing references to central vermont internet to cb fiber to reflect the the doing business as name change that we adopted last year So yeah, I will go through this stop me scream out if you have questions Or if things need to be changed this doesn't have to be This doesn't have to be the final final reading so as we will count this as a First reading and then we'll adopt it next time around if that's okay with you Um, so we're a communications union district formed and operated by its membered municipalities. We have 17 at present The legislative power and authority of cb fiber and the Administration and the general supervision of all fiscal prudential and governmental affairs thereof are vested in the governing board here Except as specifically provided under otherwise in statute The way this is written is essentially to take a lot of what it's already in statute and put it here Essentially make it available And understandable Maybe not understandable, but available anyways to everybody the governing board gets one representative one delegate from each member municipality And one or more alternates Let's see So one added thing that's not in statute is the chair. That's me However, without such specific authorization of the board may speak for the governing board in matters of policy as well as on actions taken by the board So I went to the legislature for example and I testified and I said you should pass this bill and It'll be great for us. So As a public body Because we're a municipality the governing board is required by law to conduct its meetings in accordance with the vermont open meeting law Meetings of the governing board must be open to the public at all times except as provided In statute which would be for executive sessions and we've only I don't know that we've we went into executive session once That was for a strategic discussion about Some contract upcoming contracts Let's see So the application these rules are adopted in accordance with statute and she'll be readopted annually This is what we're in the process of doing now Organization she'll annually elect chair vice chair So on and so on this is It's out of statute If the chair can't do his or her job then the vice chair will the vice chair can't do his or her job Then the governing board appoints one of its members to take over to take over the meeting Upon the death disability resignation or removal of the chair vice chair the governing board shall forthwith elect a successor To the office until the next annual meeting Um a quorum is 50 percent of the district members So if you if there's an alternate so for example, i'm going to pick on you susan So you're here representing woodbury and you're the alternate But right now you're acting as woodbury's delegate. So you would are a voting member We talk more about that too, but you count as part of the quorum. This is not there was no worries about about meeting the quorum tonight That's out of 17. We need What eight i'm nine nine rather So if we have nine towns represented we're good to go Um informal discussion of an agenda item shall be permitted while no motion is pending We haven't had any motions today. So it's been relaxed free-for-all Although when we get a lot of people talking sometimes it can can drag and then we may kind of engage robert's rules to make sure that Things move smoothly A motion shall only be made by a delegate or an alternate serving in the absence of a delegate All motions require a second The chair may make motions and may vote on all questions before the governing board That's different than the policy of some select boards where they Prefer that the select board chair not make motions Once there's a motion on the table only delegates and alternate alternate serving in the absence of a delegate may speak to a motion so which is So if you're an alternate and your delegate is here, we're going to ask that you kindly respectfully Step back and let us finish with the finish with the discussion Because there's no motion on the floor you can do lots of things Is is there the option for the voting members in the board to allow for other people to speak if that's If that's to mean to Valuable for the discussion Yes, but to keep things up orderly that would be that would be a like a special condition But yes, that would be that would be something that the board would the the board would allow the chair has to recognize them Yes There shall be no limit to the number of times that Number of times a delegate or alternate serving the absence of delegate may speak to a motion Motions to close or limit debate will not be entertained So that's different from roberts rules And that's one of the roberts rules that I actually like because when people kind of go on and on Sometimes it's just so they can hear themselves talk and the rest of the board's like I want to go home So, um, but we we don't have that and we've not had that problem If a member has already spoken on a topic he or she may not be recognized again until others have been First given the opportunity to comment or until others have been given the opportunity to comment as many times as any other speaker has commented So that's one of those things that you get a chance to talk everybody gets a chance to talk before you get to go again Reasonably egalitarian I think Um anytime you'd like to you can request a roll call vote Uh, the request must be sustained by at least one other member So two of you think that we can do a roll call roll call vote rather than just shouting eyes or nays or whatever you can do that, um Whenever somebody is attending electronically and there's a vote the roll call vote is required and that's also statute Each member's delegation shall be entitled to cast one vote Only delegates and those alternates serving the absence of delegate shall vote Any action adopted by a majority of the votes cast at a meeting of the governing board at which a quorum is present She'll be the action of the board So this could mean that if we only have nine people here and five of them vote in favor and four of them vote against That's the decision of the entire board with all 17 members So show up. I guess is that stuff hidden message there? Um agendas are um are to be posted At least 24 hours prior to a regular meeting. I try to get these out on friday um Uh, let's see a time a lot for each item of business to be considered by the board Those who wish to be added to the meeting agenda should contact me Generally, if you get to me before friday, I can get you on the agenda if you think you need more than 15 minutes or so Just make sure you let me know of that at this point agendas are being posted automatically to the town clerks No, they're being emailed to the town clerks. Yeah, how how the town clerks decide to post them or otherwise Distribute them is essentially up to them. I can't can't really compel town clerks to do anything in particular Let's see So 48 hours prior to a regular meeting if we have to call a special meeting because something really pressing is coming up We have 24 hours for that The agenda must also be made available to any person who requests such an agenda prior to the meeting so I can email those out Uh, the next one is it has to be posted. Um, so I already found a Something to change for next time Um, if we maintain a website the agenda needs to be posted there. Uh, I posted to the facebook page We will eventually post it to the website as well Um Additions to or deletion from the posted agenda must be made as the first act of business at a meeting Statute addition to the agenda shall require majority vote of the governing board and shall be made only when necessary To respond to an unforeseen occurrence or a condition requiring immediate attention by the board Um, that's not something that we've actually been enforcing. Um, maybe we can talk about that later Um, typically we just done done it by acclamation. Nobody's kind of screamed out when um You know, I've added an item or when um, josh wanted to add the item So maybe we need to change the policy to do that. I think everybody here is respectful and kind and generally pushing in the same direction. So Maybe something to modify next time uh special meetings Emergency meetings may be held without public announcement without posting of notices And without 24 hours notice to members provided that you can post some notice thereafter This is again, this is out of statute. This is making sure that everybody understands the different kind of permutations of meetings that we might have You can always choose to attend electronically over the telephone or skype or whatever. It's not It's not ideal having done this For this board having done this for Select board meetings and other things like that. It's not ideal, but it but it works So as long as there's one person physically present at the meeting to essentially allow for the public To come to a place All of the rest of you could attend remotely if you chose to Now it's sort of a chicken and the egg sort of thing as we're building out broad band and central vermont That may not actually be an option for you at some of your houses to get Cell service or reasonable, uh, audio conferencing Um summarizing now Is that actually possible within uh, are we having some kind of a broad broadcaster? Do we need a separate uh computer Connect for each person Um, if if I knew that there was going to be more than one person attending remotely I can create essentially like a meeting room Go to meeting or something like that and I can have everybody in that same meeting and just sort of with the You know the speaker on like you know like phil had had me on Last time and you you could have multi-person skype calls too. So it would just be One person ideally Would be collecting all of those callers Um, and if you think you need you want to attend a meeting, um, remotely So as much uh advanced notices you can give to me Would be really really helpful So I can I can plan and I can make sure that I have numbers of you've tested connections making sure everything's working smoothly Uh, let's see members of the public shall be afforded reasonable opportunity to express opinions about matters Considered by the governing board as long as order is maintained according to those these rules At the beginning of each meeting there should be 10 minutes afforded for open public comment By majority vote the governing board may increase the time for open public comments in its place in the agenda A reasonable opportunity for public comment on agenda individual items shall be allowed at the discretion of the chair This is not again not historically been too much of an issue um Comment by the public or members of the governing board must be addressed to the chair or the board as a whole And not to any individual member of the governing board or public again um This is a bit more of a failsafe to allow us to prevent the meeting from going off the rails Members of the public must be acknowledged by the chair before speaking For member of the public has already spoken on a topic He or she may not be recognized again until others have been first given the opportunity to comment Order and decorum shall be observed by all persons present at the meeting Neither members of the governing board nor the members of the public Shall delay or interrupt the proceedings or the piece of the meeting or interrupt or disturb any member while speaking Members of the governing board and members of the public are prohibited for making non germane or threatening remarks Sadly, we had had to include this um Members of the governing board and members of the public shall obey the orders of the chair or other presiding member The chair should adhere to the following process to restore order and decorum of meeting My but may bypass any or all steps when he or she determines in his or her sole discretion the deviation from the process is warranted First call the meeting to order and remind the members of the applicable rules or procedure To declare a recess or table to issue three adjourn the meeting until a time and date is certain And then place for a bunch of Thoughts feedback anything more discussion next time around I know that this is appropriate time. This is Martin Woodbury. I don't know if this is appropriate time, but I sent you an email about um why why this body is not a 501 c and obviously we have some grant issues that There are more grants offered to 501 c's than there are to Vermont municipals communities like that you have or like we have here um I don't know what the appropriate thing is to do whether I should make a motion that we change our Our organization to a 501 c or I don't know what the appropriate thing. I need some guidance Sure The reason that when when this organization was founded the reason that I started it in the way that it that I did was So that it could be a municipality specifically so that wouldn't be a 501 The reason is when we eventually go and start building our our various Infrastructure bits We can get cheaper money through the municipal bond bank than a 501 c3 can There may be there may be a time when we need an affiliated 501 organization to go after certain other grants But for the most part the grants that we're most interested in we qualify for as a governmental entity Thank you. So even though we have to go through this extra layer of procedure and process I think I think it's solely worth it. And I think I also I also appreciate the openness I appreciate that that orca shows up to this because we are a community owned Entity and people can generally feel pretty good about us kind of being open and doing the right thing Just to add to that I feel very good because it makes us accountable to our member communities I can't hear you. I'm sorry. I feel very good about us being a municipality because it makes us accountable to our member communities I'm serving my community. I'm not just with us not profit. Oh boy, what are they doing? You know, I'm it has some weight to it That might not otherwise exist Thank you Jerry Jerry DMZ is alternate Berlin. We did have a lot of discussion about 501 c3 And the Affiliated 501 c3 that Jeremy alluded to Maybe something that can be done in the future if that opens up other grant opportunities, whereas This this entity would not be a 501 c3, but there would be one dedicated to supporting this municipal entity So it's it's it's a very good idea. It's something that we've talked about in the past and it's it's Will remain an option While we're talking about rules of procedure and how we're organized a new member orientation Yes, so I was thinking that Based on some questions I have and also have gotten and also just because I think it would be a good thing to do Of doing a new member orientation that could also be an old member orientation if anybody was interested in reorienting themselves Where I would kind of go through, you know a summary of the minutes for over the past year and What's on the google drive and those kinds of things and Get people contact rosters and all that kind of stuff And I was thinking that like half an hour before the next governing board meeting Would be a good time to do that if that works for people But I'm open to other times if that would not be good for people So I just kind of wanted to throw that idea out there and see If that time is good for people and then be if there are any things in particular that people want to make sure I include in that Yes Yeah, yeah, so I would do would hopefully be able to get in here Happen hourly, maybe or or you certainly have space over at um maple woods Yeah, we could also do um over the finance committee a lot of times has met over at the maple wood service area And right before this meeting so we could if we can't get in here I could do it over there Anything more practical just do it as part of the meeting agenda We're about to do more than 90 Oh People might feel more free to talk If they're not on camera during a regular meeting I mean ask ask more questions get a bit more Detailed history I don't know that there will be night that there will be nine new people who want Yeah, alternates that we don't need to include in that with that case I mean I'm I'm open to whoever wants to come. I mean we could we could also be Yeah, we could do it a couple dimes or something like that too. Yes. I mean the other thing probably is Having a little and I don't want to create work for you But actually just having the material that we present So just to a three slide of the house because I'm just reminding everybody where to look for stuff So so here's another option back if you want to like just record a A video lecture of some sort And we just post it to everybody. Okay. I mean it that prevents you from asking questions Um, but if anybody has questions, um, maybe that should be addressed And if you wanted to to sort of talk through some slides or talk through some, um Previous minutes and such that might be the a good starting point And then individual questions could be addressed to you or to whomever else Okay, another permutation just to throw it out there. Not that it's necessarily good We could go into executive sessions so that cameras and public We would not be able to go into executive session for that. There's only a handful of reasons that we can and Training that's not not one of them. So contracts impending legal issues personnel issues Um Yeah, um, that's even questionable whether that's exactly Possible, but there's yeah, there's only a handful of Yeah, if premature public Disclosure of what we're going to talk about would put the district at a disadvantage Then we could find that and then we could go into executive session, but it's but we're a bit restricted Okay So got a grand kelly barry city and I would support either that you suggest either a meeting before training before meeting Okay um I'll Shoot to get something out then unless other people have I'm sorry Yeah, the foreign thing's not an issue if you would sworn me You mourn that there's preliminary meetings are any five third then the foreign things not an issue Right. Yeah. You just have to post an agenda take minutes So but but I mean if again if you don't want to have to warn it If you don't want it to have to be a public meeting there are other there are other options So how about we try the video thing? And I send that out to folks and then I will also put together folders for everybody Including alternates which I may give them to you if your alternate doesn't come very often some alternates come all the time but um That would be for you know, just kind of your board member packet and then um I can and then we can kind of play it by ear in terms of you know, I can stay I can come a little early to meetings to answer questions or People can email me or whatever Yes, I think a video is a great idea. Sorry. Jonathan waves marshfield and also could be used as a recruitment tool for those communities whose All the tiers are not as forthcoming Well now To make it an entertaining video That's all right. We can do that and I Yeah, that's fine Jeremy thank you one advantage doing video is that you know you could keep you know do video one and then video two If you know a year from now you want to make another one to kind of update people from what's happening from now until so I don't continue Anything else Okay, uh policy on grant submissions phil I'm phil hayek delegate delegate from um, where did I live uh middle six? It's been a long day The policy committee met to take up What we were referring to just simply as a grants policy, which we turned into a submission policy and we we really had some confusion Uh about what our charge was as we first started to debate this so we we focused at least for that session on the idea about some requirements for Submitting proposals of various categories and actually that gets out of the minutes from our meeting earlier I mean a couple of our copies so there can be one of those tables The actual policy, which is very sharp is embedded right right in those minutes So we realized that you know, there may be other issues that we need to address about uh grants possibly grants management Although most of that is spelled out uh in the conditions under which you receive the grant But we thought we'd at least get this out see if this is what people were we're thinking about And allow for some discussion some feedback and we can continue to go back and revise this as needed so What we came up with was really um A three category application processes basically that any board or committee member may apply for an appropriate grant on behalf of Um central mont fiver board with these limitations Grants for ten thousand dollars or greater And or with substantive reporting or compliance requirements require the approval of the full board prior to submission And again, we thought that grants at that level the grantees probably want to know that the board has passed some kind of resolution Uh in favor of the grant so we felt at that level we should We should make that full board Grants and smaller amounts Thousand to ten thousand dollars Uh can be submitted with the prior approval of the executive committee, which is basically jeremy myself and beca But without full full board approval and again, we may want to debate that Um, and then very small grants off to a thousand dollars. We're kind of looking at as almost the donation level of kind of grant And that those Really did not require prior Any kind of prior approval of you the executive committee or the full board Um, I think for the most part anybody who are any of us who find a grand opportunity like that Um, and they're looking to to help support some of the goals can go ahead and do that or you know of the fund Um, because we kind of felt like that's that's coffee money Um, and we'll take anything we can get but it didn't need a whole long Drano process and I think most of us are going to be involved in something like that I tend to bring it up and report to the board any way that this is something or ask for some guidance that goes Oh, I know this opportunity should I affect some of their proposal and You know, we're probably not heads It's that simple, um as far as what we came up with at this point and You know, we're open to Suggestions anybody else who's on the board Want to jump in? Questions comments Yeah, I have a question just for discussion and I'm suspecting that you guys already talked through this, but I'd be interested to hear How how it went so when you're Submitting for a grant you're committing To see the fiber to to do something in a certain way Right, and what is the I guess the executive committee is the check Kind of a final reviewer Of that grant before it goes out to be sure that somebody isn't You know, this aligned with either our capabilities or Or processes, right? Yeah, that at that middle level that certainly was some of the thinking that it should at least go to the executive committee depending upon You know, how much uh the grant reporting requirements are they ownerist or not ownerist? And that's the kind of thing is aligned with goals. Yeah, so just to follow up with that. Yeah Jeremy, what is the uh Bill what what How does the executive committee work again? It's Three people so two out of three and It moves forward without the rest of the of the board. Is that correct? That's what we're proposing I mean that as this is written that's what And that may may or may not be what the full board wants to have as a policy But so we're basically throwing this out there at least To get some discussion and generate the kinds of questions you're bringing up David Healy call us the uh the one thing about applying for grants. You also have to accept a grant So the there may be you know, you may discover something in between So I don't you know, how rigid you become with the grant application versus accepting the grant might might weigh on this John Well, why Why separate those? At all. I mean why why ask three people to make the decision For 17 people or 17 talents. I mean what's the What was the rationale to saying as I recall in terms of again the discussion and helping out members That we really saw a difference in that kind of 1000 to $10,000 category. You know, those those are not large grants um as opposed to 10,000 and Could have been 25,000 and I don't know where we we cut the line On that but we felt that the smaller submissions did not necessarily Have to take up vetting by the by the full board, but again You know, we want to write this the way the board wants it written So as a member this Andrew Gilbert Kavett just to add to the post and I think some of the thinking is For small stuff from the expediency perspective and some of that's my experience. I you know, I brought a $500 grant To a non-profit cabinet it's like You know and I informed the board of it, but there's no obligation on it. There's no You know, it's not like we have any compliance or anything. We may not even get it if we don't Use it in time, but it was just out there. So it's like do you really need to go? You know at some level the moderate levels a lot of money without a lot of owners requirements. Do you really need to Use go up and hit it versus Obviously there's what the jury brought up if there's any kind of You know the USDA one that's something that requires full board review So we were just trying to distinguish between you know, not all grants are equal But you know, it's open the debate John throwing is marshal field I would uh as a professional grants writer, I would urge the such amount by we're governing board to not differentiate between these simply because in my experience There is rarely correlation or causation between the amount of money that one receives and the reporting requirements I have seen grants for $800,000 or more that require a three page proposal and there's no reporting And I have seen grants for a thousand dollars That the the work the amount of reporting requirements is so Onerous as it's simply not worth it. I would also suggest that we incorporate language for applying for grants that are don't have a set monetary value, but that have been in kind Not from us, but from say someone is providing a service for us But it is qualified or they qualify it as a grant and I would also Add a provision in here As to who is responsible for Handling the reporting workload and or who is responsible? I assume it would be jeremy, but who would be responsible for the word? Signing the grant of the women's house. I nominate you Several times during our policy Meeting it mostly in vain for not having invited you to I apologize right the draft I just wanted to address The first point the way this is written grammatically Is it if it's an onerous reporting requirement? Does it matter the amount if you look at if you look at the actual text it is $10,000 and or a substantive reporting requirement So that's the first level so that that addresses that but The other stuff now is not it but that only applies to $10,000 or more No the way it's written grammatically it's and or I wrote it explicitly for that And or with substantive reporting requirements grants $10,000 or greater and or So if it's so if it's like john's talking about and it's a thousand dollar grant But it's just so painful to manage it would fall into category one. Yes Okay Like a program Uh, is there any discussion of sort of what is too onerous We were kind of trying to Because it was going to be onerous for us to detail what was onerous Rape L here don't feel the uh, I didn't have a heartburn with this but what what I don't get from this is Where are we posting a copy of the grant application online? Are we archiving character capturing that information? And secondly, we're where is the two and three being minted? The first one is at a board meeting the other two executive committee and Anybody submit something? How is it? Where's the reporting requirement to come back to the board or how is this otherwise captured? Well, presumably it would be reported reported as informational item during a board meeting So for example the the cabinet grant that was you mentioned that in the last meeting as I recall Um and reported back that we got the $500 for example Do we want to leave that implicit or do we want to make the explicit that the copies of the application will be Posted and second thing Well, if it's an action item the board is voting on and it has to be on a warned agenda Right, so there's going to be that a presentation from whoever you know committee or person is heading that up I mean, I think Jerry you walked us through all the steps I reported several times on that grant so Before I came up to for a vote the the board is pretty well informed Right So yeah, I mean so with the with the previous grant applications, you know, I we could put those put those out I think I may have put the um the think-for-mots grant application. I think that's in our google drive Which I believe everybody got a copy of isn't not everybody have a link to that No, no, okay. I'd say to do Maybe that could be in some sort of video presentation www. There you go, so Yeah A link to the google drive. Um, we will in include that as well. Um, I don't think the No, but and we sent out the copy of the usda grant narrative The not all of the like supplementary materials and all the contracts and stuff Not contracts all of the the things that I signed and had notarized Those weren't all included in there, but the narrative with the fundamental I was 17 pages or whatever That was that was sent to everybody happy to send out additional Copy was necessary. I'm not concerned about us getting it. I'm more concerned about the transparency though I mean it needs to be online and available And we're going to have a special book website update and I'm looking forward to that For all of this material to be there what One of the I guess I'll wait for that report, but that should be Part of the you know most upper end there Sure, and transparency and because we don't have At present quite yet. We don't have a a website where it's easy just to drop things off and put them there We we put some things in piecemeal on facebook for example But yeah, but all of these things because we are a public entity all of these things are Public records and can be requested by anyone As a public record in the state of vermont. So your emails your personal account emails related to business of cv fiber are Discoverable under the public records law just so you know to the don't be don't be surprised There is a process for responding to such things. So if you want to make yourself a separate email account to handle these and maybe that's something that we can talk about too with the There are some accounts that have already been created and I don't know where those live or if that got Handed off from elliott or whatever, but we can maybe talk about that next So yes, so we are statutorily obliged to make these things public We're not statutorily obliged to post all of them. I think still think it's a good idea and is the right thing to do You got something I still don't My question wasn't really answered as to why there's a separation Between two it doesn't It doesn't make sense to me to say, okay. Well, nine thousand nine hundred nine nine dollars Um, we just you know two out of three people can can say yeah, that's fine But 10,000 requires 17 people to uh to be to knowledge. So You know, I I just feel like money's money The thousand dollars and less for nine ninety nine and less You know, yeah, it's a donation, but I think anything about that It doesn't make sense to To sort of deselect the board As far as I'm concerned I concur I think that separating them might be more trouble than it's worth as well And I'm just Hypothesizing here. There may be an instance where We as a municipality a functioning municipality Are applying for a grant that a number of our constituent communities are also Applying for and in that instance Regardless of the amount of money I I've never seen this happen, but it may Happen in that instance We may want to bring it it may it should come to the Entire board such that we all have the opportunity to weigh in and we have instructions carried forth from our respective select boards or whatever saying No, we don't even though this is a an asset to this body We do not want to apply for it. We've instructed not to vote for it And I think that is while unfortunate A possibility Okay, so how shall we proceed? So so anyone so if you have feedback or suggestions Yeah, send the suggestions to me I'll put them together and either we'll call another quick meeting or I'll get a draft out and then we'll meet to go over This is david heli. My brain is fuzzy on the rda grant application process The fact that I think three people put a lot of time into it and went in I don't know if the board ever Full board ever looked at it for it for the USDA. Yeah It was it was submitted But do we approve it? That's the question. Well, so You delegated you delegated the responsibility for applying for it to me correct. So that's different than This policy I think You make a distinction between actually submitting it Well, does it the final review of here it is now it's prepared thing we're signing off on Well, so the question is is do we grant applications or complex? Um, does the board say yes, we're going to apply for this money And we'll leave it into the committee's hands to draft the thing And the committee doesn't vote on the app, you know the full Package ours that come back to the whole committee and we might miss the deadline For applying that's what I'm telling you. So so my my suggestion is that That when an application is going to happen that the Whatever these tiers end up being that the board or the executive committee, whatever Approves the application and then whoever's delegated to go and write the application They can go do that now if we get the grant And then we're going to start to become obliged to do things for whatever money then that's would have to be brought back Um To the rest of the board I think to explicitly accept it I think one of one of the issues we were that came up in our discussion was Quick turnaround suddenly somebody finds out that there's a grant and we've got two weeks to get something out How can we make that we don't want the red tape to be the enemy of us being able to go for a grant That would like be really awesome for us to get we just heard about it And you know, okay, maybe we can't turn it on to me Jerry did an amazing job I'm I was like blown away honestly at that um I don't want us to get in the way of that that kind of thing because It it encourages our members to keep our eyes open for that kind of thing otherwise You don't think oh, yeah, we'll never go for that. That's gotta go before the board. We're getting so we're trying to Here on the side of less red tape to make it more agile Just to if I may uh, just to respond to that I think with all the benefits that being a municipality confers one of the drawbacks Is that we don't move as quickly as say the vermont food bank on these grant these grant applications, um And I think that's intentional that's built into the structure of us being a municipality such that everyone has their say and also um, I think one of the things that this policy should outline is how opportunities Are tracked and reported so that if we do miss an opportunity that we can apply we can prepare ourselves for the next Fiscal year the next time it come it arises and then be more prepared and ready to submit Well in advance of the deadline so we No, no, that's great. I so And I agree with that my I think one of my concerns is Again being and here's this guy's You know, we're very limited we're all volunteers we're all part time. We don't have a grant coordinator I know and so we're trying to do a policy to define a grant coordinator in virtue You know where then we as 17 people act like a grant coordinator. I think it's unrealistic So, you know, we were just trying to come up with something that at least Met some obligation to the board and the community being aware of what was going on Here people are actually applying till such a point that we could actually have a grant coordinator That was kind of the philosophy I brought That's Johnson Jerry from Berlin again go back to david's original question But I heard you describe I think it's kind of a two-step process One the board approved Applying for the grant and we had to actually submit a paper that says the board approves this But the board never voted to approve the final content of the grant application And if we had to it would either have been emergency session Or we would have just missed the deadline And that's That what as I say it was sent out for review and comment but to have that final step Makes it really really difficult from a time perspective Yeah, it was I mean With both the electronic filing and the hand delivering filing. It was very very last minute I'm Dan from montelior the Just thinking of other municipalities like montelior where the city council does authorize, you know, in other words looks at application possibilities that are brought forward by the planning department or whatever and allows them to submit, you know, per their own cognizance when they are You know needed to be submitted without the second You know, you know, so unless it's like you said something owners in terms of reporting requirements and stuff that would be Necessary to consider in the process We do have to give you know, whoever's going to write the grant a certain amount of flexibility because these things come up with deadlines And we're not gonna Meet our meetings are not those deadlines Yeah, I would think that if the board approved Applying for a grant the grant application itself is just factual information so I don't I guess I don't understand why the board would need to vote on the actual written application itself if they had already Agree to pursue the grant John will give you the last word and we'll wrap this up in each other's time That's where but but I agree and and I think that you know my concern about the $1,200,000 is separate and that what you did for the usda grant was Definitely with impermissible limits and like you say Montpelier or another city says well, you know, joe you're responsible for that. We want this grant go get it so That's completely different from from this separation. So I don't want I don't want my concern about this to be overall It's it's really Yeah, we wanted if we know something And we have two weeks then we should have an emergency meeting To say joe go get that grant But not to come back in a week or 10 days and say, oh, did you do it right and all that other crap? Okay So so what I what I think I would like all of you to do is if you can take any of your any There's any other specific feedback that you have and I have a couple things that I'm going to send along Send it to phil And then phil if you want to just as absorb as much as you can the sentiment of the of the room and bring back another copy for For another crack at it next next month. We need to pull the policy committee together or just circulate whatever I pull together to Put back on each other. Okay. So so Go ahead and discuss it with the policy committee If you if you do send it out though, make sure you put a little note on there saying that's not for email discussion among the 17 to 30 members in the email chain and don't cc reporters and don't cc the town clerks because they're just not interested in our internal chatter Just in Just and everybody now has a contact roster and and link to the google drive Thank you All right, uh website update jared Jared talks I Take it over responsibilities of Managing a website sort of I've been working on Basically building a new one That probably suggestion Basic first step What i'm trying to do is The place where there's more information for the public we've been very close to meeting minutes agendas if there's public documents such as grant applications and also to Promote cb fiber news Promote our Fundraising efforts things like that I Full disclosure. I'm not below developer at all. This is way outside of my Normal operations People for help. Yeah Great, thank you That's magic Yeah, so Basically, I set up a copy the development site and I think once I have something that's resembling something that resembles a final copy and they can send it out to everyone to get some input on it Yeah, and I would say if anybody has a wish list item So obviously minutes meeting agendas donation link all that's all that's there There's a spot for that stuff there any anyways There's other stuff that you think needs to be there So I heard, you know the grant applications we can certainly include that The link to the videos Right, okay So a link to orca where they have all of our all our meetings and such if that makes sense presentations Yeah, the presentations Maybe a section about the board The the Oh the list of members Okay, or the list of delegates you mean Even in this or something that was discussed earlier a way to contact us And maybe we do come up with a you know separate email We'll be able to go through each email channel whatever maybe and and then that way everything goes through that As opposed to our own personal emails Okay Yeah Yes So if and if anything else pops in your mind feel free to send it on to on to Jared any other Map of the town So you can you can talk to David about that you can have that look like anything you want Map story thing I sent out everybody a map today. I don't know if anybody's had a chance to look at their email, but I did not see your map yet. Oh, I see it Okay Business Development Committee report back David, that's that's you The business committee met last week We hadn't met in about two months. We got sidetracked by grant applications and Very difficult, but we did get together last week Not the whole committee, but a good chunk of it members and we realized we really didn't have a charter And so for our next meeting, we're hopefully going to have a charter with what is it? We're about doing and we'll report back to the full board What we can't do Oh, we think we can't do But one of the things we tried to do last year was to have a list of grant opportunities and you know keeping that count We just didn't nobody got assigned it. So it didn't happen. So we're trying to get a little more organized about what we do and how we do it Um, so that was one of the first items we agreed to do Um, we also I realized in the coming of the meeting I left some I didn't know All the members on the committee Which is another thing we probably ought to put on the website is we got three committees or four committees and these are the members With their contacts or something like that And so I left out Jeremy from barry town So he didn't get any of our notices and I think um, Skip lindsay from woodbury. I think he was appointed to business development also. Okay at the apron meeting So we can get that name And operational planning committee will develop a process for identifying rollout Priorities in other words, we should have a calendar for when we're going to be doing things And how we it may have to be modified Periodically, but it's it's one of those things we we felt we needed to do Then we had a discussion on all the activity on planning grants and How that was and I don't know if Jeremy's going to give an update on that on h5 13 or not But in other words, there's a lot of things that happened in the legislature this year that there's planning money for the communication union districts The public service departments get money to do Hire a new person to help communication union districts Electric utility money is in there. They're doing their own study. They're going to give grants to electric utilities This is some overlapping stuff in that legislation I'm not exactly sure how it all sugars out, but we made a list of it and um The you know trying to get a handle on that Ken is drafting a How do we what how do we possibly look at the integration of some of the things We need to be looking at as these studies go forward And hopefully we'll have some information for the whole board to to ponder Yeah, no, there's quite a bit The amount of information in 513 got me. I don't know if it did 513 with deal with orca No, no, I don't think so, okay There's a lot of stuff on orca during those hearings in the finance committee send a finance committee The feasibility study that would you know, we're going to be hopefully get money to do We're going to start developing a scope of work. We got sort of a skeleton. We've seen 17 15 presentations We sort of know what the content typically is but we'd like to start drafting What an rfp content would contain so we can actually do the business planning feasibility planning Service priorities, you know, that's something that's come up discussion here a couple times We think we have a committee that should be working on that But anyway, we're going to come up with some ideas on presenting to the board, you know, how do you choose Where deployment happens in some sequence? Unless somebody here says no, that's not a business development function. So we won't do it Hang on that is How can we possibly do that before we've done any kind of feasibility work? Well, it would be but I think if we need to have that framed in the feasibility study Well, right, I'm looking if somebody who sits on the board and you know, be You know, I would vote against cabin if it made sense I'm going to be parochial for stuff human nature, right? And so you look at it from a perspective and two way of information that you would get Correct from a body It's going to be very difficult and there's multiple kinds of information that factor into that So we'll see how that goes, but it's something I know If we don't address it in in the study, the feasibility study are You know looking at the results of surveys, whatever, you know, where's financing coming? I mean, you know, it's a whole Anyway, so that's something that the committee thought it had to deal with Marketing And I know we have I don't know is there there's a turn on this one, but is the cabin $500 targeted towards what? No, we can use it for marketing because I think we need to get a designer A logo and and material just simple stuff. We can use it. It just has to be invoiceable. Okay Well, anyway, I think the web committee ought to work on that with $500 there, but I know we'd have to get the board to approve the expenditure But I'm just saying you're not having a standard identity and all that is Sort of hurting us a little bit. I think do we dislike the current logo? Okay, I won't go there But in terms of color to me design standards include color logo Fonts all those things that are standard. I figure that's called the design. You probably know the term and all of you for a geo cities look And elliott had some of that started last year in terms of color colors and whatnot If he was talking about oranges So anyway, so there's that that the committee has been grappling with to Jared at something The color scheme it was an email back and forth. It was a discussion at one of these business development meetings I got I got a clip art of the A transparent transparent background of the logo from So I got that Anyway, but I think that that's something that I think we ought to start to focus on as we get to be a real entity So in that regard, would you bring a specific proposal? Yes to us for the next meeting? Yep. Thanks And budgeting we're not you know, I think our role on budgeting and since it came up with the last meeting And I wasn't totally following it last time the committee will develop Our budget needs to submit to the executive committee as opposed to trying to ask being responsible for anything more than we want to take on And the community survey It's been you know ready for four months And we sort of had to go slow on rolling it out the committee agreed that we would do the pilot Testing of the survey in callus and I'll put it out on front porch forum tomorrow And we'll see what happens That way the other thing is I need to as you'll notice on the web map that you get tonight in the survey It's all on stone environmental server and our license With esri. I have no idea what the demand is going to be in terms of credit the way the software works It's all credit driven We'll see what happens with the survey And I can report back on that in case it comes it blows up my office's Cherry license What exactly do you mean by credit? Do you mean there might be additional costs to stone environmental for handling the traffic? I'm not sure I understand. Yeah, the way this license works is you know He uses credits when people do things with your site And it's pretty minimal But I have never seen you know if I get Ten thousand replies to the survey I'm curious as to what it's going to do So it could incur a $1,000 fee or something Yeah, I won't be more than that. But anyway, yeah, it could be there So could you ask stone if they'd be willing to do that as in kind? Yeah, yeah, thanks. It may get out of it at some point out of the year kind but And then the last thing the committee is going to try to do is formalize its meeting so that they're the Thursday two weeks before the Full board meeting because sometimes the board meeting falls on It's a very odd thing. I can't schedule it as a calendar of recurring event So we're going to do that for the next year. So that's the report from the very other questions for the business developer committee So Question is that I had asked of me is so what's the value proposition for the towns that already have service? So I'm from bearing city. Yes, we have a spectrum and so Can I let Michael So so having having talked with the development folks in berry city and popular for that matter You're going to be probably late in the in the equation. There is still a demand among business and residential folks to upgrade from From cable and it's a it's a pretty substantial upgrade and people May not like save lots and lots of money for using like ec fibers rates On the other hand they get local tech support. They know it's a we're not-for-profit entity And our speeds are going to be symmetric Those are all and we respect net neutrality Not that we've had a policy for that But we also don't collect your data all these sorts of things There's intangibles beyond the speed and the cost that I think will drive a number A larger number of people to us than would than another For-profit entity coming onto the market and offering something similar So I had communication with the Montpelio's development Person who really felt that there are a lot small businesses to medium-sized businesses in Montpelio who really are looking for A venue to buy high-speed internet, but other than that I don't have a lot I have you know The survey is they're intended for residential, but we're also going to do a survey of businesses as well And ec fibers experience with building With overbuilding fiber to the to the premises in places that have cable because they get about a 17 percent take rate So which is about half of what it is in dsl only areas But the demand is there that the density is clearly that clearly there We just haven't sat down to try to build up the the business model that would make that work Reasonably well. There's some other there's some competition issues there, too They get can get pretty ugly pretty quickly Yeah, I'm Ken and I'm a resident in Montpelio and one of the things that strikes me is the amount that I pay for my current service is Very very very hot And we have there is no alternative So many of the residents that I speak with about internet connections would long to have an offer And yeah, we got In particular smallish towns In very Montpelio, we might get 10 percent the 10 percent of Residents that's a good number for our CUD and that's the reason Well, it depends upon how concentrated they are really dispersed. Maybe not sorry Although there are so many people really not happy with compas to not say that There could probably be a much higher number than one suspects And it's the contemplative to offer tv service Yeah This this this conversation has happened and that and it's it's rather fraught So giving people strong suggestions of set-top boxes and services they might be able to stream really effectively with their You know 100 megabit symmetric That's probably a better angle than saying that There's the middle ground, too. There's there's all these Latest just come out IPTV sort of solutions. Yes, some of them are very good. That's right. We should consider that but we're not there yet Well, what cv fiber is doing is they're overbuilding like in Montpelier and in bearing But traditionally overbills capture at least 20 of the population, which is not a bad start Right, but that's but that's where the feasibility study comes in to give us some sense of what the actual numbers are You know, you see fibers numbers, but michael's right the demographics are Rather different And chavon One of the things that will play well. I'm not pilliar is it's a local artisanal source One of the things that I'm brushing for As part of our goal here is to help bridge the tech divide between the classes and the state Because we've got a huge tech gap there. Yes, and that might be better Because it'll make it more my I've got a lot of I've got all these dreams I've got hopes and dreams about What what I'm hoping that we can do one of the things is Possibly an offset fund that people can contribute into to help offset start costs for people who can't afford it That kind of thing that a company like insolidated is never And so Farm to premises internet One item that came out of this discussion for the web is a calendar the monthly calendar Mm-hmm Any other questions for me are the members of the committee? Thanks, david All right, um insurance options josh Yeah, um, so Well on the on the committee, yeah process question Are all the members that we already have on the committee don't know like jerry doesn't know he is appointed to the committee or not Was it do you remember that seen that in minutes? I'd have to look back through the minutes I know I had seen jeremy in the march minutes. That's why I sent that to you So what I I guess I'd like to make a motion for because for clarification that jeremy I mean jihad thomas I don't even know if michael and david were ever formally appointed Okay, we did boy back No, I think you showed up at the meeting And that's sort of been how it's been going Yeah, we have voted people on before Um, well the last meeting we said the business the finance and business development committees will seek to appoint new members at the next meeting So um I think it would be a good idea to vote on appointing people, but maybe we should Get that all together and then vote on all the committees next time Or or if you want business development committee, we can just say here are the people who are on them Anybody who's not listed in that list or is not So i'm going to make a motion that's jerry darryl meadies DMTDs David healy dan jones ken jones michael barenbaum jerry thomas skip lindsay and Jeremy matt matt Be on the business development committee I have a second. I'll second that The discussion What's that All right, not hearing any further discussion all in favor All right, thank you Opposed abstaining Motion passes unanimous. Great. Thank you. Thank you anything else. Um No, I'm glad you grabbed it now josh you were saying something Uh, josh very town In our last meeting we had a discussion in regards to insurance that we're going to need Have for grant reasons and Somebody in that last meeting had brought up the possibility of looking at captive insurance And I I have some background in captive insurance Loosely I will say And so I decided to just look into it a little deeper It's two of possible options that we might have for that starting Our own captive at this point If any of you know about captives is it's not feasible. Um, you would need A quarter of the insurance that we were hoping to acquire down as as a capital start to Um Essentially create your your captive insurance agency and then there It would also have a required feasibility study that would need to be done in order to do that And then there are of course on management fees that would go back to the captive management firm And there's a captive for you I can see that A captive insurance could actually be beneficial for us once we're an established organization But right now creating our own captive is not feasible However, um, I Am also aware of some other captives that are already formed that potentially could Help us one of them being um A captive by the name of county reinsurance limited. They're out of the caroinas Their name county Kind of speaks to a lot of what they do. Um, so they ensure Counties and they give the exact types of insurances that we're looking for Um, and I knew that going in and I was actually very familiar with this particular captive And but I was hoping that they might actually even branch out into municipalities. Um, they do not so I was I was able to affirm that they're not going to be able to help us help us with that Um, that doesn't shut down captives as an option for us There's also such a thing as called rental captives I can believe it's essentially a More feasible way for Organizations small as ours and with a bank account like ours To possibly be a be a part of I'm still waiting on some numbers to come back from that on on possibilities, but I really think that we're We were definitely going to be in the situation where we're going to have to you know, shop this with you know, typical You know and you know commercial insurance companies As a We qualified for Vermont later cities and towns insurance. That's a really good point In our last meeting. Um, it was brought up and Jeremy had brought up. But essentially we were Say it nicely we're essentially kind of like Shut down in the leagues in town. So that's not gonna happen Um, we can certainly propose it to them and that was an option. I was given to us by presseitink, but That's more than actually not going to happen. We'll not be able to be insured by And he presented to their board and they voted it down On his recommendation, they voted it down I actually am very familiar with presseitink. So I actually Need that going into so yeah, that's not gonna happen. So we do need to find our own insurance Especially if it's something that we need to procure in order to you know, accept these grants So I don't know if you all want me to While I'm investigating this cap of insurance thing I don't know if you want me to if there's specific Commercial insurance agencies that you want me to look through as well. I would be happy to do that So, um, I'd like you to if you could reach out to valley net and find out who they use That was explicitly suggested to us by the league And it's an insurance company that already knows Um, that particular kind of organizational structure and what they're hoping to do And uh, it's not super cheap, but it's at least at least available and it's and they've had as I understand it They've had an organization Speak to the intelligence for that insurance So if you could find out find out that landscape of what's required for that then too, um, you know, we can then Go find it or if if somebody else knows a specific insurance provider and they can suggest to, um Suggest to josh that would be helpful. But yeah, I I personally would love to see you spearheading this and Bringing us some, you know proposals By the next meeting if you can At the last meeting just you come up and and I volunteer to call up, uh, ec fiber Okay, and so they have a new manager there And who I just started like Not even a month ago and uh, so he was unaware that you know, um, you should do things by the book So he just went and asked and uh, so The people that they use is uh, is called telecom insurance company out of greenbelt, maryland and Game of the name of the account manager and the phone numbers and email and et cetera So if anybody wants that that uh, I would like that. It's around me. We just pass it right around. Oh, sure Another on paper And uh, and if you want more information chris was really helpful from ec fiber and uh So I think he wants if you just pass that around. I think that he'd be Because he's new, you know, um, let's burn him out quick So so my experience with the folks down at ec fiber and valiant is that regardless of who I talk to there They're always happy and don't really necessarily care about going by the book So I'm glad to hear that chris is continuing that that tradition of just handing us information that we asked for I think that was staying up the other back. Yeah, that's great. Michael. Thank you It was former commissioner of department of public service chris was Yeah, he was great Because we can't um, actually I got an email from From the state of vermont. Um asking us like so How's that timeline going? It's like, well, we haven't even accepted the grant yet So yeah, early to be talking about the timeline and I said I let them know about the usda grant and these sorts of things But I said we can't even comply with your insurance requirements yet. Let's get this down once we can do that We'll hopefully be able to say yes and spend some money at the next meeting Uh, go get that insurance policy and move on from there Anything else about insurance I know well one thing I remember working with some subcontractors that I've dealt with over the years Who on a specific project or grant can buy a policy just for that grant So since we're not really an operational utility yet, I hate to spend more money than we need to So I'll look into that and get back to you. Yeah, please Okay, um review of back burner items committee assignments and membership. Are there any other committee changes that need to happen? Um, we had talked Briefly last meeting. Um, so bob kline was on the finance committee and he is no longer The delegate or alternate for east montpellier. So And I did email him to see if he was still interested in being on the committee and I haven't heard back so Um finance could probably use some more Okay So this is a I knew Uh member training, but what are the different committees and how do So this this actually came up in the um in the meeting from april the minutes of which I just finished today Um, so yeah, so we have we have three committees business development committee the finance committee And the policy committee the policy committee handles the policies business development handles the things that we were hearing before and summarized more much better By what david presented today than anything else. I think that we've had in the past and then the finance committee, which is more um oriented around financial procedures and the bank account Um At things like uh like purchase orders, um kind of liaising with uh with becca on the treasurer stuff And that's it's really those three and then the sort of the executive committee, which is just um ex officio chair vice chair and uh treasurer And I suspect as we start growing as an organization, you know, there'll be other committees and technical committees and things like that That'll that'll just start to come, you know out of the woodwork as we need them And yeah, and so if at any point people think that there's some other Work that needs to be done that doesn't fit within the the purview of an existing committee. We can we can Spin one up. That's fine. Um realize though that these committee meetings all also have to abide by The open meetings law. So if you have six people on a committee, um, you know three constitutes a quorum And if you're just like sitting and having a having a pint down at apple bees or whatever the the three of you um That technically is a meeting that would have to be warned so So yes, but but you ask your server if they have any Yeah I don't think there is So During the last meeting it was midnight So the um the back burner items that I currently have um on the back burner Interest from waterbury and duck spray. I've not heard anything from anybody Over there. I even reached out to their um to waterbury's economic development person and She did not respond to me yet Did you have something yeah related to the expansion having seen uh kingdom fibers line And seeing that it isn't hard work. Is there any interest in us looking at hard work to connect to the state line? The state's fiber line that goes to hard work, right Should we be entertaining trying to get hard work to become part of a cv fiber? Would it be any advantage for us? You can bring up to us for sure I'm personal friend with the town manager and I'll ask them But it's just one of those things. I saw the line. I'm saying I mean we we are we are in hard work You are in hard work. Yeah, okay, so that's kingdom fiber. Yeah, okay So for the the new folks that might not know you do you want to give a quick blurb about kingdom fiber so that they understand the Possible conflicts involved like we did last year. Okay. Well, um for starters, um, I'm a one-man CUD Sorry So is that for profit company serving the northeast kingdom based mainly owns um Long-term leasing is called an higher view of state fiber with building out, um Latinos off of that as it passes through 22 different towns And So it's a startup we're operating Maybe at the beginning then working on for five years, but we're just turning up customers finally And I'm happy to Cooperate with cv fiber in every way including the potential of Being possibly in some form an operator Um, so that's where it comes with the interest might arise if we are getting discussions of that sort of topic Which case I would accuse myself in those discussions Is that sort of what you really just wanted to make sure everybody kind of understood the landscape? Yeah, okay um so Expansion into other towns, you know, we'd previously talked about water break ducks burry Um Conceivably stow and washington. I think those were the the ones that we were Otherwise considering I haven't done any sort of outreach to them. I haven't done Any other follow-up except that contact to water break about three weeks ago uh, just the other issue that comes up based on You know washington elected co-ops interest and actually looking at all 41 towns that That are in wek whether that ought to be As they proceed with their feasibility study and the costing thing is that something we We should probably keep in mind in my opinion I think they're going to see us as their pilot study Because they're not going to be boring when it comes to that And so we're going to do a few towns at the beginning of one town or a half a town or whatever We're going to grow and they're going to feed into that as as they can You know they will have to keep really raising a lot of money quickly and so They're risk-averse and yes, and they would love for us to take the risks and prove things for them. So I think that's A partnership. Oh, it's partnership Okay, so it doesn't sound like we need to assign any more people to um committees or tackle any back burner items. Um All right Yeah, so we just you went over the rules of procedure And you said something about signing them Or else just to adopt them Are we are you going to have people sign them? Do you have some changes to that? I was gonna have this be first read and I I've already did I've already found some things that I need to change that are just minor corrections um But yeah, if anybody wants to take a little bit longer and give me some feedback if there's anything that You need to change or add or otherwise I don't want to just kind of lay it on you a couple days in advance and then then adopt it We'll we'll adopt it for it in our july meeting Okay That you just identified in your mind and you can share with us and Dispense with it Arjun on the first year figuring that stuff out. We don't need to rehash all that work Are the changes you're recommending housekeeping changes or their major changes? I mean, I've I've read it I don't know how many other people have read it, but Yeah, there was the one the one housekeeping change that I made was under agendas There's a reference to central vermont internet. I just wanted to strike that make that cv fiber right and then the other question was about additions to our changes to the agenda The way we've been doing it has not been according to the rules procedure I've been doing it more like we do it at the berlin select board Which is kind of everybody's kind of like stares at each other and nods in agreement And if nobody pipes up then they get added to the added to the agenda or remove from the agenda So we can leave that in there and just We can actually your agenda does not follow Robert's rules of order. I can talk to you about that No, no, no, and and we and there's no there's actually no mention here that we Are adopting a Robert's rules of order. It is in the statute that unless we adopt policies otherwise We're not following Robert's rules of order. Exactly. So for example the Informal discussion of an agenda item shall be permitted while no motion is pending. That's not Robert's rules However, it works for a much more Colloquial Comfortable meeting rather than being slaves to the format of Robert's rules, which I have been Unfortunately part of organizations that take that really really seriously Here's what I want to do. I'll just start running the meetings according to these policies Starting the next meeting. So there have been adopted I will I will hear that as a motion from Mr. Healy and seconded by Dan Jones that we adopt the rules of procedure with the Center my internet struck on page three and replaced with CV fiber. Okay any further discussion All in favor Well then thank you Michael Okay, so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna pass it around I grab a pen Choose not to actually don't have a pen. Thank you. I'm gonna pass this around if you don't want to sign it out of principle Yeah, which should maybe go into the informal section of the Yeah Yep, so moving on to the approval of the April 9th and May 14th meeting minutes I sent you the April 9th meeting minutes via email Probably a half an hour before this meeting started because uh Procrastinator supreme So I would I would not be offended if you wanted to decide to hold this off until the next meeting although given that Have people wanting to get things uh out of the way These are the main ones. Okay So I'm not sure I should vote or move the main the main meeting minutes given that I was only there for the first hour Okay, so moved and seconded Second Tom, okay No, we're not going to sign the minutes we're just going to sign the policy that's coming around So April or sorry the the May 14th meeting minutes any further discussion about the the main meeting minutes Okay, hearing none all in favor Opposed Abstentions I'm abstaining Okay, May 14th meeting minutes are approved Do we want to sit on the April 9th or chew on them for a bit? This is true Should be um Let's see michael phil bob early's not here and he's here. I'm here. David's here. Tom's here Let's get this not Jerry's here John's here Yeah, yeah, we have enough So i'm going to move that we approve the April 9th 2019 meeting minutes as presented Okay, seconded not andy gilbert, I guess Any further discussion All in favor opposed And probably a handful of abstentions one two three Yeah, and several yeah Okay Round table I just want to the only thing I want to say is that I want to thank everybody who helped get h5 13 through the legislature of the session Um, we I don't think it's been signed yet. I I haven't I have an update. I'll give but anyway I just want I know a lot of people put time into going to the legislature and preparing materials for this feature and It I think it paid off I just said it I didn't like put it in my purse Um, I just want to say that um, I I reached out to the town of berry just to see if um Our army Had any monies That they would be willing to offer to organizations and things of that and and our town doesn't have to do that But we do offer our town offers low and some things like that So um, I just wanted to make that known that I did that I did reach out to the town to see if there's any money available Everyone built to acquire Thanks Just really briefly I've On a number of occasions recently been reminded how Core our options are for good quality internet here, uh, particularly corporate businesses, so Very much looking forward to Did you talk about the big outage last week? Oh, uh, that was part of it. Yeah I know you're familiar with that. I I was off that day and that was the biggest headache of my life So who's failed router was it? Consolidated in Burlington and it affected Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine Jesus, so when they do it when they blow it they blow it really good. That's why I get my thing. Yeah There's a little aside not that I can do too much about that. I get the watch that I haven't built on Who's my internet store looking? Actually, I have monitors and most of cc. I said so I one thing that More for me is a I wanted to operate. I mean, I can help you a little bit with the website from a technical perspective if you'd like I think the other thing that we got to start focusing on is development I you know, I say that it's like then my volunteering itself, but Um, you know active it, you know the similar what you're talking about, but I think somebody goes hand in hand with Can I get that website presents a little better? I know we got to think about But really putting pressure on ourselves for the ball Um, I just wanted to express my appreciation for what the policy committee has drafted with this Grant policy, I think it's a good first step and You know, I don't know much of anything on the technological side of things You all have much greater wealth of knowledge than I do on just a writer, but I can be of any help whatsoever This is Martin Woodbury Our town appropriations Request or due in By before december for our march meeting and I I'm going to appeal for the town through appropriation of $500 for cd5 or I also recommend that this committee or form Partner ship with local businesses And also that if we can join a chamber of commerce such a Vermont chamber of commerce, I think that would Be an ideal place for us to Advertise for partnerships Especially with businesses. So as a just a point of information Um, it would be illegal for the town of woodbury to give us a $500 appropriation Because we're a municipal the communications union district statute says that a town may not use its taxing capacity to fund any of our operations Really? Really But related to that, how could we change that Change statute or we or we read a charter It was So but the the option of that is getting every one of our municipalities to buy cd5 or as its provider Yeah, so if the town office wanted to hook up wanted to commit Commit or wanted to contract with cd5 or to build something as a project like you might Contract with a construction company to do some new paving or something Um, that's possible. But isn't that why we're here at the table to do this with you? Yes, but the town can't simply write us a check Unless we're doing a unless we're doing a project that will be like That involves with their Yeah, so yeah, you could hire us to do something, but you can't simply write us a check as an appropriation like you would to Yeah, that's their development or the development It's a so Ten gentle to what susan's bring up so towns many towns ran fire alarm cable And the towns control that space on the poles and i've been successful in the past of getting towns to Let us use that space So if you go back to your towns and find out does your town have fire alarm cable That would be the first question and second is Definitely Do you have a map of that? No, so it says town by town, you know, actually whether they ran fire alarm cable You have to find out from the town where those fire alarm cables go because they don't necessarily go over the whole town Right, but do you know for berry city where that stuff lives? Yes, that would that would be great because having knowing where that where that landscape is Municipal owned dark fiber. No, no, the fire alarm cable is copper This is back decades, but using the line but using the space to put the fire cable Without having to pay for make ready. That's a real estate. It's not the cable It's and but those and those alarms are not being used in most cases they're obsolete Many many years ago the local cable company say saw it as dark fibers for the fire department up there to use The question that came up from for me is the business development stuff If we're actually working in kind of two areas that may need to be subdivided at some point there is We'll call it the business image the the whole idea of what is the offering? What is the position development, you know, like surveying the There's a thoughtful like grant activity, which is it business? Is it is there a funding? Is there a finance committee? Something should that be you know, how is that being handled and it seems a little bit questionable on how we're handling it right now I don't have a specific Recommendation I'm just saying that I believe this something we have to start working at because we're As we grow that's going to be forcing the Too much work on one small thing Okay, so maybe if you next time you guys have have your meeting I would just say if you can come up with a proposal how you would like to Spread the love or divide the love or whatever Or if the finance committee needs to take over some elements of that bring the recommendation I don't think you'll find probably a lot of Reluctance here Do you think Jerry well just going back to to Dan's point we we did make this We made a split between finance and business development where The going out and getting the money went to business development and The bank accounts and and and the handling of the money was going to be with Finance working more with the with the treasurer. So that that's where we made the line But it may be the case that you know a separate grant writing team capitalization Yep Um So Getting rid of make ready is really important Unfortunately, you don't get rid of poll rent in your share space And that's something I'd like to see changed. Um, it's something I want to propose to the PUC or Maybe the department of the service first To see if we can change the poll tariff So that when you over lash on another cable, you don't have to pay Over rent to the poll owners when you're not increasing the load on the bowls, etc So that that's just an interesting thing And today that there's more of kingdom fiber you need to put on the map Okay Yep John I just wanted to say that I've been on a lot of a lot of committees and This one is by far the best run So thanks, thanks to all the people Thanks, so that was recorded From the else who said it was also recorded right and I'm behind everywhere I'm good So I heard back Not with any results, but um, we are being scored by uh, the rural developments Folks on our grant. So we will hopefully Know soonish so they're Telling up those points. There was something there's some documentation that was missing in our packet and they Gave us a couple days to catch back up and provide that documentation And so hopefully that means that they're nearing the end H5 13 was passed by the house in the senate by Insanely overwhelming margins and the most recent version Contrary to the vt. Digger article allows for loans up to four million dollars so And just to remind all of you valley net has has approached us About them essentially putting together the business plan and the loan paperwork and everything To get the to go after that four million dollars and build on on our southern towns Into interconnect with their with the existing network With ec fibers existing network So It's not been signed by the governor yet. There's a lot of really interesting Parts of it. I think for us the biggest one though is that vita loan Which could mean that we're building in rocksbury northfield williams town as soon as next year They're only authorized 10 million right and the maximum loan is four million right right so it's going to go fast It will go fast. So it'll be there'll be essentially Essentially the first two or three entities to get to the feeding trough are going to be Going to be emptying it which is which is fine because we're ready. We're poised to go and it could not have been passed at a better time Can you explain though I keep hearing about it being passed But if if you if you do a search it seems The house built passed at the end of march And then you don't hear about it So so passed in the senate definitive and the final versions on the west so so here's what happened The the house passed their version which was not very much like well It's It resembled the senate version it went to the senate senate finance made a lot of really good improvements And changed a couple things and then it went back to the house for For essentially conference committee, but they just they just accepted it without sending it to a conference committee It was accepted and now it's waiting to be I don't remember the name of the process But I don't even know if it's been communicated to the governor's office yet Once it gets to the governor's office. I think there's five days 48 hours something like that For him to sign it or let it be Automatically passed into law or to veto it. He's going to make hate with it Oh No, I I understand I I haven't seen any invites to the press release or anything like that For the press conference, but I expect that's going to happen Hopefully soon and the sooner the better because the sooner that that gets passed a lot of those part A lot of those things go into effect on passage And as soon as Vita knows that that's something that they have to get underway Then the sooner they're going to be able to get their their stuff going and the sooner that will be able to apply for it So Are there things that we can be thinking about doing or getting prepared to do So That's what that USDA grant is supposed to be about a big way is to get us positioned For that next from that next branch. It's uh, everything seems to be moving in slow motion But I guess it's all moving Yeah, so I'm um, I have as a to-do list item for me to talk to valley net And find out what our next step is with them and get something reasonably concrete now that the bill is going to pass um Finding out what our next step with them is and be able to bring something to you all And be able to say Yeah, or nay or make some changes But it essentially to be able to move forward and be ready to pull that trigger As soon as Vita's ready to accept applications will be it will be their first day And why is the necessity to have fiber valley net? Because they're offering to essentially use their business model do all the work Um and be our operator for the first three years or so And they've already done it. They're already and they're literally already doing it. They have the office. They have the technicians Our startup costs for them would be and consequently for us would be really low It would it's right at this moment It's it's the cheapest option and we would be able to immediately start serving customers And so years of serving customers then Then we can transition into the municipal bond market or we can start going after revenue bonds And then we sort of put on our, you know Adult pants and we can start doing things on on our own then But we don't have the technical proposal from them. So going back to you sir What you just brought up about why? Valley net we don't have a technical proposal that has to go up to the board There's there's been preliminary discussions and there are lots of reasons good reasons to follow through on those discussions but it still has to come up to the board and As jerry's trying to do get this happen for the right time so that we can be on the top of the climb If the board decides they want to do it Yeah, I keep something I said before about this and that is the As much as we love eC fiber and we appreciate them for all the reasons that jerry just Layed out and advantages to us They aren't necessarily the way to go and technology We get instead of them and their technical arrangement then it Probably be who's us to continue that way as we expand. It's really hard to have multiple platforms on the network and multiple Modus of operandi and so forth. So it's something that we very well may endorse But we as a board have not really discussed it. We need to understand how they do things and how that compares to some other options like Greg has tremendous experience running networks and it's very different from the way they run their network So these are the kinds of things you need to do at some point Just jump okay Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to adjourn Okay, any further discussion all in favor Thank you, Susan. You you completely beat me to it