Commissioner Tierney, I do see you now. Thank you for joining us. Really appreciate it. One of the things that we're hoping to, and I know you have a whole team with you from, from the department of public service. Just from a, you know, from a general context, appreciate your patience with my committee this morning as this is the first, I think we've all been using the zoom platform in recent days. This is the first committee hearing we've conducted with this. So again, appreciate your, your patience as we kind of wade through conducting our business via zoom. There are a variety of topics we'd be interested in hearing from the department on in the, you know, in the wake of the governor's declaration of an emergency a couple of weeks ago. You know, two big areas clearly are how our telecommunication system and connectivity is, is performing in the state right now. And I know that folks from the department had testified yesterday with the Senate Finance Committee on some similar topics. And then also how our energy infrastructure is functioning. One of the things that we've been paying attention to around the region and around the country is how loads have changed across the country to some extent, but, you know, interested in a high level and generally how our energy system is functioning as a state just as, you know, our way of life has changed pretty significantly in the last, in the last week or two. But with that, I just want to welcome you and I know you're extremely busy and thanks for joining us today. So it's definitely our pleasure to be here, Tim. Can you confirm with a hand gesture that you can actually hear me? Yep. Great. I cannot see myself on the screen.  You look great. I do look ridiculous. No worries. It really shouldn't matter because the substance is the value that it has, regardless of how I look. Very briefly to give you a fair warning. I have two individuals on the phone or who are appearing today who need to be elsewhere in fairly short order. That's Ed McMurray and Riley Allen. So I will ask that we put them on first with what they have to tell you about how our electric infrastructure is holding up and the potential rate impacts and pricing impacts that you indicated in interest in hearing about. And then we'll go to the telecom piece. I think we also have with us, I think today director Jordan, who is our electrical engineer. If anybody has any specific technical questions about the system, but in a nutshell, it seems to be doing fine right now. I'm saying that because I want to offer reassurance. I don't think our infrastructure, whether on the electric or the telecom side has ever been tested the way it's being tested right now. And from all indications I've seen it's been holding up seamlessly. It's important to distinguish between that fact and our aspirations, what we wish our infrastructure could do on the electric side. I don't see any wishes going on fulfilled at this time on the broadband side and sell side. Obviously the story is different. But for right now in answer to your larger question, what is the department's focus been since the onset of the state of emergency? Our focus has been first and foremost on continuity of essential service. And I think that has been going very well. It has been on making sure that the utilities have their contingency plans in place and are acting on them, meaning that they are getting out there to do the necessary work that also fits within the parameters of the governor's executive orders to ensure that the systems remain functional and delivering essential service to remonters while also planning for care of their workforce, whether it be in terms of prescribing and enforcing social distancing policies, or in holding an appropriate amount of their workforce in reserve to in order to plan for the possibility that if their frontline folks get sick that they have people they can rotate in. We have been discussing this a great deal in the healthcare space, but it is also a factor to be considered in the utility space. And that has been one of several regulatory supervisory functions that the department has been exercising during this time. Very briefly on disconnections. There are now a disconnection moratoria in place for both residential customers and nonresidential customers. That is a process that was met principally through voluntary service. And then there is a regulatory framework within which the essential services that utilities deliver are being managed, reviewed, and acted on as needed in order to ensure that people have lights on and basic telecommunication services. So unlike other areas of state government, there is an already in place mechanism that allows us to do a lot of the reacting and prescribing that may need to be done under this emergency set of circumstances. There are some instances where there are potential needs for either legislative fixes or executive orders, but they are at this time have not been absolutely pervasive. So there are some instances where there are potential needs for either legislative fixes or executive orders, but they are at this time have not been absolutely pervasive. The first point of action has been either my reaching out to utilities and saying, hey, what can you do here? Hey, what are you doing here? Get back to me on what your plan is for this, that and the other. And as necessary going to the PUC for action. So with that introduction, I'd like to pass this on to Ed McNamara and Riley Allen, if that's all right with you. That's great. And I think we have a very high level. Question that probably goes across the department of public service function, which is, have you seen, to what extent have you seen an increase or none at all kind of in the consumer complaint world or issues raised by consumers on any front, but just more consumers are at home now. More people are, whether it's conducting business or quarantined at home. What are some of the issues that you're seeing in the consumer complaint? This is an area that we are keeping an eye on. I receive a report every evening from my consumer advocacy division on this. I have not seen a noticeable uptick in traffic when it comes to complaints. They are well within the normal parameters, which would suggest to me not so much the people don't have complaints, but rather that it's not necessarily the first person that tends to be about service not being available, which as you know, is in the broadband space of predicament because we don't have the jurisdiction over that, but we do nonetheless take in the complaints because we gather that information as a statistical base to help us with policy. But I can't say that there's been a, you know, a rush to complain. And frankly, I'm not surprised because as I said, I think our, excuse me, our infrastructure is holding up to the needs of the public. And I'm not sure if that's the case. I'm not sure if that's the case. Which is distinct from whether it is everything we want it to be. Does that make sense to you? It does. That's helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. So we're going to turn it over to Riley now. To add if you went in mind. Oh, okay. Great. Yeah. Great. Thanks. Yep. I'm here. Perfect. So Ed. I'm playing director for the department. And if you can get a little closer to your microphone, that, that would be helpful for me. I'm having a little trouble hearing, hearing it. Is that a better. Yeah, that's much better. Thank you. Okay. Great. Thanks. So I'm just going to give a overview of some of the regional impacts on a region-wide basis. I said New England is seeing about a three to five percent. Lean in. Sorry, it's not a pretty useful computer here. That's all right. I said New England is seeing about a three to five percent reduction in load in the last couple of weeks. This time of year, April, May tends to be relatively low load levels. Usually during the winter and summer, the highest load. Also this time of year, you're seeing more hydro production as you're getting more of a snow melt. So you're seeing quite a bit of hydro production. Solar is just starting to ramp up this time of year as well. All those factors in addition to low natural gas prices are leading to very low wholesale market prices. And that has two different factors. First, during this time of year, when our utilities that have a lot of committed hydro resources and solar resources. Those run of river or solar resources, the utility. We're losing yet. And my apologies. Having trouble with interconnect over here. Okay. So I said knowing that we're sorry utilities are selling into the ice in New England market. And they're selling at lower prices. This is sort of the worst time of year for utilities to be reselling power because wholesale prices are low. And there's a lot of excess generation because of the hydro and the ramping up of solar. So there's a cost pressure on utilities because they're getting less revenues from the power they're selling into the ice of New England market. I'm going to turn it over to Riley to talk about the retail impacts associated with that. Good morning, Riley. Good morning. Can you hear me? Okay. I'm using a. First set. Yep. You're coming through well and I'm getting thumbs up from other reps. Okay. Yeah. So I just wanted to quickly cover a couple. Points. I want to talk about. The retail rate payer exposure and sort of building on. Ed's comments. From our perspective. We think the exposure really emanates from. Three or four things. First is kind of the, the lost margins, if you will. From the difference between retail revenue and wholesale costs to our utilities. We estimate that it's approximately in the. Area of about 10 cent per kilowatt. Hour that is lost. From. Reduce sales that Ed was referring to. There were also other areas of. The retail. The essential pressure. On the utilities. It comes from the resale. Point that Ed had made. That's also relates to. The potential resale of. Some of our utilities are relatively rich in. The attributes of renewable energy. And that's, that's being felt. By the way, I'm going to talk a little bit more on the. The renewable energy credits. There's also potential cash flow implications from the. Disconnect of policy. But just to, just to give you a sense, a high level sense of what it is that we're. Talking about in terms of rate payer exposure. On a statewide basis, we, the state has. We've seen that in the last couple of years. We've seen that in the last couple of years annually. Roughly $67 million on a. Monthly basis. What we're seeing in Vermont is at least in, in March was a 10% drop. In. Electricity sales. Now, not, not all of that is associated with the. We've had 19 and related directives. Much of that is just weather related. Eating degree days or down about 20% in the month. March. So that's, that's a fairly major influence. The other secondary influence is. The effect of all the new renewable. Distributed generation that's come on in the last year, we've had almost 60 megawatts of additional generation. But at the end of the day, it's about a 10% drop in, in March from electricity sales. And I just thought I would kind of share the, you know, the implications of that.  Essentially a $67. Million a month electricity bill. Overall. So that, that'll give you a sense of proportion as. The longer the more months they go by with lower loads. If they continue to kind of. In terms of, you know, the increase in the total energy consumption of the energy consumption, you can see roughly four to $5 million and essentially. Lost margins from our utilities. And again, some of that you ascribe to weather and some of it you described to reduce demand just from lowered commercial activity. Yes, exactly. Thanks. So. process and how it kind of functions when our utilities are financially strained. There are a number of recourses for our utilities. For our largest utility they have a decoupling mechanism in place so there's a place for it to essentially recapture lost revenues and associated margins in the framework of its power cost adjuster. So on a quarterly basis there is a mechanism in place to essentially flow back to those lost margins. And they can be kind of spread and adjusted so the impacts aren't too great in any given quarter. The rest of our utilities have the rate making mechanisms that are in place. There is essentially a 45-day rule that requires our utilities to give notice but they can essentially file for rates and put rates into effect. Subject to refund within 45 days of providing notice and that applies to all the co-ops and municipal utilities. Various other kind of mechanisms that we can kind of speak to but I think that at a high level our thinking now is that regulatory mechanisms in place are flexible and will essentially be responsive to the needs of our utilities as they unfold. The last point that I would make is that the Federal Relief Act also provides additional provisions for emergency relief related to the COVID-19 epidemic. And so there's some potential additional relief for our cooperative utilities that rely on our US funding. I'll stop there. Okay. We've got one hand up, Riley. Scott, did you have a question? Got on mute. There you go. Hi Riley. Excuse my voice is terrible and sick for the last week. Sorry, you were talking about, sorry, lost margin due to reduced sales. I guess you're kind of using economists speak and I just want to wonder if you can explain a little bit more what you're talking about. Four or $5 million reduction in sales means presumably some reduction in I think when I guess I'm thinking of margin as the difference between between revenue and costs. So if we have a reduction of sales of say $5 million, and there's, that's not a reduction in profit. Yeah, well, whatever the word is for revenue over costs for non-profit. Right. So I just wanted to explain that a little bit more. I appreciate the question and I apologize for reverting to my eco speak. So what I mean is, so there's around $67 million a month is our electricity bill that's about 10% reduction is 6.7 million and kind of gross revenue reduction. But part of that is associated with the cost of providing the electricity and there's a kind of a relatively short run cost marginal cost that is associated with that. And that's about, you know, in the neighborhood of 6 cents per kilowatt hour. So on a roughly 16 cent per kilowatt hour revenue, the incremental or short run incremental costs associated with each kilowatt hour is about 6 cents. So in between those two is is that that margin, that contribution that helps to carry the cost of the system, the joint common embedded costs of our utility some of the longer run cost considerations that aren't so caught up in the cash flow concerns. So 16 cent revenue, I think 16 cent revenue, 6 cent incremental or affordable costs, and then there's a differential of roughly 10 cent per kilowatt hour and that's being felt by our utilities as they go forward. And that's the, you know, when you do the math simple math it's roughly four to $5 million of margin, if you will, that's lost per month that has, you know, real puts real pressure on our utilities. Thank you. Riley I've got another hand up from representative in touch. Yes. Yeah, thanks. It's always happens. I'm writing those point. We can come back to you like. Yeah, please get back to me. Robin, did you have a question as well. You got to unmute yourself. Yeah, thanks. I did and I lost my hand raise hand button somewhere so the old fashioned way. Riley, I think building on, on Scott's question. You talked about a loss in revenue for utilities selling electricity into. I saw New England. Is that correct. Selling electricity to other utilities. Yeah. Yeah. I'm wondering, I mean, that works both ways, right? That electricity costs are then lower for utilities purchasing power. How does that figure into the numbers you are giving us the 67 million or 10%. I wasn't incorporating that I was kind of leaving that out because a lot of this is just unknown to me at this point it really depends some of our utilities most of our utilities are hedged relative to other states in the region. It's partly because we have vertically integrated utilities and they engage in longer term contracts and own generation where in other states they're restructured and they don't necessarily hold those positions so in the spring time in April, for example, there's a lot of, well, there's hydro we have, you know, the hydro Quebec generation but we also have, you know, a material number of kind of run of river hydro facilities that tend to run very well and in the spring that's when we get the runoff and that's when we have just a lot of electricity being produced by our electric utilities. That's typically when we tend to see, you know, more electricity flowing then than we necessarily need. And that's when we're in a position to essentially sell some of that electricity to to our neighbors so it's in part a function of the, the regulatory environment that we have here and part of the function of the types of resources that we have but it doesn't that was separate and apart from the, the math that I had done earlier that math earlier was just on the question of lost margins and I haven't factored in the implications of the question you're asking about which is that those resales. Okay, you also made a passing comment to if I got it right with my hand scratch. There are revenue impacts due to disconnect with policy. So disconnect policy, those are just kind of the, the, I mean, this is extending essentially that there's, there's a kind of a wintertime moratorium on disconnects to protect consumers that ends that ended yesterday effectively in March. And that's been extended by virtue of essentially the voluntary interventions of the utilities, coupled with the order from the commission. That means that the leverage that utilities have to put customers on notice that there is going to be a disconnect and the, you know, they lose that leverage and so there is a cash flow concern that would be associated with the slow payments or payments that ensue from the absence of that that leverage. I misunderstood the comment I heard it as a disconnect from policy, as opposed to a disconnect policy. Thank you. Mike, did you have a question. Yes. And I have to remember to write these things out when they pop into my head. The question I had is this, can the utilities expect any help from the federal government in terms of lost revenues, or are they a different category than other businesses. Part part of my response is, I don't know, I mean, I just that just created this federal cares act, I think it was signed into law. And I know that there is relief that is expressly given to the cooperative utilities. In relation to COVID-19 related costs, I don't know if that includes lost revenues or not. So there are also various provisions of the federal cares act that relates to state and municipal government. And, you know, again, that's an area that is unfolding and it's not clear to me that the lost revenues would necessarily be covered by that. So it's, it's, it, you know, I guess my earlier point was, we feel that we have the mechanisms in place through the regulatory structure that that we have to provide some relief. And I know that June has her hand up as well so I'll let her kind of jump in. So that's okay. Okay, just to point out everything Riley said, I agree with completely. Another thing to consider is that there's no legal bar to there being federal help if the Congress chooses to adopt that. But more importantly, the Congress may choose to afford ratepayers relief. And that secondarily is helpful to the utilities. For instance, if a rate payer accrues a significant rearage, because they have been paying their bill. The federal government may choose to grant help to individuals much as they're doing with the $1,200 checks. And then if that proves to be the resource that allows the rate payer to pay off your rearage that in yours to the benefit of the utility, that's all I wanted to point out. Right. Thank you. A follow up there if I may. Since the utilities are regulated. And they're guaranteed a certain return on investment. Does that mean that if they have a loss of revenues that the rates that would tend to cause a rate increase. So that is, I mean that's a complicated question but the, it varies by the utility system. I would characterize it as a guaranteed rate of return just just for a safe clarity. It's an opportunity to earn a fair return. But the plan that we have in place for essentially three quarters of the state through green mountain power essentially is a decoupling plan. A decoupling plan is intended to help kind of reduce the motivation financial motivation to sell more electricity and take that off the table and that's part of the power cost adjustment plan that exists within the green mountain power framework. And within that framework, there is a mechanism that looks at the volume of sales and adjust for the volume of sales and ensuring that the utility has kind of fairly been given an opportunity to recover, you know those lost revenues and lost margins, along with other kind of variables related to power costs. Now with respect to co ops and munis. There is a more as inherently as kind of a shorter trigger for kind of responsiveness that is to the extent that they feel like they're heading into rough waters they all they have to do is provide 45 day notice of the need for great relief and they those rates can go into effect they can also have those rules even the 45 day rule waived. If, if granted by the commission then they can kind of move forward, even, even more quickly but there are opportunities for fairly quick responses for the cooperatives and the municipals for the own utilities there is a kind of an inherent decoupling mechanism that provides, you know substantial relief in this area. So, Riley, I want to be respectful of your time and add as well I know that you guys have other things to head to today something that I want to bookmark that, frankly, even if we had our entire hearing to talk about this today might not be enough but I am interested in, say a month from now, maybe even sooner, hearing back from the department as to what type of rate impact. You might start to see coming out of, you know what what maybe a blip in in load in our system or might be something that's more prolonged, depending on how things evolve with this public health emergency in the next year. Or the next month, hopefully not next year. But I'm interested in feedback from the department as to, you know, some of the conversation we've started here as to what are the rate impacts going to be. And also, this may not be relevant or it may be but we've got, you know, 15 to 20 electric utilities in our state and are there any that are particularly severely affected by, you know, some of the issues that that are related to demand changes. And again, maybe that won't become more obvious until we've got some more weeks under our belt of what is actually occurring here in terms of load changes. So. Yeah, happy to provide more information and suspect that the answer will be a hedge I think we'll have a better sense of what the kind of dollar implications are and then it's a matter of kind of sort of regulation to kind of figure out how to kind of smooth those those rate implications and but we'll we'll have more to say about that later June has her hand up to go ahead. Just to reinforce that point. The committee should be aware that there is already one action that was taken through the PC process to defer rate changes that otherwise would have happened today. So one concern that the department has been keeping an eye on is with those decisions having been made, and with those bills coming due conceivably in July, we already know that there is going to be some rate adjustment process necessary. There's a second utility that is in the process of weighing a deferral of that nature as well. So I'm just flagging that for you by way of example that this issue is already in the the thought process the sorting had if you will, of the regulatory framework, and something that we are attending to and so we'll be happy to brief you on that. Right. And again, and this discussion is getting along a little long in the tooth in terms of the time that you have and the time that we have. You know a question, a very general question I have there as the kind of pressure builds behind the dam on this is that will that more affect utilities financial health or what more impact rate payers in the state of Vermont's financial health and and I'm sure it's going to split be, you know, be split between the two, but there will be an impact here as we defer, as we defer these these rate changes so no that's something that I'd like to bookmark to catch up on as we get into April. Mark, it would be helpful if you kept in mind the analogy to storms. You might think of this as a very, very severe storm, but the regulatory process has mechanisms for dealing with storms and the cost consequences of coming back from storms. And with that, I will take your cue and let you move on. Okay. Well, since you're orchestrating your team here, Commissioner, I'm presuming the next person to introduce would be clay purpose to talk about the telecommunications and connectivity side of the house. That is correct. And to the extent that there are different questions clay may pitch some of them back to me. So I'll be on standby for that. But right now, we'll have clay stuff up. I can't see you but you may be on the line. I am on the line hold on just one second. If this works. Can you see me okay. Somebody can but I can. Oh, there you are. Okay, good. Hi, how are you. Well, thanks. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. So thank you for having me testify today. For the record on clay purpose the director for telecommunications and connectivity with the Department of Public Service. Just a profit some of my or my testimony with an update on what what has occurred, both in the industry and at the Department of Public Service, since the start of the pandemic. And I think March 13 is probably the, the date where things started to happen. In the industry wide. The pandemic is not something that affects the industry like it's affected other industries. Our telecommunication systems are all still working. In fact, we're as we sit here today on zoom. We are relying on them more than we ever have before. Carriers have through the FCC made various commitments to things like suspend disconnections of internet and phone service. Wave data caps increase bandwidth for their consumers where they can. And some of the carriers have also opened up by five hotspots. So carriers like Comcast and charter. Have allowed non customers to access their customers modems to use the internet. So if your neighbor is a Comcast customer you can use Comcast service for free. They've all rolled out plans that either offer short term service at low or no cost. So that folks with school age children can sign up if they need to to do things like schoolwork or telework. So we're seeing a lot of that. All of these things are happening in Vermont just like they're happening elsewhere. But a question we're getting a lot is with the increased traffic on these networks. Is it going to break the internet. The answer is no, that's not something that's happened yet. Carriers are reporting increased traffic. We've reached out to all of the major carriers. They say that they have the capacity to handle the type of traffic that they're seeing. Longer peaks, they're seeing a change in peak usage, the time of day in other words. But they are built to handle that and given that many of them are doing things like waving data caps and increasing bandwidth. That is something that indicates to me that they have the capacity to handle the traffic that we're seeing. Clay, I'm going to ask you to hold on for just a second and I'm going to give you a chance to catch your breath. Representative Sebelia has a question. Laura. Good morning, Clay. So I just wanted to with regard to the notion of the increased traffic not going to break the internet. That is a relief. But I think I just want to make sure that we're clear. When we're thinking about folks that have like a four one or five one or seven one connection. We're now trying to participate remotely from the legislature and do education remotely from high school and work on a job somewhere else that we may be seeing that not functioning well or are we not hearing about that. So lower speeds, higher demand, my question. You are definitely hearing about it. I must admit that my connection is a four one and my children are preoccupied watching a Netflix documentary right now. So if I seem pixelated, that's why. But from what I'm saying, I look fairly clear. I do think you can do some amount of work on a four one connection. Because I've been doing it and no others who have, but depending on the type of work that you're doing it course may not be adequate. And so, you know, we have 2324% of the building locations in Vermont where for one maybe all that's available. Something less than 25 three which is the federal definition. And it may only be for one. So I didn't want to, you know, happy to hear continued reporting I just wanted to kind of stick a pin there that while the overall network, it's I think a relief to hear that that's holding up the increased residential uses in places that can't access higher speeds. That's not necessarily smooth sailing which I, I'm sure I know you are experiencing as a mind. So, yes. Yeah, I understood that that's that's been a long standing problem it's a problem that we've been trying to address well before the pandemic and I do, I do think that that the risk of sounding callous that the pandemic is going to highlight for America. The real effects of the digital divide. People are used to using the internet at school or work and maybe they can say, I don't, you know, you don't really need it at home because you have it accessible to you in other places but now we've taken that away for health and safety. You have to be home right now. And you are totally dependent on your home internet. That's why you continue. Oh, I'm sorry, did you want to jump in. I just wanted to underscore Clay's remark. Clay said he at the risk of sounding callous he thought this would highlight the digital divide. My, my view on that is that I fully intend to use this as a battering ram with the federal government to get them to understand. As I mentioned already, how this pandemic highlights the need to think about this critical infrastructure in the essential nature that it actually has which is that it is essential. And it needs to be treated as a matter of public policy and funding as necessary. That is something that the federal government has resisted to this date and I am. I'm hopeful because frankly I don't know what it takes to get through to Washington DC, but I can say that the department is definitely turning up the volume on its advocacy in that direction. And in that sense this crisis proves to be helpful and I hope that doesn't sound callous. No, it's, it's actually sound hopeful you just don't sound optimistic, but so I appreciate that. As a patriot, as a patriot, I'm hopeful. Yeah, as a as a realist looking at the immediate, you know, past. It's it gives me great consternation that there's even a question that the federal government would see it this way. But I think folks understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I do. And some place that I would like to lead you in terms of your testimony is that, and I listened in to some of the discussion in the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, which is some of the and actually I will also give the speaker Johnson credit for trying to focus our committees on things that we can do to address the immediate emergency issues before us, as well as as commissioner Tierney was referring to, you know, never letting a good crisis go to waste, you know, hopefully that there are opportunities for us to shine a light on things that have a longer term impact in terms of the work we're doing here. What I heard in this, you talking about in the Senate Finance Committee yesterday related to kind of issues of availability. And it's something that our committee and you have spoken about in our committee with frequency in the last year, where are parts of the state where people, even if they wanted access there is not access. And access sufficient internet speeds that allow them to kind of operate in the modern world. In that issue, relative to an issue of access related to things like affordability. Maybe you have a Comcast line or a fiber line going by your house, but you simply have a home that has school children living there that frankly can't afford the service. And the department has been able to distinguish between, you know, an issue of availability relative to an issue of, you know, access related to affordability is that something that that and I know we're early in this but is that something that you've been able to discern. So, as far as kind of affordability goes, that's kind of a hard question to answer as in who, who does that affect. There isn't a whole lot of good data nationally on that issue. And I don't know that we have data on the state level on that I think it's something that we're working with the agency of education that will want to pin down for students especially, you know, how, what are the barriers to access and his price one of them, we do know a couple of things. We connect. Apologize for the pun between folks who are eligible for lifeline programs and folks that actually take advantage of the lifeline, excuse me not take advantage but use the lifeline program to to get broadband service and get or get telephone service. And, you know, that's likely a result of efforts by the FCC to cut down on waste fraud and abuse issue that they are concerned about with the lifeline program they've done some things over the years to to verify people's income and that So we see, you know, in the state and I think all states overall that the number of people that would technically qualify for lifeline as much higher than the number of people that actually use it. And we don't know for every person who doesn't take advantage of it whether it's because they don't want to or because they can't give us some barriers so that's certainly an area of inquiry and maybe looking at how we could promote lifeline better in the state might be helpful. I know the CDC does collect some data so we'll look into that as well. But in all likelihood it's it's an issue. In Vermont, like it is everywhere else it's an issue. You know that's in New York City or any any major metropolitan area but also in rural areas as well so. Well, I will interject clay is I've spoken with representative web, who's the chair of the Education Committee and we've spoken in recent days and I have asked her to reach out to the agency of education to see if we can get better data quickly about what our school children in the state who to whom internet access would be available, but for issues of affordability. And if there are children, students who we can tie into remote learning that's available to them at their schools, but it's not available to them because they live in a house that again for reasons of affordability does not have internet access. In the last couple of days I've reached out to all the present all the principles in in schools that I represent and just ask them, you know, give me a rough number. How many students do you have that live in homes that cannot afford internet access and you just, I've been getting back more anecdotal information but I'm pressing them because I would like a number that we can react to, you know, if we have a policy solution to that that we can implement quickly that is something that I would like to see. You know whether it's a we whether it's the department whether it's something that we do through an emergency appropriations process that we, or something we do working with providers. And I would encourage the director that that's something that we click, you know, rectify as, as soon as possible but I just wanted to mention that and I would encourage other people to reach out to your principles. In your local schools to see how big an issue is this in your local schools. There's a couple of hands up and representative Campbell, I wanted to call on you if you still have a question. What about leveraging the crisis for for cell phone services well, and wondering if that might be a way of getting at least some internet service to, to be aware of none right now, as well as, as well as broadening cell phone coverage which is something else we need to do. Yes, certainly wireless is a possible solution. I think that when you talk about availability. Folks that don't have access to it because the facilities aren't there their house. You know that's a that's a longer term problem I don't think it's one we should ignore or lose sight of but you know if you started today to build something. You know they the construction would go through what the projections are for the pandemic. You know, with that said, certainly we're always looking for for solutions to that problem. Well, I get if I may, I think one of the things I was thinking about was not so much in the in the current acute phase of the crisis, but when we get it get into recovery we have some recovery money or stimulus money whatever you want to call it to spend. How are we looking at team up using some of that money to expand our cell phone network coverage. We certainly have the connectivity initiative, finding ways to get carriers to take connectivity initiative funding. The dust I don't think is quite settled on the federal bill. And so we're not clear yet what dollars can be used for what there are those several provisions that were added to the stimulus that beef up some of the existing federal broadband programs. And there may be opportunities there. There's a lot of money for telehealth and distance learning, for instance that may be able to tie into a wireless solution or even a wired solution. Just going to question or the comment by the chair. I did want to say that you know we are working with the agency of education, and we're putting together a survey that that we hope will get some of that data I don't know if it'll be a complete data set but it should be another data point that we can rely on to get a sense of what the affordability or barrier to access issue is like in the state. I appreciate that. Thank you. Mike, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I saw your hand come up. Yeah, actually what clay just said, address the question that I had, you know, folks, you're all set. Yeah, pretty much, I guess. I just want to remark that folks have been advised to go to libraries and school buildings, park in their car and have the kids do their homework in their car. And I think that's pretty cool and you know anything that can be done to help them get better access. Yeah, certainly that's been a criticism we're hearing. We're not representing that our, our Wi Fi hotspot map is a normally solution here but it's something that we could put together quickly. And for people that really need the internet for one reason or the other. We want to let people know that they there are places they can go to get it still. Certainly no one wants to see children doing their homework in their parents car in the cold at night but that is that is an image of rural Vermont that that we've all seen well before the pandemic. That's that's a way that a lot of rural Vermonters still access the internet and go to the library is one thing. But when you take that away, we wanted to make sure people knew that you can still get the service. So, I've got two hands up, Robin, if you could go first and then Laura. Well, I also noticed June has been raising her hand and I don't know if she wants to comment on this before I ask my question. Sorry, sorry, you weren't on my screen go ahead. You're quite all right we're all still learning just briefly I want to point out that as Clay said, it's not like we're happy with the idea of folks going to hot spots. But it's important in a crisis situation to try to keep in mind chronology. And so those are actions that were taken in the early days to respond to immediate needs. So the conversation we're having as I'm sure you're aware chair Brooklyn talks more about the, the window going out and things that need to change. And so to that end the point I'd like to make is increasingly I don't draw a distinction between cell service and broadband. The need is for connectivity. And that is the one of the points of advocacy that I intend to emphasize at the federal level, when it comes to funding. And that does speaker Pelosi intends to bring another stimulus package before the federal Congress. And one of the highlighted items in there is infrastructure. So I'm quite sure we haven't seen the last of movement in that area. And I think it will speak to these issues that we're talking about because the crisis is highlighting that this infrastructure is necessary and it's inadequate. And from the department's perspective, none of it's accept acceptable. The issue is funding funding and more funding. And so data collection is definitely a priority in terms of finding out where the students are who have affordability issues. It's one of the things that has become manifest through the crisis because now we have the government directing people to stay home.


So guys welcome back to my youtube channel going for a walk today around The Damascus Gate area in East Jerusalem. This is what's called the southern bus station I don't know what the official name is the blue and white buses, which are informally called Arab buses Those go to the south to the best of my knowledge. So the bus I just took was coming from Somewhere in the south so those buses go to Bethlehem Bejala, then there's another bus station Which I will also go to that is green and white those buses go to the places in the north. So like Ramallah Jeannine anywhere north of Jerusalem. That's the my understanding of it anyway could be could be flawed, but there's two separate Very colloquially known as Arab bus stations, and there are different bus companies than Egid Which is like the Jewish bus company. So this is one of the streets outside the Damascus Gate Which I will go by too. I'm just opening my GPS because I Don't always know the names of these streets. I call this Niveem Street. I also have a different Applation in Arabic and it goes up to about here before kind of Goes into Moos Rara You can see there's some vegetable. I'm going to do a turnaround. There's a plaleat here Plaleat is one of the health funds. So this is a street which has a market on Saturdays. The good thing about this area for non-Jewish people living in the city is that When Jerusalem closes down There's some stuff here open. So these monites Should I share taxis go to Tel Aviv you can see the Doma the Rock in the distance. That's the big Golden Structure just visible over the walls So you've got some like falafel places here You can buy coffee you can buy I used to buy spices here sometimes and This isn't the market in progress is just like what it looks like on a regular day today's Thursday. I'm taking a lunch break here Friday is usually the day that this is busy It's Yomal Juma, which is the holy day for Muslims so on Friday, you'll see lots and lots of buses arriving in this area with people going into Damascus Gate to visit Al Aqsa Mosque quite a number of tourists here today and Just getting to the end of it. Let me open Google Maps take a look at the names Turning on my GPS. I Wish there was a phone that did everything had a gimbal built into it, too. There probably is For the meantime, I'm using two devices Our and by is what's given on Google Maps. I'm not sure that's actually I use much Here you have some more shops This is the Al Ayid restaurant Pretty well known place You'll hear kind of the share taxis yelling ice destinations like in Khalil, which is a Hebron or Ramallah or Bethlehem, so it's common to take you can also take Arab taxis Arab taxi driver citizens of East Jerusalem Will drive you to Ramallah and back they go through a checkpoint called Hisma So if you are able to go into area A So you're not Israeli citizens. There's also services here share taxis leaving to Al Ambi Bridge, which is a crossing land border into Jordan Palestinians can go through their Israelis cannot So this is a Sultan Suleiman Street, here's a guy was about to drive into me. Thank you. That didn't happen We're now going towards the Damascus gate Plaza, so this is the there's a pretty intense Military presence here because as I mentioned or as I wrote in the description. I should say there's been many Attacks here over the years. It's kind of a flashpoint, but right now it's pretty chill That's the weird thing about Israel as you know people think this is like such a crazy conflict zone to live in and it's not that it Isn't it's just that the conflict when it happens tends to be very localized both in time and in place so right now you can see it's just people pretty much enjoying relaxing in front of the Damascus gate. This is called a Baba Lahmahud in Arabic In Hebrew, it's called Shah Shem and English just Damascus gate. This is a great big plaza I think I'll come down in here in a bit For right now. We'll just continue checking out some of the streets around here. So this Is a shopping street that I think if memory serves will lead up to the northern bus station I'll show people where that is. No, sorry. That's a little bit further up, but there's a few Kind of shops and stuff on that street here Nablus Road is what I'm getting on Google Maps for this street enemy I think that's correct. We'll see if you can see a street sign or maybe even ask somebody So you can see this is East Jerusalem the temperament of the street here. You can hear Arabic music playing. It's very different than West Jerusalem Coffee here is really really good. I might actually kick some up some bread too Probably pick up a copyright strike now for some random Random music. It's all good This youtube channel is a monitor. I don't have really any plans to I don't know become like a big youtuber. I'm just doing this Um, because the thing about here we go Derek Shchem. So that means Nablus Road Thing about living in Jerusalem is my day-to-day existence is pretty minus the minus the fact that I've been self-employed for Three years now, which is why I can do this to begin with. It's pretty mundane so it's kind of easy to live here and just have like a really ordinary day-to-day life so Doing this has actually been really good goes from an exercise standpoint Um and from just like getting a little bit more adventurous. So yeah, this is um Nablus Road. We'll see what we can find up here Deutchen, Viren, Varm, Hellingen, Lander. I'm not sure what that means in German I'm shooting these videos on the Femi Femi Pam too. I usually put that in the description shoots well in daytime And stabilizes video nicely It doesn't do very well in low light conditions at night time So in East Jerusalem, there is some neighborhoods being into them on a couple of videos like Schechtjarra Schechtjarra Ah, sorry. Here's an northern bus station. So the northern buses are the green and white buses So if I wanted to take a bus to Ramallah I forget the number of bus to Ramallah, but I can ask someone and It would be from here. So this is a separate bus terminal. So it's obviously at the end of Nablus Road for anybody looking to do excursion There's also a car company car rental company up here That will do rentals That are authorized to go into area A So that's just a tip for anybody looking who again if Israeli citizens can't go into area A, but uh, some people Some people can internationals and want always want to find most Israeli rental companies will not So you can see this bus here has Kalandia written Which is the checkpoint into Ramallah So that's where that one is going I thought I think I remember I took it before I just got dropped off in Uh, Mansara square master square. I forget the name. This anyway the main square in Ramallah So I'll go back here next Place on the itinerary So the street continues Sultan Sultan Suleiman continues over And then goes on to Salat al-Din Which is like one of the main streets here in East Jerusalem So I'll go on to that street next Then maybe go into the uh Muslim quarter the old city. I did a video yesterday a walk from Damascus gate through to uh the little western wall And I did mention in that video that I think Izzyman's coffee is the best coffee in Jerusalem That was visible there just inside the old city I'll point out where that is again It was also at Wad Street, which is on the other side Everything else is interesting about this place. You'll see the Jordanian dina are used To an extent. It's not legal tender in Israel, of course. You'll see signs because a lot of Uh, Jordanians a lot of Palestinians effectively holds Jordanian citizenship And there's a strong relationship between Palestinians and Jordanians So you'll see a lot of signs for foreign currency. There you see look the sign here has atm Dollar sign British Pines sign Euro sign and at the bottom you see j.dinar. That's the Jordanian dinar Today is a nice sunny day, which is why I decided to do this video today because It's winter time in Israel now and it's been days of Sun and then days of rain There's an expression in Arabic Which means the day of Onions and a day of honey, I believe So this is one of the days of honey. So I said I take advantage of it to go and do this video These are workers for the Jerusalem municipality. I'm kind of walking in the middle of the street right now Whatever All right So we're just coming up on the other side of the road here Are the walls of the old city of Jerusalem And as I said, we'll go to Damascus gate Shortly. This is a really interesting exposed section of the wall So you see the buses here almost entirely The Blue and white buses. This is actually another bus terminus. I think some of them come into here So it's not that you won't see the agate buses here in This part of Jerusalem. There are some lines separately, they're not really used much by the Jewish So this is why east Jerusalem is such an interesting city because I think the best way to think about it is three cities This area east Jerusalem Kind of functions as a stone city. You'll see for instance discount and Israeli bank and I mentioned this when I was in Ras al-Amoud the other day You'll see stuff like this that you wouldn't see and let's say Ramallah. You wouldn't see It's really helpful because it's fully under the autonomy of the Palestinian Authority the PA whereas here it's kind of a mixture of effectively Arabic, but you'll still see all the kind of Israeli post offices and etc Golden malls tell us here. You'll see a lot of border police here In this part of tain. That's what that vehicle is. So these are Jean-Dar-Marie, I think is the official description So you'll see them You'll see them here You're gonna keep walking sort of on the road just to get around The pedestrians a lot of people like today These things are really big. You'll see them in Ramallah as well these corn stands Not exactly sure why Sweet shops are also really big. They love their sweets And What else You see a lot of here So things are generally cheaper. So some people historically Israeli Jews would go into these areas to do stuff like shopping Um Going around again Looks like a school group or something I'm gonna put the camera down slightly because I don't want to be freaking people out, but I'm Filming them intentionally. I do try in these videos to not film police because I don't want to create Autocations, I don't think it's actually legal, but I just kind of do that anyway. You may have noticed So let's see what else we have here We're coming now on to Salah-e-Din street walls of the old city or over there Here's a fried chicken established. Sorry. It's warm establishment Okay, we're coming now on to Salah-e-Din. So as you said, this is like the one of the shopping streets And this will lead into Sheikh Jarrah. I think the strawberry season is so produce is very seasonal here And uh Right now you're seeing strawberries from Gaza being sold. This is the other rival in the Jerusalem Arab coffee scene is a place called Sanduka You see these kind of old ladies selling Um Zaatar Which is a wild thai. It's already pretty popular. You probably don't need to explain what it is Also mint also parsley So this is Salah-e-Din streets, which is Saladin in in English And this goes on for a little bit as he said up till Sheikh Jarrah, which is a more actually affluent I've been in the news a lot recently, but it's actually one of traditionally the more affluent neighborhoods of east Jerusalem Um and you'll see there a lot of Not embassies, but they're like consulates. I've talked about this before. It's not super interesting for most people, but the Jerusalem has a number of consulates And most of them are actually officially to the city of Jerusalem It doesn't really kind of mean much because the city of Jerusalem, you know, clearly isn't a state um So they're effectively kind of liaisons with the pa. You also find some there are embassies in uh, Ramallah And those ambassadors usually the head of the mission gets a residence So you'll find residences of heads of mission to the pa In Jerusalem and they tend to be in Sheikh Jarrah. I don't know why I guess it's just kind of more affluent nice So I think those are guys in strawberries What we're walking back now in the direction of The old city in Damascus gate I'm trying to think there's a way to get across, you know, I'm just going to cross the road Make this more very I guess and footage of the uh walls of the old city too so Coming back to my earlier point about Jerusalem being three cities because this really It's just a curious mixture. I mean if you look at what's on the ground here, it's got its own bus network It's got its own hospital network And the rest is kind of Israel, but the people the cultural identity Of the people here is, you know, uh, Palestinians and It's Arabic is the language here's another gate to the old city here a little bit further down You should probably put on a mask before going into one of these Heads gates according to google that was a little gate back there There you go. You're doing something every day I think there's like seven or eight gates to the old city One it's one of them is sealed off. I was at an iron gate yesterday So just inside of Damascus gate There is a plaza which I sort of went up to for a second and then turned back and then it bifurcates into two streets and what's on the inside is the Muslim quarter of the old city so them all cities divided into quarters. This is a pretty nice garden here The Jerusalem municipality does try to put on some events that's a for the local area population so Around, you know, events like Eid al-Fitr. You'll see Eid Mubarak signs going up and stuff like that, but I think the best thing to say I don't I don't want to say things I can't back up with statistics. So Just say that the relationship between the city of Jerusalem Which is basically a Jewish municipality And the population here is probably very tense So I think that's uncontroversial to say that much anyway Zidkiah who's cave is here apparently not open So you'll see here coming where I'm approaching to there's this big observation point for the Israeli army. There's one on both sides of the plaza to Damascus gate And also just before we go into the old city itself, you'll see another observation post So these were installed The last couple of years there was some kind of controversy about it at the time and that's kind of the nature of Jerusalem is it's so It's so kind of tense that all these fairly inconsequential things like someone puts up an observation tower attract international media coverage sometimes. So here's anyway the back to Damascus gate I'm gonna be quiet because I really love the look at this plaza just for a couple of moments Let the scenery speak for itself I'm gonna put on my mask now so I'm gonna get a little bit more mouthful I just think whenever there's a lot of people it's a good idea these days Just coming up I know from Google is Hamid Falafel. Good place to get Falafel in the old city Left here is El Wad Street where I was yesterday. We'll go right this time for Variety Is that possible? It's a sweet one of the sweet establishments All right, I think that's enough in this dark. So I'm gonna do a 360 Oh Change of plan. I'll do that some other day. I kind of want to just get some lunch at this point so I'll go outside of the massive gate and wrap up the video for the day. We're going to come back here for a second to Damascus Gate. Another deal city. I'm not sure what's going on over there. A lot of guys shading. Can't get around the guard booth. Probably a good idea to move in the other direction. But I'm saying this is a volatile territory. Alright guys, any video? Thanks for watching.


Hey Psych2Goers and welcome back to another video. If you're new here, welcome to Psych2Go. Can you think of some qualities that society in general values very highly in people? Selflessness, perseverance, respect, commitment, loyalty, amongst others. Each of these qualities is extremely important for the development of society. But it can be argued that the most important and sought-after quality is honesty. You might think that honest people can be found at every turn on the street, but studies have shown that 40% of adults lie at least once a day. Wait, what? And although most of these accounts are for small white lies, it still counts as dishonest behavior. This makes honest people that much rarer and valuable. So here are seven revealing traits that honest people have. Number one, you have strong beliefs. How strongly do you defend your beliefs? Even when these are part of a minority. Standing by your beliefs and not being afraid to share them with others are traits that you have as an honest person. You are not afraid to go against the trend and you'll not change what your opinion is simply because other people think differently. Number two, you are thick-skinned. Don't take this the wrong way. Here defining thick-skinned is important. Thick-skinned refers to a person who is insensitive or hardened to criticism, reproach, rebuff, etc. Yes, really. So how well do you handle criticism from others? Are you someone who will feel down after being criticized once? As an honest person, you'll often tell people things as they are. And of course, people who don't like what they hear will get defensive and come back at you with insults or whatnot. This is why honest people tend to be thick-skinned. To prevent being affected by other people's defensive responses. Number three, you have a calm and consistent voice tone. Have you ever noticed someone constantly raising their voice tone throughout a conversation? That is a dead giveaway that someone is lying. As an honest person, you maintain a calm and consistent voice tone when talking with others.  You reply calmly while maintaining a consistent voice tone because you don't have anything to hide. Number four, you don't care about popularity. How much importance do you place on other people's opinions of you? If your answer is not much, then this might be one of your personality traits as an honest person. You're not interested in being admired as the smartest or most attractive or most interesting because you know that it's probably not true. You don't wish to waste your time and energy convincing people of things like that. Similarly, whenever you do good deeds, you do them because you want to help. After all, doing good deeds only to become more popular can be seen as fake and completely goes against your beliefs. Number five, you can come across this route. Are you someone who's not afraid to tell the truth to people, even if it might hurt them? As an honest person, one of your main traits is that you would rather tell someone the hurtful truth than a pleasant lie. Because of this, and considering that, again, some people don't like the reality of things. You might come across as rude or like a person who doesn't care about other people's feelings. But in the end, even when people think you're rude, remember that you don't have ill intent. You're just being honest with them, and most of the time people will come across and acknowledge that. Number six, you have close, meaningful relationships. How easy is it for you to build meaningful and strong relationships? As an honest person, you'll find yourself surrounded by close friends. After all, a strong and lasting relationship bases itself on trust and honesty. Would you rather be a close friend to someone who gossips behind your back, or someone who confronts you when there's a problem? You'll most likely prefer someone who's open and honest about problems. And most people will have the same preference towards honest people. This is why you're able to form close and meaningful relationships. And number seven, your movements are natural. Sometimes the most obvious signs that people can give are not verbal.  Similar to how you talk with a calm and consistent voice tone, you also move your body in a relaxed and natural manner. Natural movements are obvious signals that you're not afraid of getting exposed, or that you have nothing to hide. On the other hand, someone who is lying will usually have a stiffer and more unnatural movement. So feeling completely relaxed when talking and having your body language show that is one of the traits of an honest person. To conclude, honest people are harder to come across than you might think. But if you do, or if one of the friends you know have these traits that have been described, you can move forward knowing yourself better, as well as being able to tell honest people surrounding you apart from people who will lie to you. We hope we were able to give you some insight into some of the traits of honest people. Do any of these describe your experience? Or did any of these points describe you? If you have any questions or feedback regarding this video, please leave them in the comment box below. We love hearing back from our viewers, and your feedback is so important for us when we're creating content at Psych2Go. If you found this video helpful, be sure to hit the like button and share it with those out there vying for honesty. Don't forget to subscribe to Psych2Go and hit the notification bell for more new videos. As always, thanks so much for watching.


I'm in a good mood today. I don't know why. Oh, yeah I know why I had a lot of coffee and not enough food It always gets me really amped up and until I burn out But I'm gonna keep making videos because I have the energy right now So I want to do an update on the roly-35s that I've got because I finally got a moment to shoot a roll of color film on this camera and I loved the results So I'm gonna show you guys that in a minute and we'll go to the computer But I just want to say I shot it with some old expired Kodak I'm gonna go check what I shot it with It's like I got at least two rolls left. Yeah Okay, I'm back It's what I thought I shot this with some expired super 400 and I don't know too much about this film yet I've done some minor research, but What I found is it's I might be a very similar formula basically To portrait I think it may have transitioned into portrait if you guys look at the box here It does say professional on it Kodak professional. This box was originally 1299. I think it expired 2006 so 2006 1299 I think that's a five. I'm guessing it's a five roll. Yeah five roll box 36 exposures improved color What else did we know about it? I don't know I'll tell you what I do know I love the look of this film at least how I've been developing and processing it I'm processing it in some expired chemicals. I bought a tetanol kit. I've been shooting I'm probably at about 16 rolls with the chemicals I mixed last and it's still coming out now you can push this for a while. I Don't know how long I think you can almost in depth I wouldn't say indefinitely, but you can do it for a very long time because They just kind of need to watch them their asses basically and say they can't say oh you can do 20 rolls They actually say for best results dump the chemicals after every time you process so basically you would use the chemicals to process one roll and that would be it Obviously you wouldn't use a whole batch of chemicals. You would use what's required to develop that one roll of film I want to share these photos with you guys because I really loved them I love how they turned out. I got a lot of interesting tones. Some of them almost have like a It's like an earthy tone and you guys will see it's like a lot of browns. I know that's a hard way It's an interesting way to describe it, but I don't know how else to describe it But I hope you guys like them. I really have loved shooting with this camera and loved shooting with this film It's gonna suck when I run out. It looks like I have two rolls left I will say this though a little photography hack for you guys. I bought I don't even remember what camera I bought I basically bought the camera for the film that was packaged in so I may have Spent like 30 to 50 bucks on a Canon a1 But I got a five pack of super 400 and some other film and it made it worth it In fact 50 bucks for an a1 is really good, but I didn't really need it by it wasn't for the a1 I really bought it for the film. All right guys Shouldn't be banging around. I'm not like angry or anything I'm actually pretty happy today. So all right I'll see you guys tomorrow if you guys are liking these videos do what everyone tells you to do on YouTube and like and Subscribe and and ring the bell or whatever that thing is. I know there's something all right. See you guys