I'm going to start the recording and call the meeting of the May 11th, 2021 CV Fiber Governing Board to order. The first order of business as this is our annual meeting are meeting start in May and they end in April. So this is the time where we elect officers. And so David as acting vice chair, if I could ask you to take the helm from here to preside over the election of the chair. Okay. So the first order of business would be, do we have any nominations for the chair? I nominate Jeremy Hansen. Second. Do we have any other nominations? Not hearing any other nominations. I guess we'll take, that I hear on? Nope. We do not have to vote when there's only one, that we get right? One nomination. Nope, you could just direct the clerk to cast one vote for the body. So I would like to request the clerk to cast one vote for the nominee, Jeremy Hansen to be chair. All done. All right. Thank you everybody for that. The next office that we have to elect is for the vice chair. I would like to nominate Siobhan Parakone for the office. And I'm happy to talk more about that. But if there are any others that are interested in serving in the role of vice chair, right? I'd like to nominate John Fisher for office, vice chair. Okay. I'll second it. Okay. So technically, Siobhan's. Okay. So Robert's rules does not require seconding for nominations. Oh, okay. That's okay. Are there any other nominations? Okay. One of the reasons that I nominated Siobhan, and this actually goes for Tom as well, is that to fill out the executive committee and make an odd number of people, it would be important to have somebody who's a vice chair who is not already an existing chair of a committee. So it makes things rather simpler. So I'm happy to offer the candidates a moment to weigh in. If they have anything to say about their candidacies, however brief this might be, we can do this by voice vote. We can do this by, actually can't do it by voice vote. We can either do it by a roll call vote, or we can do it by secret ballot. That is your call. Ray, I see you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to say that I've worked with Tom on a number of committees and also subcommittees. And I think you get a lot of value to the executive committee. So that's my nomination. I nominated Siobhan because I know that she's been doing a lot of work in Orange, and she has been part of the project manager process and has done a lot of behind the scenes stuff as well. So, and having a woman on the executive committee, I think is probably a good idea. Because we don't have what, how should we say any sort of gender balance in this body? Get in there. Thanks, Lucy. We're getting there. Slowly, but surely. Katharina. Yeah, I'm just thinking of our newest members coming in. And we have a new member, a new delegate from Woodbury, and I don't see her here either. But I'm just thinking of the art. Most of our newest additions have been, in fact, women. Okay, any other comments? How would you like to do this? Does anybody have a preference? I can take, we can do roll calls or you can do secret ballot, Jeremy. I guess, how do Siobhan and Tom feel about this? Do they both want it? That is a reasonable question. I guess I'll go first since Tom's not unmuted. I'm willing to take this on. I did talk to Jeremy about this before. I'm willing to do this work. I have a little bit of nervousness about it, but I think that I would settle into it just fine. I've done stuff like this before, it's nothing new. But at the same time, I'm doing other things, but I know Tom's doing other things. So yeah, I am willing to do this and happy to do this, and I happen to agree, which will come as no surprise to any of you that we do need more women on the executive committee. But that's where that is.  I think that speaks pretty well for me as well. I'm happy to serve at the pleasure of the board and I've been looking for ways to get more involved, but I totally agree with the need to have solid representation across all different demographics. So happy to hear however the board wants it to go. So thanks for that, both of you. That is a necessary first step before my question, which I will repose then. How would you like to do this? Would you like to do a roll call or would you like to do it by secret ballot? I would really prefer a secret ballot. Fabulous. Okay, so what I would ask you to do then is if you open up your chat and go to meeting, I will only vote if there is a tie breaking vote. So everybody who is a delegate or serving as a delegate, which as I see right now would be David Healy, Josh Jarvis, Jeremy Matt, Sean Pericone, John Morris, Alan Gilbert, Ray Pelletier, Chachini, Katarina Mack, Henry Amastati, Michael Bernbaum, actually Michael, you're a alternate now. Tom Fisher, Ken Jones, and Artie Eno. These would be the people who can vote. So if you can go into the chat, change the send to from everyone, just choose my name, send it to me, and then you can, and once I have everybody's votes, I will tally it up. Are you the organizer? There you are presented. I got it. Got it. Thank you. Okay. I see Jeremy, I'm an alternate, and I noticed that Josh Jarvis is on the call, so he would be the very town vote. Oh, that's true. Good call, Phil. Okay, so I have a total of, let's see, eight, four, I have a total of 12 votes. Oops, one more just came in. So I will close the ballot box in a moment if you haven't already cast your vote. And the vote goes to Siobhan. I'm happy to tell you the breakdown. I think it's probably just as well that I don't. But Siobhan earns a majority of the votes cast. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Siobhan. Appreciate your help. We will, Chuck, can we add her to the executive committee mailing list? Wonderful. I appreciate it. Okay, the next position to be elected is the clerk. I will nominate our current clerk, Jeremy Matt for the position. Are there any other nominations for clerk? Hearing none, I will ask our clerk to cast one ballot for the body for himself, which seems kind of weird, but why not? And thanks and congratulations, Jeremy, for serving. We also have the position of the treasurer to fill. So our current treasurer is Jerry Diamantidis and I'm going to nominate Jerry for the position of a treasurer. Are there any other folks interested in nominating a treasurer? Okay, hearing none, I will instruct the clerk to cast one vote for treasurer on behalf of the body for Jerry Diamantidis and we now have our officers elected. Thanks, everybody. It's easy peasy. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? As a point of personal privilege, I'd like to explain Plainfield's delegates situation at some point. Sure, that's a perfect thing to do in public comment. I'm just under the kind of unstructured stuff that's not on the agenda. I have one for that section too. If you think it merits a longer discussion, I'm happy to add it as a formal agenda item. I don't think so, but that's the pleasure of the body. Okay, so we'll see if it provokes any additional discussion and go from there. Okay, so public comment. So I'm, I'll make my point here and then Michael, if we end up with a larger discussion we can go and do that. So I'm working with our recently departed delegate from Middlesex, Phil Hayek, to draft some language for towns that are looking for some way of spending their ARPA funds. So I expect to have that sometime later this week. And that's sort of like essentially establishing a groundwork for how they could, I don't want to use the word partner because I think that's been beaten to death lately, but how they can work with us and how they can support our mission and how we can support construction and build out in the towns as well. So I should have that together and something that's agreeable to towns soonish. And this is not the sort of thing that I'm hoping to put in front of a lawyer just yet essentially just figuring out where everybody is. And then once we get to the point where we will essentially ask them for money, we will sign a formal contract with all of the towns to make sure nobody is surprised about who's doing what. Anything else, any public comment on anything that's not on the agenda before I hand it over to Michael to do his public comment? Okay, Michael, it is your floor. Okay, thanks. So Jeremy, Matt and I presented to the town of Plainfield our recommendation and reasons for switching positions. We described to the select board that there is to protect the integrity of the COD, the district, we don't want appearances of conflicts of interest to exist. And I hope that you can all agree that in the past I have not advocated on behalf of my private company or done anything untoward in regards to our conflict of interest policy. And I consider it completely resigning, but I asked to be appointed as an alternate. So I asked to not be the delegate anymore because I wanted to protect the district from any outside accusations or internal that there was any kind of conflict of interest. But secondly, I'm still very devoted to the success of CV Fiber. I've worked for the last three years pretty passionately in favor of the COD and I really don't want to leave. I want to keep helping, I want to keep contributing. And so I thought this would be a way to do that. It would be extremely rare that Jeremy wouldn't be here. I would take his vote as the alternate on those rare occasions and then I would still follow CV Fiber's policy on conflicts of interest. So quickly, I wanted to just mention the high points of what that policy says. It doesn't even mention appearances of conflict of interest. It only deals with direct conflicts of interest, but despite that, I thought it was important. Essentially, a board member should not vote or act or get involved in discussions that could directly provide gain, whether it's personal or financial. And it also should, and the all board members should protect the public trust of the organization. So if personal or financial gain can be direct by a board member, any of us, any of you who are direct delegates and alternates, replies to alternates, then it is permissible if it is not gain that only accrues to the individual. If it can accrue to others as well, then that's not considered a conflict of interest and that's an interesting aspect of our policy. But if you self disclose that you believe there's a conflict of interest, you can still be part of the board. You don't have to leave the board, but you should disclose it, explain your reason and recuse yourself from the discussions and votes on any matter where you would have a conflict. So in other words, it's not prohibited to be a member of the board and have a conflict of interest. It's prohibited to take advantage of your membership on the board in relation to that conflict of interest. So I thought it would be important for everyone to review that. And I think that I could have remained as delicate and observed all of those rules. But I think Jeremy is very able, he's a wonderful member of the board and I have no problem with him representing our town. And as long as I am able to continue to contribute, I am confident that he will vote in the best interest of both the town and the board. So I'm comfortable with stepping back from having voting and that kind of influence. And I will still, if I think that I'm going to be in conflict as an alternate, I will recuse myself. Thanks Michael, that's completely clear. And this is something that's not a surprise to me, but I do appreciate your thoughtfulness and sort of adding that little extra buffer between your activities here and your activities elsewhere. I definitely do appreciate that. Does anyone have any questions for Michael about this? Or Jeremy, for that matter, Alan. Can I just say that one thing Michael didn't mention that I think is important for everybody on the board is there are two ways that a conflict of interest can be identified. The one that's preferred is of course to have the member who he or she thinks may have a conflict of interest acknowledge that. And Michael talked a good deal about that. But the other way is for a member of the board who thinks that another member has a conflict can actually ask that be discussed. And I think it's important to know that if somebody ever does feel that one of us has a conflict, we really should feel responsible for bringing that up and having a discussion about it. So any sort of decision or any sort of outcome that results at least has been done in the open and people have been able to voice their opinions. So I thank Michael for being really pretty careful about telling us when he thought there might be a conflict or he wanted to know what his position was or what his relationship was in one situation or another. I think it's worked out fine. I don't think anybody has been compromised. I don't think there's been a conflict of interest as identified in the policy. So I thank Michael for his service and I'm sure he's not going to go away very quickly. I'm sure he's going to be in about the same place on my screen he has been for almost three years now. Actually, that's not true. My screen is only what, one and a half years. He's otherwise been sitting next to you somewhere. Any other questions or thoughts for Michael? Conflicts of interest in general? Wonderful. So let's move on. Unless anybody else has any public comment that they would like to add. I'm going to move on to the consent agenda and I'm going to move that we approve the consent agenda, which only includes the approval of the April 13th minutes as presented. Second. Okay. Seconded by Siobhan. Any further discussion? Are there any objections, abstentions or discussion desired? All right. I will take that motion as having passed unanimously then. Thank you for that. Moving along to the treasurer's report. Jerry is traveling and Ray will be giving the treasurer's report in his stead. Ray, you have the floor. Sure. You have the report on the screen or. We can, we can put it on the screen. Okay. Thanks for that. I'm going to move it up to the presenter. Ray, and you can. Take it from here. It is yours. Thank you. Like Jeremy just said, Jerry is traveling on business. This is the report through April for all the expenses. For these first four months of the year. And you can see what I'd like to call your attention to our, the 12 items on the left-hand side. expenses that the board has approved over the course of the last year or so for example we approve the contract for the Regional Planning Commission to provide admin services who have approved legal, who have approved treasure stipend etc etc. What you see here is that January and February no payments were made and some of the payments that were then made in March and April actually represented accumulations of payments or work that was done in the preceding months. And so the March total for about $900, the April total was about $7,500, the total about $8,400. That's the expenditures year to date. The other thing that was in Jerry's report is that he wanted you to be aware of the grants that we currently have and that we're currently drawing funds from for the work that we're doing. And so funding source A, he described as a limited use grant, this is CARES money and then there's a funding source B which is a general operating support grant and various grants that you provided that we're using to pay for our services for example. And the chart below that shows how that money has been expended and the next bottom row shows the grant funds that are remaining year to date that shows like 33.6,000 for funding source A and almost 40,000 for funding source B. Where that's significant is here, this is that administrative expenditures to date and you can see that the third column is the column which shows the source of the funds and so for example the administrative services is funding source A and legal is also funding source A, the treasurer's type and is funding source B. So here we have an example of the what our expenses are, where the money is coming from and where we stand year to date. Questions, comments? Yeah, I've had to suffer through a lot of organizations and this is a really nice presentation so thank you, Jerry. I'll make the minutes show that I think. Thanks, Ken. Any other questions or comments? Henry? Yeah, so I see 8,000 expended but where's all the other money that got spent that only left 40,000 of the initial grant funding? Is that under last fiscal year? Oh, last fiscal year, okay. You can see that those columns here grants total 160,000 for example for funding source A. Oh, spent in FY20, I see. Okay, good. Anybody else? Not hearing anything? I'll stop sharing my screen, I guess, if I could figure out how to do that. Oh, here we go, probably there. All right, wonderful. Thanks for that, Ray. So let's move on. Clerk's report, Jeremy, do you have anything for us? I don't, I've been working a little bit more on the, I did upload all the rest of the minutes as we discussed last meeting and I'm working on some of the meeting minutes for the committees, particularly the planning and development committee, but I don't really have a report. I have not yet received, I hope it's not in my inbox and I missed it, but I don't think I've received an invoice yet from CVRPC for last month's administrative services. Okay, so I'm sure that will be coming soon and we can, if we end up having another meeting in two weeks, if we need to or, well, otherwise we'll see that in our June meeting, or maybe not, depending on the administrative budget and process that's a little bit later. All right, thanks Jeremy. Let's move on to committee and Vecuda reappointments. I think the Vecuda reappointments are simpler, so we can maybe start with those. We've delegated an alternate to Vecuda, which for those of you that are not familiar with it, that's the Vermont Communications Union Districts Association. It's all of the CUDs throughout the state meets, it's been meeting weekly almost and once every two weeks and then periodically as things crop up. As of now, I think I am the primary delegate and David is the is the alternate. We can leave that as is, that seems to be going okay if anybody else would like to serve in that capacity. We can do that, otherwise I would take, I don't really want to self-nominate, but if there's, if anyone wants to change things or leave things the way, I would take a motion some way. I nominate Jeremy Hansen to be the primary delegate to Vecuda and David to be the alternate. I'm going to retroactively reframe that as a motion rather than as a nomination. Okay, I wasn't sure if it was a motion or a nomination, but yes, because it's not technically an election. We can do it as an election if you'd like, otherwise we're just, it's just a motion to a point. Any discussion? Okay, not seeing any screams of pain. I will assume that everybody's good with this. Any objections or abstentions or okay, I'm going to assume that the motion passes unanimously then. Thanks for that. Okay, moving on to committee reappointments. Committee chairs, do you have handy a list of who is on the committee? This would be the time that we would, so we can sort of hand wave and say reappoint all the people who are currently on the committee with the addition of whomever. I would just like to do this as a formal, as a formal additional step rather than sort of riding the wave of assuming everybody that's been appointed has, you know, remains appointed. The only thing I'd say is that on CB5.net on which of the committees that lists all of who all the members are and might be used ways to go there and bring it up. Wonderful, so let's start with, that's great, communications committee. So I'm just going to read who's on the communications committee and you can tell me if any of these need to change or if we need to add somebody. So we have R.D. Eno, Allen Gilbert, David Healy, Jeremy Matt, Ray Pelletier, and Tim Sullivan. One, two, three, four, five, six. Jeremy. I'd like to step back from the communications committee. Sorry, Chaka. I just don't feel like I've been contributing a whole lot to the actual work working in the committee and, you know, the meeting fatigue is getting to me. I think that I can be more helpful in the planning and development committee. I would like to make a motion. I would like to also make a motion to add John Morris and John Walters to the communications committee. John Morris, I don't know if you're interested or not but you have made some contributions so I figured I'd throw you in the lump but, you know, feel free to step back if you don't want it. But John Walters is here. He's a community volunteer. He actually wrote our last April update and for those of you who don't know about who he is, he's a journalist. He worked for many years for New Hampshire Public Radio, has also worked for both Digger and Seven Days in more recent times and it stays very on top of the ongoings of the state legislature, particularly as it pertains to CUDs. So our very first conversation, I tend to open up with community volunteers. Do you know what a CUD is? And he is the first person who has ever said yes. So he has already proven to be an asset and I would like to formally bring him forward on to the communications committee. It's what a cow eats. Yeah, exactly. Yes indeed. Alan. I didn't second that. I don't. Yeah, okay. Okay. Alan for discussion. I think I've got to step back from the communications committee too. I've now gotten myself on three committees. I'm chairing one and I just don't think it's fair to the communications committee that I'm probably going to skip some of the meetings. So Chuck, thanks for inviting me to join originally and someday maybe I'll get back to it. All right. So if I can maybe restate and again retroactively modify Chuck's motion. So we're appointing R.D. Eno, David Healy, Ray Pelletier, Tim Sullivan, John Morris, and John Walters to the communications committee and Chuck Burt of course. That seemed reasonable. I put the same list in chat. I don't know if it was in a different order than Jeremy listed. So I don't know if I got it quite right, but this was who I was tracking because you want to reference it, Jeff. That's that's the same. Yep. Okay. Wonderful. Any further discussion on this? Any, um, any no's, any abstentions, any other discussion? Okay. I'm going to say that motion passed unanimously then. Thanks everybody. You have a newly formed communications committee, Chuck or whoever you elect as the chair at your next meeting as the policy suggests. So let me back up and we will go on to I can find my finance and audit committee. Right now the finance and audit committee is made up of Ray Pelletier as the chair, Jerry Diamantidis as the treasurer which as an ex-officio non-voting member, Jeremy Hansen, Alan Gilbert, Jeremy Matt, Siobhan Paracon, Phyllis Cheney, and Tom Fisher. Are there any folks that should be that want to step back from that or that want to step forward to that? Siobhan? I would like to step back from that one. Okay. So removing Siobhan from the finance and audit committee. Anybody else joining or leaving? All right. So if I can, you know, maybe I will make a list like the one Chuck made to stand by. All right. So I just put in chat Ray Pelletier, Jerry Diamantidis, ex-officio as treasurer, Jeremy Hansen, Alan Gilbert, Jeremy Matt, Phyllis Cheney, and Tom Fisher as members of the finance committee. I will move that roster. Second. Seconded by Siobhan. Any other discussion, opposition, abstention, etc., other words ending with ION? I'm going to take that as a unanimous approval. Thanks everybody. We have a slightly modified finance and audit committee. Let's go on to planning and development. Right now we have David Healy, Michael Birnbaum, Ken Jones, Jeremy Matt, Ray Pelletier, Siobhan Pericone, Jerry Diamantidis, Jeremy Hansen, Greg Kelly, Tom Fisher. It's a rather larger board, but for a pretty good reason. There's a lot of heavy lifting that goes with that. Any takers or folks stepping back? Okay. This one's going to be easy. Jeremy. Just a question. Is Jerry as treasurer ex-officio non-voting for any committee that he's honors it only for finance and audit and executive committees? Only for finance and audit. I mean, and the executive committee, I don't remember what we decided for that. I think he's a voting member there too. Do you remember Ray? I see your hand up. Since he's not a delegate, he can't vote. Oh, right. Right. But he can vote if he is nominated to be a member of a committee. He can still vote on that committee. On a committee. Yes. Just not on the executive committee. This is the statutory requirements. Okay. So we have an unchanged planning and development committee. So I will say again, well, I'll make a motion that we appoint David Healy, Michael Birnbaum, Ken Jones, Jeremy Matt, Ray Pelletier, Siobhan Pericone, Jerry Diamantidis, Jeremy Hansen, Greg Kelly, and Tom Fisher to the planning and development committee. Jeremy Matt, be on that one, Siobhan. A rare race to finish on that one. All right. So moved by me, seconded by Jeremy. Any objections? I'm going to take that as the motion passing unanimously. Thank you again. And last but not least, but smallest, we have the policy committee, which is currently made up of chair Allen Gilbert, Siobhan Pericone, Ray Pelletier, and John Morris. We have four members. Jeremy, at our last meeting, Phil, Phil LaBarry, attended and I thought he was on the list of members, but Phil wasn't sure himself whether he was. So it would be helpful to clarify whether Phil A wants to be an official member and will be a member because if he doesn't, we're down to four and it would be good to have an uneven number. Sure. I'm actually quite clear that I was not before, but I was in the minutes as a member. Therefore, I guess I have no problem joining the team. Thank you. It worked just by mentioning you. Wonderful. I appreciate that. That's easy. So unless I'm hearing any other folks stepping back or stepping forward, I'm going to move that we appoint Allen Gilbert, Siobhan Pericone, Ray Pelletier, John Morris, and Phil Succini to the policy committee. Okay. Siobhan got at that time as usual. Reliable seconder. And any objections? Objections. I'm going to take that as unanimous consent. Thanks, everybody. Anything else that we need to talk about with the committee in Vicuda reappointments? Are there other committees that we need to be standing up? I'm going to go with hopefully not at this point. Okay, good. Moving on. Committee chair policy addendum. Would you take this one, Allen? Yeah. So if you remember, you asked the policy committee to deal with the issue of how chairs of committees are appointed. And we met and came up with a proposal that was sent out. And you should have that for this meeting. There's an explanation of before the actual language that summarizes what we tried to do. Briefly, the first thing is that it made sense to not have a policy on this, but to include it as a section of the CV fiber rules of procedure. I mean, that's really where it belongs. And so what we what we're proposing to do is to simply add an addition to the rules of procedure. This would be a new section called governing board committees. What we did was generally we came up with a scheme whereby the committee approves the I'm sorry, selects a member of the committee to be chair. And then that name is forwarded to the governing board. And then the governing board a sense or I guess distance from the selection of that person. The reason we did it this way was that when somebody has chosen chair, they're not just being appointed the chair of the committee that's choosing that person. The person is also automatically becoming a member of the executive committee. And the executive committee is arguably probably going to be the most most most worked and most important committee, especially as we get moving on more and more actions involving a lot of money and a lot of public public notice and so forth and so on. So our thinking was that if you're going to be not only essentially electing a committee of your chair or nominating committee of your chair, the whole board should really in the end have some sort of say about the membership of the executive committee generally. And this would be a way that the whole board would have a chance at some point to know who is on the executive committee and would be given the chance to to agree to that person's nomination essentially by the person also having been appointed chair of a specific committee. So that was our that was our thinking behind that and what we did was we came up with a structure of how this would how this would happen. One thing I wanted to know was the first two subsections that we have in RJ, one of them is sort of a general statement about how committee what's the what's the what's the what's the way that committees have been authorized to exist for CUDs and it references the state statutes. And then the second item is a description of if the if the governing board establishes an executive committee who should be the members and who should be the chair. So what we've done is we have just simply said what's kind of evolved already of who is a member of the executive committee. And we note on this that the treasurer of a CUD who who is who is on the executive committee can't be listed it's supposed to be a board member and the treasurer is prohibited by statute from being a board member. So that's why the board the person who's the treasurer doesn't have voting rights on the executive committee but they can they can they can participate as a member who's not a board member. I'm sorry they can participate as a treasurer who's not a member of the board but just a member of the public essentially but an appointee of of of us. The rest of the section three four five and six subsections lays out the scheme by which the committee chairs first are selected by the committee. The committee then forwards the name to the governing board and that's that's us and the governing board has a chance to approve the essentially selection or nomination of the committee chair by the committee. And then there there there's a whole there are there are details about how this happened when when it happens what happens if the person actually is not approved what happens it goes back to the committee and the committee comes up with another nomination and that goes back to the chair until eventually somebody is found. That's the scheme I hope you had a chance to look at it we thought it was pretty solid but of course we had a couple suggestions from that they came up between the time I sent this out to the whole board. Two of them two of them make intuitive and sense and we we really should make these changes. One of them is in section five in the third sentence of section five the word may is in there and it really should be shall it's a it's a must instead of a discretionary action that is to be taken. And the other and I'm I'm recommending for the committee that that we do make that change and the other place that we think there should be a change in what we originally wrote is we'd like to see inserted in the second sentence in section six after the opening of the sentences says at that time we would like to see inserted the language in the event of resignation or incapacitation. So the person who came up with this suggestion caught up was thinking of something that we weren't thinking of which is what happens if the person leaves the board or it becomes ill or can't serve or whatever. We really need some some sort of way of of having another committee person. So what adding in the event of resignation or incapacitation to that second sentence in section six after at that time it it it it helps us deal with a situation that could come up and we thought that was that made sense. The other changes that were suggested were really style and syntax suggestions. They weren't substantive and I would ask if anybody who made those suggestions wanted to bring those up now after I'm finished with this with this review and of what we've done. I invite you to speak up about that. The only other thing the only other suggestion that came up that I think if you want us to noodle about this some more the committee would have to take this up at its next next meeting. There was a suggestion to change the last section in sentence in section six so that in the in the case of note chair being chosen at the committee's annual reorganization meeting in in May or whenever that takes place the governing board chair would that would be Jeremy in this case would appoint it would appoint a temporary one rather than what we have in the language before you that we said the current committee chair should stay in the position until a new one is chosen. The reason why we chose that language the committee chair stay in the position in the two until a new one is chosen is actually the language that's applied to delegates if you remember this if we're not reappointed each year by our select boards we stay in that position until a new delegate is appointed or until we're reappointed and we thought doing the same thing for the chairs made intuitive sense just to keep the wheels rolling and you know the grease going in there but I guess you can imagine some situations where you have a chair who never gets reappointed for I don't know whatever reason and it becomes a little bit difficult to even think about that person not being chair when there might be a time the person has to be removed or some other circumstance comes up so I'm going to let the person who suggested that language if he would like to like to say something about that why they think it's important to include that otherwise I think we could do without it and assume that a committee would go ahead and appoint somebody who would then would whose name then would be forwarded to the board to the governing board so that's what we had all right any any discussion about this all right to move this along I will move that we adopt that we amend our rules of procedure to include section J as presented by the policy committee with the with the amendments that Alan mentioned changing the the May to the the shall and adding the in the event of something or incapacitation resignation or incapacitation I just want to make sure that that's out there and clear and Alan if you could once you have those edits if you could send that to the entire to the entire board that would be that so that we know what we just approved that would be terrific second what I'm what I'm going to send you then is is just those two sections that's fine because people should people should have the whole policy I don't want to burden you with all the other stuff sure right I put in the chat room with the with the modifications yes oh wonderful so it's in the chat great great thanks I wasn't sure if that one had incorporated the changes or not Jeremy so I just noticed that a caller one showed up on the call and caller one if you'd like to identify yourself to be included in the minutes please feel free to do so I have to try and see do you make the motion and was there a second it was moved in second it just we're at discussion now okay okay any any further discussion I have one point that is actually not about this but it's related to the statute that was included at the tail end of that document should I just bring it up now or after we go through the vote it's not going to impact the vote I don't think all right we'll see yeah let's let's do the vote then and we'll we'll circle back around to that in just a second any other discussion on this okay any objections then okay then I'm going to assume that we have unanimous approval thanks for that our rules of procedure are now amended uh Chuck yeah there there was a call out to the statute at the end of the document that was circulated around the full text of title 30 chapter 82 section 30 71 talking about how if there was an executive committee established members of the executive committee would serve staggered terms I was wondering if we were going to do something about that I think that means you walk away from the meetings are rolling from left to right that's the best I could come up with yeah or or maybe Jeremy has has anybody in by could have brought this up or noticed this or it's odd it's it's odd I I don't know how you would stagger a term across delegate delegate terms that are only a year in the first place so I mean we could we could appoint executive committee members you know for two years I mean so like yeah you said what set what one clock one minute ahead of the other so it's you know never actually gets to closing time you say no it's that clock right yeah right so when I was drafting the executive committee charter I obviously came across this and my feeling was that there's sufficient turnover amongst us as delegates that over the course of you know next three to four or five years that there's going to be staggered terms even on the executive committee so it's going to happen organically and if not then the board has selected the right people to appoint the executive committee the people that they trust and have confidence in so I think we can reasonably say that we serve staggered terms because by virtue of me being chair and the vice chair being the vice chair we are already currently on the executive committees the other members of the executive committees as the committee heads that we have decided to to pass that responsibility on to the committees those people won't be appointed to the executive committee until next month so we have staggered terms there we go Ellen you had something else on this I just wanted to say thank you to Ray and John and Siobhan and Phil for helping out on this policy this was this was an interesting one I didn't see the way straight through this at first and we had a good discussion about it and I just really appreciate people's help I appreciate you wrangling everybody and putting this all together because that was you know clearly something that we needed some clarity on okay anything else that folks want to talk about with the committee's chair policy etc okay let's move on to the next one approval of materials from the planning and development committee I'm happy to have you David I'm happy to have you take all of these you just have the floor until you're done with all of them Ray's gonna do the first one Ray do you want to share the screen all right yeah you're still a presenter right so I I have put the motion and material in the in the chat room and I just like to speak to it actually so the motivation for a joint cud agreement among cv fiber bc fiber and northeast kingdom broadband any cave broadband is that we're all working together with wek on the r us financing right to build out the network the wek network which is going to enable our our particular benefit and we felt like it was important that we couldn't speak together with one voice so that we would work together and come up with common a common position of certain things and some of the outcomes for example are going to be before us tonight for for adoption for example we have worked together to develop a high level design statement of work a high level design rfp and you're going to have an opportunity to vote on on the rfp tonight we have also worked together to to put in an application for a high level design a joint high level design grant application and we're also we've also decided amongst us for example that we will share the cost of different things which could include the high level design if we don't get a grant for example but it also includes like say legal costs and the sharing of those costs for example are broken down by the amount of wek miles that are being developed in each of our cd's and as a rough number um cb fiber has the majority more than the majority of the miles that are being developed it comes to about 60 plus or minus and the other two have about 20 plus or minus and so we have an agreement with regard to that so the the motion is um that the um board approved cd fiber entering into an agreement of cooperation collaboration and cost sharing and authorize the executive committee to approve the details of that agreement so okay moved by ray seconded by jeremy any um thoughts or discussions on this this is um kind of the kind of the first necessary step for us to sort to move forward and do this big kind of arm in arm linkage with the other cd's and with wek so that we can move forward and really i mean there's a there's a wonderful sort of economy of scale that's going on and we'll move everybody's plans forward um much more quickly so i i definitely support this any other any other feedback on this initial motion i'm in favor of cooperation so it seems to be going fairly well so far all right well if there's um any objections abstentions etc all right i will take that as a um unanimous approval thanks for that ray you have another one then do and uh this actually gets to the high level design rfp that i just mentioned and um uh the motion is uh the board approves move that the board approved the issuance of a high level design rfp on behalf of wek and ek brought in and uc fiber and authorized the executive committee to implement this action and what i would tell you is that um rfp has been developed and the plan is that it it be issued on friday and that we start getting responses back in june uh for uh possible starting by the end of june in the beginning of july from this high level design for an 800 mile network across these three cud's so um the group has been working the group is ready and we're ready to issue this rfp so i hope you'll approve the motion second second okay so i heard it's second before jeremy's second was that you chuck oh that was tom that was tom so moved by ray seconded by tom michael you have something you're muted there um ray for the benefit of the whole board uh i think it'd be useful to define where the high level design is or if you need assistance i'll be glad to but go ahead well i'm going to punt this to david i didn't do the statement of work i don't do statements so the uh the statement of work that was prepared for this rfp was done collaborative with carol Monroe from valley net and um go howl from wek and ek broadband i guess it was christine hallquist so that's where the and chris carol Monroe drafted the basic statement work so it's a high level design basically it covers how everything is connected to everybody and everything both in terms of the kinds of equipment the um the links between things um hub locations is supposed to be identified um all the connectivity that needs to be made and for the whole district so that there's a unified design for all of the work territory and michael if i miss something in there please add to it that was good i i what what a high level design is not maybe it's an easier way to put it um it isn't all of the color coding of all the fibers and how they connect to each other and the sum of different fibers to different residences and businesses but it is and it isn't necessarily in as great detail as is necessary to construct but it's it's the design that's useful for budgeting and applying for grants and that sort of thing so it it shows where everything will go and the pretty close to real mileage but not accurate and it doesn't identify poles it doesn't identify drops but it it's uh like halfway there the other half is actually um triple the amount of work but it's still halfway there i don't know if that was confusing or not so is it the sort of product that is done relatively quickly or is it one that we need to also establish priority so that we can initiate builds on uh the our chosen routes it's quick any other questions or thoughts about yeah henry and then phil so this is um basically um the design for the middle mile so that all the cuds could figure out how they're working off of the the main lines and um may not include all of the all the lines that are going to be put in or you know the design for putting lines in everywhere but not um uh having enough bandwidth to put lines into everybody but not necessarily designing the wiring to everybody but having adequate bandwidth to eventually supply everyone if that contingent you know as a plan yeah go ahead michael your second version was closer henry um it has nothing to do with bandwidth though um and so it's all that it's all the middle mile but it's all the distribution miles as well so it's all the fiber that goes by every location um but what it what it doesn't include is identifying which fibers are going where and all of all of the passive optical network design that's necessary so uh i think what might be clearer then in the language it says for the purposes of completing a middle mile fiber project could we make that for completing a fiber to the premises project does that make more sense because this is not just a middle mile project right yeah okay so i have let's see i have a lot of hands up by uh phil then jeremy then ray so mic mic i had a question just on budget uh what's this cost and is do we have the funds now or is this contingent upon getting a digital funding so the next motion is about the budget thanks phil uh jeremy so i just wanted to say that i saw a caller so uh caller too if you just recently connected and you would like to identify yourself for the minutes uh please feel free to do so i heard caller too unmute but i didn't hear anything here well caller two is gone well if you could we spot him again jeremy well we'll try that again go ahead ray okay um just to state that uh this is not a detail design that we still have to do a detail design after this high level design is done and that detail design won't get done until the whole data has been collected and so this is a high level design and the motion itself is the therefore the move the board approves the issuance all the whereas stuff is just you know preamble right so um that's what we're looking for a build-up i would i mean but if we're going to be precise if we're going to use language that means what we mean i think if we can if we can just agree to change middle mile fiber to fiber to the premises i think that that sounds more precise to me yep i mean if you're just willing to take that as a friendly amendment on amendment ray and tom then we can just modify that if it'll get your votes all right you know you could call a distribution to instead of middle mile okay well we can do a lot of things but if you have a if it needs to be middle mile and distribution that that's fine or we i mean it's overall about a fiber to the premises project we're not building velco middle mile style right that's not what we're building that's we agreed didn't we yeah i thought we agreed okay so we're good there any but any objections to that as amended as kind of retroactively removed etc okay i don't hear any objections so i'm going to take that as as unanimous approval you got your motion ray uh looks like david you're up on the next one okay let me post it in the chat box so now that we've approved an rfp we have to get money to do this and so the three the four entities are the three entities this motion is to seek the power in the public service pre-construction grant money and what was considered the round one that they're still working on their terminology of how they're going to ask for applications that hopefully coming out tomorrow but the legislature has authorized pre-construction money and so the group of us are applying for $200,000 to do the high level design in the wet work territory so this is a motion to approve cd5 and to participate in that grant application in terms of signing it with the three other entities second okay moved by david seconded by shavon any other discussion so so again this is going after money that's not that's been approved but the process has not technically been finalized yet but it will we're ready to pull the trigger soon so i see a chuck and then phil for the benefit of anybody who might be dialed in and not uh viewing the chat i would like to ask that the motion in its entirety be read please okay just the the more motion portion i the preambles i okay therefore the board approves a submission of a joint pre-construction grant application for $200,000 to complete a high level fiber network design for the work territory to the vermonta public service department and authorizes the executive committee to implement this action thanks chuck and thanks david okay phil uh yeah i just a clarification the $200,000 is is um we would apply on behalf of the consortium or would it be um 200,000 is our portion of that and they don't they'd have funds if we'd be going after how what is the uh the total budget for this the total budget is 200,000 and we are applying jointly so we don't know exactly what the impact will be on our future grant requests individually but as a joint um showing collaborative and a partnership endeavor we thought it was best that we apply for the money jointly so hence and it's for design that we're all using so so roughly i mean the way that we had been allocating this before if you imagine whatever 60 percent of 200,000 is you know that would be our roughly budgeted amount that that we would be getting even though that's it's may not ever even hit our bank account so we i don't know exactly how we're going to do that i i think we are currently because you know uh you know david and rave and spearheading this i think you know we are the lead um applicant if i'm not mistaken so it so the whole the whole amount may hit our bank account we may be the ones responsible for uh dispersing the funds on behalf of the of the group any other questions or comments on this okay hearing none any objections to this abstentions all right i'm going to take that as unanimous approval thank you for that so our number three has passed david you can take number four and there's somebody say something right so the next item is to approve a high level design rfp for the remaining part of the cv fiber network to be done concurrently with the high level design for the washington electric territory part of it and included in this rfp would be um include the same engineer who does the work will be hiring them a proposing to hire the the same firm to do the detailed engineering on the phase one route so they were not spinning our wheels one more time so this is um the statement of work is identical to the um the um earlier statement of work with the addition of continuing to do the detailed engineering for the phase one route so okay that was seconded by moved by david seconded by jeremy could you um would you actually read the the the meat of this again david therefore the board approves the issuance of an rfp for the high level design for the remainder of the cv fiber district and detailed engineering for phase one and authorizes the executive committee to implement this action then ken yeah um so the high level design for wek and then there's a high level design for say gmp and everyone else and then there's the phase one detailed design why are those coupled with the part two of the of the other one um would you um so high level designs and then there's one detailed design of correct um and so it's a question this the motion has a high level design and a detailed design in together as i'm trying to understand is that one proposal or two separate proposals that we're voting on together or one rfp that does both high level design for the remaining of the cv fiber district and and then would also include in the same rfb includes a statement of work for completing the detailed engineering on phase one project that we've planned and is that because of phase one is is not in washington electric co-op they're not doing a detailed engineering study yet so so this is so they're already they're running oh sorry they are running the the middle mile fiber we have to do the engineering to connect to all the houses yeah that good point henry yeah so so i'll go ahead no i was just gonna say the reason that we're doing this this is still in the phase one of the grant buckets there's two phases of these grant buckets that are going there so we're going collectively in phase one and then we're going also in phase one to do a to get all of the rest of cv fiber to a high level design and then again with the timing because we want to go and get our our actual our phase one stuff done we're then going to then ask the same person that's doing all this work then to then focus and say go do the high level design for all of cv fiber and all of wek and then narrowly look at phase our phase one and give us the detailed engineering for those 130 miles and then if you hang on for the fifth part of this you will see what's happening in phase two as we're sort of going after the next bucket of money to go and do our phase two and and so on you'll hear david talk more about this so i think i understand then that the reason for breaking it that way is because the other one was with the group and these and these two are just for us and one is the other part of high level design the other is details okay i got it yeah it's not simple okay ken and then michael so so my question is the other members of our team kind of agree that that as we select a firm that is is the one we're really wanting for our detailed engineering that they'll be comfortable that yet that we agree that's also good for the high level design for the whole area is that discussion been had or and maybe it is kind of a moot issue maybe it's just so automatic the same firms are going to do it but is that discussion been had no but i think the review committee ought to include more people from cv fiverr on the cv fiver review of the proposals similar to the what we've been doing for poll and pro and pm kind of thing where there's three or four members of the committee who are reviewing the proposals but we haven't decided that in terms of answering your question okay michael so let me amplify the answer to ken's question first um when you work with a firm to do the high level design it's very efficient for them to do the detailed design based on the work they've already done and typically they extend a discount to anyone who hires them to do the detailed design so you get some refund or some credit from the high level design that was already done so it's absolutely unless you're really unhappy with the firm's early work it makes sense to stick with the same firm and the other thing i wanted to mention was that wek is not doing a middle mile project they're doing the whole thing the whole distribution but it's all dark fiber it's not lit we have to put the equipment in to light it we have to do the drops the service drops to the houses and businesses but the middle mile or the the main trunk lines are kind of the middle mile but all the distribution polls are also going to be reached in the wek project thanks for that michael was there anything else you wanted to add you said you wanted to answer ken's first i just didn't know if there's anything else you want the second part was i just answered both did both all right fair enough anything else on this phase one combined high level detailed rfp okay any objections to this motion okay i'm going to take that as a unanimous approval thanks for that now we're getting now we're getting somewhere slowly but surely fifth motion david yeah so the next motion is to deal with the grant application to do the high level design and if i could if you could share the screen with me i want to show the detail breakout of the the the money we're asking for from the state of ramon okay you have it do you really okay can everybody see that yes so the way they're doing the grant applications are initially anyway was there's going to be a round one and a round two uh coding information i got today from the state is probably only going to be one round and it's sort of complicated because of the way the legislation is working but in any event the round one grant application was supposedly the work that had to be budgeted and spent in the next three months two months so and they also request that we put priorities on this so poll data collection phase one the amount of 225 thousands in here and that is we have bids that have come in we're going to review them tomorrow from the three companies we selected to get bids from the second is for high level design network design for the remainder of the district and i think um yeah i this is where when we finally get around to doing this there may have to be some modification of this project manager support and we're reviewing project manager ref people tomorrow i believe i forgot in which day we're reviewing those and then general administrative legal support for an amount of 425 000 round two grant application was poll data collection phase two which is basically the good chunk of the rest of the district and the detailed engineering phase one i think when we put this together we need to put the detail engineering up in the first group of priorities and then even this is the kind of money we're asking for and um it's unclear whether they have all this money right this this month but based on what the legislature has passed or has passed previously the um the money should be there in fact i think i go to the next slide but david just one thing um you have those priority numbers there and i think they're backwards because you say five is highest oh yeah no i screwed it up thank you i just changed to one is highest yeah yeah um sorry but any just to give you an idea of how complicated this gets um this is the kind of money that if i understand the money that's coming out from the department in the next two three months there's the money that we've been waiting for us since last year that got tied up with the northern border regional commission grant to leverage the veto loan there's two and a half million dollars coming out in june and that was you know the leveraging was never clear whether it was included you know construction engineering or just construction so that one's up in the air a little bit h3 15 which has already passed as 1.6 million and that's what this current grant is asking for and then h360 which just passed has got these weird amount of monies of 20 million 80 million and 50 million um that there'll be you know the timing of which is you know these are my best guesses so my feeling is the reason i'm putting this there is just to show that i'm pretty sure we're going to have money to do what we're talking about um but that's that's sort of where we're at and so going back to this one i think there needs to be some more work out before giving us the executive committee um and before we get actual guidance revised guidance from the department of public service the highest priorities are the poll data collection one a high level design network for the balance of the non-wek area and the detail engineering for phase one and poll data collection phase two um the project managers report and general admin the legal assistance we still have money left in our budget from the previous grants we have for a general admin and legal support so i'm not sure we need to make those a high priority but um they're going to decide how much money they want to give to us um so we have to be pretty explicit about our priorities and our needs and so that's why i've sort of broken it out this way so uh so david if you could again read the um read read the kind of the body of of the motion there and i noticed in in your breakdown there you had a slightly different number for round one than you have in the motion the motion says 420 and your breakdown at 425 so i'm gonna get to chat again here we go um so that'd be therefore the board approves the submission of a cv-viber pre-construction grant round one application of 425 000 and around two application of 490 000 to the Vermont Vermont Department of Public Service and authorizes the executive committee to implement this action second okay moved by david seconded by ray jeremy um so that 425 000 does not include the high level or the detailed design rather because that was in round two but you'd mentioned moving that to round one which i think would be a good idea yeah it looks like there's only going to be around one okay so would we include all of the items in both round one and round two in our one application okay i understand so that in moving the high level design of the second pull level i mean the detailed engineering so then so it seems to me that we shouldn't have a in the motion it shouldn't be and then we're going to do a grant of round one for 425 000 and around two of 490 000 so there's only going to be one round one i modify it to what's that 910 915 000 okay did you want to add something while david's doing that yeah i don't even make it more general but um in the sense that really what we need to board to approve is that the cv5 or submit a pre-construction grant application for pull data collection um high level design and detailed design engineering and a couple other things which it now escapes me at the moment um and let the executive committee sort it out because more details continue to unroll unfold and uh we're frankly not going to submit the application probably for another two weeks because we're not going to have the guidance from the state for half the next couple weeks so i don't think we have to get too detailed about it yeah i think that the critical thing is a little bit of flexibility and i also know the sooner you get your grant application in the sooner you're going to get the money and hopefully i hate to say this but beat out the cud's to the punch okay anything else on on this any objections to the motion as uh lightly amended okay motion passes unanimously um anything else on the pdc stuff david or ray no no ray do you have anything else it's been a busy couple weeks so i would actually like to um like to you know insert an agenda item here that's sort of related to to all of this you know david you had your um your screen up and you had you know funding from municipalities and what and whatnot um and we had talked i talked earlier about um working with the towns and coming to an agreements and it's uh occurred to me as i got a message from from phil um that we may want to move more quickly to actually draft the um the actual contract language so i would like um if we can if we could get some approval uh i want to think about how to move this um if folks want to help me with this uh how to move approval for the legal costs of having um having those contracts with towns reviewed because if we have towns that are ready to ready to move and we can sort of slot them into one of these one of these projects um these sort of cash buckets it would be great to do so right yeah so you might want to postpone that we're about to consider an administrative budget which is the line item for legal oh that's right that's right wonderful you are absolutely 100 correct so why don't i hand that off to you administrative budget and process that is yours right great call okay can you can you let me share my screen again please uh did it take it away from you it did okay only because you do data yeah quite nice kids so um on this screen here is an administrative budget a proposed administrative budget that the finance committee together with a treasurer worked on the finance committee is uh recommending that um the board approve this administrative budget we'll see what i have here if anything um so let me let me go through this a little bit maximize the screen oh sure i'm sorry so what are you saying okay that hell that's perfect okay so again the first 12 rows there are items that the board has approved in the past let me call out a couple of things about this and that is that you're looking at the item like number 10 it says a single audit and you know as a result of law we have to we have to do a an audit but the line item is in the budget because we're not going to we're not going to spend any money this year for the audit the audit's going to take place in January February of next year um these projections that you see here through the end of the year are based on commitments one based on commitments for example the bookkeeper the clerk and the treasurer for example they're also based in law like the audit number three they're based on contract expectations so for example at number one admin services we have a contract with the regional planning commission in which we said that the mic costs us $15,000 or something this year and so we kind of extrapolated over a period of end months how much that might cost for example and then we have expected workload and for that I would point to number seven legal and here we see that we might expend over the course of the year over $21,000 and this is the burn rate in which we might expect to spend the legal the legal funds and of course we're doing great frankly we're doing a lot of legal work and if you've seen the recommendation from a third party to the senate finance the senate finance committee they recommended that that CUDs have $250,000 in their budget for legal because of all the legal work that has to get done and and I'm not kidding you that we're not going to spend that much this year I don't think but there's definitely a need for legal so here are all the different things that we previously kind of approved okay and so the motion is in the finance committee where is that the finance committee recommends that the board approve an administrative budget for administration by the executive committee. Is there a second? David second. Moved by Ray seconded by David. Any any further discussion so I have Chuck and then Henry. Thank you Ray I would just suggest and I sent an email about this to Jerry but let's consolidate rows 4 and 12 4 is really a dependency 412 and it's a nominal if at all expense so let's just consider it all on my item. I have no objections to that. It seems reasonable. Henry. Chuck my question was about website 3000 in December and wondering if if we might need some website work sooner than December what your thought was around end of year web development or whatever. Yeah great great question Henry thank you for bringing that up so we actually have our website developer retained and she has indicated that she is feeling that she is prepaid through the end of this year for anything we might ask her to do that is not kind of a major structural overall you know if we kind of continue going to her with little tweaks here and there she she is very happy to contribute to the cause and feels that the retainer we paid her at the end of last year more than covers that ongoing work so you know this would be more bucketed as how we start to fund work subsequent to this fiscal year and you know maybe that begs the question of whether we should align set costs in this fiscal year in which they are likely to fall but frankly there's a lot of unknowns here you know I don't know when that good will with our particular developer will run out because she is not inclined to track her hours closely and and sure that we are hitting an exact budget so there may come a point where she said I feel I've done enough and we do have to start to put some funds together to accomplish something we want to accomplish but in the meantime I'm I for one am of the opinion that we continue to be thankful for the good will we have with her and and that you know she's willing to contribute in the way she's willing to contribute and are there any other like the as we the license for the ArcGIS or Tableau or any other accounting software or any other other softwares um is there a need to put them in here but we got the Esri license in there yeah so so these were like Ray was saying right at the beginning these are things that we've essentially already approved and so that the next step after we approve this budget is essentially to allow the executive committee to take responsibility for these things that the board has generally already approved in this budget if we come back with and we decide that we need another software package later we will bring it back to the entire board perhaps put it in this administrative budget for the executive committee to manage but otherwise unless it's in here it's going to come back to the whole board very good and Ken so in terms of legal what then because I guess I think we may agree that it is going to be more than that but what what do the next few months represent in terms of that declining amount is that a specific set of tasks uh there are a specific set of tasks and let me just call up my last you know with our attorney and which of those tasks were outlined here we go um so um we're working we're working on an easement issue having to do with poll data collection for example we have and that's broken down into several different parts we have a Velco Velco agreement that we're we're working with and analyzing to see how our CUB group and our individual groups interact with this Velco agreement we can't see anything yeah well well hopefully we shouldn't be seeing communications with the lawyer I'd rather have I'd rather have me describing it yeah we're also working on a dark fiber agreement with um amongst the CUBs and we're doing cost sharing on that by the way but we're working on a dark fiber agreement that we're going to execute wind up executing with WEC after we execute all the MOUs and uh there's some other work that we're doing with the three CUBs and and with WEC so this is this is what's coming up but then it gets to my point I can't imagine how that number ramps down it ramps it ramps down because we're expecting uh May and June to be high months and then things to slow down a little bit and and I sure hope they do but they don't um and the other thing I'd point out here is that when you saw the treasure's report I would point out the bottom right hand corner here we're looking at $50,000 less than $50,000 and if you recall the treasure's report which I think that I abandoned here let's see here here's the treasure's report recall treasure's report we actually have a balance of about $73,000 so there is some there is some money here beyond what we have projected for the budget so if we need more money then yeah then we can we can go to this and plus of course you just heard David describe our our grant application that we're going to be putting in so so if so if the actual legal ends up being more can we will come back to the overall board and we'll adjust this this figure up I but I mean my my understanding is that the most of the agreements and most of the contract reviews will be able to get through this summer and then hopefully you know in the fall it will be you know some actual construction so whether we need attorneys and all is not was not completely clear any other questions or comments on this this budget I would assume that uh attorney costs related to construction etc would be part of those grants and therefore sort of outside of what we're looking at here that's that's what I'm expecting Ray if you have any anything else all right any objections to adopting this administrative budget okay hearing none I will assume that we have unanimous approval thank you for that and Ray want to go into part two yeah so um the motion here is that they move that the board authorizes executive committee to approve invoices and authorize payments from the just adopted administrative budget and that the treasure report monthly to the board on the status of the administrative budget its ability to meet future obligations and bills paid for previous month that's a motion second okay moved by Ray seconded by Jeremy the idea here is to streamline because we're going to have a lot of bills to pay coming up quickly the idea is that rather than waiting and waiting for perhaps a month or you know bringing the governing board back twice a month or three times a month to approve some of these these payments that with this sort of carefully constrained list of things that we would put that to the executive committee to pay and then we can bring back at a at a regular meeting what what actually happened what was paid we can do that as part of the the treasurer's report any uh thoughts or questions about this this is this is a reasonably large delegation of authority to the executive committee I should just make sure that everybody's clear what's going on here I know that a number of the other another a number of the other CUDs have the same executive committee function a rule you know just to to simplify and auto you know get things moving in a timely fashion yeah EC fiber actually suggested that we do this probably about two years ago and I'm not I'm not sure mainly because we haven't had that many bills and it really hasn't been too onerous but it's it's about to get onerous I think it's a natural evolution as we go uh they become more real and there's more activity to more of a staff structure as well all right sounds good any other questions or thoughts I'm not seeing any so I will take there's no objections I will take this as unanimous approval thanks again everybody all right this was uh this is good stuff and if Ray you could minimize your screen again that would be swell or stop sharing I should say no we don't want to go there do we yeah all right very business there we go there we go good I got you here we go so um p.m. search update uh you want to report back also on the how the project manager search is going sure um I'd like to thank the finance committee for all the work and and uh Jerry I'm a treasurer for all the work including the process and the administrative budget together uh with regard to the the p.m. search what I can tell you is that on the subcommittee is David Tom Tim Sullivan and myself we received over 30 applications for the position we've gone through four rounds of review and discussion and zoom and we've now narrowed it down to uh less than a handful of folks um next week we'll be doing uh zoom interviews and following up on references so I think sometime over the next couple of three weeks we'll be getting something to the executive committee and then to the board sounds great any any questions for Ray or thoughts about the p.m. search okay just one yet one thing and that Jerry made aware of earlier board meeting but Jerry was one of the people submitting an application for the position so that's a exciting opportunity I think there especially knowing his background okay uh anything else on a project manager stuff folks all right we are basically well we're we're a little late but that's all right we had a pretty cramped agenda um state and federal funding legislative action affordability etc so age 360 passed its second reading today this morning uh house gov i'm sorry senate government operations um made one small recommendation for a change and that was to strike a sentence from the language about um the trade secrets statute clarification um that they made so that um the language that they struck was I'm trying to remember what it said but essentially um at the end of a project the language would have required CUDs to release all um all project materials and they would no longer be exempt as trade secrets but as it stands right now this essentially just clarifies current law and those if they are if they remain sensitive those parts that remain sensitive would still be um subject to the trade secrets exemption of the public records law public records law um I think David did a pretty good job of showing you where some of the various funding the ARPA funds um are coming from for the municipalities that was a line item in there line items from the the pre-construction grants and we will see construction grants probably coming out um we will see the how they allocate those buckets before long uh next but more like next year probably later or maybe later this year um any other legislative action that I'm um I should be mentioning David no I mean the the conference committee is going to decide whether there's a a board or an authority that'll be the big thing right so the board or an authority that oversees the giving out of the construction right so that will presumably pass the senate without much uh to do um and then it'll go to the yeah the committee of conference where it will take a handful of house members from energy and tech probably handful of senators from senate finance probably and they'll essentially choose the pieces of the house in the senate versions that they like the best that they can agree on and then it will get to the governor's desk and um probably get signed there um if uh and then should that all go through then yeah then magic starts to happen I expect yeah there's a discussion you know how many how many people should be on this board where should it live uh there was a very long discussion in a lot of different contexts about how that should go um if you're really interested in sort of the kind of the permutations of that feel free to I'll set up a time we can chat about I can tell you later in the week I'm not gonna give other people insomnia cures affordability so um that there was a a proposal that was rejected by senate finance to put money into um an effort from the tom ebslin and uh and company that they were proposing ec fiber I think I mentioned this in the past ec fiber allocated $100,000 to a 501c3 that they spun up and that's being run by holly groeschner the former CEO of Vermont public television if I'm not mistaken and uh so she's spearheading that and the idea there is that that entity will be looking at ways that it can subsidize low-income Vermonters so that they have access to fiber when we get there um so that's through that um through that nonprofit I don't really have anything else on this any anybody have any questions or any other thoughts on this sort of broad topic Henry you had mentioned h315 I believe earlier um what's the status on on that one it's past signed by the governor it's it's out it's ready to go we'll be seeing the the funding from that rather soon what's that yeah what's the actual timing on that David do you remember that he says in the next two weeks so I've heard very good yeah two more weeks two more weeks yeah ellen hear me during the senate uh committee hearings there was some testimony from matt done and a couple other people about the 10-year telecommunications plan that's supposed to be wrapping up this summer do you is that does that have any effect on us is it are we going to be expected to respond to this or I I don't quite understand how this is going to fit into anything that's happening or isn't it expected to fit into it so it's it's kind of it's kind of running in in parallel I mean presumably it's going to say things about cud's and the eventual buildout but um I can't imagine us waiting for that to be finished I'm going to put a um there's a link that it just came out there's just released today from um clay pervis at dps um there's a public comments draft of the 10-year telecommunications plan so if you this is like literally four hours ago so if you want to go check that out there is a draft there's an opportunity for written comments and such so um you can see what that looks like at the moment and if you don't if you can't see the chat for whatever reason if you're watching this later whatnot if you go to publicservice.vermont.gov if you just go into their news their most recent like news items whatever you should see it there shouldn't be uh shouldn't be too terribly hard to find thank you you're welcome anything else on state and federal funding legislative action affordability okay moving right along uh insurance update so um our insurance the moment that we start actually building things um our insurance obviously has to change I think we have probably several months before that's any sort of concern our current insurance should cover us for the sort of stuff that we're doing um up until we start actually you know buying stuff uh so I'm working with our current insurer um trying to figure out what's necessary and what's not and in working with him I'm gonna have a meeting with him tomorrow or Thursday there's all sorts of weird like contractor like as if we were an engineering firm so that we the insurance that we have to have to do any of this other stuff so like errors and omissions at like as if we were doing engineering and we are we're not doing that we're contracting that out and he said nope doesn't matter you're you're involved therefore you have to you have to take out the ENO insurance as well so I have to sit down with them and we're gonna go through what it is that we actually need and he's gonna these uh if you're not a josh jarvis or you know other folks who have dealt with insurance a lot these insurance forms I have a phd and this is impenetrable um so it's so he's uh we'll hopefully have that wrapped up in the next uh the next day or so and also um I should also update the uh in order to get a certificate of public good to be a you know essentially recognized as a telecommunications carrier which is going to be one of the things that's required for us to work with um green mountain power with their uh it's for their their pole make ready subsidies we have to go through this process and uh the last thing I have to do is I have to put together a um disaster recovery plan and I finally got a something that I can work from today so um having done disaster recovery plans in a information security field this looks a little bit different but it's not it doesn't really seem to be that that heavy of a lift so I will put that together and that will be out by the end of the week hopefully too right okay Henry I can help you or review that yes I will I will reach out to you Henry wonderful thanks for that so unless any folks have questions about insurance let's start wrapping this up let's go to round table one minute late um I will oops let's see we'll start from Alan Gilbert boy things felt like the clutch was being released and we're getting into gear great meeting thanks Alan it does feel good uh Chuck just want to echo that thank you all for the the great hard work what what progress thank you thanks Chuck uh David Healy I'm good all right thanks David David went anything you'd like to add or sorry trying to get my mute button nothing bad thanks all right thanks David Henry I'm good keep up the great work thanks Henry Jeremy I just want to say it's kind of exciting to be here as the uh actual delegate rather than the alternate for the first time but anyway thanks a lot for all the work that everyone's doing uh it's it's exciting all right uh John Morris uh thanks everybody for all your work thanks John Josh uh yeah just again want to say thank you everyone for all the work that that's being done and uh Jeremy again thank you so much for taking the heavy lift on that insurance um and when you come up with a a time frame uh for that phone call would you mind shooting me that time if I'm not currently already in um no meetings I would love to at least attend the uh call of duty sure I will I will see what his schedule looks like I haven't I haven't nailed it down yet I got another email from him today but I will I will certainly do that okay Ken yeah a couple meetings go we talked a little bit about the fact that Montpelio is getting its fiber connections and they're actually now happening the front porch forum is starting to fill with people saying that they're getting their fiber connections from consolidated and I posed the question to the communications group as to whether we can develop some material to help people understand what fiber connection is um because I'm starting to get people calling me um to to ask about should they hook up to fiber and I know it's it's not a simple request but I I would ask now that the communications committee consider it again whether we can just for our own as we begin to have people up have some material that describes what it means to be hooked up to fiber and take that under advisement thank you all right thanks Chuck and if if you guys end up taking that up I would like to have a if I could have so have a quick chat with you I have some other information that might be useful there all right thanks Ken uh Lucy thank you I'm uh I'm very honored to be in this group of such incredible expertise so thank you everyone for bringing your a game to the table I wish I had more to contribute um I'm here mostly because I really believe in access um it's and this year has really proven that more than anything um hopefully as we get into a public outreach phase of things I'll be of more use to this group really thanks Lucy um Michael um I'll pass thanks thanks Michael Phil get I'll pass thank you okay Ray uh yeah so um we got a lot done tonight someone had to do a process someone had to do with actually moving the chains on um getting some work done so I'm gonna have to do again getting acquiring money um the work is only going to become more and the speed is going to pick up significantly and so you know buckle up and be prepared to work in your committees and you might be meeting more than once a month and I think the executive committee is going to meet at least twice a month in order to keep up with everything sounds good thanks Ray Siobhan adding my thanks to everybody else thanks so much for all the work y'all are doing thanks Siobhan uh Tim things sound like it's going well and uh Chuck I'll be making sure I attend more of those other meetings there all right thanks Tim Tom I'd start off a new year uh and uh looking forward to it wonderful thanks Tom and uh yeah thanks to everybody the uh you know many hands make light work and such this is you know it it it felt like we were you know like we had the light at the end of the tunnel and I think we're starting to you know we're starting to enter the tunnel or maybe you know finish not enter the tunnel get get towards the exit we're almost there almost there so thanks everybody um have a good rest of your week hope the weather stays warmer and uh we'll talk to you all soon


Hello, hello everyone. My name is Laura. This is my channel Laura's Little Library and welcome to today's vlog Which is the week one of continuous on The continuous on if you don't know what I'm talking about I will link the announcement video down below But it is a two-week long read-a-thon that I am hosting in the two weeks of April from April 10 to April 24 So we are just now at the beginning of the continuous on and the book that I am reading first is actually Beasts of Ruin by Ayanna Gray This is the second book in the Beasts of Prey trilogy I read the first one previously and then this one came out the third book is not actually out yet But I have this book over audio and I purchased it. So I really wanted to Read it quicker because I do have It available to me and then this way hopefully you don't forget a lot of details from the first book if I read the second book Soon after so for this read-a-thon. I have an idea of what books I want to read like I have plenty of Books in series that I haven't finished on my shelf on audio all kinds of things like that So I have plenty to choose from and because of that I don't necessarily want to set a TBR because I will be happy reading as Many of these books as I can definitely there are some that I would like to prioritize Thinking of two series that I wanted to read last year and didn't So I want to try and prioritize those otherwise I don't plan on starting any new series I'm just going to be Continuing and hopefully finishing some series so I Want to make it super loosey-goosey not force myself too much because I am also coming out of a reading slump actually This book I've got less than two hours left in the audiobook and the first half of this book Was like threatening a reading slump. I'm finally now Getting into it. I think it's picking up. I think it's picking my interest, but I'm still not Super the biggest fan about it I am going to finish it because I bought the first two But we'll see how the ending of this book goes if I will want to get the third one when it comes out or not But yeah, I just want to be gentle with myself as we get started here So I will update you probably when I finish this because I just it's like one of those books I need to just sit down listen to over a long period of time and get it done And then I can move on to hopefully something a little more enjoyable, but yeah Welcome to the continuum. It is now day two of The continuum and I have finished Piece of Ruin by Anna Gray So this is the second book and a trilogy the third book is not out yet. So I have caught up I've got one book done and I'm in the first year. Yay Exciting, I'm happy. I have a lot of books to choose from that I could read next Looking at my shelves But the thing is is that there are a few books that I got recently that are in my last haul video If you want to check that out that I'm kind of in the mood to read So I'm probably gonna choose one of these three next. We have a magic steeped in poison by Judy Eileen And so this is actually the first book in the duology I have both books in the duology. This is on my spring TBR and I also have the audiobook for this So even though I didn't want to start a new series during this because I want to just continue and maybe finish series I am considering picking this one up and reading the duology, which would be pretty nice I also have Immortality a love story by Danish warts. This is the second book after anatomy I didn't realize that there were gonna be more books after anatomy I honestly thought it was just an open-ended standalone, but No, so there's this one which Yeah, I want to read. I read it around this. I read it early summer last year, you know, it's a good spooky book Yeah, it's it's a romance, which is it's a gothic romance. So there's this one that I could read my final option That I'm kind of interested in right now is Rise of the Snake Goddess by Jenny Elder Moke This is a Samantha Knox novel. This is the second book. There are only two at the moment This uses Greek mythology to pull from it's basically a female Indiana Jones 1920s Kind of thing. I wasn't super excited. I mean, I wasn't super impressed by the first one I was really excited for it because it drew from Irish Celtic mythology But I don't think it was executed very well So I I really hope that this one is better because it is like, you know new adventure the same characters I really liked the characters But we have a we have another chance I think and the other reason I am debating about this one is because so it's Greek mythology So I assume they're gonna go to Greece because they went to Ireland in the last one And I will be going to Greece this summer So I'm kind of like do I want to read it now for the read-a-thon? Or do I want to read it closer to when I actually go to Greece because I'm going to Greece Early June and it's mid April So I've got like a month and a half before I go. So I'm kind of in the mood to read this I'm also thinking of like finding a book for every country that I'm going to because there is a Contemporary romance that just came out that is in Amsterdam. So I'm like, oh, I'll be there too. So I'm like Do I want do I want to have that be a thing or I don't know. I'm figuring it out I think I might be leaning towards leaning towards one of these two is the vibe So we're gonna edit some videos Film a video actually and does see What I gravitate towards maybe I'll do like a try a chapter of each of them and then decide which one I'm going to read from there Oh, yeah, so the camera's crooked a little bit. I'm sorry. It's just gonna be like that So yeah, I finished this I think the ending was a lot easier for me to get through because I think it picked up and it did peak my interest again Honestly, the first like 60% of the book. I was like sludging Through it like it took me two weeks to read because I don't know if it was just slow Or if I didn't like what the characters were going on or I didn't understand the significance of what was happening So I'm like I had just read the first book. So it wasn't like I forgot a lot of details. So it's just kind of like Okay That happened. So yeah, we'll see if the third book is better when it comes out. Okay friends I have decided that the next book I'm going to read for the continuous on hello The next book I'm going to read for the continuous on will be rise of the snake goddess by Jenny Elder Moke. I I want to read this because a I just got the audio book for it So I can do both of them at the same time be I'm very much in the mood of planning our Europe trip and so I think I'm gonna use this just to keep myself in that traveling nude and to just kind of make it all come together and You know just kind of follow along the themes of traveling right now. So Yeah, I'm just obsessed with these covers. I'm beautiful. So Yeah, plus it's it's relatively small. I don't think it'll take too long for me to get through which will be great because I've also been thinking I should try and read the toll by Nila Schusterman because I Started it last year if I didn't get through it and that's because I love the trilogy and I don't want it to end But I did also get gleaning so it's not gonna be the last book in the universe So I really want to get that done already So anyway, this is going to be my next read and I'm super excited for it And I'm worried because I think I'm getting my hopes up again Even though the first book was quite a bit of a disappointment. I'm hoping that the second book will be better So we'll see. All right, so It's already Wednesday, April 19th. I know I haven't read a lot Or really just done a lot in this vlog. It's gonna be a very short vlog, but It's been a busy week. Um, I've been working a lot of course Which included a six-day work week, which was not something I was planning on and I just had a lot of Other things happening, you know, we're leaving the state in a month So we're kind of in that. Okay, what do we need to do to get ready for this? So we're starting on that, but I did finish Piece of Ruin Which is the second book in a trilogy, but I'm caught up in the trilogy now and I have started Rise of the Snake Goddess by Jenny Elder Moke and I am I'm excited for it I know I don't want to get my hopes up too high But I I started it and I forgot how much I love these characters So At least I have that to look forward to I'm really happy and excited about that So I will continue this in my next vlog the second half Of this read-a-thon's vlog it goes the read-a-thon goes until April 24th I'm doing it in two weeks into or two vlogs So If that was confusing, I'm sorry, but I am ending the first vlog here. Hopefully next week I will do a lot more reading. I don't quite have as many plans. I don't think coming up so Because I would really love to read at least two more series It's not as possible So We'll see but thank you all very much for watching if you like this video Give it a thumbs up comment down below if you are participating in the continue-a-thon If you don't know what this is, I'll have the announcement link down below as well And while you're down there, you can hit the subscribe button I try to post twice a week generally Sundays and Wednesdays doesn't always happen. Um But I also have bookish social media linked down below that you can follow me on to get more Updates on what I'm reading when I think about it. So yeah, thank you all again for watching and until I see you in the next one I wish you happy reading