When we give up a little bit of privacy in favor of security, we rarely gain that privacy back. In the wake of 9-11, we got the Patriot Act, which is the largest expansion of our financial surveillance regime since the Bank Secrecy Act in 1970. We don't want to end up looking like mainland China looks. Lockdowns still in effect across the country. Americans are growing restless. But they've taken something and blown it so far out of proportion that it's destroying our country. There's a system that could make reopening possible without increasing the spread of COVID-19. It's called contact tracing and involves tracking down every in-person interaction that infected individuals have had in the preceding days and then testing, isolating, and repeating the process. Several countries are using phone applications that use Bluetooth or GPS to generate a record of who individuals have come into contact with. In Singapore, downloading contact tracing apps is voluntary. China and Israel use them to enforce mandatory quarantines and isolation. Voluntary coronavirus tracing and tracking software for iPhones and androids. In the US, Apple and Google have partnered to create a contact tracking app for iPhones and Android devices. But these technologies are raising serious privacy concerns. It's important that these systems are lawful and voluntary. It's important that these systems minimize to the greatest extent possible the collection of personal information. Allen Butler is a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has been urging Congress to build privacy protections into any contact tracing system deployed in the United States. Butler says it's also vital that the system be entirely voluntary. Wouldn't making it voluntary limit the amount of data able to be collected and therefore undermine the effectiveness of the system? I think it's likely that a decent percentage of citizens may decide to install that app because if it's actually useful, then they may find it helpful for themselves. But it won't, there will never be universal coverage for this type of system. I think it's and it's never meant to be right. It's not a silver bullet. Butler says like in other countries, these apps would be used in conjunction with manual data collection and he cautions against systems deploying any apps that use GPS to track phones like those being used in China and Israel. That really changes the relationship between the government and the citizens. It's very different to build a system for citizens to receive alerts that actually serve a purpose to them and serve a public health purpose versus a system of direct government enforcement of quarantine orders and the like. Butler says that a better approach is to use a phone's Bluetooth signal to enable virtual handshakes. And those handshakes don't reveal your name to the other phone or the other phone's owner's name to you. They just exchange random and rapidly changing identifying numbers. What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the world's first cryptocurrency. Peter van Valkenberg is the director of research at CoinCenter, a non-profit advocacy group for cryptocurrency and decentralized computing technologies. He praises aspects of Singapore's Bluetooth-based Trace Together app which alerts users when they've been in proximity to someone who's recently tested positive for COVID-19 without revealing that person's identity. But he objects to Singapore's decision to store phone numbers in a central database. We're not talking about a system that's truly privacy preserving because there's still this very valuable list of phone numbers that have been near other phone numbers. You could mine that data and if you were sort of malicious and dedicated, you could come up with just about as accurate a portrait of a person's movement throughout their day and all the people they've been in contact with as you'd have from the GPS data. Van Valkenberg says that cryptocurrency developers with their expertise in building privacy-preserving systems could solve that problem. He cites a recent paper from the Zcash Foundation where Van Valkenberg is a board member that describes an anonymous and decentralized system for verifying COVID-19 test results. What's important about that is unless you are found to be sick and you publish your numbers to the central server, no information gets published to the central server about you. And so that's how we keep it private and local. The data is not shared at all unless and in the event that you are sick. He says another application of this technology could be in issuing proof of immunity certificates for individuals who've developed antibodies that protect them from COVID-19. This little QR code is a lot more powerful than it looks. It helps collect data about your travel history, health status and more. And China's using it to track citizens and stop those infected with the coronavirus. In this scenario, health officials would grant digital tokens of immunity to qualified individuals who would then be allowed to engage in otherwise restricted activities like going to restaurants, driving taxis and walking around without a mask. So the normal way of doing digital identity is to just have a big list. The decentralized ledger would not include any personal identifiable information. It would just be these pseudonyms. That's in a nutshell how Bitcoin works. We have this database of who owns which bitcoins, but it's not one company that controls it. It's a blockchain that's shared across many people. And it doesn't reveal a lot of personal information because everyone on that database is pseudonymous. If we were to build a decentralized proof of immunity credentialing system, I would hope that it would at least contemplate using a decentralized identity system rather than trusting one corporation or one government to keep this centralized database, which could be vulnerable to hacking or to abuse. But truly private and decentralized systems are harder to build. And it's not clear what Van Valkenburg envisions could be ready in the near term. Perhaps the system being developed by Apple and Google will have to be good enough. Though the companies didn't respond to our interview requests, according to the initial proposal, their system does rely on Bluetooth handshakes as opposed to GPS to preserve location privacy. The phone identifiers recycle daily and never leave the device unless the user reports a positive case. And the whole system is completely voluntary with users deciding whether to contribute to contact tracing. Apple and Google software would maintain a central record with identifying information from phones of those who test positive, but it would stop there, keeping those who were merely exposed anonymous, even allowing devices to identify each other through Bluetooth is a step towards weaker security that in the past companies wouldn't consider. Google with Android and Apple with iOS have previously prevented apps from doing this kind of Bluetooth handshaking for the very reason that it is extremely violative of people's privacy. So in order to allow these apps to work, Apple and Google need to loosen the restrictive policies on apps ability to use Bluetooth for these purposes. And what's interesting, which is indicative maybe of whether Google and Apple are approaching this in a way that respects our privacy, is that they've refused to loosen some of the ability of apps to access location data when health authorities in some countries have demanded it. How much of a concern is it for you that once we allow this temporary surveillance, it's not going to remain so temporary? When we give up a little bit of privacy in favor of security or to address a crisis, we rarely gain that privacy back. In the wake of 9-11, we got the Patriot Act, the largest expansion of our financial surveillance regime since the Bank Secrecy Act in 1970, and we may now see that rather than in the terrorism context in the pandemic context. And instead of talking about financial surveillance, we're talking about full-on location surveillance. We don't want to end up looking like mainland China looks right now, where sure, we might be able to lock down a city during a pandemic. And you might think that the trade-off is worth it then. But it's important to note they also have the ability to track ethnic minorities and put them in reeducation camps when they don't go to the right places. And so I think it's a noble objective to say, can we do something to stop the spread of the disease but not involve a violation of people's privacy? But that doesn't mean that we must do this. Maybe if it turns out that we can't build a solution that minimizes those privacy risks, we just shouldn't have this. We should just say, look, there are other ways to make this happen. As states begin to contemplate plans to end a lockdown, the Apple Google project is set for release in mid-May. The onus is on all of us to make sure to scrutinize the systems that are put into place, the proposals that are put forward, and to make sure that they are protective of privacy and that we don't adopt some new eternal system of perpetual surveillance. I think none of us want to live in that world.


This lesson is called variables and envelopes. We're going to learn how we can build sentences when we're still missing pieces of information. Most of us are already familiar with the idea of filling in a blank. We do it when we're putting a name on our homework. Sometimes there's more than one blank that needs to be filled out, and in that case, we give the blank of a label so that we know which piece of information goes where. Variables are placeholders for pieces of information that can change by using a variable for missing information. We can continue working on whatever we were doing and let someone else fill in the missing information later. In software, we use variables a lot. We use variables as placeholders for name, email address, and even username. That way, we can let the program know where those details will appear after the user fills them in. We use variables all the time in our work. So anytime you need to store a piece of information for later, we'll use a variable. Let's say we need to count the number of times that a user has tweeted. Every time that user tweets, we'll add one to that number, and every time that user deletes a tweet, we'll decrease that number by one. Anytime we need to know how many times the user is tweeted, we'll just look at that variable.


I went because Henry was here for more than a month Well, not here I'm local But if you're in Asia Fajapong, I don't know where to order I'm local But if you're in Asia Fajapong, I don't know where to order Oh, I've been eating eggs and fish for the past two months By this time, I've taken a lot of supplements A lot of supplements There was one point when I was carrying around a big bag of supplements everywhere And I eventually stopped taking those supplements Because I felt like they weren't doing anything to me And then I would get tests and nothing would change So I was pretty much sick of just taking powders and taking supplements I didn't want to do it like that And adding some animal protein into my diet to substitute what I wasn't able to eat Because basically what happens when you have SIBO is that your body can't digest fiber And as you know, the plant-based diet is mainly focused on fiber When you have SIBO, fiber is really bad for you And your body can't process it Which is why I was feeling so bloated And I was having indigestion and diarrhea Whenever I ate anything Because it was full of fiber and my body couldn't take it One of the weeks it was around five days that I was constipated I literally did not go to the bathroom for five days It affected my mind My mind felt foggy I didn't have energy It affected everything, my mood It was obvious that everything that I ate Whenever I ate it, I just felt sick I decided to put my health first Alright guys Quick update, Newsflash Rawvana is no longer vegan This video is not to hate on her quite the opposite This is to congratulate her Rawvana, congratulations for reclaiming your health Last year was already the year of the ex-vegans Kellal, Vegetable Police Timothy Schief, Alan DeGeneres And even Steve came out and they admitted that their health suffered on this destructive diet Rawvana said it in her video She suffered from SIBO And now she's trying to make sense what truly happened She sees that the fiber doesn't work for people with SIBO But the reality of things is that fiber doesn't work for anyone If you eat only plant foods That very fiber will trigger your gut over and over and over again Until you cannot take it anymore This is why animal foods are so beneficial for gut issues Those gut issues have been provoked by plants in the first place Anyways, just a quick update video Head over to Rawvana and wish her all the best on her recovery from veganism This is something that we truly have to share with each other You see it all over the place This is absolutely beautiful Finally people are reclaiming their health Finally people feel comfortable in coming out with those problems Finally people speak out Up until now it was an absolute taboo It was something that you had to be ashamed of Because the vegans would blame and shame you But by now we have so many By now you cannot discard this anecdotal evidence anymore Get together, reclaim your health and end the vegan propaganda Alright guys, this is for today's video Show Rawvana some love And as always, much love and peace It didn't even take that long It only took like five days for me to actually feel better But two weeks ago was when I really really really started to feel a lot better I'm feeling like myself again I feel energy again I feel good I don't feel bloated I feel... I go to the bathroom once or twice a day And it's just been amazing Like I'm so grateful for that


All right, it's five o'clock, you can hit record. All right, hello, my name is Hunter Thompson and I am the director of telecommunications and connectivity with the public service department. This is the second input session for the public comment draft of the 10 year telecommunications plan. This meeting is being recorded for everybody's awareness. So I'd like to give a brief overview of how this is going to work. Basically, Alex will go through a slide deck, we'll give a brief overview of the plan and some of the recommendations and then we'll open up the floor to input on the plan. I just want to add the caveat that this is not a open discussion. We're here to solicit input. So we are glad to accept your input verbally or in writing, if you'd rather you can email it to me or the psd.telecom email address on the website and we will answer your questions, but this is not a session where we're going to have a long drawn out back and forth. Also, welcome FX, I see you joined, glad to have you. Learners checked the line outside and I guess there's no one to come in. So we'll get started and Alex from RISI will take it away with the slide deck. Thanks Hunter. Again, I'm just going to quickly hit some of the highlights of the plan for context and to prompt people's thinking. This presentation is not going to be a comprehensive overview of what's in the plan. I would encourage you to read the plan and provide comments, however is most convenient. So today I'm going to start by just talking a little bit about the context of this 2024 plan. We have a quick overview of some of the pieces of research and analysis that went into creating the plan and then discuss some of our findings and recommendations in some areas of particular note. You can go to the next slide Harley. So as with every year, the plan is guided by the telecommunications goals in Vermont statue and it's also guided by the process for this plan that is also in Vermont statue. What's fairly unique this year is that between the last plan and this plan, there has been incredible federal resources made available for various parts of broadband deployment, ARPA, capital projects fund and BEDE plan, BEDE work. Along with that, those resources, the federal government in making those resources available particularly the BEDE resources have also required that states put together very specific plans for using those resources. And what that means is that as we were creating this 2024 plan, there was a parallel process happening dictated by federal legislation to create a plan to deploy the BEDE resources as well as a digital equity plan. So as you all probably know, those plans were being created simultaneously by the BCBB. And so what we did with our plan here is we made sure to address all the statutory requirements again in BSA 202C and D. However, we placed a special focus on the elements that were not simultaneously being covered in the BEDE planning so as to be efficient with resources but also because the BEDE plan had very specific, the BEDE resources have very, very specific rules attached to that that we could not supersede. Next slide. Again, here's a quick selection of some of the elements research that underpinned the plan. We did a landline and cellular phone survey of statistically significant sampling of Vermont residents. We also did online surveys of businesses, healthcare professionals and public safety professionals. We interviewed a large number of public and private stakeholders involved in telecom. We performed a statewide mobile wireless engineering and coverage analysis. You'll see some of the implications of that in today's presentation. And we also did an input-output analysis which is essentially a mechanism by which you can understand workforce gaps based on anticipated levels of spending. So again, just a selection of some of the pieces that went into the plan. Harley can move us forward. So in the findings department, one more slide please. The headline here is probably obvious to everyone in the room, fiber coverage is expanding rapidly. The data that's available to measure this is continually grows based on how fast fiber is currently being deployed. But through our interviews and conversations, we certainly had a few small challenges identified that made its way into our analysis of the plan and recommendations. So again, according to the data and according to the planning work that the BCBB is currently doing, Vermont is on track to pass all on grid premises by 2029. Of course, we have five years or so between now and then but as of now and current projections that should be correct. We found that Vermont does need to grow its broadband construction workforce. This is a section of the workforce that shrank but prior to 2022. And if we expect the state to spend about $700 million in fiber deployments from here through the end of 2029 which is the upper end of that estimate, it will require a broader workforce by about 750 workers according to our calculations. Not all of those are line workers. That's inclusive of the top 12 categories of occupations that impact or are associated with broadband construction. Another important finding that we've heard from several stakeholders is that fiber infrastructure owners may need to vary portions of their network in the next 10 to 15 years as part of utility hardening practices. But there's uncertainty about processes for that as well as costs and responsibilities. And another notable thing is actually partway through the creation of the plan, the agency of transportation stopped issuing right-of-way permit waivers which they had been issuing for broadband builders in unserved areas. And so that increased the cost of deployment in those very sparse hard to reach areas. Moving on, mobile wireless, overwhelmingly stakeholders reported that service as being critical and based on an analysis of the data, there's been very little expansion over the past five years. So 80% of businesses indicated that the mobile wireless coverage is not adequate at the moment for their business needs. There's some very interesting kind of further responses to that survey about the customers and the employees that all use mobile cellular for their jobs. And 64% of the residents in the survey of Vermont residents strongly agreed that the state should use public funds to improve mobile wireless coverage. Speeds have actually increased quite a bit. Oops, sorry, a little bit left on this one. Speeds have increased quite a bit since 2018 according to the drive tests performed during that period, but coverage areas have not seen many improvements at all. And approximately 412 miles of road in Vermont don't have mobile broadband coverage from any provider. So that's across AT&T, Ryzen, T-Mobile. And then lastly and quite importantly with the statewide propagation analysis and engineering work, we found that strategically placed small wireless facilities which are 50 feet tall or less can make significant progress towards closing the easiest to close broadband gaps. And so think of this kind of like the effort to bring fiber, right? The most rural areas are the hardest and most expensive to serve. So the easiest to serve areas for mobile wireless can be served very efficiently with 50 foot towers. And so the state can make good progress on that with less intrusive towers compared to the traditional 140 foot wireless facilities. So affordability is a big concern in the state and the current outlook is that the affordable connectivity program is going to sunset at the end of April. That's a program that's been giving about 24,000 Vermonters access to $30 a month of subsidy. Some interesting statistics about how important that subsidy is to different types of Vermonters. And so that will be a huge loss and a huge blow to the ability of low income Vermonters to access connectivity. The other interesting finding was in our survey and discussions with healthcare workers. They very strongly and compellingly spoke to the fact that mobile coverage in particular is critical to our unhoused and housing insecure Vermonters because that is their connection to care and that is their connection to consistent correspondence with human services providers. Public safety slide here. So our public safety systems will continue to evolve. There's the statewide communications interoperability plan and other efforts around the state. But a really big theme of this is also just the importance of mobile coverage for public safety as well. In addition, there's been discussions amongst legislators and policymakers about the possibility of consolidating the public safety answering points in the state to some degree. So we included a number of pages analyzing the pros and cons and trade offs of that type of consolidation. And lastly, we included some report out of first net deployments, including at this point we've got approximately 50 first net sites that have been deployed. Some of those new construction, new towers. Some of those upgraded existing towers. Despite that though, a very small percentage in public safety respondents reported that we're losing mobile service on the job. Lastly, we took a look at the direction of the legislature at the statutes that govern telecommunications and telecommunications planning of the state and identified a few ways that the statutes could be more specific and better aligned with the current broadband strategy and telecommunications strategies that are being implemented in the state. There's different differing kind of and slightly misaligned speed definitions and deployment parameters. And Vermont is actually starting to lag behind some other states on this front. The statutorily mandated end date for the BCBV is potentially before all the B program activities are likely to happen. In particular, the enforcement and oversight and that the state is going to have to do for the recipients of the B funding. And then just broadly statutory goals, some of which were drafted about 40 years ago, have some overlapping language and non-specific language, which should be tightened up. So moving into the recommendations here. So we recommended some small actions the state can take to make wireline deployment more efficient. Again, a lot of this deployment is being governed by the NTIA and the B plan, which has to be that way by statute. But there's a few things that we recommended. First of all, reinstating the AOT permit fee waivers, at least until the state achieves their goal of a universal 100 or 100 broadband. Vermont has workforce training programs in place, but they really need to be scaled and calibrated to the workforce gaps that we identified via our analysis. And then lastly, the state should play the role of being the central driver of clarity around the process and costs and implications of the potential future effort to bury infrastructure across the state, right? Which impacts everything from, which frankly is relevant today as that those future costs, given that they're undefined will have an unclear impact on the business plans and economic health of entities building fiber today. So based on our analysis of the efficiency of small wireless facilities, especially for the easiest to fill gaps in mobile wireless, we are recommending a small facilities mobile wireless grant program. And we're recommending a pilot first of two to three million to test a few assumptions and parameters that the state can make and then refine the program to deploy a farther. So again, there's a substantial amount of ink that we put towards this idea. I encourage everyone to look at the text itself for all the specifics, but we do think that the state can make good progress with less aesthetically intrusive facilities in closing our broadband gaps. And lastly, we made a number of recommendations on this front to update data collection practices for the state to better plan and better measure progress against mobile broadband gaps. So there's a drive test in 2022 that should be repeated using the same protocols. The state can establish a crowdsource drive test with the same parameters as the one that they've been doing to collect data on roads that aren't tested. And then we had a small recommendation about how to request information from 248A permit recipients so that the state can track the completion of tower builds as well. So on the affordability front, we're recommending a benchmark of 2% a monthly income as the definition for what we should think of as affordable for low income residents. And there's kind of charts and examples in the document demonstrating exactly what that is. Based on the feedback we got from stakeholders and policy makers, we do think that it's important for the state to try to ensure affordability for both fixed and mobile service. And so because of that, should the state replace the sunsetting ACP program we're recommending a program that provides $67 a month to qualifying for monitors to support both a wire line and a wireless broadband subscription. And then lastly, because of the importance of that mobile wireless connection with a reliable device to unhoused for monitors, we're recommending a program to provide a fully subsidized mobile device and subscription working through various human services organizations in the state. In the emergency communication systems category, one of the biggest barriers is simply there's elements of the skip that are yet to be tackled and it's really a funding barrier. Sometimes there are federal grants available but where they are not available, the state should be the one to step up and fund those activities. And lastly, if the stakeholder is considering pushing for PSAP consolidation, read our analysis of the implications of that, both the pros and the cons and believe that it's worth moving forward. The next step is to fund a dedicated consolidation plan which will outline the specific cost of consolidation and then long-term savings. Lastly on the statutory front, there's a few ideas for how to modernize statutes to better guide practices. First of all, all of the critical telecommunications statutes need to be in alignment. Act 71 was the most recent piece of statute and so presumably that's where the other pieces of statutes should be brought into alignment with that but it's also an opportunity to reevaluate the goals more broadly. We do recommend that the BCBB's sunset date be extended to provide, make sure that we're able to provide adequate oversight and monitoring of B-deployments. And lastly, with the telecommunications goals, the 10 goals which as we noted are occasionally vague or non-specific and misaligned with current state strategy and we recommend obviously updating those. One small example that we included here, the state should be promoting and measuring the benefits of competition which are better speeds, lower cost, better customer service. And that should be the goal that the state sets its eyes on rather than competition for competition sake given the strategy the state has chosen which is to empower CUDs in our unserved rural areas and given the financial difficulties of making the economics work in those rural areas and that it is hard to support one provider, much less multiple, the goals could be recalibrated to the potential benefits of competition rather than competition itself. I think that's the end of my slide. So Harley, you can pull that down and we'll go into the comments and feedback portion. And if you have your comments written down as well, we would appreciate them emailed just because the transcription sometimes doesn't capture everyone's words exactly. Thank you, Alex. So as Alex said, we'll move into the public comment portion where adults, let's make sure we keep our comments civil. To start, I'd like to request everybody please try to keep their comments to three minutes to five minutes and then as time allows after everybody has a chance to comment, we can circle back around.  Lauren Glenn. Good afternoon and thank you very much, Alex, for that presentation and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the 10 year telecommunications plan. Today I'm speaking in my capacity as public policy director of CCTV and representing Vermont Access Network. As you know, I think a mutual aid society of Vermont's 24 access management organizations, also known as community media centers. Van is part of the state's social and civic infrastructure from interactive local, state, regional, public meeting and event coverage, election coverage, educational programs including sports and media education, STEAM and skill building for youth and people of all ages, nonprofit media production and planning support open forums for the exploration of diverse ideas and the preservation of local history. Vans 24 community media centers deliver a breathtaking range of television and radio programs counting more than 18,000 hours a year and non-commercial local media services for free or below market rates to Vermonters in all corners of the state. This point was brought home during the COVID-19 health emergency when the legislature recognized Vermont's AMOs as an essential service. It helped to keep the wheels of democracy turning through interactive and now hybrid meeting coverage, setup and operations across the state. Sorry, people are calling. Van members pull resources for joint projects such as the video file sharing Vermont media exchange, VMX and the recently launched Vermont community television channel, which is available in HD on Comcast Cable and Stream Live with programs of statewide interest at the website, vtcommunity.tv. All of this is to make a larger point, which is that Vermont members, Van members manage and deliver public educational and government access media services to cabled and non-cabled communities alike. While PEG channels air on cable and are largely funded by cable TV subscribers, these services are now largely delivered through the internet and therefore should be considered part of the state's telecommunications planning concerns. Just as an example, CCTV and town meeting television just produced election coverage on town meeting day as did forms were covered all over the state by all the 24 centers, but our election coverage was viewed online by 7,000 people and including our election forms, which counted probably three dozen. We had 21,000 views online. We're not able to count the cable views, but we know that we have a wide audience who are using fiber through their telcos, essentially fiber, two access services. So just to start at the top very quickly, Vermont offers the following comments on the draft tenure plan. Given that the Federal Communications Commission just voted on Thursday to raise the benchmark for broadband internet to 100 megabits up and down or up and 20 down or down and 20 up. This first increase since 2015 is really important and it's a speed at which all Vermonters should be able to expect. According to the plan draft, 60% of Vermont households do not yet have access to these speeds and this is in section 202CB1. We agree with the plan's recommendations to generally align the goals and directives across the statutes and in particular to set universal standards. To set universal 100, 100 megabits as the goal for a wire line broadband across all elements of telecommunications attaching. Regarding section 202CB7, support the application of telecommunications technology to maintain and improve government and public services, public safety and the economic development in the state. We recommend that the plan take a broader view than those recommendations outlined in section 12.7 on page 65 and consider ways that telecommunications technologies can be applied using the partnership of Vermont's AMOs. First of all, broadly speaking, we believe that the state, one of the recommendations should include that the state provide funding to support municipalities and regional bodies to plan, build and implement hybrid public meeting coverage in those communities currently served and unserved by PEC AMOs. Funding for technical support and equipment purchase in those communities, which lack the infrastructure could be implemented by Vermont's experienced PEC AMOs and or by the public bodies themselves. This would extend the reach of democracy to all members of the community interested and willing to participate in local government and decision making. I think it's important to acknowledge the incredible asset to the archives of Vermont's 24 access media centers represent CCTV's archives alone count more than 45,000 programs dating back to 1984. Recently working with Middlebury College, we're part of a National Science Foundation five year grant to establish Vermont videographic access archive which would be accessed using online resources. So while this may not be germane to the plan itself which is quite preoccupied with broadband deployment, lateral goals to consider is the continued investment in the archivist preservation position in the secretary of state's office and to continue to support the secretary of state's archival preservation position actually program. We are very concerned with the modernization of Vermont's telecommunications tax structure and believe that public benefits in general could be modernized and rethought that is happening in the legislature at this time but it certainly is an incomplete process from our standpoint and examining existing the telecommunications tax rates including the Vermont universal service fund E911, telephone personal property tax and the cloud tax and reconsider how these subsidies are distributed to users of the public network would be in order. Moving ahead to 2202 DE, the department shall coordinate with Vermont access media organizations when planning public hearings. So while we were struck from the statutes the last time the statutes were updated as a concern of the telecommunications plan we are included as a partner in helping to plan and to build an audience and to expand the reach of this process. So the first recommendation that we have is that you have a great list of stakeholders including for example, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and we think it makes sense given the important role that we play in as an application of the telecommunications infrastructure that has civic, democratic and social implications that we be included as a stakeholder in future assessments. I have testified on more 10-year telecommunication plans than I care to remember, not that I care to remember but that I probably can remember going back to the 1990s at least and it is a mystery to me why there are only one or two people here at these hearings except that is not a mystery it's a lack of outreach and given the amount of money that we're spending on the plan for the research and the writing which I understand is really necessary I think that the department or the legislature or whoever has to make the decision I would put this in the recommendation it's to seriously invest some resources into A, preparing this materials in advance so that they are easy for people to understand along the lines of the presentation that you just made and that a serious outreach strategy be developed in order to include people who could with this information and with insight could be educated to participate in this process otherwise you're pretty much stuck with the stakeholders that you've listed which I'm sure gave great input and I have no doubt about that but what's the point of having a public hearing if there is an outreach to make sure that people come so one part of that is to provide VAN with more notice than 10 days or even two weeks of the dates of these hearings so that we can assist with using our network to help bring people in as well as broadcasting these on our channels but in particular to really think seriously about who are the groups, the advocacy groups the organizations that represent low income people that represent public safety that represent older people all of these advocacy groups have constituents and those constituents need to be mobilized in order to weigh in on these questions that affect where they live, where they work and essentially their existence, functional existence in the state of Vermont so thank you very much for your time. Thank you Lauren Glenn. FX, would you like to go next? Yes, thank you. Okay, so I want to begin by saying this is by far the best 10 year telecommunications plan I've ever read and you guys did a bang up job, so two thumbs up. I just want to offer a couple of comment suggestions and I will provide you with my marked up copy of the plan. So taking it in order of what we need to do locally here in Vermont as opposed to nationally and things that we need to do immediately versus things that are going to take a while. I want to address the workforce concerns, I want to address the mobile enhancements particularly the small tower program. I want to talk about a burying infrastructure and I want to talk about affordability and I'm doing all of this based on my role and experience as chair of EC fiber. VCUTA is going to be coming on Friday evening the board of VCUTA on the secretary treasurer of that organization. We're going to be meeting tomorrow and discussing that I'm sure that VCUTA is going to be bringing in some comments as well. So I'm not trying to anticipate those. All right, with respect to workforce, you know, the VCBB and the state colleges got serious about working on this and it's been a very, very tough row to hope. Okay, I honestly believe that if the state needs to recognize that there is no way we're going to be done in 2029 with the amount of workforce that's available to us. And I think the state needs to think seriously about looking to see whether or not it can create some kind of a long-term incentive program to get another 20 or 40 or 60 people to come here and work here for the next five to seven years at which point in time, they would get a significant bonus of some sort. Just an idea, but it's that serious a problem that if there is not some way to super-incentivize people to come up here and do it despite the fact, despite the housing challenges, despite the cold weather challenges, we just are not going to meet that 2029 goal. Okay, secondly, with respect to the idea of the small towers, now that pilot project is one that relies on EC Fiber's fiber in that area. And EC Fiber would like to go ahead with this. I know Mac Mountain would like to go ahead with this, but nobody wants to put up that million, two million, three million dollars to get it off the ground and see whether or not this can really work because there are open questions about what kind of revenue will flow through, will it be enough to sustain it in terms of any repairs, equipment upgrades, things like that. In concept, it looks like it should work, but there's a limit to the willingness to invest in this idea without knowing that the states kind of got our back. I think that if, because face it, if this proved out and it would make sense on its own, there would be private capital available, right? And the state wouldn't have to get involved. So it's a really inexpensive way for the state to find out whether that'll work. I also saw a few things in this plan about CUDs and other small carriers needing to become a carrier grade or enterprise grade. And I have to say, I read that as the big cellular companies not wanting to get involved with doing small towers or anything else because they are looking at a huge cost to go with dark fiber from the major dark fiber providers who in many cases would not be, who are enterprise grade, who in many cases are not on these small roads, they would have to put up additional fiber and then charge the cell companies rates are above what say EC fiber would charge for dark fiber. But by the same token EC fiber, we're not in a position to offer the kind of contracts for businesses that show that you are carrier grade or show that you are enterprise grade. And the willingness to invest, to get to that point does not exist right now because we're busy enough fulfilling our original mission of building out in a Vermont where we're talking, where we're talking about residents and businesses, we're mostly talking, we're really talking about small businesses, essentially residential services fine for them. And the big institutions, the hospitals, the major manufacturing firms, they have long been able to go and purchase carrier grade internet at market rates, wherever they locate themselves in Vermont. So there's not a market incentive for us to ramp up to that because frankly, there just isn't enough business that we might win from those folks in our service territory. So I would be careful about giving a lot of voice to this call for carrier grade CUDs and enterprise grade CUDs at this state of CUD development. I mean, here we are, EC-Fiber, we've been in business for 13 years and we're not ready to take that step. So it's the 10 year plan we do in 2030 might more fruitfully address this. Okay, in terms of burying infrastructure, you know, right now and understandably, Green Mountain Power is deciding where and when they're going to do what aspect of this grid hardening. That's understandable, but it's frustrating for me to talk with our operator and say, and say, hey, when we were going over the build out plans up in Newberry and Thompson and we noticed that long run of Eastman poles going across Hill and Dale. Now that's exactly the kind of thing Green Mountain Power wants to get into underground along the road. So, you know, can we make sure that that gets done now? And if they're not going to do it now, then maybe we should go out and contract with somebody and we should put the conduit down the road and make sure we put in conduit sufficient for GMP and then they can buy that work for us. Well, GMP is not having that type of conversation with us. Okay, not that they don't want to necessarily, but it's that they're not far enough along either. And I don't know what the incentive is, but if the state's tenure plan can incentivize all of us to be focused on that issue, I think that would be a huge improvement. And then finally, my last point about the affordability issues. I'm just a little bit disappointed that the fact that EC-Fiber offers a $20 private subsidy on top of the $30 ACP subsidy isn't noted in this report. Cause I think that's kind of a cool thing that we do as a district. I also would say that we have a lot to bring to the table, a lot of learning that we did because EC-Fiber donated $250,000 over the course of the last three years to stand up equal access to broadband, which went through the process of finding out how to identify and reach out to and do navigation for households in order to get them qualified for the ACP. And frankly, it turned out to be really like pulling teeth, because EAB was not granted recognized agency status by the state, so they couldn't find out which households in a particular town that we had complete service in should be contacted to see if they would like, you know, can we help you get into ACP, et cetera, et cetera. So it became a, you know, it became a super difficult process. And there's all that learning. And on top of that, you know, we've got the be digital equity thing going on. Now we have the proposal that is coming into the legislature where they're gonna give, they're gonna create this additional or new or revised telecommunications tax. They're gonna put some of that money into the agency for social services to figure out what to do. And I'm telling you at Vicuda, we're like, ah, wait a second, okay. We can't have three different things going on. We've got to get all the stakeholders together at a table. So Vicuda will be recommending to the legislature that they establish a study group that makes sure that every single stakeholder in the state who either knows about how affordability actually works on the ground with a customer and an ISP to how households can be identified, i.e. the capstone agencies to the people who are doing digital equity work nationally who are influencing and helping put together the digital equity program for Bede in Vermont which will result in a grant. And that grant money, it can't go to the state broadband office, i.e. VCBB, okay. It's gotta go to private entities. So you would think, okay, the capstone agencies, right? Or Vicuda or something like that. I don't know. I just think that in Vermont, we can be smarter about this and we can get this right. But we have to realize that we can't, there's not a lot that we can do right now immediately. And this idea of $19 million really, if you ever got that passed, it would immediately be a $40 million program because it would be so much easier for people to take part in. So it's not really a $19 million program. It's really a $40 million program. I, just looking at the politics of everything right now, especially with what was going on with the schools, hard for me to see that getting started at this stage of the game in the legislature. Not gonna be until next January. There's a lot of time between now and then get all the stakeholders together, figure out a way forward. And if that way includes action that the state legislature has to take, then when the legislature convenes next January, we'll be all set with draft laws. So, and finally, one last thought. There's no affordability without availability. And I was really happy that the plan emphasized that the CUDs need to focus on getting their network built right now. They really should not be distracted by an effort to force them to be the most affordable option everywhere in their district right now. EC fiber is not there and we've been at it for 13 years. So I'll just say that. Okay, thank you. Any questions? Thank you, FX, we appreciate your input. Hi there, Irene Renner, Senator for Chippendon North. Yeah, thank you. How you doing? Nice to meet you. Do you mind going last, Stephen? Thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is Irene Renner. I'm the solo senator for Chippendon North. I'm not here necessarily to speak in official capacity. I am also a member of the JITOC Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee. Again, not here on their behalf, but an interested party. I have worked in technology in my distant past. Just new to the world of telecom, starting to make my way through your plan. Thank you for all that good knowledge. I would echo first of all, Lauren Glendividian's comment about needing more effective outreach. We've grown accustomed to having remote participation, but the lighting sound bandwidth can vary from site to site across the state. And I recall a long time ago, a model which I'm told was the Vermont Interactive Television Model in which we could go to a site. I went to Williston and we could be assured that there'd be a well-lit room and the technology's set up so that we could be heard and we could hear other people. So I don't know how many people are not tuned in just because they don't have the bandwidth or because they're too remote. I see a couple of pages in here devoted to FirstNet and also priority and preemption are defined, but only for that carrier. I wonder what is the failover solution when FirstNet goes down as it did just a few weeks ago. The plan also doesn't speak to the recurring problem of fiber cuts. Plans should document recent ones as case studies so we might better prevent and re-miniate future outages. And I'll stop with three. Thanks. Thank you, Gary. Mr. Whitaker? Well, I wish I could be that concise. We all do. I'm gonna touch on a number of topics, especially regarding the public safety. The Public Safety Communications Task Force met today. They've been meeting almost weekly or bi-weekly. And what's lacking in that regard is, again, appointed at the deficiencies of prior plans. We could have by now established in a plan two or three iterations back the architecture for a statewide public safety network. Building from the state microwave network, which is kind of the last resort when all the grid collapses. It's generator protected, it's line of sight. It's fiber to those towers. I don't know whether it's buried or not, but presumably it is, if not, it should be. That's in effect may be the only way for us to deliver 911 calls and transport radio signals to towers after a big disaster. And beneath that is the state police statewide land mobile radio network that utilizes that microwave network for long haul, but also has fiber, media diversity. And then there's the regional networks. And the recent RFPs for the public safety planning surprised everyone by saying they're building a statewide trunk radio network in the future. But no one has ever agreed to that, authorized that, put any cost numbers. That could be hundreds of millions of dollars because they'll also have to replace every portable radio of every first responder and every vehicle radio that are compatible with a trunk system. So without this architecture having been defined, we're squandering money and we're going down dead ends in a very reckless manner, while the 9 million in congressional directed spending is at risk of being forfeited if we don't spend it by the end of the year. But they're caught in a vice between spend it without a plan or spend it on assumptions that haven't been validated yet. And it's chaos. And that's the purpose of a plan is to guide those decisions. But if the plans haven't been done year after year after year, we're flying blind or we're rebuilding the airplane engine while we're in flight. And it's a lot of shared responsibility there. So I've made a graphic of that concept, but I won't try to. There is a, the administration is interpreting the statute found in 3VSA 3301. There's a definition of information technology activities. And that definition governs telecommunications network because all telecommunications networks today are built out of information technology. Router switches, circuits, microwave, fiber, whatever. It's all information technology, including all the phone carriers, all the broadband carriers. It's all information technology under that definition. But yet, and that's what triggers planning requirements in 3VSA 3303, those planning requirements are to protect both the integrity of the planning as well as the finance. We've had lots of big IT disasters over the years. And I think we're headed for one again with our broadband investments. But my point is that it can't be left to the agency that's supposed to conduct or contract for the independent review of these massive investments. Anything over a million dollars has to have an independent expert review. Anything over half a million has to have a whole series laid out in 3303, a series of elements of plans that are all to be on file at ADS. The problem is that they're claiming that these public safety IT investments are not IT investments, therefore we don't have to plan. So we're headed for a train wreck there. Again, precisely because we haven't planned, we haven't defined what it is we're doing or how these statutes apply to it. Similarly, he spoke, Alex spoke about the statewide communications interoperability plan. You can't hold that hostage for more money. You've got a staff, you've got a department, we've got a telecommunications staff present in the room. Y'all should be writing the plan, not squandering $400,000 on a firm that cheated us last time. Y'all should be writing the plan. And if I have my way, we're gonna extend the deadline for this plan, conclude their contract, they'll take the money and run and you all will finish the plan and make it right this time because they've proved that they can't do it. So the senator brought up the issue of the failure of AT&T and FirstNet. It failed for upwards of 11 hours on the 22nd of February. The governor opted into FirstNet in 2017, even though we had evidence ahead of time that there was not a disaster recovery plan. It was missing. They claimed that document was secret. I didn't think so, I thought it was essential to put it out there. The legislative committees refused to look at it. So here we are, six years later. This draft plan says that we don't have substantial more coverage than we did in 2018, but yet FirstNet claims they put 50 towers out there using our 25 million and our 30 million worth of band 14 spectrum. Those, both the 25 million cash from NTIA and the 30 million worth of spectrum, that's an educated estimate, would have been at our discretion to use to build a reliable ramp that would not have been vulnerable to AT&T's faulty update processes. So, oh, this plan refers to the public safety, the governance and the skip as being governed by, it's so blatant that the misinformation in it, it refers to, oh, it's being advised by the Emergency Communications Advisory Council. The Emergency Communications Advisory Council was created four years ago by executive order, but it's never had anybody appointed to it.  Why didn't you all fact check this thing before you put it out for public comment? That's just one example, right? I've raised my last comment. Oh, I'm gonna pause for a second. The transcription that I received, even though it did have names in it, is useless. That the accuracy of the transcription is useless. I asked the director of electrical planning, I believe there's a statute that requires statutorily required public hearings to be transcribed professionally. These hearings are too important, but my way of viewing it, if y'all didn't do the precursor prerequisite, you gotta start over anyway. You've gotta do the 10 year forecast. All the things that it says you have to do before you put the plan together, you've gotta go back and do those and then put a preliminary draft out. So I would ask you to read the darn statute very carefully, because I've been paying attention to it for 30 plus years, and it was only written like 35 years ago. So take heed. I did a public records request to the Department of Public Safety regarding the first net outage, the AT&T outage, and I should have done it to you, Hunter, because it says the only people who got this email from Barb Neal were Hunter, Jen Morrison, Commissioner of Public Safety, and the E911 Board, Chair Roger Marcu. Now they're claiming it's Governor Executive Privilege, right, that it's about policy development. Advising the Governor the record is protected on operational decision making and communication strategy. Well, regardless of whether it's Executive Privilege or not, how to prevent and what did we learn from this massive outage of the too good to fail first net should have been in this plan. You'll have to break Executive Privilege, breach Executive Privilege to put it in the plan, because why did it happen? We can't let it happen again. We need to fail over to the other carriers with priority and preemption, you know? And that's a whole architecture that should be in the plan.  This is ludicrous. Did y'all not catch these flaws, right? Are you just taking whatever Alex and Reese feed you because they got the 400,000? Urgh. The CUDs are attempting to merge a better position themselves to compete for BED funds. BED funds are competitive based on the number of unserved addresses. And they fear that consolidated or Comcast will win their share of BED funds because they have a greater concentration of unserved addresses within their reach that the CUDs don't have. And so by combining CUDs, this was done in Environment and Energy Committee today. By combining CUDs, they'll better position the quantity of unserved addresses to compete. But why didn't when Southern Vermont CUD decided to partner with consolidated, why didn't they put a prohibition, a non-compete clause in there and say, if you're going to take this work, you can't compete against us for BED funds? It's like who advised that contract? And how did you adhere to the statutory goal of competitive choice and open access in entering that contract? Instead of laying out strategies to accomplish the statutory goals of competitive choice for consumers and open access for competitors, this draft attempts to end around them. It says, oh, we'll change those. We'll get somebody to change those for us so that we don't have to have competition. But to pretend that we're going to accomplish the goals, I just heard this twice now, we're going to accomplish the goals of competition, meaning better speeds and lower costs and better customer service by granting monopolies when you've got no lever to accomplish those goals. It's a wing and a prayer. These are volunteer-run organizations. I'll jump to the carrier grade issue again. That requires engineers, $200,000 a year engineers to do carrier grade. So the idea is an absolute fallacy that we're going to turn the CUDs into carrier grade because they're never going to have the economics. Most of them don't have the economics to create a sustainable staff. But the lack of transparency, the lack of transparency of what they are doing and what their agreements with the operators are doing and how that's affecting rates and how quickly things are going to be fixed, we're going to leave a lot of people without landlines during power outages with only a fiber connection and possibly not even cell coverage without an ability to call for help. And that's going to be, that's going to be on y'all. I hate to say it, but this is the problem of failing to plan year after year after year. Or decade after decade. So I got just a couple more things, I think you're... It's six o'clock, but I'm willing to go over. Okay, so an inventory is needed. An inventory is needed of what's in our right of way in order to inform the legislative process about where we're going to get the money to do this work. There's the 901 shortfall, there's the lifeline shortfall, TDD, 2-1-1, 988. Peg access. I'd also recommend that the AMOs, they made a good pitch today for what services they provide. I think we need to elaborate or consider at least that y'all in the plan should consider positioning the AMOs as the first public information vehicle during disasters. They could and should have generators, they could and should have diverse connectivity, even underground. They should have potentially low power FM. They should be taking the load for public information off of the first responders to be out there saving people and beginning to remedy the disaster. The demand for information on first responders should be outsourced to the AMOs with proper funding and infrastructure. That's a viable, especially in that they're asking for continuing public money, that's a good quid pro quo to expect something back. The inventory needs to be done statewide and I believe that at this point, ignoring the electric infrastructure in the public right away, ignoring the gas infrastructure and ignoring Velco, ignoring green mountain powers fiber is a mistake. I think we need to inventory everything into GIS that's in our public right away and then let and tie that to a financial model and allow the legislature to then tinker with who's exempt and who pays what rates. But with that kind of a system, you can fine tune subsidies and accommodations for new emerging competitors or CUDs or whatever, whoever needs the handicap. But without that kind of, that's an information infrastructure to complement the utility infrastructure in the right away and to create a revenue source to sustain it. The other, the neutral host model proposed, I believe there's some weaknesses in the Mack Mountain chapter, but the whole elaboration of neutral host options based on Spectra, based on shared radios or new open-ran radios where the individual carriers could have their own infrastructure needs to be elaborated because there's a potential, and I've verified this, there's a potential to use those roaming agreements in that spectrum in a way that generates revenue to maintain the public safety radio network. This is something we really need to consider because ongoing funding for this public safety communications is as difficult an issue. That stuff needs to be replaced every 15, 20 years. And so we're talking $100 million, maybe more, and then another $100 million. So we need to be really acting now to put the information infrastructure which is based on a GIS inventory of what's in the public right away. As far as secrets, there's just been some language crafted for a professional study by a lawyer and an engineer to tease apart all the alleged needs for secrecy. Deal with Homeland Security critical infrastructure, deal with trade secrets, deal with system security exemptions, but otherwise tease it apart, even CUDs. They don't need, they need secrecy of what they're gonna build next so that Comcast or Consolidated doesn't run out ahead of them. They don't need secrecy for what their operator agreement with Waitesfield is. You've just expanded the footprint of Waitesfield as a regulated ILEC by 10-fold via these CUD agreements and Fiber VoIP, and yet no new regulatory tease at all. And yet that's exactly what we should be doing with the backup power to make sure people can call for help in an emergency. I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Whitaker.  I want to thank you all for attending. We will be back here again next Monday. I'm not sure what that day is, the 25th maybe. We'll be back here the 25th for the final round of this. And everybody have a good night. Who's gonna make.


I got up top. This was so real baby. Hey look, I got a lot. I was terrified. That drum was going so fast. And I don't know how to drive. You gotta put your foot on the brake on the left hand side of it. Hey, it was critical. Help us push it up. When we got to the house, guess what? The customer was already in the garage outside already. So I'm like, I cannot do this because if this drink fall with this customer right in it, it was gonna go on world star. So I'm like, absolutely not. I'm not doing it. I do want to practice because I think that you should always learn something that you don't know. But now it's not the time to practice. You gotta know the time and place for that. Right now is another time. If this drink were to fall off by the customer, by the customers right here, it would be critical. She just can't even get it. What's this? Hey, learn and earn.


Let's make monsters. Surprise for your monsters. Clay, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes. Let's make monsters.


Another quantity of interest is the volume of a three-dimensional object. And so, just as a recap, we've defined the length of a line sequin as the number of unit line sequins required to cover it. We've defined the area of a plane figure as the number of unit squares required to cover it. And so we're going to define the volume of a solid object in the same way. It's going to be the number of unit cubes that are required to cover it. Well, there's just one minor problem, which is that because we live in three dimensions, it's possible to cover a line segment or a plane figure with unit segments or unit squares. We can't actually do the same thing with solid objects. Covering it with a cube is not actually possible, but we can put it in a box and then define the volume of the solid object as the number of unit cubes that would fit into the box. So, for example, let's take a figure like this and we'll assume each one of these things is actually a unit cube. And I want to find the volume and, well, the volume is the number of unit cubes that we have. So now we have to go through this impossibly difficult mathematical task of counting cubes. Well, actually, it's pretty easy. The only problem we run into is that our limitation to two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional objects means that we'll have some cubes back here that we'll have to assume are complete cubes because we can't actually see them. All right, so we're going to count the number of cubes. And so let's see, that's one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. So the volume is going to be seven cubic units. And that's all there is to volume. Everything else is implementation. Well, sometimes we can do some things that'll make this a little bit more efficient. So let's take a look at a rectangular prism, a box that's three units high, six units wide, and four units deep. Let's go ahead and find the volume. So let's actually draw a picture. Paper is cheap, so let's draw a picture. And we know that this prism is three units high, so I know that I can cut it into one, two, three slabs. Each of these is one unit thick. So here's our one, two, three units of height. The prism is six units wide, so I can cut it into six slabs, one unit thick. So here's one, two, three, four, five, six. So again, here's our width of six units. And then finally four units deep, which means I can cut this depth-wise into four units. So here's our one, two, three, four units of depth. So here's my three units high, six units wide, four units deep. And now I want to find the volume. Well, I need to count the number of cubes that are in this thing. Now, what I could do is I could count the cubes. One, two, three, four, five, six, and so on. And then I could do the same thing for each of the others. The problem is most of the cubes back here are going to be hidden by this front face.  So let's go ahead and take a look at that. Now, the prism is three cubes high. There's three cubes here. And it's six cubes wide. So that means I can figure out how many cubes there are in this, not by counting, one, two, three, four, not by counting, but it's three, six times. And so that means I have three times six cubes in that front slab. Now, I also know because the prism is four cubes deep, there's one, two, three, four of these slabs. So the total number of cubes, well, there's three by six in the front face, there's one, two, three, four of these slabs, so that's three by six by four cubes altogether. And at this point I can find the product, three times six times four is 72, and that is the volume of our rectangular prism.


Give it all, Raka! Today, he should be a good training, physically he's not going to be through the Monday. Six! Yeah! I will say now a name, the one who I say, say the number. Okay? He say... Number. Number. One, two. No! No! Yes! Yes, that one. Yes, that one. 30 seconds, lads. Four! One! Wait! Watch it, watch it. One, play, Josh. Yes, three, four, one. Let's go!


Hi, guys. Welcome back to the Whiskey Room. I'm Brian Sakawa here, as always, with Chris Sarengoulis, and today we are tasting Clyde May's Alabama-style whiskey. Who is Clyde May? Well, Clyde May is actually a World War II veteran, and he returned home from the war with a purple heart and a metal abower, very accomplished man, but he immediately began distilling his illegal moonshine and eventually ended up in the federal penitentiary for eight months. But that didn't stop old Clyde. He kept on rolling with his distilling, and he had a unique flavoring, green apple and cinnamon. Interesting thing about the Clyde May's whiskey is it's actually the state beverage of Alabama, and we did some research, and actually of all of the states, Alabama is the only state with an alcohol or a whiskey as a state beverage. More than 50% of the states have milk as their official state beverage, and this is something that's actually signed into law by the state legislature. So pretty interesting stuff. Very interesting guy. Party on, Alabama. The first thing that I noticed right off the bat and that they list on the bottle actually is the presence of green apple, which you mentioned. If you're used to smelling whiskies and you have a nose for it, the green apple is extremely present. The thing is when you taste this whiskey, though, the green apple is not overwhelming. It's a very subtle taste, and I think that has a lot to do with the high rye content of the mash bill. That is right. Now this whiskey in particular, we're talking an 85 proof whiskey, so it's not too high of a proof. It's very approachable, and the rye content is 30%. Now what that does is that nicely balances out the green apple and cinnamon finish, and it don't confuse this with the liqueur or something really sweet. It's very subtle. It's very well done. I also thought this whiskey would be very good as a mixer for cocktails. I personally think it would be very good in a whiskey sour, also mint and julep with the Kentucky Derby coming up, and also you might want to try this in a Manhattan as well. And as they like to say when you toast with Clyde Mays, roll Clyde. So that's the Clyde Mays Alabama style whiskey. Thanks for watching everyone. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel and check us out online at He SpokeStyle.com. We'll see you next time.


Hey, somebody's village looks like somebody's capital It's not fair in Africa It's not fair It's not fair I just have to say this I read on the internet that Namibia got the best roads in Africa I never believed it until I got in here believe me inside the city. They go fantastic road as fat You will never see a single pot hole in the city, but I never knew that it cut across the entire country We've been driving for almost seven hundred kilometers from Vinduq. We are here in the north We are on our way to Oqpo, is it Oqpo? Yeah, where the Himba people live and I just have to confirm and cement that Namibia got the best roads in Africa Can you believe it like the whole road man?  It's so smooth When I say the best roads I mean the quality of road infrastructure remains on challenge Did you know that Namibia has been ranked best roads in Africa five times in a row? I guess you didn't know that so all you need to do to thank me by subscribing to my YouTube channel and help me reach 900,000 subscribers Don't forget to like this episode and also share so that other African countries can emulate Namibia On my last day in Namibia I wanted to know the people behind this great success and it led me to the road authority of Namibia I want to say a big shout out to Tio for linking me up with the CEO and the executive officer of engineering of the road authority of Namibia How proud? Do Namibians feel to know that they got the best roads in Africa. Do you guys feel proud at all? Yeah We are proud, but it's not we took it. It's no more It's no more. Yeah, and do you know the rank of Namibia in terms of the world? Yeah, 23rd Yeah, you're ahead of China. Yes, and which country are you ahead of again? UK or India? Yeah, and India What was the first ever road built in the country? The road between Wolf's Bay and Swakopmund is the oldest And from there you guys kept on moving and moving Yeah, before independence the road network was still good But then after independence the government has concentrated in funding huge road infrastructures and Also rural access Road There's there are specific targets just for rural Accessibility on behalf of all Africans want to say congratulations to the road authority in Namibia. I Mean, they didn't they didn't tell me to say this but I'm impressed because any time I travel within Africa I always want to use flights, but when I came to Namibia, I saved money Because I wanted to use road so I want to say on behalf of all Africans Congratulations, and what do you think other African countries can learn from Namibia? Just maybe to have the to stick to a performance management system The corruption to is another problem. Yeah, and No, no the whole of Africa should run away from corruption Is what am I a man African content creator from Ghana who is on a journey to tell positive stories about Africa and Namibia is my country number 22 And I got shocked when I got here because I've been hearing that Namibia got the best rules in Africa But I never believed it until I got in here And that is why I really had to come and find out how did Namibia do it because I believe that the entire Continent needs to learn from Namibia So if you can help me introduce yourself, then you tell me who you are before you answer my question for me. Thank you My name is Rauna Nilao Hamwa. I'm a civil engineer by profession and I am the executive officer for engineering In the Rhodes Authority of Namibia How did Namibia achieve this success in terms of roads? It's huge investment from government the government invest a lot of money in to the road infrastructure and We have a dedicated team of managers. We are road managers because the The mission of the Rhodes Authority or the objective of the existence of the Rhodes Authority is to manage in a safe and efficient road network So we concentrate in efficiency and safety As far as our success story is concerned Is that this this really comes from The policy which was undertaken by our government In late 90s where I Went through a road center reform and that the road center reform Created the establishment or established the Authority of Namibia to manage the national And also at the same time It created the road fund administration to fund the operations Of the management That's where we started so this operation started in 2000 And then from there, of course, we started making Rosenthal was created and with emphasis dedicated to ensure that the Management of the road network from the maintenance the rehabilitation the planning the construction of new ones both Benjamin's standards as well as the That's where really the the success is started, but also as we moved we really looked at a very very focused strategy where we then balanced the Mentalists as well as the New development, especially our effect, you know most of our countries Road network as a pattern of any economy is the failure is mostly if you neglect maintenance So what we have done? We then really focused our strategy in ensuring that we maintain our roads As we proceed or as we continue Building new ones as a strategy, of course that strategy will not be carried if you do not have an effective leadership governance framework people themselves innovation is competent stuff and then Only then our competing stuff, but also creating the capacity within the country To be able to obtain or get the value for money. So this is really what what has pushed us to Be proud today that we are at number one in Africa to have a good or So we might help you and we would also want to share our experiences We want to know like every year annually how much money does the government invest in roads in the country? over two billion amoebian dollars every year and since the formation of the road sociology or its operation in 2000 so far and the road partner administration has invested more than 20 billion amoebian dollars in the road infrastructure and what kind of measures does the government put in place to make sure that the engineers are constructing the road because some of us where we from the government will give the money and at the end of the day The work is not done yet But when I came to Namibia even port holes people are fixing it has the government put in place any What do you call it any? Measurement to ensure that people are really working on the road in the country Yeah, we have a very strict performance management system It's it's all about KPIs It's all about KPIs Key performance indicators you have to always Achieve your KPIs. Do you guys have Time range for contractors to finish a particular road? Yes If we say 36 months, it should be 36 months Anything outside that we may impose penalties According to the contract analyze those who don't perform Give them a contract and they don't finish it.  There's a certain formula. I say not more than a certain percentage of the Whole contract and you pay Until that maximum This will keep them in check It's amazing. What about like and if you perform the police is called the bonus and penalties If you over perform quality and time wise we give you a bonus This is beautiful. What about the um people who does the maintenance? Is it a particular company or it's all coming from the road authority? We Look I will talk about the engineering services that I had. Okay There we have network planning It's a department a division network planning It has to do with The project planning budgeting feasibility studies Then it goes to another division called network development which is now going to like Benson from network development and is the project control engineer of this project Then there's network maintenance. It's another division. Yes, and there is technical services that hosts road management system laboratory services training unit and R&D research and development. Yeah R&D I'm gonna know what was the longest route in the country Be it's it's known Touristically is known as B1 B1 B1. It connects. It's from the border with South Africa Until the other border of Angola But it has sections we in the road authority. We know it's run road one stroke one one stroke two, but it's all B1 We have a medium to lump them road master plan And all the roads in Namibia are in that master plan If there are new roads to be identified, they will also end into that master plan We also have roads boards Every region of Namibia has a road a roads board Wow constituted by people from the community who represent their roads And who represent the problems on the roads then bring them to the minister of works and transport And the minister will then direct the road authority You do this Implement this project and do this and this or put them in the master plan if there are new roads And this one was also has been in the master plan and it was it was planned in the 70s 1970s This was planned in the 70s. Yes, because there is a road going to the airport But because of the development of the town windows expanding we have certain rules to the conveyance Conveyance roads because we have access roads and conveyance roads So you may not branch off this road if it's a conveyance road a trunk road Now that one of the developments are going until the airport we have to abandon that as a trunk road Because it was already planned ahead of time ahead of time that will if The town grows towards the airport then this will be the new road But now the town is going close to the airport Yes Projecting the new road from here to the airport So that that road can save as a step up road To those residents and businesses that people living around Yeah, and this one is a conveyance road That is a road close because that's where the road used to end And now another road can continue the road We also want to know what are the advantages of having a good road in Namibia? The total transportation cost Is reduced Because you don't will not have to change much of your tires and your spare parts and your time Your safe time and that constitutes the total transportation cost that we can also Use a new car for so long. Yes So apart from the advantages there should be disadvantages of having a good road Yeah, a good road also brings out bad attitudes and drivers They are not careful because nothing will stop them from speeding They don't obey the rules of the road because the road is too good And they just speed off or Don't comply with the rules of the road And we have many many accidents in Namibia. I think Namibia is one Maybe the first country in the world with a lot of accidents How can good roads cause accidents? Just attitude attitude because the the the safety the road safety is 3e Is engineering Enforcement and education Are you know we have safety campaigns to try to educate people Maybe we are weak on the side of enforcement of the rules of the road Engineering as you can see the roads are very good engineered And education we really try But maybe we are weak on enforcement. I thought bad roads bring bad accident Like it brings a lot of accidents, but I never knew that Good roads actually cause more accidents. They do Now I know when the three is are not working together So we need to enforce Educate And All the road authorities in various African countries definitely going to watch this video because I'm going to tell them to tag their road authority ministers They'll be watching if you have a message for them. What would that message mean? Yeah, the the message is is that Really for us Africa It's quite a very important country We do have the capacity to manage our continent But in order for us to do that poverty is still a problem and Fortunately or unfortunately most of the trade Issues in Africa take place through the road network And therefore it's important that we really Dedicate our effort to improve our network. The first thing is let's take care of what we have Maintenance is is key a good governance It's key leadership It's key and of course Let's find a way of sustaining this right through an effective funding models most of the African continent countries now They have tend to the road user funding models where many of Countries have created road fun road fun or road maintenance Agencies to fund that I think that's the way to go but the the the support and the and the long-term Vision of our governments It's very very critical In order to achieve that because if you don't have the support of the political leadership the government The community Then you you have problem to mobilize what you what you want. That's that's the message to My colleagues. Thank you. I want to say thank you so much for talking to me But is there anything that you really want to say about roti Namibia that I never asked you But there's something that you think people need to know Well, we have a network of 48,900 kilometers 8,900 tired roads right now Because of the economic situation not of Namibia, but of the whole world We are moving to The low volume seal. We have a program for low volume seals sealing the gravel roads Just to put the slurry seal. Okay, so that we tuck in the dust And we make it easy for those the users of gravel roads I want to say thank you so much for talking to me and I really appreciate your time