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. Alex will go through a slide deck which will give a brief overview of the plan and some of the recommendations and then we will open up the floor to input on the plan. I just want to add the caveat that this is not an open discussion. We are 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 are going to have a long drawn out back and forth. Also welcome FX, I see you joined, glad to have you. Erin has checked the line outside and I guess there is no one to come in so we will get started and Alex from RISI will take it away with the slide deck. Thanks Hunter. Again, I am 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 is in the plan. I would encourage you to read the plan and provide comments however is most convenient. So today we will start by just talking a little bit about the context of this 2024 plan. Give 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 statute and it's also guided by the process for this plan that is also in Vermont statute. 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 VCBB and so what we did with our plan here is we made sure to address all the statutory requirements again in VSA 202 C 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, 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 and 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 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 VCBB 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 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 growing the 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 heard from several stakeholders is that fiber infrastructure owners may need to bury 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 services 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 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, Verizon, 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 obtrusive 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 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 tradeoffs 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 of the public safety respondents reported never 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 in the state. And identified a few ways that the statutes could be more specific and better aligned with the current broadband strategy and telecommunication strategies that are being implemented in the state. There's, you know, 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 VCBV is is potentially before all the bead program activities are likely to happen in particular enforcement and oversight and that the state is going to have to do for the recipients of the bead funding. And then just broadly the statutory goals, some of which were drafted about 40 years ago, have some overlapping language and non specific language, which should be tightened up. 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 bead 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 universal 100 over 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 it, which frankly is relevant today as that those future costs, given that they're undefined have an unclear will have an unclear impact on the business plans and find 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 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 and 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 inclusive 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. There's a drive test in 2022 that should be repeated using the same the same protocols. The state can establish a crowdsourced drive test with the same parameters as the one 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 248 a 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% of monthly income as the definition for what what we should think of as affordable for low income residents. And there's kind of charts and examples in the in the document demonstrating exactly what that is based on the feedback we got from stakeholders and policymakers. 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 Vermonters to support both a wireline and a wireless broadband subscription. And then lastly because of the importance of that mobile wireless connection with a reliable device to unhoused Vermonters. 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, you know, one of the biggest barrier barriers is simply there's, you know, there's elements of the the skip that this 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 should be the one to step up and fund those activities. And lastly, you know, if the stakeholder is considering pushing for PSAP consolidation, read our analysis of the implications of that both the the pros and the cons and believe that it's worth moving forward. The next step is to fund a dedicated consolidation plan which which will outline the specific cost of consolidation and then the long term savings. Lastly on the statutory front is a few ideas for how to modernize statutes to better guide practices. You know, first of all, all of the critical telecommunications statutes need to be in alignment at 71 was the most recent piece of statute and so presumably that's where the other pieces of statute should be brought into alignment with that. But it's also an opportunity to reevaluate the goals more broadly. You know, we do recommend that the VCB B'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, we recommend obviously updating those one small example that we included here. You know, the state should be promoting and measuring the benefits of competition, which is 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's sake, given the strategy the state has chosen, which is to empower CUDs in our unserved rural areas and 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. You know, 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 can pull that down and we'll go into the comment comment 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 or adults let's make sure we keep our comments civil. To start I'd like every 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, you can circle back around. For the folks online.  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. Vermont 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 the people of all ages, nonprofit media production and planning support, open forums for the exploration of diverse ideas and the preservation of local history, fans 24 community media centers deliver a breathtaking range of television and radio programs, counting more than 18,000 hours a year. These are 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 that helped to keep the wheels of democracy turning through interactive and now hybrid meeting coverage set up and operations across the state. Sorry, people are calling. Band 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. And this is to make a larger point, which is that Vermont members, fan members manage and deliver public educational and government access media services to cabled and non-cable 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 7000 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 through their cable codes. Essentially fiber to access our services. So, just to start at the top very quickly, Vermont offers the following comments on the draft in your 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 Vermonners 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 202 CB one. We agree with the plan's recommendations to generally align the goals and directives across the statutes and in particular to set universal 100 100 megabits as the goal for while wire line broadband across all elements of telecommunications regarding section 202 CB seven support the application of telecommunications technology to maintain and improve government and public services. Public safety and the economic development of the state. We recommend that the plan take a broader view than those recommendations outline 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, probably 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 served by peg amos funding for technical support and equipment purchase in those communities which lack the infrastructure could be implemented by Vermont's experienced peg amos and or by the public bodies themselves. This would extend the region 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 archives alone count more than 45,000 programs dating back to 1984. We're 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 is it which is quite preoccupied with broadband deployment lateral goals to consider is the continued investment in the archivist preservation position at the Secretary of State's 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 E 911 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 20202 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, 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. 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. It is a mystery to me why there are only one or two people here at these hearings, except that it's 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 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 needs 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 you've listed which I'm sure gave great input. 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 I think it's really important 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. Do 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 comments 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. The Cuda is going to be coming on Friday evening. The board of the Cuda. I'm the secretary treasurer of that organization. We're going to be meeting. But tomorrow and and discussing that I'm sure that the Cuda is going to be bringing in some comments as well. So I'm not trying to anticipate those. All right, with respect to workforce. Vcbb and the state colleges got serious about working on this. And we've, it's been a very, very tough row to hoe. Okay, I, I honestly believe that the that if the that 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, just an idea, but it's that serious a problem that if there is not, if there's 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, we just are not going to meet that 2029 goal. Okay. Finally, with respect to the, the idea of the small towers. Now that pilot project is one that relies on EC fibers fiber in the in that in that area, and EC fiber 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, you know, 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, it looks like it should work. But, but there's 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, 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, it's a, 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, you know, they are looking at huge costs to go with dark fiber from the major dark fiber providers who in many cases would not be, you know, who are enterprise grade, who in many cases are not on these small roads, they would have to put up, you know, additional fiber and then charge the cell companies rates far above what say EC fiber would charge for dark fiber. But by the same token, EC fiber, we don't, 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 when we're talking about residents and businesses. You know, we're mostly talking, we're really talking about small businesses, essentially residential services fine for them.  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 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, 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, you know, what aspect of this 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 top some and we noticed that long run of easement polls, 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 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, 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 10 year plan can incentivize all of us to be focused on that issue. I think that would be 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. Because 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. So we have a 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, you know, 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, if. Can we help you get into ACP, et cetera, et cetera. So it became a, you know, became a super difficult process. And there's all that learning and on top of that, you know, we've got the bead digital equity thing going on. Now we have the proposal that is coming into the legislature where they're going to give, they're going to create this additional or new or revised telecommunications tax. They're going to 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, oh, wait a second. Okay, we can't have, 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 ISP to how households can be identified, ie 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 bead in Vermont, which will result in a grant and that grant money. It can't go to the state broadband office ie VCBB. Okay, it goes, it's got to go to private entities. So the cap. 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, and, and we can. We can get this right, but we have to realize that we're, we can't, there's not a lot that we can do right now immediately. And this idea of, you know, $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 going to 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 will be all set with, you know, with draft laws. So, and finally, one last thought that 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 effects. Appreciate your input. Sorry. Hi there. Yeah. Do you mind going last. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm a solo senator for Chippenden North. I'm not here necessarily to speak in official capacity. I am also a member of the GI talk joint information technology oversight committee. Again, not 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 Glendavidian'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 let room and the technology 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. The plan should document recent ones as case studies so we might better prevent and remuniate future outages. And I'll stop with three. Thanks. I wish I could be that concise. We all do. I'm going to 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. Moving 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, in effect, may be the only way for us to deliver 9-1-1 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 trunked 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, every first responder, and every vehicle radio that are compatible with a trunked 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 indirect spending is at risk of being forfeited if we don't spend it by the end of the year. But we're kind of, 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. 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. Routers, 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 going to extend the deadline for this plan, conclude their contracts, they'll take the money and run, and y'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 30 million worth of spectrum, that's an educated estimate, would have been at our discretion to use to build a reliable rant that would not have been vulnerable to AT&T's faulty update processes. So this plan refers to the public safety governance and the skip as being governed by... It's so blatant that the misinformation in 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. So to be putting in the plan that this ghost empty council is advising on this stuff is absolute fallacy. Why didn't y'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 going to pause for a second. The transcription that I received, even though it did have names in it, is useless. 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've got to start over anyway. You've got to do the 10-year forecast. All the things that it says you have to do before you put the plan together, you've got to go back and do those and then put a preliminary draft out. 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. I did a public records request to the Department of Public Safety regarding the first net outage, the AT&T outage. 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. Instead, you're advertising for Mac Mountain, ignoring details assets, you know, you're advertising for first net, ignoring Verizon's assets with priority and preemption. This is ludicrous. Did y'all not catch these flaws, right? Are you just taking whatever Alex and Risi feed you because they got the $400,000? The CUDs are attempting to merge to 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 with outland lines 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 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've got just a couple more things I think here. We're at 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, Pag 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-of-way, 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-of-way and then 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-of-way and to create a revenue source to sustain it. 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 O-rand, open-rand 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-of-way. 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 going to 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 Weitzfield is. You've just expanded the footprint of Weitzfield as a regulated ILEC by tenfold 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. Oh no. Everybody have a good night.


Hi everyone, this is Jessica Hagman at Alden Library and today we are doing a live video to show you some new things in our special collections. I am in the MAHN Center for Archives and Special Collections on the 5th floor and you are welcome to come up here and visit and see these things so please feel free to stop by when you have a chance. I'm going to turn the camera around and introduce you to Miriam Intritor who is our Special Collections Librarian and she's actually going to open some of these things that have just come to the library that are just getting to be part of the Special Collections so take it away Miriam. This is Jessica. Two new acquisitions to the collection. These are both in the Artist Book category. The first which I'm opening right now is by great paper maker and artist book maker Helen Hebert. What's that? The call-a-font is usually like an artist statement that explains to you maybe the process in making the artist book, the materials used, the number created so this is 25 copies of what's called Handle with Care and you'll see how you'll understand why the paper globe inside this beautiful wooden box, very carefully, you are holding the world in your hands. Wow, that's so cool and so is this like paper and then is that stitched on there it looks like? This is where we go back to the call-a-font carefully put it back so 25 copies of Handle with Care were produced in the winter of 2013 by Helen Hebert who made the pigmented air-dried abacca paper, penned and embroidered the text onto the paper so it is sewn on and then designed the laser cut box which is made out of basswood and then it's signed and numbered by Helen so it's a very exciting addition to our collection because we have a lot of paper making classes and students that are interested in learning about paper making processes and different types of paper that you can make and the different things that you can do with paper and expected things like this also this has kind of an environmental message about the fragility of the world, anything else that we'd like to talk about? How do you, like so this was in 2013 so how do you know to order these, is these are like a catalog or how does this come to us? How do you make that decision? It sends out a weekly email newsletter which I receive and in this case because we purchased from her before we have other materials by her in the collection she sent an email to us about some books that she was offering books, artist books, objects that she was offering she was having like an artist book sale basically and that's really different how I order books as a subject librarian it's a lot of online clicking of links are not nearly as cool as that which I'm going to show you one more time in case you didn't get to see it so that is a globe and the word has stitching on it and then the box made out of what was it? The box is made out of basswood. Basswood. And this is an advocate paper with the text stitched on it. Okay. And so you expect like paper making classes will be interested in this. Paper making also there's a few different classes. We are a department where students make books and they're always interested in books having different and complicated structures. And then just generally history of the book type classes. So cool. Okay. So looks like we've got something else here too, right? We have one more box. A double unboxing day for us here. This is from Strike 3 Press. This one has some tape so it might take a little longer to get it open. This is a physical ABC and artist's interpretation of the ABC books that we all kind of grew up with. And we see a lot of these in artist's book making. I haven't actually seen this one in person before. So this is the first time you're seeing it? Yep. So exciting. This is the last copy that they had. So this one's from 2008. Note to the reader. It's not a matter. Board book or a pop-up. I guess good. Very important concept. So it's like interactive. If you weren't concerned about preserving the book, you could actually interact with it. Definitely. And certainly with classes and visitors, we have let them of course handle it and carefully interact with it. So we're discovering it for the first time. So we don't really know what's inside the pages. Just a different take on your ABC. Does it say the end? They're cute. Sounds like a research question for someone. Right. Ooh, it's behind the door. Don't open it to us again. Or does it pull? Does it pull or not? Oh, something comes out. Okay, bye. Yeah. I'm not sure if I can do it with one hand. Oh. Secret code. Okay. It's like lost. Definitely unknown. Okay. All right. Another question for someone to come and figure out if you like this book. We'll put that back in a moment. That's familiar. Oh, yeah. We've had lots of Alice in Wonderland stuff. Yeah. That looks like the original to Neon. We're the first edition to Neon illustrations. And in here again, we have a caliphant. And typically if it's in a more traditional book structure than the globe that we just saw, it will be at the end. It's only 26 copies of this one. Wow. And Dan at Strike 3 Press told me that this was the last one they had. Wow. So again, it's like your personal kind of, like you contact the author or the artist. All right. I'm going to turn this around and say thank you to Miriam for showing us the new items, collections, and reminder that if you want to come visit, you can find this through the doors, the fifth floor. You can see an exhibit that's out there now. And there's actually another exhibit over on the fifth floor about the Left Book Club that we're hoping to do a live Facebook video about soon. And maybe we can do one here as well. So stay tuned and let us know if there's anything in particular you want to see or if you have any questions about the things we've shown you today.


Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. We will begin today's proceedings. Welcome to the official handover ceremony of the children's playground to the Fawcaw Preschool. My name is Donna Charles and as we commence today's proceedings, I would like to acknowledge the presence of Honourable Isabel Joseph, Parliamentary Representative for Babineau and also Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Cooperatives. Honourable Dr. Gail Rigabet, Minister for Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development. Mr. Darrell Raymond, General Manager of Rainforest Adventures, Rainforest Adventures team members, teachers and staff, students, media personnel and other specially invited guests, a warm welcome. Today is indeed a momentous occasion and we know that the kids in particular are very excited about the unveiling of their new playground. Rainforest Adventures has been operating in Babineau for over 14 years and we're proud to see that the company is well established and respected in the community of Babineau. Throughout the years we've always been involved in many community activities and today is testament of our continued support to uplift the community in whatever way possible. I now invite Mr. Darrell Raymond, General Manager of Rainforest Adventures to deliver a few opening remarks. Mr. Raymond. Today's opening of this play area for the Fawassaw Preschool is a very special occasion and it's a long time coming. Today's ceremony marks the culmination of almost a year of planning because I believe it was in January of last year that Minister Ezekiel Joseph initiated the discussions with me and said this area he had already secured this area. It had been fenced. The initial grasping had been done and all that was needed was for us to come together to procure and install some play equipment. Naturally it was our pleasure to agree to this and we had planned to have everything in place for the reopening of school at the opening after the Easter break last year. We were ready to go. However as we all know the COVID pandemic hit us and we had to put our plans on hold until now but God knows best and everything happens at the right time. So today we can celebrate this momentous occasion. As a company this project was a no-brainer for us. They are class synergies and this project ticked all the right boxes for us. First we saw this as a pure and genuine example of a public-private sector partnership. Given the difficulties brought about by the COVID pandemic no government and indeed no private sector entity has the resources to do everything that we want to do. So projects like this when we can come together and pull our resources for common good are something that we embrace and we hope to continue to undertake. Secondly rainforest adventures believes in green spaces. We believe in allowing people to play and enjoy the natural environment. That is our ethos that is what we are about as a company. So a project like this naturally we would embrace. Even more importantly we believe that physical activity particularly among our young people is critical so this space allows our young children to recreate and play and sets the foundation for their development. We also see this park as a place where members of the community at large can come. Families can come with their kids so it will encourage community building and family cohesion and bonding and also most of our team members we have about 90 staff. The majority of them are from this area and community surrounding. Many of whom have children who have either attended or currently attend this preschool. So it is our little way to give back and say thank you for the support that the Babano community has given us as a company. You have guarded us jealously, guarded our infrastructure, provided us with extraordinary workers and team members and for this we say thank you. So in closing I just want to implore the students, the teachers and the parents to take care of this place. Take care of the infrastructure. Ensure that you use it safely. As a company we will continue to play our part in maintaining the infrastructure, adding to it as we go along and to ensure that it is up it is kept to a high standard. We also ask that in using it you ensure that you follow all necessary health and safety protocols, sanitize on a regular basis and follow the guidance provided by our health officials. So again I thank everybody and wish you a very prosperous and successful 2021. Thank you everybody. Thank you Mr. Raymond. As we continue please join me in welcoming to the podium Honourable Dr. Gail Rigabat. Dr. Rigabat. Thank you Madam for ceremonies. My colleague Minister the Honourable Ezekiel Joseph, Parliamentary Representative for Babano. With your kind permission can I greet the warm beautiful people of this community as friends. Good afternoon friends. It is so good to be here. On behalf of the Department of Education, Innovation and Gender Relations we wish to extend our gratitude to Rainforest Adventures for their generous contribution to this play area. We note the great importance of play as a significant part of early learning and social development of young children. The engagement in play builds a child's creativity and imagination. It provides for the development of important social skills such as learning to take turns, cooperating, getting along and team building. Additionally children develop their fine and gross motor skills in the simplest play activities such as throwing and catching a ball. Play helps children learn to develop skills in expressing themselves and exploring their experiences, ideas and emotions. We must also appreciate the great need for active children in the quest to keep healthy and maintain our well-being. At all stages play is necessary for a child's social development, mental well-being and maturity. It is with this in mind therefore that we applaud the efforts of the parliamentary representative in collaboration with Rainforest Adventures for extraordinary effort at creating this social space in constructing this play area. This is a tremendous resource that will impact not only our children but their families and indeed the wider community. Our pledge is therefore to use this facility effectively and safely so that our children may enjoy this space while we continue to contribute to their holistic development. Thank you. Thank you Honourable Minister. I now warmly invite our parliamentary representative for Babono Honourable Isikal Joseph to the podium to deliver his remarks. I want to start by expressing my appreciation to you Mr Riman and of course to your company and your staff for considering the requests that we made and I say we because it's a community made as it pertains to establishing this park. I want to say that when we had a side visit with Mr Riman, myself Mr Riman and some members of my executive the initial intention was to build a public toilet facility on this field because I'm sure you're quite aware of the work that has taken place on the far south field as it pertains to the lights and of course other fields around Babono and it's our intention as much as possible to see how we can improve the facilities at all of our fields. So when we had that side visit something struck me and say why but Isikal you have started this park. You have spent over $60,000 to re-establish this park as far as fencing and laying down the foundation and replanting the grass. Why don't you do change focus a bit and request from Skyride. Resources to put down the bits and pieces where our children can come out and play and I must say that I was very delighted to see that the change of focus to place right away is from the day one is from the time I mentioned that you say yes to me that's a better project than the toilet facility that you're talking about. Doesn't mean we're not going to continue developing our field. But as you have heard before there are a lot of benefits to be derived by putting down this facility for our children because right now unlike when we grew up our children are more confined to in front of the television they're more confined to staying in the house and the question of going out and recreating building up their physical strength building up the social skills is very much lacking. So I want to echo the sentiments expressed previously that I'm really hoping that we can utilize this facility and of course to continue to maintain and keep this facility. We have discussed it and again apart from establishing this facility Mr. Riemann has agreed to employ a full-time person especially whilst we are speaking of the use of this facility by the students at the preschool you heard Mr. Riemann speak of the use of this facility by the community. So definitely by employing someone to behave full-time on weekends we are hoping that the community can see the need for us to bring our children here and to recreate. And I want to say thank you very much again for agreeing to employ a full-time person to manage the operation of this facility on weekends. And there's Mr. Riemann around to applause for that please. But the commitment does not stop here we still have other packs to build and I can say that the bits and pieces are already in St. Lucia and the next preschool that we'll be looking at will be the Lagge preschool. And I've gotten a letter Mr. Madam Minister from your PS approving the establishment of a playground at the Lagge preschool. Unfortunately the delay is on our side we have not fenced the area so that we can establish that preschool but based on discussions we are hoping that before the ending of this month we shall see again another facility funded by Rainforest in the Babono community. In Babono we develop things, we only do one thing without many things. For example we have free fields in Lagge in Babono with lights. So whilst we are going to Lagge with another facility I'm sure as we the the publicities out there working along with Rainforest Adventure putting them establishing playgrounds I'm sure the other preschools are becoming to me for that type of support. I want to say that I'm really looking forward for us and I see us the community showing appreciation as far as the maintenance of this facility. I will here to come here and see it has been neglected it's been abused because by showing appreciation I'm sure we can get further support from private sectors for us to continue in that vein. So once again I want to as parliamentary representative express my appreciation to you Mr. Raymond and your staff and your company and of course the Ministry of Education for a green to establish this facility and I'm really looking forward to the students and children in the forest or by extension Babono because if you're going to open on weekends we will not limit on whether individuals come from all we'd want is for them to utilize it in a safe manner and of course to enjoy whatever we have established. So thank you very much in closing let us stay safe because the numbers in Babono is not encouraging. So let us stay safe let us follow the protocols that has been established so at least we can see the reopening of our economy and of course the continued employment of our people who have lost the job from since March April last year. Thank you very much.


I put this presentation together on Wednesday, and it's titled What Is Ireland's Bank Debt and What Can Be Done About It? And if you pay close attention to the morning radio shows and internet news coverage, you might think that this is now an out-of-day presentation because, to coin a phrase, I have in my hand a piece of paper that potentially, supposedly, is going to lead to banking debt peace in our time. In truth, this morning's statement about Ireland merely says that the Eurogroup will examine the situation of the Irish financial sector with the view of further improving the sustainability of blah, blah, blah. So it's a commitment to examine. What are they going to examine? Well, let's talk about that. The 63 billion total is 30.7 billion, related to promissory notes. It is 20.7 billion, which is money that came from the National Pension Reserve Fund to acquire stakes in AIB and Bank of Ireland. Then there's an additional 11.4 billion that's been spent on AIB, IBRC and Irish Life Permanent. And we talk about Ireland's bank debt, you can say, okay, we had money in the National Pension Reserve Fund, and if we hadn't put it into AIB and Bank of Ireland, we could have used that to finance budget deficits, and we wouldn't have had to borrow money. That's fine, but there is no specific issue of Irish sovereign debt, there is no specific part of Ireland's EU or IMF debt that is sort of earmarked and has a little stamp on it that says, this is the bank debt. So basically what we have is the promissory notes, which clearly is bank-related debt, and then we have the other stuff, which is we have acquired assets, and there's a question about what those assets are worth at this point. So I'm just going to divide my comments into these two bits and start with what we call the living banks, AIB, Bank of Ireland and Irish Life and Permanent. The government has spent 25.4 billion in acquiring AIB and part of Bank of Ireland. Now those investments are currently held by the National Pension Reserve Fund, and they are valued by the National Pension Reserve Fund, most recently at 9.4 billion. So these have not been great investments for the stage. Now what are they really worth? Most of that 9.4 billion represents the NPRS valuation of its stake in AIB. The book value of the equity in AIB is 14.6 billion, but the bank has very weak operating profits. It has ongoing loan loss write downs, and potentially will need further recapitalization if mortgages and commercial property and other loans that they have end up moving in line as it looks like they will, the central bank's sort of stress scenarios that were done last year. So in my judgment that 9.4 billion valuation looks quite optimistic relative to what anybody in the market would pay to acquire AIB and to acquire part of Bank of Ireland. Then there's Irish Life and Permanent. That's not held by the National Pension Reserve Fund, and we don't know what anybody thinks it's worth. It's not worth a whole lot. I'll tell you that. Irish Life and Permanent is a sort of basket case kind of institution. It is a combination of a reasonably functional insurance element and a dysfunctional banking element. It has about 34 billion in mortgage loans, unfortunately if you've got one, 23 billion of them are tracker mortgages that are sort of ongoing loss making vehicles relative to what a reasonable market cost of funds would be to a bank like this. And it has serious funding problems. It owes nearly as much to central banks as it has by way of deposits. There have been various discussions about what could be done to restore Irish Life and Permanent to some kind of viability, the idea of perhaps carving out the trackers from it and creating some sort of special vehicle. But ultimately that's a form of subsidy from Europe to provide this bank with cheap funding for a long time as it runs down. In terms of market value, the bank would have, I've written here, a limited market value. Now, why does this stuff matter? Well, I wrote here on Wednesday that a European Bank Resolution Scheme is part of Mr. Van Rompuy's genuine EMU proposal. But I think we can start to say today it's one step closer to reality. But we don't have details yet on how something like this would work. Now, how might it work? John referred before to the idea that European banks should be allowed to fail and that it's a business and that bank creditors should be on the hook for losses when they make bad investments. And I think there's now pretty widespread agreement throughout Europe that the Irish model, as was practiced here, we could talk about whether the government made good decisions or not in the past few years. One decision they made that was a particularly bad decision was the bank guarantee. It's pretty widespread, there's pretty widespread agreement that that is not a sustainable model for Europe, that the European taxpayer should not be on the hook. So my suspicion is that if the ESM is allowed to go in and recapitalize banks, that this goes hand in hand with the proposal for a supervisory authority, that means that all of these banks that are going to get investment are going to be analyzed according to a sort of common methodology and that the ESM is not going to be set up as an institution to just walk in and lose money by putting money into dead banks, putting money into insolvent banks. And I don't think anyone in Ireland should hope that the European authorities do that. So, but from our perspective, that suggests a potential problem. If ESM is set up to go in and make investments and purchase shares in banks at market price and not lose money for European taxpayers to get the risk associated with those investments off, let's say the Spanish balance sheet, but not to go in willy-nilly losing money, then we have a problem in terms of, let's say the 25 billion we spent on AIB and Bank of Ireland. Now, we would love if the man from Europe arrived in later this year and offered us 25 billion for AIB and Bank of Ireland, right?  We'd say, yeah, we recap those banks for 25 billion and we'd like the 25 billion back, please. But I suspect ESM is not going to be set up that way. And if you want the European taxpayers to give us back all of our money that we put into those institutions, then you're going to need some sort of separate deal and a separate deal that explicitly involves an agreement to take on losses that we have already taken on and spread them across the European taxpayer. And I suspect that that's not how ESM, at least, is going to be set up. So I'm not saying it can't happen, but it would require a level of negotiation well over and above simply saying, yes, Spanish are getting banks recapped, we want that too. You could argue there's some disadvantages if we end up selling at a relatively, you know, low price. Suppose we've got the NPRF valuation of 9.6 billion. You could say, well, maybe we're selling at a fire sale. We're losing strategic control over these important national assets. You would find that AIB and its policy towards people in mortgage arrears, Irish life impermanent policy towards people in mortgage arrears is not being made by people who work in Marion Street but by people who work in Frankfurt and Brussels. I think probably on balance that might be a good thing. But there are potential disadvantages to selling off these institutions. I think it's outweighed by the advantages. Any funds that are received can be used to pay off debt or if this is what you want to do, potentially to fund productive capital programs, to the government to decide what to do with the money. Probably more importantly, it reduces further uncertainty in relation to the state balance sheet, in relation to if these banks require further recapitalization, well, then that's going to be the European taxpayers issue and not ours. And I think that's removing that sort of tail risk uncertainty as to what happens if the economy gets in a downward cycle and then the banks need recapitalization and we have to spend more money on the banks and so on. That is cut off. There's also the question of whether or not European control of these institutions and a remaking of them in a way to make them marketable and functioning institutions could end up being to the wider benefit of the economy in the sense that if you could come up with a vehicle that removes, let's say, the tracker mortgages from AIB and Irish Life and Permanent, they could be very quickly sort of right sized in a sense. And the sort of ongoing deleveraging process could possibly be ended and they could start lending into the Irish economy again in a normal way, which they're certainly not doing now. So I think there are advantages to those kinds of deal. Which brings us to the dead bank. The issues at the dead bank are really quite different. We own the dead bank, for sure, just like we own AIB, but there's very little point in talking about the value of the IBRC, the equity of the IBRC. Nominally, the bank actually has some equity of $3 billion. But that's one year is promissory, no payments. That's not anything to get too excited about. The real problem is looking at its balance sheet. This is a bank that basically doesn't have any depositors anymore, more or less, no depositors. But a lot of fuss about the various bondholders that it owes money to, most of them got their money. There's very few debt securities left. This $5.4 billion is the balance sheet at the end of 2011.  We've given guarantees to the rest. Basically, this is an institution whose primary reason for existence now is to pay back $40 billion in debts that it owes to the Irish central bank in the form of emergency liquidity assistance. And that's the purpose, essentially, of the promissory notes. Without the promissory notes, if there were no promissory notes, the ELA debts couldn't be repaid. But everything else could. So effectively, that's what they're there for. And this whole schedule that's been come up with for the promissory notes, this $3.1 billion a year until 2020, and then after that, effectively, that's a repayment schedule for emergency liquidity assistance. So if you want to get into the small details of this arrangement, it can get very, very complicated. But the simple summary of it is basically the Irish government has agreed to provide promissory note payments to the IBRC. The IBRC owes the ELA to the Central Bank of Ireland. Central Bank of Ireland takes the ELA. And basically, the money that they created when they went and made loans to Anglo in the first place basically is taken out of circulation. There's no great upside for us in that repayment. Lots of people who have analyzed this have come up with the very clever idea of, we should just write off the ELA. Patrick Honohyn should call up the government and say, it's OK, guys, don't pay back. Well, Patrick's a very smart man. If it was possible, I think he would have done that. Unfortunately, the issuance of ELA is something that is determined, has to be done in agreement with the ECB Governing Council. And the ECB Governing Council views any sort of deferral or open-ended repayment or cancellation of ELA as illegal, and that it breaks the monetary financing prohibition. The government has also provided various legal commitments that these ELA debts would be repaid, separate from the promissory note. Ultimately, what it comes down to is to simply write this thing off would be illegal under European law. Most likely what would end up happening would be the European Central Bank would end up removing the Irish banks from its programs. There would be no more lending from Europe. It would probably trigger a massive demand for repayment. And effectively, it is a decision. It would be a decision to decide to have a national default. Now, people can talk about that, but I mean that's basically what we're talking about. So within the set of options that are available to us that probably make sense, I don't think simply just saying, we're not gonna repay the ELA actually works. My preference is to restructure the promissory notes in a way that allows the bank to work through its current assets that it has and use it to pay off the bondholders that it owes money to, to pay off the ECB to pay off all its creditors. And then at some point in a few years time we can find out, okay, how much do they have left in debts, in ELA debts? And we can start repaying that and we can do it very, very slowly. And this is not something that would require political approval. This simply requires the ECB Governing Council to do their bit and accept that part of the improving the sustainability of the so-called well-performing Irish Adjustment Program that the summit statement refers to is something that the ECB can contribute to and contribute to with a relatively simple decision. The ECB of course doesn't like ELA. It doesn't fit with its standard procedures. It's by definition a loan that is not against the standard Euro system collateral. And they would like to see ELA programs across Europe disappear. So the ECB would prefer something like the Ireland gets a big loan from the ESM to pay off ELA. So let's say we get a 30 year loan from the ESM, pay off the ELA loans and then we can gradually pay back the ESM. That's not my favorite proposal here. The underlying interest rate on loans from the ESM would be higher than the effective cost of the state of the current ELA arrangement. It turns the ELA debt into official debt that is owed to this ESM body that requires political approval throughout Europe to get such a loan. It would be widely seen as a second bailout for Ireland. Even if in Ireland it would just be viewed as swapping one type of debt for another. And at this point with things going the way they're going we have to remember that in extreme scenarios such as a Euro breakup scenario, this will be official debt that will be almost equivalent to owing money to the IMF. Whereas outside the Euro system, the Irish central bank could come up with its own bilateral arrangement in relation to ELA. I'm not saying that that's something that's going to happen but we need to think about the sort of extreme risk scenarios. At the same time, I think still thinking ESM loan to replace the ELA provided there's a very long maturity loan would still be better than the current arrangement. And certainly something should be put in place before next March 31st and a long time before next March 31st. And we can avoid the fiasco that happened this year. So some concluding thoughts. There's absolutely no doubt that Ireland was placed under pretty severe EU pressure to take on large amounts of bank-related debt. Now here I'm not really referring to the September 2008 agreement, we did that on our own. But at subsequent points, in particular in the run up to and after the September 2010 EU IMF agreement, there was severe pressure placed by the EU and in particular the ECB to have Ireland take on large amounts of bank-related debt. Now today, everybody in Europe pretty much agrees that this so-called Irish model for dealing with bank debt doesn't work. So there is a strong moral and practical case for some form of EU assistance. I wrote this on Wednesday and I'm happy to see on Friday that there is some mention of us. But people need to understand that to call today this statement a seismic change, to call it a deal breaker, is getting very far ahead of ourselves. And we've been here before, by governments' statements in the run up to the March 31st promissory note payment. Also talked about we've gotten a deal done and all sorts of things are gonna happen and that's not what happened. The retrofitting of the Irish debt is extremely complex. It's a very sui generis kind of issue at this point. The model that is being worked out by the Europeans for dealing with bank debt is unlikely to involve wholesale losses being put in individual states or being put on the EU. And so it's really a separate sort of an issue and I think that it's going to be up to the Irish government to keep this case on the agenda all the time and to keep working out imaginative and fair ways to resolve this issue. So for good or real, this is an issue that we're going to see a lot more headlines about in the coming months and I'll leave it at that. Okay.


Today, we are in the second day, but we have a backup backlog from yesterday. Yesterday, I planned to complete the basic ideas and definitions. There are 19 subtopics in it, but we could go only up to topic 13.  One of the topics near the end of yesterday's discussion was thermodynamic equilibrium. We said a state is in thermodynamic equilibrium means that it is represented by a single point in thermodynamic state space. That means the system has unique values of… We should note that the idea of thermodynamic equilibrium defined in thermodynamics is somewhat similar, but also different from the idea of equilibrium in other branches of science. For example, in mechanics, there is a mechanical equilibrium. Mechanical equilibrium means that no forces or no net forces acting on a body and if it is a extended body, not a particle, then no net momentum is acting on that, no net moment. So, sigma f should be 0 and sigma, if m represents moments, that should also be 0. Remember that the mechanical equilibrium is not as strict as thermodynamic equilibrium because a particle in mechanical equilibrium with no force acting on it can still be moving at a uniform velocity. If you say that its position is a significant variable, then the position is changing, the state of that system is changing. So, from that point of view, mechanical equilibrium is not as strict as thermodynamic equilibrium. Then, we have chemical equilibrium. When you have a chemical system with different components, chemical equilibrium indicates that there is no net reaction between the two components and this means that the chemical potential is uniform. In our course, we are not going to study chemical equilibrium in any detail from a thermodynamic point of view. So, we will not worry much about it. However, from the science precursor of thermodynamics in school, so called heat, you have some idea of what is meant by thermal equilibrium, not thermodynamic equilibrium, thermal equilibrium. This we will come to when we come to zeroth law and this naturally means that temperature is uniform. In fact, we will use it the other way. We will define what is thermal equilibrium. Then we will look at zeroth law as a thermodynamic premise and then from that we will derive the idea of the temperature as a useful thermodynamic property. This is something we should remember because there are many words. Yesterday, in the discussion which is already on Moodle, the question came up as to whether the universe can be considered as a thermodynamic system and the answer to that was that the universe which universe. We later will define a thermodynamic universe, but if you are looking at the physical universe of the astronomers universe, then I do not think that is a thermodynamic system because we are unable to define its boundaries. Thermodynamics is all about systems. System means we must have boundaries defined. Now, we come to the next important topic and that is thermodynamic processes or simply processes because the adjective thermodynamic we will soon get rid of. It takes too much time and too much space. For defining a process, we will just use this. Process for us is nothing but a short form for change of state of a system. So, when we say that a system undergoes a process or a system executes a process, that means the system has undergone a change of state. So, the minimal description of a process would be the system which undergoes a process and for that system the initial state and the final state. So, if you look at the thermodynamic state space and let me simplify it by saying we just have a two-dimensional thermodynamic state space with some two properties say x 1 and x 2. If you are not comfortable with such abstractism or abstraction, you can write p v or whichever two properties t s, t v, t p, whichever two properties you feel like. Let us say that we have defined a system. So, x 1 and x 2 are properties of that system and let us say this is state 1, this is state 2. So, this is the for a given system, this is the minimal representation of a process. Now, the question that is asked is if this is the minimal representation, the question is what happens to the system during the process? The idea here is any process will require a certain amount of time. So, there is some duration associated with a process, hardly any process is instantaneous. You can always select a scale of time such that it takes some delta t. So, it is possible that the process is such that when it goes from the initial system, goes from initial state 1 to initial state 2 and I keep on observing it. I may say that look, I cannot measure the state, I cannot measure the properties properly as it goes from 1 to 2. In that case, we cannot even, we can only may be link this up by a dotted line saying I only know that 1 is an initial state, 2 is the final state. Do not ask me anything in between and many of our real life processes are of this kind that is no detail available or no detail can possibly be obtained. This is the general situation. However, sometimes the process takes place in such a fashion, slow is not the correct word in it that during the process at any stage system is in equilibrium or system can be observed to be in equilibrium. That means at some stage between 1 and 2, you will find it in a state of equilibrium. At some other stage, you will find it in a state of equilibrium and since it starts with 1 may be soon after the process begins, you will find it in a state of equilibrium very near it and after some time still slightly different state of equilibrium and you will find that if you make enough detailed observations, you will find that you will have an almost continuous locus of states, which you can draw from 1 to 2. From initial state to the final state and here we being engineers and the realistic people, we will say that instead of a system is in equilibrium, we will say perhaps that the system cannot really be in equilibrium because it remains, if it remains strictly in equilibrium, it cannot even move from the initial state because a slight movement from the initial state would mean non-equilibrium, but we will say that the system is in equilibrium with a qualifier almost. How good is this almost is left to us, but if we say that to an excellent approximation at any stage the system during a process remains in equilibrium, then we can draw it by that process by a continuous locus and such a system, such a process we define as a quasi-static. Static is an old name for something like equilibrium. Quasi means half way through or almost there. So, quasi-static process means a process in which the system remains almost in equilibrium throughout. So, if I identify this process as 1A2, A is not a name of a state just a label on that process, then 1A2 is a quasi-static process. Another quasi-static process could be like this, the end states are the same, it is another quasi-static process, but this process is non-quasi-static. I am not sure that the intermediate states are in equilibrium and hence I cannot represent it by a continuous path. I will just show as a convention a dotted line joining 1 and 2 with an arrow from the initial state to the final state and the position of this line does not mean anything. Similarly, I can have another non-quasi-static process, I can show it as D, but I am showing it like this just to distinguish it from C. The position of this line does not mean anything. So, 1D2 is also a non-quasi-static process, whereas for quasi-static processes, this locus 1A2 means something. That means, at some stage during the process, you will find that the system was here, the property was this value of x 1, this value of x 2. At some other time during the process, the property x 1 was this, property x 2 was this. You could have identified the state and marked it on the state space. We say that between the same initial and final state 1 and 2, 1B2 is another quasi-static process because our observations would have shown us this, the system would be here at some time, here at some time, here at some time, here at some time and so on. So, that is the idea between a quasi-static process and a non-quasi-static process. Why do we classify processes like this? The reason is as follows. A quasi-static process, state of system defined because it is in equilibrium throughout the process because the locus is defined. Now, the moment you have a locus, you can operate on it mathematically. You can do operations of integration, differentiation, etcetera. That means a quasi-static process can be analytically handled. A non-quasi-static process cannot be no detail available. So, the characteristic of such a process, say the work done to such a process, heat transfer through such a process cannot be obtained by integration. If at all it is obtained, it has to be obtained by some other means. So, whenever we want to study the detail of a process, it always helps if the process is a quasi-static process or if the process can be modelled as a quasi-static process. That is the advantage here. Most real processes are non-quasi-static and a quasi-static process is only an approximation or a model used by us. Remember this. This is something to be remembered and this is something to be emphasized to our students. The next idea to be defined is a cycle. Our definition of a cycle is nothing but a process such that initial state is the same thing as the final state. So, in a state space, the minimal representation of a cycle is a single state. Initial state is the same thing as final state. In general, the cycle could be or will be non-quasi-static. So, we will only show it like this, just a loop of any kind. This is the general cycle, natural cycle, non-quasi-static. A quasi-static cycle would be, suppose this is whatever is represented by A is a non-quasi-static cycle. A quasi-static cycle could be like this, 1 B back to 1. If this same cycle is executed the other way, through the same set of states, I may call it a different cycle because although the initials and final states are the same, the path traced is in a different order. Of course, I can have another one like this. This could be another quasi-static cycle. Another non-quasi-static cycle can be simply be shown like this. Here, where I show the dotted line and the way I show the arrow is immaterial because all I know is my initial state and final state are the same. In a non-quasi-static cycle, there will be only one state of equilibrium or at least one state of equilibrium. Part of it can be quasi-static but even if a small part is made up of states which are not in equilibrium, it becomes non-quasi-static. So, this is our idea of a cycle. The system comes back to its initial state. So, the final state is the same thing as the initial state. Now, we will get into the heart of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics pertains to situations like this. We have two systems, say system A and system B. System A and B, they interact with each other. That means energy in some form gets transferred from A to B, B to A in some way. There is an energy transaction and because of that system A executes a process and goes from state A 1 to A 2. System B executes a process and goes from B 1 to B 2. For simplicity lesson, let us assume that system A and B during our study interact only with each other and not with any other system. That complication we will do but for our basic study, we will consider such situations. This is the domain of thermodynamics. In fact, if we restrict the transactions of energy only to certain kinds like mechanical energy transfer, then this is the domain even of mechanics. But if physicists studying mechanics soon realize that apart from mechanical energy transaction, which in thermodynamics we will call work transfer, there is an energy transaction of the non-work kind, which we will later formalize as the heat transfer kind. Whenever there is a heat transfer involved, thermodynamics is on its home ground. The laws of thermodynamics relate changes in state of these systems to the various types of energy transactions and all the three laws have something to do with essentially this model of thermodynamics. So, here the energy transaction between two systems we will define as a thermodynamic interaction. A thermodynamic interaction is nothing but an energy transaction that means energy transfer, energy give and take between two systems. Here it is important although it is not very clear system A and B must be separated by a boundary. Usually this will be a common boundary between system A and B and all these interactions will take place across that boundary. So, our domain now be systems change of state means a process which is caused by some transaction and this state change will be related to the transaction, which is the interaction and the laws of thermodynamics which we are going to look at both the first law and the second law will relate change of state to a transaction. Since you have already studied thermodynamics, I am just giving you some form here. For example, the first law will give you something like delta E is q minus w. We have not yet defined any one of these terms properly, but just look at the form. On one side you have a change in property representing change in state, on the other side you have interaction or transactions. The second law also on one side you have a change in property, on the other side you have a function of interaction and the state of the system. It is the zeroth law which is different. Zeroth law has something to do with equilibrium with d q equals 0. It has something to do with transaction, but it has something to do with restricted transaction. So, this law is in a slightly different form, because we want no heat type of interaction. We have not defined any one of these terms. I am writing this here only to emphasize that the laws of thermodynamics relate change of state to transaction, except the zeroth law, which relates a property common to systems such that the heat interaction will be 0. Now, that brings us to the end of basic ideas and definitions.