to decide on that so that there wasn't the awkwardness of that person clearing down there and for everyone to discuss it within that context, but it was able to, and I think it's up to the board and how they want to handle that with that person. I mean, I self-acknowledged the conflict and then spoke to my feelings on the subject matter and then left, and it's that they were able to do with it by the way they wanted to. I don't think you can mandate that because it opened me up, so. The way we specifically addressed it is that the governing board member who has recused him or herself for her self from a matter under consideration shall not participate in board discussion. It shall not participate in any board discussion, vote or other official action on that matter, so no discussion, no vote, you are off, if you were off the table, it goes on to say that upon recusal of the governing board member who is a member, municipalities designated representative, the members, the municipalities alternate shall serve in the absence of the designated representative, so then your alternate steps up to the table and have a conflict of interest in the case yourself. You just reminded me of something I forgot that the prior document still needs to address how if executive sessions handle, how alternates are handled in executive sessions because actions, yeah. Let me just go back to that. Only the members, only the serving members of the board can vote to go into executive session. They can invite into executive session any persons that they want to invite in, so they potentially could invite in alternates to participate in the discussion. So I don't think that we need to address it in our rules of pursuers. Yeah, and that's pretty clear in the statute. I mean, so, it is, yeah, it is and it isn't because of the role of alternates on this board. Oh, with the alternates, that's not clear, but in terms of that the board can bring other people in. Like in Berlin, we often bring our time administrator in. Yeah, the reason I brought it up is that subsequent action at the next meeting on the same topic might have an alternate uninformed by what was done in executive session, the meeting before. Sure, I think that's a risk that we have to be aware of. Anything on this document that's of concern or needs to be changed? Okay, I'm hearing anything else. Do you have a clean? I have a clean policy. Perfect. Would anybody like to move to adopt the topic of interest policy? Yeah, I'll move to adopt the policy in conference. Just a second. Let's do work. Okay, any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Abstentions? Motion passes unanimous. I've got the copy here. I've got the way I did with signature line for each town. If you find that you are supposed to be signing and you don't see a municipal name to sign over, just write it in, okay? So we'll pass it around the table and then back up, we can deposit that with you. Do you have a scanner? I do. Put that, make that a little? Yep. Awesome. Okay, while that is going around, I've put an item on here, so we have only 10 minutes left. So I wanted to, so future presentations and connections, if there was anybody else that you think we need to bring back and have a conversation with, hopefully we will get UC Fiber to join us at some point although we might have to call a special meeting to do that. Was there anybody else that folks were interested in bringing here to chat? I'd like to see the mapping get started early and so I remember someone said was the calisthenic. I've always started mapping. So could you do some early presentation about some of that? Yeah, pretty close to, pretty decent subject. And I don't have one data and how many I type I was in there. That's not as well as what existing data is out there. And then after that presentation, my thought is getting some motion from the board that I can solicit the other data that's not available from those organizations because I think it would be better to be coming from a board position rather than a personal position. Yeah, Velco and Fairpoint will have a harder time refusing to give up their Fiber maps if the district wants it. So anyway, it's part of that presentation and we'll have a recommendation on that. Do you want a slice of time to the next meeting? 15 minutes. 15 minutes. It may take less, but we're going to have dialogue too. I'd like to recommend or ask the board's permission to invite a guy from Boston who's a national expert on these topics. Can you be more specific about these topics? Well, Greg Whelan, his articles are in a lot of the trade press and he can help us understand, I think we early on are going to need to comb through the issue of open access and what it means and whether we do passive fiber or active fiber to every building in some architectural issues. So I personally think if we can keep the discussion reasonably narrow, like if he's coming up to talk about the difference between open access fiber versus subscriber based or us actually providing fiber to the premises or something like that, I think that makes sense. But having a larger scale discussion, I'm not so sure that that's going to be helpful. I mean, that's obviously. I'm not, you know. Oh, OK, I thought you had your hands up. I did, but yeah, OK. I'm not understanding what's larger scale narrow the scope because we could easily have a three hour presentation that could take up an entire meeting. I'm not sure that's useful. I'm not going to pay offer to pay him. So I don't think he's going to offer a three hour presentation. So does he have a presentation that's already been recorded and is available on YouTube that we can go and review and have some specific questions and have him present something specific? I mean, I've got some of his articles. I can I'm happy. Yeah, and then the question is whether to invite him up for a 20 minute presentation. But I guess what I'm getting at is, yes, I think you generally want as many pieces of data as we can get. But 20 minute presentation on what? So if we can read what he's an expert about and get a sense of what's going to make the most sense that we can focus him and say, we need more information and Greg, you have the best perspective on this. Let's read some of his articles, get a sense of that, and maybe at the next meeting we can decide, let's invite Greg to present us on this. So don't invite him for the next meeting. Let y'all decide this couple of us. So that we can understand better what he's bringing to the table. Yeah, that's fine. OK. I was going to suggest Matt to talk about. Well, he did a lot of the Google Firework deployment. And I really appreciate this section being more of a lot of this being governance and less technical. Technical piece doesn't really matter that much. Sorry, guys. And so I think he could really give us some insights into some of the municipal conditions that make for ideal deployment. And I know that he's now the director of the Center for Rural Innovation, really focused on finance of this stuff, I think. So he could definitely address two of those topics. So if you want to reach out to him and ask him to sort of choose. Narrow, yep. Just to narrow down what it is that he'd be presenting or a handful of topics. And we can bring him on board. I think that would probably make sense too. What was the name again? Matt Dunn, D-U-N-N-E. Anybody else? We should be talking to. Rich people. Will Tim Nolte still evolve with ValiNet? I don't know. I mean, somebody from Burlington Telecom has a lot of information about the struggles of serving an area that dense and expansion issues and stuff. I think they would have a lot to offer. I do have a couple of contacts that I'd like to reach out to them too and get a sense of, even if they just gave a 15-minute history lesson, like I did at the BBC five-hour presentation, I think that would be helpful. Also, the fact that they and VTEL have the two best video packages. So this discussion of whether we do or don't provide, aspire to provide video as part of the triple play, I think is key. Correct. I think that makes sense. I will reach out to Burlington Telecom and see if there's room to do that. OK, so I put some items on what I call the back burner pending. Sometimes I think it's a good idea to have these list of to-do items that we haven't gotten to yet. So I will be extending this back burner with some of these things that we've talked about here. I just want to go and list these. We're still waiting on Burytown's appointment. I mentioned this four-orange town is considering it. More town is considering it. We can get Irv and Carol to come from EC-Fiber, but we will have to schedule it on a different day of the month. We're still going to wait on the Business Development Committee report back, which I will circle around to that in just a second. I was contacted by somebody who's involved in Internet 2, which is a high speed network that has a long history. I won't get into it here. They're wondering if we want to be a part of them. Unfortunately, I think their existing connection stops in Chittenden County, which makes it a bit challenging and dubious whether we would want to move forward with that. But if any of you want to look into what Internet 2 is, I would say just do that on your own. I'm happy to send you materials if you're so inclined. I don't see this as something that we can do short term. I think maybe long term there's some value there. What is it, General? It's been around for a while, and it was one of the first truly high speed networks out there. Early deployments of IPv6, they were involved in some research networks around some universities. I remember in Madison, Wisconsin, there was one of the initial deployments there when I was there, and it was quite a long time ago. But yeah, I'm not sure, but it's quite as relevant nowadays. That's my personal opinion about it. I just have a casual question. For the policy, since we don't have somebody from Berrytown yet, should we write in that there's no one appointed, or do we just leave it like? OK. And then the rural broadband access loan loan guarantee, that's something that's available from USDA. We're not going to be able to go after that until December, probably. But I want to let you all know that it's there. We will probably come back to that and look at that again. I think that requires you buying a better-than-I-do-50% match. I'm thinking of a different program. There's a state program that requires a 50% match. This is something different. That's a clickable link in the PDF. I think you have different points for what percentage match you do, so that it's competitive grants. So you submit your application. Someone else has a higher proportion of grant of match, and they may win it over you. I see. OK. When we get around to that, I know folks at USDA are probably borrowing Doyle if he's the best person, but I can verify that. OK. Let's just build money, not planning money. Yes. That's both in there. The planning money is suddenly easier to achieve from the state as I understand it. And I have a question. The prohibition in statute on building, does that also prohibit for six months leasing? Like if we wanted to get something lit up over leased facilities? Financial transactions. So if you can get somebody to do it for you for free, and then hand the keys off to you, then we can talk about it. But really, we can't take on anything that's going to have any sort of financial exposure, positive or negative. OK. Homestretch, we're technically at nine. Is it OK if we go another minute or two? Sure. Jim? I had given some thought about that notion of the six month window here. You know, I think I don't know that we should necessarily look at it as a complete prohibition against substantive actions on our part. It's really going to be a limitation on those who want to give us money. They're going to say, well, as long as this six month window is open, we're not going to do this, because you could all just disappear tomorrow. But if someone were to accept that risk in donating us funds or making funds available to us, I mean, that's the risk that they're willing to take. So I don't know that we should necessarily view it as a complete prohibition to undertaking any sort of financially related transaction for the next six months. Just some maybe willing to give us some seed money or a grant, even though this is a six month window. We'll give it, yeah, yeah. Because it takes time to get money. Yeah. We do need to be incorporated to do something like that, right? We exist. We exist. We are a thing.  So we don't have any tax ID numbers yet. But you can get one of those tonight right now. It's not hard. OK. So yeah. I wonder if in our parking lot or back burner, we should include net neutrality. We are going to have to state our position eventually on that, if for no other reason than just marketing. But we might start thinking about it now. So as a net neutrality policy? Well, yeah. What does it mean to you? OK. What are we offering? OK. Does that seem like something? I mean, this is still germane to the discussion. Does that seem like that policy is something that should go to the policy of bylaws? Maybe someday. OK. But I think we should talk about it generally, because I think this is also going to get into the marketing area. I think that's going to be one of our strongest suits, frankly, especially because we have a state around us. So task, net neutrality policy, or a statement of principles to the policy and bylaws committee with sort of open-ended deadline. Well, why don't we have somebody come and talk to us about net neutrality, if you've been involved in the issue? Who do you know? I don't know. I haven't dabbled in that issue for a while. I don't know who's calling. I don't recommend Lauren Glamdividian. Oh, Lauren? Who's going to reach out to Lauren? I don't know if I'm already next. OK. Can I propose some add-ons to your back 40 list? The relationship to the 10-year plan, because in effect, what we're going to be doing is writing the central Vermont piece of the 10-year plan, telecommunications plan. That's the statute under the BVSA 202C and D. I'd ask you all to look at that. Jeremy quoted from a piece of 202C that I have. And then our relationship or possible interface or facilitation of public safety priorities, like cell coverage in Woodbury or microcells. So yeah, I think that is also going to piggyback a bit on that demand aggregation piece, looking at where we're going to build. But I think, yeah, that strategic vision, that's got to come into that discussion next meeting, next month. The public safety, there's a big public safety initiative moving, and whether we provide some guidance or support for that between capital, fire mutual aid, and central Vermont public safety agency. That's the meeting I came from to get here. So I will put public safety priorities on the list of the back burner items that we still need to chew on. I thought it was going to get addressed in our committee, bulk up our committee so that we can meet. Yeah, as soon as we talk about what the committees are going to be doing and the additional stuff, yeah, I think we should add at least two more people to each committee. Otherwise, I mean, the three person committee just doesn't make sense. Is there anything else that needs to go to committee or that we need to discuss that we need to bring up sooner than later? Hopefully, a lot more stuff will come out of our larger policy discussion at our next meeting, our vision discussion, I should say. Once we know what our vision is, then that can give us some good marching orders to continue from there. OK. We've got minutes from the May 8th meeting. I'd like to, anybody would like to approve those? Can I suggest that until we decide on them? I'm just going to move to a document so we can at least discuss it, OK? Sure, OK. I'll move we in document minutes of the last meeting. OK. Second by. I think the fact that we're doing them on the letterhead, which is lovely and all and I appreciate your initiative, but it seems to have a decision on a name and a decision on a purpose and stuff that we haven't arrived at yet. And so I would just ask that we put our minutes on paper instead of letterhead until such a time. OK. So I mean, it's on the Facebook page also with that logo and with that name. So can we? What's our name for now? What's the name? It's actually from my internet. Well, that's what we file, isn't it? So the concern is that we're putting it on this letterhead looking document that I put together where that might not be totally appropriate. Does anybody else share this concern? Well, how can you have minutes without saying who met? I don't forget this. You're just saying without a logo? No, we can take the logo up. We can take the logo up. Just say, set the room on internet in meeting June 12. It's a placeholder logo. It's not bad. And we'll evolve them. We'll change it. So I don't really care. OK, how would you submit to this? They use the word draft strongly to suggest that nothing on there is permanent. There's really big letters that go across the page. You show them, too. They were hard. They were hard to see. I move that we put the draft watermark on the logo so that it's always clear. I can't move with this. Yeah, but motion on the floor is important. But that motion is germane. Is there a second? No. Or are you? I would draw. OK. Easy. Easy. We put a draft horse for logo. I could. Is that a motion? It's not. OK, great. Any further discussion about this? The contents of this look OK? I had a little trouble figuring out, recalling what the purpose of our committee was supposed to do from the minute I. It says, motion by people to establish the Bylaws and Policy Committee with the following charges. Yeah, no, I'm talking about the other committee. Establish the Business Development Committee to talk about the Namer DBA, the research finance and org structures, establishing talking points. Yeah, as I recall, there was something about market development sectors or something. That was not. I have my original notes from that. That was not among the things that we. And you can feel free to go back to the tape or the video. That was not something that I remember seeing there. OK, any further discussion about the minutes as presented? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed? Abstaining? One abstention. Not here, so unanimous. OK, roundtable. We all had, like, URAS statements last time round. If there's anything else that you want to add in parting, I'll start with you, Mr. Breenbaum, and swing back around, otherwise you can just take half. Thank you, everyone. Phil? I'm tired. Just real quick, I'm very used to working with decision points. And we were talking about, for instance, with the vision and the thing, so I tended to get a little uncomfortable when we start talking about doing something without coming up with some idea of what we want to bring it to a close. That's just roundtable stuff. Pass, pass. Well, anything to say for the roundtable? I'm tired. No, it's just hanging season. Guess where I've been doing all night. I believe it. I got tractor back to prove it. I'd like to say thank you to our board of work. I mean, when we do an agenda, I like to know what items are action items, so in terms of describing the agenda, that should be on there. Minutes are written, we know that this item has an action. So vote likely or something like that, or action item. And does that satisfy your interest? Is that different? No, no, it's different. It's more of saying we're going to come to a conclusion. OK, so deadlines, establishing deadlines. So then you want actions also, whether they were on the agenda or not, know that in the next. Sure. See you next month. Great. He sent Jeremy an email that he can decide whether or not he wants to disseminate, that should inspire us all. It's about an English farmer in the countryside of Lancashire. We've got tired of British telecom. She bought a kilometer of fiber and installed it with her neighbors, with her tractor. B4RN, is that that initiative? Yes. Broaden for the Royal North. That was one of the initiatives that actually inspired me to seek this out. I read it and I dreamed of digging a trench down in this town. And what I thought, and I actually told this to, I did a podcast interview, I actually said, and that's the sort of thing that could work in Vermont. Something just getting a trencher, just running it back. So why is it on a tractor? We knew that all along. We do. Did everybody saw you in a tractor bag? Well, we can't buy the trencher for such a long time. It's a long car ride, right? Give me a long. Got a man in. Oh, it's true. Why get a motion to adjourn? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. OK. I'll stand a second. What? All in favor? All right. Great.


Avoiding gluten is a must for people with celiac disease, but a gluten-free diet can have negative impacts. Watch the video to find out why. Over the last decade or so, there's been a growing interest in the medical literature on plant-based eating, beyond just exclusionary terms like vegetarian or vegan. Previous such studies were somewhat limited because they just split people up into either vegetarian or non-vegetarian, excluding some or all animal foods, but without taking into account the quality of plant foods. Vegans could be liven up that, French fries, Oreos, and Coca-Cola. Enter changes in plant-based diet quality in total and cause-specific mortality. The first study to investigate the associations between changes in plant-based diet quality and subsequent risk of death. If you look at overall plant-based diet scores, the more you increase your intake of any plant foods and decrease your intake of any animal foods, the lower your risk of death appears to fall. But that's because people were adding healthy plant foods, like fruits and vegetables. If you just look at people who ate more processed sugary junk over time, their mortality risk goes up. The clinical implications being the increasing intake of healthy plant foods and decreasing intake of not just animal foods, but also animal crackers could lower the future risk of premature death, whereas just reducing the intake of carbs in general, cutting down not just refined carbs and sugars, but healthy, high-carb foods like fruits and whole grains, is associated with increased overall mortality, which could correspond to years of your life being cut short, as well as the risk of dying specifically from heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Why are whole plant foods so good for us? Much of the benefit may be mediated by our microbiome. There are all sorts of things threatening our good gut bugs, like the over-prescription of antibiotics. However, the only factor that has been empirically shown to be important is a diet low in microbiome-accessible carbohydrates. In other words, prebiotics like fiber and resistant starch only found one place in abundance, whole plant foods. We went from high-mac diets to big-mac diets and maybe suffering the consequences. The lack of dietary fiber, which is the main source of max in the diet, is negligibly low compared to how we evolved. Such a low-fiber diet provides insufficient food for our gut microbes, starving ourselves of all the wonderful things they produce for us. A low-fiber diet is a key driver of microbiome depletion, and this loss is implicated in the rampant increase of chronic diseases that now plague the modern world. We evolved, getting perhaps 100 grams of fiber a day. Our gut bugs must have been in heaven. How do you even get close to that? A cup of fruit may only have about 3 grams. A cup of vegetables, 5 grams. Why so little? Because fruits and vegetables are like 80 to 90% water. One has to go to the drier plant foods to really scale it up, like beans, at 15 grams, or intact grains like barley, over 30 grams per cup. But many people are avoiding common grains these days, like wheat, barley, and rye, due to gluten. But there is a dark side of gluten-free diets. Now if you have a condition like celiac disease, well then you absolutely have to avoid gluten. But if not, the downsides include the potential for nutritional deficiencies, like not getting enough fiber, and toxic compounds, for example, the accumulation of heavy metals in people on gluten-free diets. Those following a gluten-free diet had significantly increased blood-mercury levels, more arsenic flowing through their systems. The arsenic is likely due to increased rice consumption, because rice is a major ingredient in gluten-free foods. But you can certainly choose other grains, like sorghum, that's my favorite rice substitute. And the higher mercury may just be because people eating gluten-free diets were tending to eat more fish, for some reason. But the reason that 10 out of 10 of those without celiac disease or recognized gluten sensitivity following a gluten-free diet experienced a pro-inflammatory gastrointestinal environment is likely due to starving your microbial self, not getting enough prebiotics, not getting enough fiber, because you're avoiding grains like wheat. So whatever diet you choose, for whatever reason, make sure you're getting enough fiber.


Police have confirmed they have received a third party report relating to allegation of sexual offences by a man following recent claims against actor Noel Clark. The MET police said they had received a report on the 21st of April and officers were assessing the information but there was currently no investigation. It comes after 20 women accused Clark of sexual harassment and bullying. He has vehemently denied any sexual misconduct or criminal wrongdoing. Now the BBC does not know who made the report to the police. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.