Broadband Authority Meeting   5/27/2020

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Thank you.

So I've got a little something to read to you because of the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and limitations on group gathering imposed by the governor's executive orders.

This meeting is being held by electronic communication means on the Zoom platform.

It is authorized by the county's April 15th continuity of government ordinance.

This authority's resolution of April 22nd and the Virginia statute signed into law on April 24th permitting this authority to meet electronically to discuss and transact business necessary to continue its operations.

With that explanation, I will do a roll call of the board members attending to identify themselves and their current location in general terms.

And I'll start with Mr. Bill Fritz.

I'm here at my home.

Donna Price, in case you've joined somehow, I didn't see.

And myself, Bucky Walsh, I'm at my home in Earlysville.

We've got some other folks attending the call who are

important to this committee too.

Hello, I'm Mike Culp.

Richard DeLoria.

And Rick Randolph.

Thank you very much.

Well, I believe we have established a quorum, so I'll call this meeting to order.

The first thing we've got is approval of the agenda.

I trust everyone's had a chance to review the agenda.

Are there any desires to change it, or does it seem acceptable?

Seeing no desires, I'll move to approve the agenda.

All those in favor?

Sorry, I can't hear you.

You can't hear me.

I think that's fair.

OK.

I mean, we can see everyone.

And if there is going to be an objection, we might have to go back and take note of that.

Indeed, we will.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing and hearing none, the agenda is approved.

First item on the agenda is the approval of the April 22nd, 2020 minutes.

There were two minor changes.

Waldo and Bucky had the same comment and one minor change of could to should.

Fantastic.

I'll move to approve the minutes then.

Any opposed?

Hearing and seeing none, we'll take the minutes as approved.

That brings us to the public comment portion of our meeting.

No one has raised their hand either.

And no one has

Okay.

Oh, here we go.

Okay.

We appreciate it.

Delighted to have you.

That'll move us on to old business.

We've got the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative Body 2019 update.

our big project with SEVAC.

Mike, you had sent around some material and email having to do with that project.

Yes, Chair, I'd like to share with the ABBA board the midway substation portion of the fiber build is passing by

670 homes and businesses served by Midway and Albemarle County and then nearly complete.

There's a few more in-premise, on-premise type routers that they have to put into individual homes.

The main reason I'm bringing up this map and hopefully it's showing on people's screen is, you know, there's a

a major effort that went on here pre-COVID that if this work would not have been done, we would not have as many people able to do normal activities, what is currently critical activities for work from home and paying attention to schooling, those types of things, being able to go through telehealth type activities because the doctor's offices have been closed, et cetera.

We're very thankful for the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative, the Department of Housing and Community Development from the Commonwealth of Virginia for allowing this to happen.

And of course, the Board of Supervisors through funding has made this project a success and we're working on the final closeout.

So great stuff going there.

And that's the most current benefit.

Yes, sir.

Great.

Anything else on A?

CVAC, that is.

Mike?

No, sir.

Okay, this one's more complex, so bear with me, hopefully you still see my screen.

We have eight projects that have been initiated by CenturyLink and there are fiber projects, so fiber to the home type projects, and those eight projects which you see on the screen here starting at the top, and I've got better images of each of these areas, so starting at the top, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,

All of these projects are installing fiber by 838 locations over the next year, preferably done before March of 2021, but we will know as final engineering comes in what the calendars are.

So those projects, I'm gonna go through these quickly.

Up in the north, it's Buffalo River Road near Frays Grant.

You can see that's happening.

The next is Watts Passage.

This is a really close project to 29 North.

Next is Cole's Rolling Road, which we're moving down into the southern section of the county.

And you can tell the density is less, but it's definitely something that's coming along.

Scottsville Road, moving up toward the middle section of the county.

Then we've got the ones that we've heard a lot about, Hatton Ferry.

Next is Scottsville Road to Keene.

So this whole triangle in here is going to be activated.

and then Howardsville, which is the next biggest.

I've saved the best for last.

Howardsville has a number of citizens who've been very active in trying to make this happen.

So we're thankful for their work and making sure that we had a great application put in with CenturyLink.

And then the final one and the big one, which we've submitted three times.

This is the third time that we've submitted Green Creek Road for our VADI funding, Virginia Telecommunication Initiative funding

and finally received it.

So I'm hopeful that this one is going to move along quickly and help all of these citizens along this particular area of the county.

I do, Mike.

I'll offer this if it's relevant to later slides, but I was hoping to dive into their uses

Are they new as a while?

Well, you keep fading in and out.

But I'll try maybe I'm so let me switch bikes neck.

Maybe we could do maybe you could put it in.

Great.

OK, I keep three mics in case something goes wrong with any one of them.

Sorry, so I'll repeat that then.

I'm really interested in them making all of these fiber.

To the best of my knowledge, they haven't built out any fiber projects through VADI funding or in collaboration with us until now.

And what I'm wondering is, does this indicate any sort of a new trend?

Can we expect that for future build-outs?

Is this a coincidence of the locations?

Is this a one-off?

From the CenturyLink perspective, I have heard and will continue to support this.

There's interest in applying for VATI 2021, and the interest is purely on a fiber to the premise.

To answer your question based on my knowledge of what CenturyLink has provided to me is that going forward, DSL will be a thing of the past is probably a good way to say it.

That's delightful.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So 2021 looks like body fiber projects.

So if they partner with us.

Great question.

OK. Can we take them during the meeting as public comment?

Richie, I guess I'm posing that as a question to you.

OK. My view is the chair has leeway to allow that.

Okay.

All right.

Q&A.

So let's take the first one, 512 from Hunter.

Okay, three questions.

So there is existing fiber up the 29 corridor.

Is it being least used available in the neighborhoods such as Woodbrook or Rio, et cetera?

I'll answer that question the best way that I can.

There's multiple service providers with fiber running up the 29 corridor, including CenturyLink, Lumos, and a company called FiberLite.

There's also fiber running up the 29 corridor that's private, run by the Albemarle County Public School System.

So at least four providers have active fiber running up the 29 corridor.

So is it being least used available to neighborhoods such as Woodbrook, Rio?

As far as I know, if a request is made, especially from a business,

If you make a request to any of those three companies for a fiber connection, they will work with you and provide it.

But I hope that answers your question.

I think I did.

But the answer is we're not aware of any neighborhoods that are getting access to this by leasing it.

That's correct.

Yeah, there is a residential fiber is few and far between the times that it's been done residentially has been a private transaction between the company and the individual.

Yes, thank you for getting us back on.

We will do.

Okay, thank you so much for keeping us on schedule.

So the questions that we have, and I'll move through these quickly, and I think Liz's question is very important.

Will all projects start and finish at the same time?

No, each of them will have a different start and finish date.

Right now, the only thing that we know from CenturyLink through their engineering department is that they're committed to finishing all the projects by mid-March of 2021.

So what we can expect is that as we get through the summer, we're gonna have more detail on scheduling and those types of projects.

input that can be provided.

The intent for the FAQ is to, the frequently asked question, does to be an active web page that the citizens who are involved will be able to come and view these as they're updated.

I hope that answers your question.

Because what they said on those questions and answers when I, when I, um, um,

when I went through that is that they would have information on their website.

And I wasn't finding much, but it just says, you know, you can go there.

I mean, unfortunately, I have to agree with you that that information is not helpful at all.

The information that they have on their website, the only benefit to that is once the

The project has been activated, so it's really a no-purpose use.

All the website is doing for us is when a service is provided or available in a specific area.

A customer, a current customer or a new customer of CenturyLink can go to their website and type in their address and then the new service will one day show up.

It's been very frustrating for me, frankly, that every time that I ask them to give me an update on a specific address, especially for the ones that were done during the winter of this year,

My only answer consistently was tell them to go to the website and that's when they'll know that their service is available to them.

So I wish I had better control over getting more clarity on when projects will be activated, but

as I can, I'm doing the best I can, Liz.

Well, that's fine.

I just was wondering if there's something I missed on the website.

And my other question is the 650 feet of fiber on that last one that measured from the side of your house to the closest fiber terminal.

Originally, we were told that anything pretty close to the road

would be connected without additional charge.

Does that mean that there's a terminal in front of everybody's house?

Right, and that you're hitting the nail on the head as far as the most concerning question as we get more into engineering, where will those fiber terminals be?

The answer is coming.

I assume so.

I mean, I was kind of joking there, but- Yeah, I wish it were.

I definitely- But I wasn't sure on the terminology.

We were always calling this a DSLAM before, and I wasn't sure it was the same thing as a terminal, quite frankly, and I didn't look that up.

Right.

No, there will be fewer connections than in a DSLAM, so the fiber terminals that will be installed will serve more than one premise.

So the question becomes, how many will be in each one?

Where are their locations and how close are each of the homes to each of the terminals?

And as CenturyLink gets more to the final design and starts placing on a map where the fiber terminals will be, we can communicate with the citizens and let them know what their potential costs may be.

So it's,

You know, it's just a timing thing.

One of the big differences here, just to clarify some of the concerns, is that this being as a fiber project that's not associated with a power line project, meaning, you know, one of the reasons SEVEC is going home to home is because they're building fiber all the way to the power portion of the home as well.

So in this particular case, you know, CenturyLink will still be able to provide

Copper or DSL services.

That's right.

Yeah, thank you for that.

I was just getting some questions from citizens because originally we were told, well, if you're really close to the road, you would have additional costs.

And then I saw this.

And I'm just wondering if what, you know, not that I'm trying to get myself in between or explain to people, but

Hey, Mike.

Yes, sir.

So, Supervisor Price is on the attending.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Okay, thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

Let me move to this thing again.

and I will promote her to panelists.

Thank you for that, Richie.

You're welcome.

This is Bucky.

Let me add you to our quorum.

Thank you very much.

So, yeah, closing it out, the frequently asked questions, or trying to at least, more questions are, obviously we can talk more about this, but we've gone back and forth with CenturyLink at least three different times to get to this point.

I disagree with you, Mike.

I did not walk away from the presentation with that same sense.

Okay.

We knew there were going to be people who weren't going to be close enough.

We didn't know who they were.

We were told that the engineering would try to work so that people weren't disenfranchised who could easily have been included.

Right.

And we even discussed, you know, should we should we foot the bill for those folks?

Yes, we did.

Well, then I apologize.

What I heard was if you were far back from the road, we would not, you know, it would not be for free.

From the terminal, yeah, there's a possibility.

Well, and in many ways that's similar to the electric company, Dominion will do up to 400 feet and then after that you have a difference.

I think one of the distinctions though is that Dominion does it from their existing power line, not necessarily from a fiber terminal.

Correct.

So that's important.

I think going back to the,

you know, keeping the pressure on or at least working closely with CenturyLink so that we have a better idea of the schedule as well as the lengths, you know, if there's a significant amount of length for an individual homeowner, the sooner that person can realize the additional cost, the more they have time to save for it.

So that's the idea that I've been pushing forward with the CenturyLink folks is can we work together and figure out

You know, where are the ones that we know today are going to incur additional cost?

And can we let them know so that they can start saving?

I guess is the right word, but I'm back to the chair's comment.

You know, the more that we try to, and particularly me, try to insert myself between the customers and CenturyLink, the more difficult it becomes.

for the reason that Liz puts out.

There's information that was shared with people that might not jive with what CenturyLink is telling us today.

Mike, does CenturyLink

That's a great question and I'm trying to get a definitive answer.

They haven't given that to me yet.

I think they're going to quote them on a case by case basis depending on whether they have to go aerial or underground and what type of situation they run into.

If they have to bore through rock or something like that, it may be more expensive.

We're just very hopeful that most of these costs will be low, I guess is the great word.

If I recall the discussion correctly, and I don't know if this is what they're currently planning or not, but our discussion when they were pitching this last year was that if you were beyond the distance,

then you had to pick up the full freight of the distance of connection not just this you know let's say you're 800 feet away it's not 650 take away out of 800 so you've got 150 feet left to pay for you had to pay for 800 feet of a connection and that caused some muttering in the room at the time but it was still so much better than what we had available and in the other alternative we decided to accept that

Yeah, I think that that may have changed over the last couple of weeks.

OK, Mike, let's move it along.

So the next big thing that I'm asking the ABBA board to decide on is feedback on this.

the frequently asked questions and approval for me to work with the communication and public engagement department and build a web page that provides this type of information so that anyone who's interested can come and view this with, you know, definitely the ongoing approval of CenturyLink to make sure that we're both on the same page with this but

So that's the offer.

That's what I'm trying to work through.

Hopefully there's approval to move forward, give everybody some time to look through these again, and if there are any other questions or answers, then that would be great.

The only thing that I would mention is that there's a second half of this because Liz and I and others have been getting a lot of questions about voice.

Voice has been specifically or particularly in the southern area and

I want to confirm this that voice has been somewhat of a challenge in that area and the good news is that it will be improved.

There's traditional voice services that will be provided over the same fiber technology so we're going to be eliminating the old copper or CenturyLink will be eliminating the old copper.

and bringing in advanced fiber so that people will be able to access the typical voice services at central office.

So there's a clarifying case here.

You don't have to buy into a voiceover IP provider.

You'll still be able to use the CenturyLink service as if you were a phone customer today.

It's just the bits and bytes are going across fiber instead of copper.

So then the question came up, well that's really good news, but what happens when there's a power outage, which is another frequent occurrence in the southern area of the county.

So CenturyLink has given us advice on how people could set up an alternate power source, and that's in the frequently asked questions.

And then the big one down here, can I keep my landline and use fiber for internet only?

And that's true, that's something that people will do.

but it's something that we see as sort of, or CenturyLink sees as an outlier.

And if you wanna keep your DSL and landline service, yeah, nothing will change there.

The unfortunate thing, and I got verification of this this week, is that the DSL service, the only benefit to that will be there'll be likely less customers on the D-SLAM.

potentially less problems with that type of access through the old copper infrastructure.

In other words, the D-SLAMs that are out there will remain, but they won't be fiber fed, which is what I was asking from an engineering perspective.

Is it possible that the existing D-SLAMs copper fed would become fiber fed equipment?

And the answer to that is unfortunately no.

That's where we stand with the main questions and answers.

And Mike, I just want to say, you get asked so many questions constantly.

Like, we just see what comes in over email to broadband ads.

Like, we don't even see everything you get.

Anything you can do that will reduce that traffic, and more important, allow people to get the answer quickly without having to, because a fair number of people are just stopping before they're contacting you when they're just frustrated.

So if we can put this out there and have people get answers quickly, and you can add new questions and modify answers as reality changes, there's just nothing not to like about that.

And I'm glad you're doing this.

I would agree with that, but I also would like to know on the battery backup, is that what type of batteries and are we able at this point to say what kind of battery backup is required?

Because I do know that there's a lot of people in the rural areas that are going to be hesitant.

Their phones are working great, especially when it rains, but they at least

You know, they're not very comfortable giving it up, given that their electricity goes out so often.

So I'm just curious if we have that information.

It's been a while since I've gone.

I'd like to be able to answer that question now, but I haven't

visited their link that indicates what they would recommend.

If it's an easy thing to answer, I think it's a good thing to put on there or a link to what they're saying to do.

Just so people know, because when I read that, even though my phone here has not worked for a week, I have to do something about that.

Our phone goes, we have terrible phone service, but I know personally, I would never cut it off while my mother was alive.

My father was alive because that's the number they've been calling for years and that's what they're used to.

I think a lot of people have family members that really depend upon that landline because they don't necessarily have cell phone service where they are and they're, you know, they're very dependent upon that.

especially older people that are used to the number and that's what they know how to do.

The phone number wouldn't change in this scenario.

You could keep your phone number because those are portable now.

My understanding is the only battery backup that you'd need would be, I mean, I think you get as little as 30 bucks with power for quite a while.

One of the little backups like you might keep under your desk to power a computer.

There are much smaller ones that can power routers.

I have a couple of them scattered around my house.

Just because regular, it was known as the POTS network, plain old telephone system.

The POTS telephone includes electricity.

Mike, you said something a few minutes ago.

I'm sorry, could you just say it again?

I was taking notes and I got distracted and didn't follow as I was writing down something else you'd written.

It was about CenturyLink not upgrading

copper to fiber in some places for DSL.

Would you mind just restating that?

I don't think you explained it badly.

Yeah, my current understanding of the plans for the existing D slams that are in all eight of the project areas is none of them will be upgraded to fiber fed equipment.

So the copper equipment will stay as new fiber huts are put in.

So additional equipment will be put in

Yes, I think you're right, Bucky.

I was actually going to ask that question.

Should we not anticipate that?

Mike, one of the things I was going to say is that I think other people have commented and you know, like they're saying right now, the DSL is going to stay and the copper is going to stay, but it might go away.

But to make this is a dynamic document and all this information is based on CenturyLink.

It's not ABBA statement.

Oh, okay.

Actually, that's why I like the fact that you have a link to the CenturyLink battery backup units thing because it used to be they only sold an eight-hour battery backup.

Yeah, Mike, it's Trevor.

When you're working with CAPE on this, we clearly want to articulate that we're communicating CenturyLink information, and as much as we can reference to their site of origin, we want to do that.

So on the battery packs, I missed that, on the 8 versus the 24 hour.

So that's the longest battery pack or can you get a battery pack on your own that would last longer than that?

As someone had their electricity go out for five days, you know.

Yep, you bet.

We have a whole house generator that will just power a house for weeks and the same way you can get battery packs for your house or I've got a really big battery pack that can run my computers for hours and they could run something like, because these things sip power, these routers use very little power.

I don't think so, Richie.

I think we can just go back and forth with any comments and let's say by the middle of next week, by Wednesday.

I don't think there needs to be an approval for us to post this.

I think it's without, I mean, you are the chief administrative officer, and so I think that's within your realm of duties.

That would be my thought.

The board takes notice of your attempt to inform us of what you're doing and encourages you to move forward.

Thank you, Chair.

Yes, I want to talk a little bit about the 2021 guidelines.

We submitted a set of recommendations.

We'll be hearing more about those as the weeks progress.

The main thing will be

on June 9th, the How to Apply workshop and webinar, which will be the official posting of the guidelines.

That's when we'll first know what the approved guidelines are.

Some of the things that we put forward were regarding there's a 25% coverage that's provided to wireless projects.

There's concerns about the 25% and how that's

evaluated.

So if it's going over 25% of an active or an existing, meaning a project that's already in play and people are using DSL at 25 meg, how do you verify that you're actually hitting that 25% as a wireless

So it's a little complicated, but just to let you know, that's one of them.

Another one is the three-year guarantee.

So if there's a project that's currently underway, but it's not scheduled to end for three years, that can be a challenge.

So we questioned how are we going to verify that the person who challenges a project that's going to be done in 18 months

We'll actually complete theirs within three years.

So there was a suggestion that if someone challenges with an 18 month project because they have a three year project already on the slate, then that challenger should put together a plan that says they'll complete their project within 18 months.

So it's sort of setting a

a bar that says if someone says they can get to the moon in 18 months and you're planning a moonshot three years from now, you need to up your game in order to challenge someone like that.

So just a couple of things like that.

Bucky put in a lot of great and like clarification things.

Hopefully those show up in the guidelines.

Things like is fiber the only option, is coaxial out of, hybrid coax out, is DSL out, those types of things.

We'll see how it works.

The other thing I wanted to let everyone know is that

There was some confusion over whether the budget for VODI 2021 was dropped to 16 mil.

It was originally 35 mil.

The reality is that it is sitting today at 19.

So it's at 19 million, same as last year.

So a lot of competitive projects still coming across.

So we'll see a lot of competition.

40 some applications last year only 12 were offered funds so we're getting there hopefully things will work work to our favor again any questions about the body okay back to you chair i think that takes us on to the rfp status okay so same thing the slides here help help provide that on may 15th we released

The county on behalf of the broadband authority posted a request for proposals for broadband expansion, meaning we're looking to partner with ISPs for, in particular, there's 25 project areas that we've defined, and we're hopeful to receive responses by June 30th.

So far we've only had one question come back, which is a little concerning.

I think people are very busy and they're working through it, but essentially it's, we'll wait and see, I guess is the right word.

Yes, they did, yes.

So presumably it's a little less concerning because they already have it.

Good showing, Waldo, thanks for, yeah, there's a,

Yeah, they've had plenty of time to look at it.

There were some clarity changes made to the final RFP and just a remapping much clearer on how to look at each of the project areas and

and prepare bids for them.

So we're pretty excited.

I think it's a valuable exercise encouraging the providers to think about it as either a precursor or part of body.

So it makes sense.

It's not like they're duplicating work for proposals that come in for either one.

The other thing that it does clearly is it identifies, it helps us identify if we're gonna have projects being able to meet this deadline

which seems like it's a ways away, July 13th, seems like it's a ways away, but it'll come up pretty fast.

So we have a deadline to notify DHCD of our intent of application.

So one of the benefits and why we put the deadline for the RFPs out for June 30 is because that gives us plenty of time to identify which ones we want to at least put in for,

The interesting thing that you've got, and the reason that I put up this slide, is just the juxtaposition of our meetings.

They don't fit perfectly into making those decisions.

June 24th broadband authority meeting were moved to July 10th as an example.

I think that might be a weekend, but you see the point if we were closer to that deadline, we could all, the board could vote on if we have a number of applications that we want to make.

So I'm actually putting this out so that people understand there's a little bit of a juxtaposition as far as our meetings go.

I may be asking the board chair to call a special meeting in order to vote on or at least discuss which of the applications, let's assume we receive multiple partnership applications, that we'll vote on them sometime before the July 13th deadline.

I feel like I might have confused people with that.

Hopefully it made sense.

I think that's well worth its own meeting anyway and I'm glad it works out like that.

Is this the right time to introduce the notion of maybe having an informal working group who will review and make recommendations for that potential special meeting?

Review the RFPs that we receive and then make a recommendation to the broadband authority as a whole?

Informal, of course.

Not a subcommittee, just an informal working group.

I'd be happy to.

I'm all for it.

The other, I was hopeful to recruit someone from the school division as well to help us with this.

And they've offered assistance before.

So,

Let me pose the question.

Is there someone else out there who'd like to be involved in this?

I think that Waldo and somebody from the school could be more valuable than me personally.

So I'm fine with it.

And I think that's a very good idea to have some extra eyes on it.

and take a look at it.

I wouldn't want to do it by myself, A, because it's a bad idea to have one person review it, but B, because I don't have the experience with RFPs related to building up physical data infrastructure.

But the idea of partnering with somebody within the school system who has so much experience with this, I love.

Well, let's

Yeah, the one thing I'll suggest, Chair, is that the individuals that we're talking about helping me with the pre-proposal virtual conference, so I'll take that as an action item to make sure if they're interested to have them online for that as well.

Very good.

Yeah, I'm expecting everyone will have access to everything.

I wouldn't call this a down select because that's a very specific contracting thing to do.

But there can be something like a down selected initial pass to say, these are not these ones are not going to fly for basic technical or compliance reasons.

Here's the ones that are left viable.

Right.

Ultimately, I think from an expenditure basis, let's work this through, but it's probably a Board of Supervisors effort and we may need to work with the EDA.

So that's something that Richie and I need to further discuss how this is all very successful, we'll have to work through how the actual procurement proceeds.

Yeah, one step at a time.

So good stuff.

You bet.

Thank you, Trevor.

Yeah, knock down roadblocks before you run into them.

Right.

It does, unless there's any questions.

Great stuff.

So I don't have a question.

I just want to say something I've said before that bears repeating.

I love that we're doing this.

Mike, I love that you came to us with this idea.

I don't know what's going to happen.

None of us have any idea what the responses are going to look like.

We don't know.

But I just want to say, before those come in, let me get on the record saying, this was a great idea.

But it goes disastrously to be like, Waldo, you said it was a great idea.

OK.

Right now, this seems like a great idea.

I'm glad you're doing it.

I notice our new business doesn't include the idea of having routers in school buses, but we'll get to that.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

One more slide, you guys.

I know it's death by PowerPoint, but

So the CARES Act, there's a lot of activity around the CARES Act at the local as well as the federal level and what I'm providing was something that was put out to the public through Commonwealth Connect.

So you know I've had several conversations with Kyle Rosner about this and we're working toward a potential consortium or a group that's going to work through you know how can each locality take the same steps to

take all good caution about how we use this funding.

Albemarle County, it's still in the preliminary phases.

Trevor, do you have an update or am I putting you on the spot?

I should have asked you earlier about where the county is with identifying use of the CARES funds.

You definitely put me on the spot on that, Mike.

No worries.

Our incident management team structure as a finance and administration group that has been charged with working through the CARES Act funding requirements eligibility.

We're actually bringing some support in to help with that assessment because there is some complexity to it.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so, so from the state level, you know, there's everything from

you know working on the public telemedicine capabilities meaning you know the fact that we have an elderly population in the rural areas that

in some cases are on fixed income, it would be very beneficial.

I think Liz and I were working with a similar case this week that shows if folks were able to participate in this type of telehealth, we'd be in a much better safe place.

Our community would be much better for it.

So that's one thing that's coming out.

The next is the distance learning.

Obviously that's a big charge for the school division, dropping their 5% as quickly as they can prior to school starting up in August.

But it's also we're hearing a lot about multiple

people accessing the internet at the same time in the rural areas.

That includes college students trying to finish off their work for the year and then going into summer session and then concerned about how is it going to turn out in the fall when I've got two of my college kids as well as a high schooler all trying to do work at the same time.

So those types of things are definitely on people's mind.

And then the most important perhaps is the ability to put people back to work.

This is one of the clear ways that we've seen the equity charge here is taking a clear shot at us, meaning our rural areas without having broadband capability for work from home capabilities.

is that we're putting certain fundamental people at risk.

So it's certainly something we would like to work on as we get closer to understanding how the CARES Act will be put forward.

Any questions about that?

I just have a comment.

And I think that there's going to be

difference from community to community as to how they interpret what they can use this money for liberally or more narrowly.

It's going to be really interesting to see.

One of the links that you sent out to us, I think it was a Michigan article, they made the very broad statement of

local governments using the CARES money to provide services in light of dealing with COVID.

And it's such a broad statement.

I mean, I can see things getting applied in many different ways with that statement.

I guess what I'm hoping is that our county

doesn't decide to apply that too narrowly.

I know we're very conservative with respect to these things.

And I'm sure that whatever staff comes up with, we're going to think is the right thing to do.

Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why we want to look at this from a Commonwealth perspective at some point.

The reality is, and specifically for rural communities, is that there's not enough funds to provide all the services that are necessary.

I think it's clear that, you know, while it's a great thing that this is happening, you know, there's going to be, I don't want to put it in these rough terms, but there will be winners and losers.

people are going to be asking for or coming up with great reasons to use the funding.

But only those that are most critical are the ones that will actually be put into place.

So I think that's one of the toughest things about this is it takes a while for infrastructure to be built.

So if we're talking about using some of the funding to expand fiber internet to a specific area,

it's likely not going to happen within the deadline that the funds have to be expended.

Currently the funds have to be expended by the end of the calendar year, so by the end of December, 2020.

Pretty much, yeah.

It's like one of the things that I've heard is that this is a great way to upgrade existing older wireless infrastructure because all it takes is purchase of the equipment and then approval to climb a tower and pull some stuff down and put some new stuff up.

Mike, I had just two suggestions in trying to move from the abstract to the local as much as possible.

The first would be to look for an opportunity to try to get data from the TJPDC, which they have, in terms of where the clusters are for the incidents of COVID in Albemarle County.

We want to be looking especially in rural areas because there's been a lot of discussion, at least in southern Albemarle, in the past to try to establish telemedicine facilities.

That was one thing that we had talked about at Yancey.

It's one thing that I had looked to potentially have cited down in an expanded facility at Scottsville High School.

facility in the town of Scottsville.

The other, besides better coordination with TJPDC and getting data that might inform the actual location of where some of this expanded capability would occur, is to look to work also with the school division because they have some of that information.

I know you've had it plugged in, but to facilitate distance learning for a longer term,

They should be able to tell us where there's a potential for improving student access to the existing fiber networks that are there that may be within a mile or two, something like that.

Then we would be looking at trying to get last mile connection or maybe last two mile connection with the school division.

We talked about six months ago that I'll just bring up again to remind us that this exists is there's every reason to believe that there are many streets on which with VDOT's apparent cooperation is something they can do.

We're micro trenching.

is plausible.

So instead of digging a deep trench in the ground, you just, you know, these machines that bury it just a couple inches down in the asphalt way faster to build out infrastructure like that, that becomes more plausible with a targeted approach like Rick is describing, whether for telemedicine centers or community centers or for individual homes to do something like that by December deadline.

The way that we have been trenching and the way that the hoops that

So making the permitting process less stringent, well not less stringent, but clearer and working together as a team to make sure it gets done appropriately.

But that, you know, obviously we're working with VDOT in most cases in the main thoroughfares, so.

Yeah, and to Rick's point, yes, we have those pockets of where the school division has identified

Participants in education, whether it's a teacher in Albemarle County or a household that has students in Albemarle County schools, we know where they are.

They've done a great job of using their Check and Connect.

They have a mechanism where the teachers are checking and connecting with their students.

And as part of that process, they're asking the questions about broadband availability.

Mike, let me jump in here.

As a practical matter, what can we as a board do to influence where the CARES money is spent?

I think that's the... Can I ask one question?

I had, and this gets to your question, Bucky, okay?

I had a long talk with the director of the United Way last week.

And what they're doing is they're trying to look at rural areas, infrastructure, and

mainly housing and whatnot and I brought up well if you're really trying to coordinate infrastructure issues in rural areas you should be looking at broadband and then we got into and she hadn't really thought about that in their coordination with all these different agencies and so we talked for quite a while about that

One of the things that came up was the actual infrastructure inside the house.

Do you have the means of connecting if the fiber comes to your house, that sort of thing.

And that's something we always talk about, getting the connections to people's houses, but then a lot of people don't have a computer, don't have the stuff inside to do that.

And so I'm wondering about the CARES money for that kind of level of connectivity in rural areas for our less fortunate.

Okay yeah I think there's you know the potential that that's what's generally referred to as you know the learning of how how do I use broadband it's certainly something that we could could consider how do we support those who are less fortunate both in a learning as well as providing the types of services that they need to get going you know is it a computer is it the

you know, reduced costs, internet essentials from Comcast and other products like that provide that sort of let's get people moving and participating.

So, yeah, great idea.

And so I know the CARES money has to sort of be spent all, you know, right away.

But I don't know about setting up funds to, you know, to do that sort of thing.

I just have no idea how we're going.

How that's going to be interpreted.

But anyway, just throwing that out is one more.

That's it.

Good idea.

Thank you, Liz.

No, I appreciate the time to explain it a little.

Is there anything else that anybody would like to go over because we've come to the end of our formal agenda?

I'm not seeing any mouths moving with mics muted, so I'm going to take that as a no.

Thank you, Liz.

I'll second that.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate your attendance.

We appreciate you being here.

Thank you very, very much.

Mike, can we talk on the phone before you leave for the day?

Go wherever you're going to go?

Sure.

OK. OK.

Thank you.

Will do.

Thanks, Mike.

Bye-bye.