Broadband Authority Meeting   6/24/2020

There you go, Chair.

All set.

Maybe I can.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Chair.

I will do that.

Everyone on the phone and attending via Zoom from the public is in listen only mode.

During public comment period, please enter your comment in the chat and it will be read into the record.

Include your full name and the magisterial district in which you reside.

If you don't know your magisterial district, please provide a general location of your home or business street address.

We will run through the chat comments first and then take comments by phone.

For those on the phone, please use star nine, that's star nine, to indicate you'd like to make a public comment.

We will ask you to provide your full name and magisterial district or general location of your home or business, and then allow up to three minutes for your comment.

Because of the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the limitations on group gatherings imposed by the governor's executive orders,

This meeting is being held by Electronic Communications Means on the Zoom platform, is authorized by the county's April 15th and June 17th continuity of government ordinances, 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.

The public has real-time audio-visual access to this meeting over Zoom and real-time audio access over telephone, both as provided in the lawfully posted meeting notice.

The public is always invited to send questions, comments, and suggestions to the authority through the county's information technology.

This meeting is being recorded and will be made available on the county's website.

With that explanation, I ask the board members attending to identify themselves and their current location in general terms.

and I'll go through the role here.

We'll mix up the order this time just to be fun.

Waldo Jaquith.

I'm at home in Stony Point.

And for myself, I am present.

If you couldn't tell, then there's a problem with your receiving.

And I'm in my home in Earlysville.

So I think we are duly established and read in.

Bill, I'll make sure you get a copy of that memorialized little sermon for your notes.

Thanks.

I think the second item on the agenda here is the approval of the agenda.

I trust everyone has received a copy.

Thanks, Liz.

I'll second that.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any nays?

Hearing none, the agenda is approved.

We should have all received a copy of the May 27th minutes from our illustrious secretary.

I hope everyone's had a chance to review those.

Waldo had a change.

One of these days I'm going to realize the difference between known and no.

Thank you, and we'll look forward to catching that too.

Yeah.

I'd like to move to approve the minutes.

Second.

Very good.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

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

And that brings us to the public comment section of our meeting.

Looks like we've got a couple of potential attendees from the public.

Are there any comments?

Yes, I've tried.

There we go.

OK.

It just took a little while.

Really no comment.

I just saw the invite there to unmute.

Just want to let you know, I guess, my purpose for joining.

I spoke at the meeting several months ago.

Mike, I know we've had this conversation since.

Just wanted to listen in and find out the latest goings on and see what's going on with the RFP and that sort of thing.

Appreciate everything that ABPA's been doing to try to support our area.

I'm just doing everything in reverse here.

I'm from the Taylor's Gap area in Albemarle County, so I believe that might be IV material, perhaps.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, yeah.

Yeah, that's the thing.

You can unmute and then the person who wants to talk has to accept the request to unmute.

So I'm assuming that Allison has no comments this evening.

So I think we're ready to proceed with only the two attendees.

OK, Allison, if we got that wrong, send us a message and we'll fix that.

Moving on to our old business, item five on the agenda.

5A, the VADI 2019 update with the SEVIC project.

Yes, sir.

Just give me a second here and I will go forward.

So thanks for the time this evening, Chair.

I am glad to report that SEVIC continues their work on the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative update for 2019.

Remember, this project started

over a year ago.

Just to put some things into reference, SEVIC Firefly is in all corners of the county, meaning they've got substations that both exist in Albemarle County and are in neighboring counties, including Louisa, Fluvanna, Nelson, and others, but essentially Buckingham.

We have major work going on

in both the Cassius Corner, which is coming from the Weezer, Zions, which is coming from Fluvanna, Martin Store, coming from the West and Nelson, and of course the Midway substation, which is in Albemarle.

Kids Store, which is in Fluvanna, has a small number of members in Albemarle.

That substation is scheduled for activation in winter of 2020.

In addition, there are three other substations that are scheduled for completion in 2022.

So one of them is the Red Hill substation that's scheduled for fall of 2022 and the Whitehall and Schuyler substations are both scheduled in the winter of 2022.

Just a reference point on

Both of those stations, they have a large number of SEVIC members.

So that's one of the things that we're working toward.

Is there any way that we can accelerate any of these additional substations?

I could give you some background on all of the other substations, but I think I'll just stay on Midway because that's the body project.

So Midway continues to be worked.

We, Firefly,

had a delay because of COVID, and that delay was submitted to DHCD, thank you, Chair, and it was approved.

So the delay is we have to submit all of our paperwork by July 15th, 2020.

The crews have completed their fiber placement, splicing, and service drops in the Midway substation area.

About 220 today out of the 375 preregistered counts have been connected.

Final connections will continue through July.

So we're in good shape there.

It's just taken a little longer.

So we're happily going forward with that.

And people are starting, not only have we have 220 already been connected there, the rest of them are beginning to be connected.

So that's my update for the Civic Firefly project.

Thank you.

Great.

Okay.

Well, the first thing I would like to do is just introduce Derek Kelly.

Derek Kelly's on the Zoom meeting with us.

And Derek, if you want to say a few words and introduce yourself to the Broadband Authority, I think everyone's name is available to you, but if you just go ahead and let us know how things are going with you.

Thanks, Mike.

Hello, everyone.

Derek Kelly with CenturyLink.

Some now have government affairs responsibilities for Virginia.

Many of you, I'm sure, know Rich Schulman.

He retired a couple months ago and is now actually working sort of a part time job with the Virginia Telecom Industry Association.

So he's not completely gone from the scene, but he has gone from CenturyLink, unfortunately.

And now on the new face that you have to deal with and starting to recognize some faces

from multiple Zoom meetings.

So I look forward to the day I finally come up to Charlottesville and meet some of you in person.

I think Mike's gonna touch on the Green Creek call that we had last night, but it was a good call and a little different doing it in a community meeting over a conference bridge, but I thought it went well and the questions were good.

Okay, thanks Derek.

So, just to bring everyone up to speed, we signed the contract, we talked about that at our last meeting, and made some progress by posting a frequently asked question file on our website, on the county website.

The conference calls that Derek mentioned are in process of being scheduled.

The first was the Green Creek Road,

a conference call which happened last evening and we have three more to go.

For Green Creek Road, we had 21 attendees on board and they had many, many great questions and I thought it was an overall a successful intro.

To have that many people interested and asking questions was a really good sign that we've got a lot of community support for what we're doing.

So that was a very good meeting I felt.

Supervisor Palmer, you were our attendee.

I have a question and I guess a comment.

How many again are eligible on Green Creek Road?

How many people?

How many homes?

I've kind of lost track of that.

So I think it's 155 for the entire Green Creek project.

It's not just on that one road because there's a couple side streets and

and Private Roads, but that area is 155 homes.

And I guess one of the things that sounds like most people are concerned about is how much are they gonna have to pay for it?

I always like to take a positive look at these things, but I guess I'm thinking 21 attendees is not that large of a proportion of 155.

I think the final list, Ken Klouts and I worked on that.

The final list, we had 37.

Then that's pretty good.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I think it went well and Mike and Derek did a great job and I think people seemed overall pretty happy about everything.

They just want to know how much it's going to cost and when it's going to come in.

I guess that sort of rounds it up for now and you know I think the valid question may be for Derek and for everyone to answer is how can we as a community as well as a broadband authority and me as the

Chief Administrative Officer, what else, what can we do, continue to do to help CenturyLink move this project forward?

I think we'll learn more about that as we get going, but we're gonna have eight different types of these projects going on, all of them with different community attributes.

So it's going to be a challenging time, but also a great time once the connections start happening.

So I'm looking forward to that, getting to the end of the road on this one, which I think, Derek, you're in the same,

You're probably in the same excitement level as me.

Let's get this thing rolling and keep things rolling.

If we have questions, we'll bring them to you.

And if you have needs, you bring them to me and I'll present them to the broadband authority for action.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And just so the whole board has an idea,

So the first phase was our planning phase so network planners that was sort of the pre-application time is when they do the majority of the work or just ball parking and trying well not ball parking but trying to come up with a pretty accurate price of what it would cost where we would design everything and then after the grant was announced then they actually put those plans into all of our systems that sent them to our engineering team so that's already been done we then had our engineering team actually go in and

They designed the system where they're gonna, I think the best spot for all of our equipment's going to be, where exactly all the fiber is going to be, and getting everything laid out in a sort of an engineering plat.

So that was completed here, I think in the last two weeks or so.

So we're in the process right now of putting all the jobs.

Mike said there's eight areas for us in our networking system.

We've broken it up into 15 sort of jobs that it's gonna go out to our construction team.

So we're in the process of seeking bids right now for the construction piece of it.

Once we have those bids finalized and announce a word who we're gonna have do the construction, then I think we'll start to get a little bit better of a timeframe of which jobs are we gonna do first.

And as we get closer, it'll be a little bit easier to have, I think, less vague of a FAQ and hopefully get some more concrete information.

In the meantime, Mike's been a great resource for just helping funnel questions.

There was a couple of one offs last night during the call about private roads and I'm going to build a house here that's not there right now.

And how do we get that?

So appreciate Mike's willingness to sort of be that go between between the community and us.

And it's definitely helpful, you know, to participate in plenty of these grants in other states where

The partnership with the county is not really there.

It's more just between us and the state where we're just going out and deploying stuff and we don't have that sort of one-on-one touch that we had last night.

So that was refreshing.

Can I add one more thing that I thought was really important that one person asked and Derek you just referred to it was that if you're on a private road and there's multiple houses on a private road one of the questions was of course how far am I from the terminal if I'm down a private road and it was explained to the participants Derek explained to the participants that it's a very good idea

for people to reach out to CenturyLink and I guess through Mike to let them know that they're interested in service because the more people down those private roads, the more likely they're going to have a terminal near them when they do the design.

It's important to get that information prior to the design of the system.

Yes, yeah, exactly right.

We've had two requests come in already, one late last night and then another early this morning.

So the community has taken that to heart.

They're starting to combine efforts and make sure we understand, you know, this is how many people would like to be involved.

And they're going about, you know, talking to individual homeowners and people who are renting and getting everyone on board.

Yeah, it started a great process, I think.

So thanks for that, Liz.

Sure.

Yep.

I have a question, Derek.

Not that I've heard of.

I know, so when the engineering process was done, they went back with our original planners, which I think many of you know, Glenn Butler.

So they actually walked through every street and every house through all 15 of the projects and just were comparing them and, you know, counting rooftops and where this is.

And they said there was a couple of places where the engineer said, well, why don't we add an extra terminal here?

And then it would, these homes would be closer to that.

So a couple of those where we added some

some terminals to get a couple more homes closer to those.

And I think this isn't set in Stonya, but I know one of the private roads that was brought up last night, and I think there was like five or six homes back a private path

I think we're actually planning on placing fiber a good way back down that path.

That way it cuts down on the drop lengths for the individuals down there.

So still waiting for verification on that.

That's great to hear.

I do.

Derek, last night you explained to folks that a good rule of thumb for cost was $1.55 a foot for the fiber.

I believe that's what the figure you gave, but it was very unclear to me as to if there was going to be a distance from the terminal through which they wouldn't have to pay for that connection.

Is there a certain amount of feet?

And then past that,

a number of feet they would have to pay per foot.

Yeah, so up to about 650 feet is free.

And I say about because, you know, honestly, if our technicians go out there and it's 670 feet, more likely than not, they're just going to put in the drop request and put it in there because by the time we have

have to engage our engineers and have them work out.

It ends up costing us more money than we would get back in the process.

But for those drops that are 1,000 feet, 2,000 feet, 4,000 feet, I think someone said their driveway was maybe a half a mile long.

My driveway is like 50 feet long if that's hard for me to imagine.

But I think then that's about where the average comes out to be is

Anybody else?

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Derek, for keeping us up to date on this project.

It is, and hopefully by the time we actually get to placing some fiber and maybe we can have a little ribbon cutting or some type of ceremony to just sort of launch the

Yes.

Thank you, Chair.

I attended the virtual webinar first time

I've been to, this will be my fourth, maybe the fifth.

Nevertheless, I was there virtually and it was a great, great webinar.

It went very well.

The DHCD program is extremely well run and it goes to show that the Commonwealth can do some valid things if funding is provided.

BODi is a perfect example of how to run a program like this.

The grant application process, the fact that they allow feedback, so they encourage people to provide feedback for the guidelines, which we did.

Both the private and public sector all provided feedback and they made changes.

So the guidelines that we saw initially were changed.

Some of the things that we put in as recommendations were accepted.

So that was a real good sign that they're listening and taking action based on

public and private input.

So that was a benefit.

It's definitely going to be a busy time identifying partner ISPs and posting our intent to apply by 7-13.

So the big date there is nothing has changed.

They're moving the program forward without changing any of their original dates.

And the due date for applications is 8-17.

We're on target to accept offers.

I mean, one of the benefits of the next item is that the RFP clearly indicated that if you're interested in applying with the broadband authority for VODI, then this is a perfect time to do it.

And your response indicate that you're interested in applying for partnering and applying for VODI 2021.

So that's my update there.

going once, going twice, going thrice.

Sold to Michael.

Yes, the broadband authority, as you recall, through the spring decided we were going to post a request for proposal for broadband expansion.

And we have

Funding set aside, thanks to the Board of Supervisors appropriating funds to the broadband authority, we have funding available that will allow broadband expansion work to be completed by a partner ISP.

So it's clear that the broadband authority is not

building an internet or a network connection.

They're also not interested in operating a network, so they won't be collecting fees from citizens.

This is all about a partnership and providing funding that assists ISPs as they build out their broadband networks in Albemarle County.

The first step in that, as you recall, was an RFI.

We went through an RFI process.

and received feedback, RFI standing for request for information.

So we did a unique option here where we asked for information about how to structure our request for proposal.

So we had ISP input on the RFI, which was built into the eventual request for proposal.

The RFP working with our procurement office, particularly Sharon Cash, and I have to

thank her graciously.

And she did a wonderful job working with us to post the RFP.

And one of the tenants of the RFP is what is called an optional pre-proposal conference, which we held virtually.

And that was held last week.

And we had 14 participants representing nine private companies on the call.

So it was a very well attended call considering

you know, having nine different ISPs participating in the pre-bid was a very good sign.

Everyone was reminded that proposals are due on June 30.

And we posted our final two addendums today and day before yesterday.

So we had a couple of addendums that came in to make sure all the questions that were asked during the pre-pip proposal conference were available to anyone who was interested in the proposal.

So we feel pretty confident that we're going to get responses back and at this point it's a wait and see and there's no more questions that can be asked so we're just looking forward to June 30.

The next big thing that will happen after that is we'll put together a proposal review team which is already done.

The representatives are Waldo Jaquith, Mike Culp, myself, and a representative from the school division of

Priya Wood, he's one of the technology folks on the school team has offered to help us with scoring these proposals.

If a valid proposal comes in that needs to be negotiated, we'll make that recommendation to the broadband authority.

And I think the next step would be authorization from the board of supervisors to proceed with negotiations.

So it's sort of a three or four step process once we've gotten to the point where we've scored the proposals, but we'll keep everyone involved on how things are proceeding as we receive proposals during the next two weeks.

One week, I should say.

It's 6-24 already.

Where did June go?

So thank you for that moment to update people on the RFP.

Questions?

Correct.

And we may need to call a special meeting.

It depends on what comes back in the proposals.

I have a general observation just a reminder that like we had no idea what was gonna happen in response to this RFP.

An entirely acceptable outcome is like nobody bids or we look at the bids and we're like this is crazy we're not going to accept any of these like that's okay like we're trying a new thing here and part of trying a new thing is accepting that it may not work correctly or it might work pretty well but we want to iterate and improve on it but

I hope others share my perspective anyway of tuning expectations here that this is very different than what we normally do.

This is weird for vendors.

It's going to be weird for us.

And this should be a learning opportunity.

If you are not prepared to fail, then you are not truly trying new things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay, assuming no one's talking while on mute, then we'll plow right ahead.

Next item on the agenda is updated broadband strategy plan.

And this is something near and dear to my heart, so I will seize the mic for a moment.

The purpose of any strategy plan in my mind is to serve as a communication vehicle.

Communication vehicle to your organization, a communication vehicle to your stakeholders,

and a communication vehicle for the general public.

And it should lay out essentially what you're about and how you think you're going to get there and what you see as the end game.

So really just answering the three questions of where are you?

Where do you want to go?

How are you going to get there?

Therefore, you don't expect a lot of fine detail in strategy plans, but you certainly want enough information so that general approaches and

What anyone should expect to be happening is what they will be able to see from your strategy plan.

With some help from Mike, I took materials that we've approved over the years and put those together in a strategy plan format.

I think we are now at the time where we need this communication vehicle

not only for ourselves, but for others.

And I think it will be beneficial to us.

With that said, the best strategy plan has inputs from all corners.

And there haven't been a lot of other inputs into this at this time.

So this is an open invitation for more input into where that strategy plan, what it says, where it's going, what questions it answers if that's necessary.

I do.

I have a few things.

This is like a constitution for us.

Here's what we believe in and here's what we're doing.

So in the spirit of that, I'd like to ask a question and then propose a couple of non-trivial modifications.

I have a bunch of trivial modifications I'll pass along just as a word doc with some edits and stuff.

The first is I'm curious about how we would define ABBA will not operate its own internet service provider facilities.

And in particular, I'm thinking of my increasing personal belief that for broadband authorities to be successful in counties like Albemarle, it's important to lay middle mile fiber.

I don't see any way that we cover all of Albemarle in our stated timeline here without Albemarle County at a minimum fomenting the creation of and perhaps actually using Albemarle-owned fiber, such as the school system already has in the ground,

as a vehicle for ISPs, for last mile ISPs to be able to build on to get out into the rural areas.

My question is, are we precluded from doing that by saying we will not operate our own internet service provider facilities if one thing we might do is lease out a strand of fiber or two or 10 strands of fiber on a 20-year lease?

Does that make us ISP?

Or because we'd be renting to ISPs at that point?

Are we not an ISP?

Well, I think you pose a question that was not originally contemplated when the broadband authority was created, or perhaps it was, I'm sure Liz could speak to that.

But I think the short answer from my perspective is there's no scenario where we want to compete with internet service providers.

We are here to facilitate internet service providers.

There's nothing inconsistent with the notion of middle mile fiber in that regard.

On the other hand, operating a business, so leasing some asset that's already installed, that's one thing.

Operating a business where we have employees who do things, that's a very different level of endeavor.

And in any event, in both of those situations, even if we were simply leasing facilities, I'd want to go back to the Board of Supervisors

to get their blessing and endorsement for that.

So I can just comment on that briefly.

We had several conversations when we first got going because there were some surrounding counties

like Louisa, for instance, that tried this.

Nelson tried it in a different sort of way.

And we also, as Mike can fill in the details, is we also spoke with a company about what it would cost to do Middle Mile and Southern Albemarle, a really big, great big loop.

and as I remember it came back as an estimate and this was not a hard detailed estimate but we were thinking it was going to be 40 million I'm thinking or some crazy number and it was simply too much money for us to do as a government giving all our other responsibilities and we didn't want to go into business again

and there were also concerns about the state making things illegal for us as we moved along.

We've really felt like there was a lot of ways that we could work with the private companies at this point and it really looked like that was the direction that the state was going to support.

So all in all, I guess I said brief and I wasn't brief, but

That was a decision by the Board of Supervisors and so I would say Bucky is correct.

And if I could add, and of course I'm a new supervisor.

I was not there when this conversation took place before.

And having previously had a position as the Deputy Assistant Judge Advocate General of the Navy and Chief of Technology actions that the Joint Court was undertaking, I experienced firsthand the expense and difficulty of a government entity that is not a principal provider of that sort of technology service competing against companies that are.

So my sense is that I understand why the board would have decided why they did in wanting the county to be a provider.

I don't know that that actually answers Waldo's very excellent question, however, in terms of if there is already existing equipment, whether there might be an avenue that would open that up to kind of close the gap.

and that I think I'm agreeing with Supervisor Palmer that this is something that would have to be thought through, worked up, and then presented to the board.

Thank you.

I guess going back to originally opening it up for questions, I will say that I only had time to briefly skim through the strategy plan.

And so I haven't read it in detail, but I very much appreciate the existence of such a thing.

Yeah, two more.

One is a relative sea change as well, I think, which is the one sentence goal of extending affordable broadband internet service access to every customer in Albemarle County.

My question is whether we want to consider in light of this being raised elsewhere in this document if our goal should be to extend competitive affordable broadband.

The lack of competition in much of the market in Albemarle County is of course like a known problem in the world, the lack of competition.

That's a great question.

We do define affordable in the context of local affordability, not affordable somewhere, but not any further than that.

Because at the moment, we follow the general practice of grant making organizations as well, which is, oh, that area is covered?

Yep, we're not going to do that.

and I appreciate why largely due to market captivity as best I can tell, why particularly the FCC happens to take that approach but I'm dubious that we need take that approach and in particular, I look at areas that CenturyLink ostensibly covers just to pick a vendor because they cover most of our rural area where we've had people come to us and say, I have CenturyLink service but it's really slow, it gets slower all the time, not doing anything about it.

Would we be willing to say,

We will provide funding to get another provider in there because there's an ostensible provider there, but the service is inadequate.

Of course, if the service is inadequate, then it's probably not meeting the definition for broadband.

So it's going to fail at that point.

That's part of the affordable part.

I would offer that at this time as long as we have people who are unserved with broadband it's premature to look at competitive broadband for everyone until we're further down the path of getting

you know, more of our population with actual, you know, acceptable level of service.

But the question I would ask is, where is that point?

At what point do we declare, I don't want to say victory, but say we have achieved an adequate level of coverage for the county that we believe we can also, in addition to covering the people who are presently in coverage, which is what we talked about, will get increasingly difficult.

Like it only gets harder as we go.

At what point do we say we're also going to spend our attentions on areas of the county that do have coverage, but it is inadequate for the people living there for whatever reason?

I'm pretty sure it's not at the point where we can still point at hundreds of folks on Green Creek Road who need service and big chunks of the county that are just without anything acceptable.

But I can't say exactly where that is.

It seems like an important question.

The principle is sound.

I worry otherwise we become a broadband authority of diminishing returns.

We do more and more work to serve fewer and fewer people.

I guess I agree with what Bucky has been saying.

I agree with both of you, of course, but I'm just going through in my mind what that would look like and what that pathway would look like because I just

I have just reported my own speed test right before getting on here.

And for the first time I got over nine for a download, which is just amazing at my location.

And I had just read, and of course I've never gotten more than one, I've never gotten even one on an upload.

So I just,

I guess I'm wondering, really, the only other choice is fiber.

My assumption is it's because the Wi-Fi around here is not getting there.

So what would we really be doing that we're not doing now?

I totally get where you're coming from.

But at this stage of the game, what would we really be going after?

and another DSLP.

I don't have an idea.

So it's really, it's under the, I guess, the context of affordability and just a general question that I think my awareness has been raised through this pandemic and the work that the schools have done around access to technology.

And there is certainly a, I'm gonna ramble here for a minute, there's certainly the rural piece of

No ability to connect.

And so, you know, that broadband connection.

But what surprised me and something that we're looking at, even through the CARES funding, which Mike will talk about a little bit in the new business, is there's a lot of people, a lot of families in our urban ring

that theoretically could connect to have access, but they cannot afford it.

And so one of the things that I noted is missing from our strategy document is the word equity.

Maybe it's embedded there under affordability, but affordability can mean different things.

You know, I'm a fresh set of eyes on this and my eyes are even open more with, you know, the past hundred and five days of the pandemic.

Why we want to look at it from an equity perspective to an equity lens, you know, so maybe more than just the pipe of getting it, you know, into the rural areas, but also how to

How do we support getting connected into the homes?

I don't know.

Can I add one more thing?

I was going to talk about this in new business, but it keeps coming up in this conversation.

So I'm going to go with it right now.

So on Monday, I met with Chris Runyon, who is the 25th District General Assembly representative.

And he's my representative in the General Assembly.

And he's on the communications technology

and Innovation Committee.

And my meeting was about something totally different than broadband.

But at the end of the meeting, I brought up our broadband authority.

And he asked a few very good questions that I decided to defer until I had talked to everybody here and probably gotten some ideas from Mike.

in writing, but he had been talking to the folks that in Greenwood that were on the other side of the tracks that didn't get the Comcast hookup.

And one thing he asked me was, what about the VADI grants make it more difficult for you to apply?

You know, how could we make the structure of the VADI grant better?

He also asked if our ordinances for the antenna and or towers antenna more for the fixed wireless could be changed to make that easier to get in fixed wireless.

and he also said, while I'm on this subject that doesn't necessarily pertain right now to this, he also said the horrible thing that not to expect any value money coming out of this year, he thought they were going to cut it out, which I had not heard and I'm hoping he's wrong.

But the information about how can we make it easier for fixed wireless

if that's where we wanna go for competition or whatever.

And also how can we improve, how can we work with this General Assembly to improve the VADI process, I think might allow us to open things up to different ISPs or something.

So I'm gonna throw that out now.

Well, I'm sorry, I have one more thing because it pertained directly to Trevor.

Thank you for reminding me.

And I also brought up people not being able to afford

the computers, the hookup, the monthly cost, which we've talked about here at the Broadband Authority before, and the possibility of using the CARES Act money, et cetera, for that.

And he really didn't seem like he had addressed that in his committee yet, but I did bring that up as a concern of how we would get the money for that.

Actually, I'm going to build on what you said too.

So maybe one of the things we want to look at isn't fiber to the home, but it's actually fiber in the home.

Change that to be the focus and that gets towards the equity issue, the ability to actually use it.

So it's fiber in the home, not fiber to the home.

So I had that thought.

And then the tower issue, it rears its head all the time.

When we created the goal, we had a fairly robust discussion about what does that mean and how do you measure these things and all that.

We chose the word access to make it clear that there was an opportunity for citizen to purchase broadband, but not a requirement either on us or on them to make that happen.

The reason we did that was we didn't think anyone had chartered us to go out and hook up broadband to everyone in the county.

That wasn't, I don't think that was in the Board of Supervisors mind when we were created.

Again,

This is a noble goal.

I have a neighbor who can't afford to hook up to broadband and they've got small kids and it would be a boon to them if they were.

They're actually in a little bit of a pocket where the school's little device for getting wireless service doesn't work for them either.

So I would love to see them have broadband.

I think it would improve the quality of their life and probably improve the outcomes of the kids' lives ultimately.

So seems like a good thing to me.

but I think we need to go one step up the chain to bake that into our remit if that's who we're going to be.

I feel that Trevor, it speaks to me because I think that there are some serious inequities that have been demonstrated, not demonstrated, really brought to the forefront.

I don't think they complain as much as they're concerned that we don't have

The impetus to put up new tower sites.

There's tower sites and there's approved tower sites all throughout the county.

And I think most of the wireless and fixed wireless providers are aware of those.

It's just the cost to construct without knowing how many people are going to buy into their service is somewhat a hindrance.

As well as any new type construction, I think they see our processes somewhat

Arduous is probably the right word.

I'll defer to Bill.

The two of us pretty much have a standard answer to the questions that come in that seem to be complaints.

Most of them are more like questions about how can you make it easier for us?

And the best question I have or the best response I have is we need to provide more funding.

We need to do site acquisition work.

We need to work with the private landowners and make sure that we have good land lease

type of arrangements and can build infrastructure so that they have power to the site and we work with the communities and make sure that when we construct a new tower it's done appropriately and following all of our existing rules.

So, you know, essentially sometimes we get the calls that were not as easy to work with as other counties, but

Most of the time I think it's just an understanding of the lack of density is prohibiting the fixed wireless providers from putting up additional sites.

And then the classic thing is this time of year especially, you have to put up more in Albemarle County because we have so many hills and valleys and large trees that block the wireless signals.

And with that, I'll be quiet a little bit and maybe have Bill, if he has some comments to either back me up or question what I just said.

Well, we've only talked to a few people.

And once we explain what the process is, they don't really express that big a concern about the process.

Mike's right.

It's more about will they come.

That seems to be where their issue is.

It's return.

It's not the process.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting if you look back over our VADI applications and there's, we've had success.

I mean, we have to keep letting everyone know, the citizenry especially know that the broadband authority and the County of Albemarle has had success with the VADI program and hopefully we'll continue to have the same type of success.

The biggest change that could happen is that they re-institute the 35 million that was added to it.

You know, taking away the 16 million this year is a big hit.

because there were over 40 applications and only 12 of them were offered funds.

So last year was a boon year, meaning there were a lot of applications submitted and I'm getting to a point here, but we've only had one wireless service provider follow through with an application.

We've only submitted out of all of our applications, we've only submitted one that was a wireless one.

We were close last year, but then the company pulled out at the last minute because they didn't

they weren't able to put all their financial information together for us.

So, there's intent meaning, yes, we wanna work with you if you know you're going to be able to provide the service.

And in addition, we've made the commitment that we'll work with you to use publicly held property as a potential tower or tower sites.

I mean, it's constant AT&T, I send them tower sites, Verizon, I send them tower sites.

You know, we built a tower at Albemarle High School and things still aren't activated over there.

So it's just a, I guess I would call it a struggle.

We know it's a need.

And from the public safety perspective, it's certainly a need.

Lots of roads out there without coverage and someone runs off the road and they can't dial 911.

It seems to me that that's a concern that we as a county and the broadband authorities should be trying to address.

Let me jump in here again and see if, let me go over a couple of things that I've heard.

One, we had the, would we offer, you know, middle mile services?

Second, are we interested in competitive service offerings?

I think we've spoken about the issue of equity and ensuring not only that we have broadband available, broadband actually in the places where it can do the most good in the homes of our residents.

And I'm not opposed at all to adding

some sort of a piece to this strategy plan, which is the context in which we're having this useful conversation that it's a communication vehicle, so this is great.

I'm not opposed at all to putting all of those things in the strategy plan as things we are thinking about.

We are not committed to doing at this time, but we recognize that these are important issues that we'll take up as we move further down our strategic, towards our strategic goals.

Are there other things that either need to be in there now or do some of those things need to be in there now?

Yeah, I just want, my concern is that we don't preclude ourselves from these things by not including them in the document.

And exactly as you say, that it's communicating intent.

And communicating at least intent toward equity seems real important.

Obviously, equity is more important than the

to achieve equity.

As is saying, we intend to get broadband to everybody in this county.

And if that requires doing something other than subsidizing private ISPs building out to each of their individual homes, we're willing to explore doing that.

I think that's an important message to get across exactly as you cite.

If it please the board, I just want to point out, I think I hope I sent this around when I sent the document.

The importance of this, because of the VADI application process, we need to have a solid plan.

The next step, and this is another great thing about the program in general, I know I keep gushing about how well, and they are, the state is very interested in equity.

They're extremely interested in showing

that we're addressing that issue in particular.

But they need to see our plan, and they've been willing to review it prior to the application deadline, which is August 17th.

So if we could get this all tightened up and ready to go a week before August 17th, so August 10th at the latest,

DHCD has said they'll look at it and potentially give us feedback on what we could do to improve it and thus make our application more viable or we'll gain more points during the scoring process.

So I hope I made that clear.

Maybe I should have been like Waldo.

Thanks, Mike, for that information.

Let me propose this timeline to the board.

or the broadband authority.

And that is, I'll take the comments that I've heard here tonight and do my best to incorporate them in our strategy plan.

I will issue a copy of that out to all of you within seven days and look for your comments back on that within seven days from that.

And hopefully by the time we get to the next meeting, we will have a document that seems to be something that we can vote on to approve.

and at our July meeting, we'll have something that at that point in time, if it has been approved, we could send it then to DHCD for their review.

Does that sound acceptable to everyone?

Let me just run down the roll and make sure that we're getting everybody on board for this.

Trevor?

Yes.

Donna?

Yes.

and I'm not gonna spoil it by voting no, so let's make it unanimous.

I have one other question about this document.

Sure.

No, as in that's a really low floor.

and the argument for fixed connections were for wireline connections to be, look, even CenturyLink has moved on.

They're going with fiber now.

But I'm wary of precluding wireless providers, which I'm not a big fan of, but here we are where everybody's at home for like months to come probably because here we are.

And I don't know what speeds are realistic to expect or to set as a floor for wireless providers.

I would love for us for wired connections to be able to really up our standards from 10.1, but I'm weary that we're cutting ourselves off from, you know, I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy, the good, but it seems like 10.1 is a really neat number that maybe we should reconsider.

Anyway, I just want to raise that possibility.

I have given inadequate thought to this.

No, let me rephrase it.

I have inadequate knowledge around this.

Well, our document specifies 25-3 as our broadband floor and we will use 10-1 only when we're working with funding sources that are using that number for their floor.

Well, the question is, do we wanna spend the money on that as opposed to we wanna, you know, we have a limited resource to spend in matching grants.

And I guess my question is, do we want to match a 10-1 grant or do we wanna say, no, that's particularly, I'm thinking of federal funding where they won't build that stuff for like six years.

Imagine finally getting broadband in 2026 and it's a 10-1 connection.

It's like a curse.

Any comments on this?

The trouble is I have no alternative to propose.

Yeah, I have been very leery of the fixed wireless because I don't know how fast you can get with fixed wireless, but I brought it up before because Chris Runyon, Representative Runyon brought it up for that one place and also actually because Waldo was talking about competition and I'm not sure what competition is out there.

And so, yeah, but I haven't heard of

you know, anybody with fixed wireless getting 25 down.

I mean, most of those are way, way less than 10.

That seems really grim.

We wouldn't.

And that's another question about why I haven't really pursued the antenna situation as a priority, because I don't know what that's really going to get us.

Anyway, yes, I agree with you.

I would not want to fund something that's 10-1 that's going to take six years to put in if it's something that's kind of a, you know, we talked about temporary towers at one time during the COVID issue.

So I think it would have to be very clearly defined the timeline, why we're doing it under very specific circumstances and

I don't see those coming forward.

The request for proposals is going to be pretty interesting.

That's a great point.

Those responses may be a way to take the temperature of what the possibilities even are.

Let me just run down the roll and say, let's make it in a positive sense.

Do we want to look at, in general, 25.3 being the floor that we use?

It's a tricky one.

25.3 is a great answer, but if somebody comes along and says, hey, give me this much money and I can do 10.1 in eight months, that might be perfectly acceptable.

And so I don't know.

I want to see what the proposal is.

Waldo is shaking his head and making gestures.

I'm with Bill.

I don't know.

I don't have an answer here.

It's a hard question.

Which you asked.

No, I know.

Trevor.

I will admit, I'm a little out of my depth on this from a technical perspective.

You know, could we use preferred as a way that doesn't lock us into a mandate that would allow us to maybe, you know, there may be other factors that would kind of tip the scales to say, yeah, we would want to do it.

Using the CARES Act funding as an example, maybe it's not the speed exactly that we would want,

but it's a project that could be executed and done within the six months that we have to do it.

Where I was going is sort of like, does it fill a critical need?

We need it now, okay?

I will admit to being completely out of my league on trying to answer that question and refer to those of you who have actual technical knowledge of some degree, which I have a complete absence.

I think I've already answered it, but yeah, I would agree with Bill.

We just heard that Skyler, and Skyler's, a lot of Skyler, a good portion of Skyler is getting done with this Batty grant with CenturyLink.

That's really great, but it's not all getting done with that.

and we've got, what was it, 2022 that they think that that substation is going to be taken care of.

And we have some Appalachian power in there.

Some of them are Appalachian power.

And my understanding is that by the time we get there, Nelson might actually get to a couple of those houses on the edge there.

You know, if somebody came by and said fixed wireless for this little area and I can get it up in eight months, I'm going to be looking at the amount of money that we have to put in there and what those other auctions are for those folks and deciding on that, you know, based on that and with the rest of the broadband authority board.

So I can't answer it either.

I guess the answer is no for twenty five three, you know,

What I will do is write some words to assemble all the comments I've heard here tonight and make it into something coherent and crystal clear.

That's what I'm going to do.

Good luck.

I really appreciated Liz's, I think it was Liz who made the point that let's see what the responses look like to this RFP.

I mean, what a great landscape study of what the possibilities are.

We have a 10-1 floor now.

Let's see what gets proposed and maybe that will be clarifying.

But I'd like the suggestion of the prefers floor that doesn't lock us out of something else in special circumstances.

So I think that's where I'll go.

Are there any other comments, questions, et cetera,

I'll send you a bunch of little edits tonight.

And anyone else who has any edits, please send them along.

Alrighty, let's move along to new business.

Meeting schedule discussion.

Yes, it was.

It was mine, Chair.

I just have to

Harking back to our prior meeting where I put up a slide and unfortunately I don't have it tonight.

I could share my screen, but I think it's important for us to, maybe I should share this so that you guys can see my notes.

Bear with me here for a second and I'll share the particular notes that I have.

Hold on just a second.

So you should be seeing a Word document with new business.

Yes, we are.

Okay.

Yeah, bad formatting here, but just so you know, the dates.

So as we mentioned before, June 30 is the applications or no responses due.

That doesn't mean we won't get responses prior to June 30, but that's the date.

So one of the things that we talked about is that the scoring team is going to get together and score each of those proposals.

That should be proposals, not applications, my apologies, but

the proposals and present a summary, we'll present a summary to the board of our scores.

So it seems to me, and I didn't put our meeting in here either, our July meeting's not in here, but it seems to me we might have to have a meeting somewhere in this timeframe.

In fact, it's possible that it would be

beneficial if sometime before the 13th, we have a meeting that defines both what are we putting in as DHC intent of body application, pointing out that similar to the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, just because you submit an intent to apply for a body, it doesn't mean you have to follow through and actually submit the application.

But if we have a lot of competition, meaning there's multiple ISPs, which we hope we have,

We'll have to figure out which of those we'll put in and that's another value.

Just going back to Waldo's statement, the RFP did a couple of things for us, but one of the most important was getting the word out that, hey, we're interested in partnering and beyond that, we've gone a step further and here are the project areas where we want to partner with you.

Long story short,

The reason I'm putting it up here is I'm making a recommendation that we pick a date somewhere after June 30 and before July 13 just to touch base and have an open discussion to give primarily me direction on where I'm headed with both the notification of the VACD and just an update, a general update on the responses to our RFP.

So let's start with that first slot

Maybe we don't need the meeting.

Maybe it can all be done via individual discussions or chats, however we want to handle it.

But I'll leave it up to you, Chair, to help me close the gap on June 30 to July 13.

Do people want to meet?

We've got the 22nd blocked out here for our next regular meeting, but if we need to have an interim meeting, what would be the ideal time for that?

Wow.

Okay.

Now there's a board meeting.

Well, that's the 15th.

So that's when the reporters do also RDOF.

So

July 8th, which is the Wednesday.

That is an off Wednesday.

Yeah, there's an off Wednesday.

Well, I have a question about it.

So let's say that we get 10 responses to the RFP.

Could we not just say to DHCD we intend to apply for all 10 of them at the regular July meeting?

That's a great question, Bill.

I think it's directed to me.

I'm always concerned when and where I can speak up.

OK. Yeah, I just want to make sure I'm following protocol.

But yeah, I think that there's the only issue with that.

Well, you're right.

Why should I be concerned?

Maybe I'm creating more concern here than is necessary.

Because my only issue was, let's say we're very fortunate and we have

four ISPs in one way or another interested in partnering and including the same project area.

So there's the potential that an ISP will come and say, we want to do seven of the 15.

Another ISP may come in and say, we want to do three.

And then compare and contrast, yes, we submit all of them.

So I agree with you, Bill.

Maybe you're right.

Maybe this is just whatever we received between now and July 13th from the ISPs.

It's almost like- Let me turn the question around a little bit.

Instead of looking for a reason why we need to come back to the broadband authority to get approval to put in to DHCD,

Let me propose that we set this so that we're gonna notify and intend to file on all of the choices unless something comes in that is just so outrageous that you would like the broadband authority to say it's okay not to do that one.

I like that.

Agreed, by exception.

and just one of the things that changed and this was a submittal request.

Originally, the intent to apply was supposed to include financials, meaning how much are you planning on providing as match?

That was one of the concerns that has since changed.

Both CenturyLink, thanks to Eric and the broadband authority put in the recommendation to DHCD that they should remove that requirement.

meaning for the intent to apply you don't have to provide your financials.

Originally that was supposed to be included, long story, but one of the great things that was removed from the preliminary guidelines in the final was the ease of putting in your intent to apply has been drastically improved.

So I agree, so it's by exception.

If things come back and we see something that we need to deny or whatever,

We'll just try to schedule something on the fly by exception.

You know, Richie can correct me.

Mike?

Before we just march down that path, let me just do a quick roll call and make sure that the broadband authority is in agreement.

Bill?

Yes.

Trevor?

Yes, sorry, I had a mouse problem, thank you.

That's okay, I understand completely.

Donna?

Yes.

And I'm in favor as well, so that's what we're gonna do.

Yeah, I can answer.

Derek is asking a question if he's allowed to ask a question.

I think yes.

And I'll take that question.

A no response is definitely encouraged, especially if it's we want to partner for our body.

So we're interested in finding out interest in both responding to the RFP as well as partnership with body.

So a no response with an indication that

our intent is to partner would be beneficial.

I hope that that's fair to answer and it's something that is in the, well, a similar type answers in the frequently asked questions.

So good question, Derek.

Yeah, we can address the other ones.

The next big thing will be

as we go into negotiations, but let's take this one step at a time.

Okay.

And then the last item on the agenda is the second quarter of a status report, which hopefully everyone has had a chance to review.

It looked fine to me.

Yes, I had one.

I think it'd be good to put in there that this board has continued to meet through COVID using virtual meetings.

That wasn't in there anywhere, that we've continued to do the work that the board asked us to do.

Okay.

Thanks, Bill.

I think that's a good point.

That's our goal.

I mean, it's easy for me to be a little more thorough.

Always adding thoroughness is a great thing.

Just indicate that, you know, several of the virtual meetings, including this one, can be documented in the report.

We've only canceled one meeting.

That's right.

The March meeting is the only one that was canceled.

So, you know,

April, May, and now June were all done virtually.

So that's an excellent point.

And we had attendees at each one.

I think it looks good.

Welcome.

Yeah.

Let me just run it quick down the list that we would approve this report as the amended suggestion has been made.

Bill?

Yes.

Trevor?

Yes.

Donna?

Yes.

Waldo?

Yes.

And I'm in favor as well.

Thank you.

will do in writing, I have several ideas.

Anything else?

Thank you all so much for your time.

And I hope you can all stay safe.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

We're adjourned.

Are we, sir?

Let me stop recording.

No cares, Axo.

Okay, too late.

So, Mike, when Liz said that, I ran a quick speed test while I was here, and my wife was also doing a video streaming.

With both of us doing stuff.

Hey Mike, I snuck a note in there at the very end.