Broadband Authority Meeting   11/25/2020

Or I'm here, but I've yet to establish them.

Richie, I have the preamble.

Should I go ahead and read that?

Okay, we are recording.

It's the virtual meeting preamble for ABBA 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 communication means on the Zoom platform.

It is authorized by the county's November 18th 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.

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.

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

During public comment periods, 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 or 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 to indicate that you'd like to make a public comment.

We will ask you also 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.

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

and with that explanation, I asked the board members attending to identify themselves and their general location.

Bill?

Bill Fritz, I'm at home in Charlottesville.

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

So with that said, I see that we have a quorum and I call this meeting to order.

The first item that I have on the agenda is the approval of the agenda.

Hopefully everyone is in receipt of the revised agenda that Mike provided yesterday.

I heard Trevor mention that we needed to add an item on the agenda with regard to the next meeting date.

Thank you, Liz.

And was that a second from you, Trevor?

It was, yes, sir.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Well, then all those in favor, I'll do a quick roll call.

Trevor?

Yes.

Bill?

Yes.

Liz?

Yes.

And the chair is in favor as well.

So the agenda is passed unanimously.

That takes us to brief announcements by the authority members.

Does anyone have a brief announcement?

Raise your hand if you'd like to be recognized.

I just wanted to say at the last meeting, I went on asking Derek about questions and he offered to talk to me offline.

And I have that meeting set up for, I believe it is not this Friday, but next Friday.

So I will, if he tells me anything that is something we don't already know, I will go ahead and convey that, whatever I learned to the rest of the members.

Thank you very much.

Anybody else?

Seeing no other indications, we'll move on to our public comment period.

This is where all the folks

who aren't on the screen but on the phone or just listening in are welcome to make comments as I mentioned in the preamble.

No one has raised their hand.

Okay, here we go.

This is a reading it into the record for Tim Higgins who lives in Mallard Lake in Earlysville.

And I believe that's the Whitehall District.

Has ABBA asked CenturyLink for a briefing on its rollout plan for fiber service in Albemarle County?

If not, could you please?

I'll take that answer, Chair.

There were a couple of more things before that.

Okay.

In September, this is still Tim, sorry about that, sorry about not scrolling correctly.

In September, CenturyLink rebranded as Newman and announced its quantum fiber platform for residential and small business owners.

I'm interested in hearing about Newman's plans to convert its twisted pair DSL network to fiber outside of the VODI bidding process.

In other words, is there any hope for those of us needing better than three megabits per second or worse down DSL to get it outside of the VODI and other grant processes?

And then repeating, has ABA asked CenturyLink for a briefing on its rollout plans for fiber service in Albemarle County?

If not, could you please?

So yes, John Noreen and I have met with CenturyLink to discuss their rollout plans for fiber beyond the two VODI programs.

Remember there's the VODI 2020 which is active and working or going into the activation mode sometime in

starting in January going through March.

And then there's the VODI 2021 proposal that's in front of the DHCD review team.

So we hope to hear about that soon.

As far as moving forward with any additional DSL type activations, they prefer not to do that.

So any additional DSL activations will not be made.

If they do anything new, it'll be through a fiber connection.

I think one of the things we should do in answer to this question from a resident is perhaps call Century Lincoln either during the January or the February meeting of the broadband authority.

Hope that answered your question, Tim.

And I'll go on to the next one, Chair, if there are any more in there or not.

Tim, thanks for the question.

It's a great topic and we'll, since CenturyLink provides service to so many people in the county, we will be pursuing that with them.

In the old business, I'm sorry, back up, the approval of the October 28th minutes, I noticed that our esteemed secretary,

and provided a copy of those.

Has everyone had an opportunity to review them?

Were there any changes?

And are we good to go with those?

I enjoyed reading them.

It was like a meeting I had been to.

Creative fiction?

No, not at all.

So I would move to accept those as approved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you for the second.

All those in favor, let me run the roll real quick.

Donna?

Aye.

Trevor?

Yes.

Bill?

Yes.

Liz?

Yes.

And I vote yes as well.

So they're approved unanimously.

Thank you again, Mr. Secretary.

Just want to let you know, I'm going to be trying to roll out more quickly an action memo in the future.

So I'll be, I'm trying to get a format for that.

So hopefully you'll see that next week.

Well, with that done, let's go to the old business, the Mike, the Vadi 2020 and 2021 updates.

Yes, I'll start with VODI 2020, which is the active project funded through the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative, eight project areas that are under construction.

So most of the project areas are currently under construction, and we're hearing from many of the residents, some of them which go up to the folks doing the work and ask them, is this century Lincoln?

The answer is yes.

So we've put together a new update to the frequently asked questions and that went out to over 200 residents this week.

So we're receiving questions about that.

So things are rolling along.

I think the benefit that the residents are going to see is close to what we wanted.

They're going to receive invitations with a singular phone number that allows them to call in and pre-register for the service.

The hope was that they would have a portal, a web portal that would allow them to register, but instead they're just going to get a phone number so that they bypass the general CenturyLink customer service desk.

So we're working toward that.

It should be a really good way to get things out.

So that's the VODI 2020 update.

Everything's on target to start rolling out January, February, and March.

All eight projects being done before March 5th is the current goal.

So we're excited.

It's a good thing going on there.

Move on to VODI 2021 unless there's any questions.

Any questions about 2020?

Okay.

2021.

The good news we heard this week, there were a lot of questions about it.

We still were unaware until really Monday that the authorization to add an additional

31 million, so 31 million to the VADI budget for this year for 2021 projects is now 50 million across the Commonwealth.

So that's really good news and lots of great applications out there.

We still feel we have a very good chance, the ABBA and CenturyLink, which has 10 project areas now.

One of our project areas was successfully challenged and we've removed it from the

The application and that's the Boonsville area.

SEVIC has a number of members in the Boonsville area that are off the Whitehall substation and SEVIC came in and said we would prefer that you not include that in your application.

So we did.

So we're going to have to, you know,

Encourage SEVEC Firefly to work through that Broomsville area.

So that's the one big challenge with that.

Everything else we feel we've got a really good chance to get funded on.

So we're excited about the future of Valley 2021.

And that's my update.

Any questions on either of those?

Well, great.

Thanks, board.

Nice and succinct.

Thank you, Mike.

You're welcome.

The ABBA financial report, that just keeps getting longer and longer.

Well, as you recall from reading the minutes and the discussion from last week, Supervisor Palmer had asked for an inclusion of the CRF CARES funding projects in the next budget report.

So that really is why I guess there's a second report as part of our budget.

As far as the actual broadband authority budget,

Mike, could you bring up the PDF of the agenda and that way I can just talk to it real quick?

Please?

Or I can do it if you'd like me to.

Nope, here it comes.

Okay.

So same format as we reviewed last time.

From an ABBA budget perspective, the only thing that changed was we talked about the movement of the part-time wages last month in order to cover the potential overage in the fund balance.

That work has occurred, and so we are whole from a budgeting perspective.

I will note, and tying back to what Mike just mentioned,

The 640 is our commitment as part of the 2021 body proposal that's in.

That will get amended at some point to reflect the scope of work that has been pulled out.

So possibly I'll have to talk to Mike on the right time to show that.

But anyhow, really there's no changes in the budget other than the movement of that one item.

And we have yet to receive an invoice from CenturyLink on the 2020 projects.

Any questions on the ABBA budget?

I can't see everybody.

So I'm moving on to the CARES Act projects.

Mike, I'm going to bring you in for any questions that the authority members might have.

But we basically have three CARES funded projects underway right now.

You can see them, they're listed in the table.

Two of those projects, the first one, Chantal Beam, and the third one, the bottom one, the Nelson Cable, those are funded through the CARES funding that Almore County received.

The middle one, the Firefly Bridges Creek item, we were able to get that pushed out to the state when the state opened up their

their funding and we were able to get that approved and the timing of that just worked so that we were able to tap into the state funding.

So this reflects three projects that are underway.

I have no questions.

I just really appreciate seeing it all down in one place together with our budget.

I'm not quite sure when the Board of Supervisors is going to see this in its totality.

Supervisor Palmer, I think the answer to the question is in the quarterly report.

Right now, that's not scheduled until January 20th.

And so when that does come out, I just would request, unless there's some reason not to, when you do do the, what the broadband authority has done with the CARES,

if you can put a lot of information as to the areas, like list all the areas and whatnot.

We have a lot more work to do, but sometimes I think that the board as a whole doesn't recognize how much has actually gotten done, which I think is not enough, but it's a reasonable amount.

And I'd like to make sure that we really communicate that

all these different areas.

So thank you.

That's great.

It is a big help.

Thanks Trevor.

Absolutely.

I have a comment just as a comparison.

I mean, it's really more sort of a reflection.

for the lack of adequacy of service provided in our area.

I have what I think is generally pretty good internet, but I just checked mine just as our meeting started and I'm at 5.45 megabytes per second download and 0.45 megabytes per second upload.

And I look here at their minimum plans are 25 megabytes per second.

I can't even imagine what a thousand

would be.

And I think I have fairly decent internet in terms of what I do, which just reflects, I think, how poorly so many of the residents in our county are being served when they can't even get back.

So as y'all probably heard at the meeting we had a week or so ago, about

You know, the budget and everything.

We've asked county staff to go back and look to see if there's any way we can put some additional money into expanding broadband.

And I think what this committee in particular does is as essential to our residents as electricity and clean water is.

I actually have a question that I forgot on this.

I went to the, on the Chantelle site, I went to the Iwantbeam.com and watched their little video.

What is it about this particular service that makes it okay when it's raining and when the leaves are on the trees?

And they have a little video that says that their reliability is so much better than DSL.

Yes, I'll try.

The good news is that Chantelle will be joining our January meeting.

They've confirmed they'll be joining the January meeting and they can answer all of those questions then.

It's the high powered nature of the antennas that are part of the customer premise equipment, as well as the

the equipment that's sending the signals out that are on the towers, they have a much broader and much stronger signal.

But I think I'll defer and let Chantelle provide the details on how it all works, if that is okay.

Is that okay?

Okay.

Anything else?

Well, then let's close out our old business then.

Thank you very much, Trevor.

and move on to new business.

Oh, yes, everyone got bigger.

It's wonderful.

We've had a discussion of the legislative priorities referencing the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative.

So what do we want our folks in Richmond to do for us to make body better?

Delegate Bell asked very specifically for legislative changes that would improve the VADI process.

I think I put that in the email.

And, you know, if there's something specific, they said that they only have seven bills that they can put through.

And I think the short session.

Yes.

And the idea is to combine some of these broadband ones

or piggyback them on something else.

So I'll let those who understand actually going through the VADI process better than I do.

Sure.

Mike, go ahead.

OK.

I'll try to be succinct.

One of the things that I'm gonna do as a takeaway from this meeting is to send, there's a memo that was sent around from Evan Feynman to all of the broadband advisory council members.

And in the memo, he explains the process that the broadband advisory council has the task to make recommendations to DHCD for changes to the VODI program.

One of the most significant changes that is coming forward that the broadband advisory council will be working on next Friday.

So we have a meeting from two to four next Friday to go through some of the ideas that have been going around, improved mapping, more inclusion, or I'll put it in frank terms, pressure on the electrical companies to do a better job of allowing fiber to be included in their process.

And then the one that we've been talking about, or at least maybe we've been talking about, is the availability for wireless service authorities like ourselves, otherwise known as broadband authorities, and their ability to apply for funding through VODI on their own without having to include a private sector ISP.

Those types of conversations are going to be happening at that meeting at two o'clock on Friday.

And I'll report out both in email and then at our December meeting about the outcomes of how we're offering up changes to the DHCD body program.

And hopefully some of the things that we've suggested and will be put into play.

It's a good thing that's going on.

Well, I don't know.

That's a good question.

I'll answer that question.

I'll pose the question at the broadband advisory council.

How do the suggestions that we put forward

There's a certain interest in delegates to get a bill that's meaningful and get it through.

I would say it's a political success to do that.

And so when a delegate actually asks us

to come up with something specific.

I think it is in our interest to make sure that it gets to a specific person in the House and a specific person in the Senate in a specific way.

And I recognize that this group knows so much more about this than I do, and they're probably very well equipped to get through the General Assembly.

But if it's nebulous,

or they don't have somebody that really wants to take it in.

I will say that during our legislative session, Matt Ferris announced that he voted against giving more money to broadband because he thought that the money should really go to cell phone service because that's what he really needed in Campbell County.

And so,

You never can tell what the landscape is of individuals.

Well, there were two specific things that come to my mind.

One of them Mike just sort of mentioned, and we've talked about it in the past,

and this doesn't have much to do with the Virginia General Communications Initiative, but it does have to do with making it easier to get broadband out.

Every time Dominion buries a power line, which is a wonderful thing, the cost to them to put in some conduit that they could drag some fiber along with that, or someone in the future could, is very low.

I don't know if they have a tariff that lets them

charged the equivalent of pole attachment fees for letting someone else run their fiber through that or not.

But if that were in place, the cost to deploy fiber any place that power lines had been buried would be really, really low.

And of course, Dominion's coming along behind the places where they buried their power lines and they're taking the old poles out.

So, you know,

There's a gap there that needs to be covered on the Dominion side of things.

Obviously, CBC has gone a different route and it's not going to be an issue for them.

But Dominion's been burying stuff like gangbusters around the county and electrical service gets more robust as a result.

Good thing.

Don't want to discourage it.

But the incremental cost to create this tariffable service that they could sell or feature that they could sell

would be relatively low and then anybody could run fiber out, you know, nearly to your home to get power out there.

The second thing that I have seen that comes up is that every year DHCD has a little bit different criteria for how they're going to evaluate body grants.

And I respect the fact that they're adapting, changing, growing with the times.

But from the perspective of folks submitting these things, you're doing a dance trying to figure out, well, this did or didn't work last time, and now all the rules are different.

I don't even know how to go get the money this time.

That's what's actually happening to these delegates.

They are getting constant complaints that the Batty grants are too difficult to apply for.

and they don't have the time to apply.

And one of the reasons why Bill said, asked us, he said, Elmar County has been successful.

Tell us why you're successful.

Tell us how we can change so we can make it easier.

And we're successful in large part because of Mike Culp.

Right.

You know, but beyond that, anybody could take Mike's last year application and use it for theirs, except they'll have changed the rules next year.

As long as we've got Mike, I just assume it'd be complex so the other communities aren't as successful.

I looked at how successful we've been and Mike and you know when I say we that's kind of the royal we I had nothing to do with it.

For what it's worth, like I believe you have as well, Bucky, I've read through some of the other applications filed by other localities, and some of them are really just quite low quality.

Like, I don't think that they have the resources within that county in order to provide a competitive grant application for reasons that I think are probably tied to personnel and resources.

Yeah, I hear you.

Again, I'm with Donna on this.

I don't really want to make it easier for them.

I have a question for probably Mike on this one.

And I'll try to ask it in the least confusing way as I can, Mike.

But as I think about the process and I think about what we hear a lot about some of the, I'll call them kind of the incumbent ISPs in our area,

Is there anything in the process that would be beneficial to the county that would weight performance, execution, anything, any of those kinds of metrics that would enable, I'll just say better performing ISPs and entities that have better customer service have more traction in the process?

Thank you Trevor, thank you board for allowing me a little bit of time to talk about the process and thanks for all of the compliments.

don't necessarily agree with them, I have to be frank.

Our projects, the projects that we've submitted have all been small in comparison to some of the larger projects that are out there.

Now that may not be a fault of mine.

All of our projects have been within the two million or less.

I would prefer that we were way up there on some of the big projects that have been awarded funds.

So just to let you know,

although I'm, how can I say this?

I don't wanna be, I won't go much further with that.

The second thing, the question about improving customer service is very much at the forefront.

There is no use in having a gigabit fiber service at your home if when you're in the middle of a meeting like this the connection goes down and you're not coming back online and things just get worse instead of better.

It's almost like it would be better if you didn't have the service because then you're not in a situation where suddenly you can't move forward and do the work you need.

So a couple of things there.

The ability to promote competition does a couple of things.

It's going to help us lower price and it's also going to allow us to create redundant fiber rings through the county so that if I drop off on a meeting like this, I at least have some capability of using a backup resource so that I can connect back in and be able to participate.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing about customer service stats, we want to do a better job at the state of collecting

information directly from the customer.

Meaning it's not enough to hear from the ISPs that they're providing good service or they're providing adequate service or they're providing certain speeds.

We need to hear directly from the citizens on a more frequent basis as well.

So there is an effort to improve the way that we're providing the broadband map.

So

We're hopeful to do a little more work on that so that across the Commonwealth, we're getting better data and that data needs to include performance of the ISPs.

And what we want to do, combined with my first statement, the competitive nature of putting that all together, that's going to force the ISPs to be better.

We'll have data that shows you're not providing

Excellent customer service.

And that's not a great thing.

So we're going to try to work with you, or at least it forces them to do a better job.

The last thing I'll talk about.

I know it's everybody has a lot going on is there's a definite need for all of the ISPs to provide accurate address listings when they put a project together.

You know, there's a lot of things that go on that they're just sending out.

This is an area we're going to serve only to find out later it's missing a pocket or it's not including additional addresses that seem to be included in the project map.

So one of the things we're going to be talking about is the

capability or the requirement that every awarded VODI application before the funds can start flowing back to the ISP, they have to provide a list that everyone can use and access to confirm that the address that they're thinking is going to be in the project is absolutely included.

Or if it's not in there, then that means there's another project that'll come through and get that address at a later date.

So I think I answered your question, Trevor.

Thank you, board, for the time to talk it through.

And hopefully that answered.

Thanks, Mike.

Will you be able to report out after your regional meeting next Friday?

I think report out to the authority.

It'd be interesting to hear what the discussion points were and really what

what recommendations will be being made?

Yes, will do.

And I'll share the listing of the delegates and senators that are currently on the broadband advisory council.

Can I ask a question about what you just said about requiring the ISPs to give a list of the folks who are going to get service, which of course would be wonderful.

Do you think you can force them to do it?

Because if we have a community out in the rural areas that is only going to be served by

Good question, Supervisor Palmer, and I agree with you.

It is a potential showstopper for, especially the larger ISPs.

They may come back and say, because of the corporate

rules and regulations, they're not able to provide proposed customer lists.

But yeah, one of the body requirements is to break things down by, you know, by passings, how many residences or businesses you pass.

And so if we can't verify the numbers that they're providing us, which we can only do with the residences,

then we don't, you know, how can we sign off on that?

Right, exactly.

And I think that's, you know, that's one of the reasons why the Broadband Advisory Council is across the spectrum, meaning there's members from the Senate and there's delegates on it as well.

There's people from the municipalities and there's representatives from private sector.

So the discussions there will lead to, remember, this is not a definite, so

It is certainly something we would like, at least I would like to do.

I don't know that the rest of the Broadband Advisory Council will agree with that assessment, but we can just put it forward and hope that it comes back with a positive result.

Does that help?

Yes.

I thought you guys were really intense.

You were going to be meeting on the day after Thanksgiving.

My opinion just went down.

Yeah, I have a couple of things.

Okay, Waldo?

It seems to me like broadband mapping should be handled centrally by the state and not on a permunicipality basis.

And nobody's going to say we don't have the resources.

OK, we'll figure it out.

Because this is a serious problem.

It's hard enough for us.

And we have lots of resources.

I don't know what they're doing in Fluvanna on broadband mapping.

I don't know what they're doing on Nelson and broadband.

They're just out of luck.

And so it's a fundamental disconnect to say you have to be able to demonstrate there's this need for servers not already serviced there and so on.

and also not provide any resources in order to gather that data.

What the schools built that we use now, there is zero reason why they can't be used for the entire state.

It would be a pretty trivial thing to scale up to do that.

The state should do that.

So that's the first thing that I would like to see Bonnie doing.

The second is, this is not prescriptive, it's a complaint.

I can't prescribe a solution to the top of my head.

The current funding model

is creating these ever smaller and farther flung islands of no service.

So these incumbent providers get to expand their footprint more and more, leaving these smaller unserved areas that it makes no sense for a new provider to show up and say, well, we'll get 12 customers here and 15 customers five miles away there.

And then over that mountain there, we'll get another 16.

And so Vadi's model of expanding the footprints of incumbent providers

is allowing them to enhance a monopoly while then prohibiting overbuilding as we saw with the Boonsville build.

And it's the conflict of these two things that I fear is contributing to monopolistic behavior.

And something's gonna be done because this story doesn't have a happy ending.

And I'd like to see something, an intervention before that happens.

And one last point that is not about the Virginia grant process directly, I'll just say we should anticipate a change

in the federal funding model under the Biden administration.

One of the ways that may change will be funding flowing to states such as VADI-type grant funding, which would be enhanced really significantly how much funding they would have available in which this year's funding wouldn't be a fluke, but perhaps a low point going forward, and then moving away from the RDOF-type funding to the degree to which it's being used right now.

So those are all really good points.

And do you think that, Mike, that things like the current funding model enhancing a monopoly would be covered under your meeting next Friday?

Is that the kind of thing that they might talk about?

I think Waldo is right on with the comments regarding the creation of the smaller pockets.

Going into the, I think it's a, how can I explain this?

I think we need to recognize that it's important to encourage partnerships.

and Vadi is trying very hard to make sure that they don't allow what is typically called cherry picking where a provider will come in and only bid on the areas where there's the most density so that they'll get the most.

We're getting to that point across the state.

I wish there were a better way to prohibit that from happening.

But I think it's complex enough that it really is a tough discussion.

Let's just put it that way.

It's a tough discussion to bridge that gap and say you're no longer going to be a monopoly and you need to either reduce your pricing for that.

That's the other thing that we do talk about a little bit is the difference between

the urban areas paying X amount, and then the rural areas being forced to pay an additional amount.

Those types of things do come up.

So I'm not answering your question very well.

I apologize for that.

I will say that the little video on the Chantel website, they have actually explained this creation

of the monopoly that they're just not going to go and serve these little pockets.

And they say that their fixed wireless program is the solution to these little pockets.

But I think it's funny that Waldo brought that up because I just watched that video and it literally explains that problem.

Supervisor Palmer, I was on the meeting with the delegates last Friday.

I don't recall

Is it just ahead of the budget process coming out of the winter or did you know like a- They typically want, because they only have seven bills this year, typically they want things as soon as possible so that they can get them in the proper form and hook them onto different, you know, different bills.

and I just don't think that Delegate Bell would have asked, it's unusual that they specifically ask for something.

So that to me just means he wants to run with it.

And so I would just be more than happy to ask him, but it's usually as soon as possible.

Yeah.

Just trying to end with some closure of the specific actions that we're asking Mike to do on this and what involvement we would want to have as an authority.

There's agreement around the meeting that will be attended next week, a week from Friday.

Mike can report out on that, but it would seem like we wanna provide that input as quickly as we can after that to delegate Bell.

Well, let me offer this and see if we can get agreement on it.

I'd like to see what Mike has from this meeting circulated to this group with his recommendations for how that ought to translate into legislative priorities.

We should have the opportunity to comment on that, amend it, et cetera, and do it not as a meeting, of course, because Richie would tell us that was wrong, but just offering advice to our delegate, which is not a per se an action of this authority.

I don't know how well we know the process, but it is appropriate.

So I work with Mike and others in our office if it comes to that.

I think that's appropriate.

And I think it's appropriate for him to, he can send out memos to you all.

Does that address your interest there, Trevor?

Yes, sir.

That wraps it up.

Thank you.

Good.

Well, thank you for the closure on that.

If it pleases the board, I was looking through the agenda and trying to find exactly what Liz is asking for.

What is the deadline?

You know, what is the role of the broadband advisory council for submitting their recommendations for approval?

And it is not included in the agenda, but one thing I did note, and this actually happened during the last, the November meeting, is that the authorities had at least one person who came in during the public comment period and advocated for allowing the authorities to, you know,

convinced the Broadband Advisory Council to allow them to apply for body funds without an ISP.

So there is some, I'm not sure what you call that, but there are some of that going on.

The reason that I bring it up is that this meeting next Friday has a public comment period.

If anyone from the ABA board wishes to be on and make public comments about what's going on,

Some of the things that I heard tonight would be great for the Broadband Advisory Council to hear on Friday.

It's early in the meeting, so two o'clock sometime.

I'm not making a recommendation, I'm just giving information on what's going on with the Broadband Advisory Council.

So that's it, Chair.

So you sent that information to us, and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to email Delegate Bell and ask him the question of where is he on doing this, that we discussed it at the meeting, because I told him that I would be asking our broadband authority and Mike Culp this at this meeting.

And so I'll follow up, and I'll put that you're going to this, I'm sure he knows about this meeting that you're going to next Friday, but I'll mention that in the email.

and say that the broadband authority talked about possibilities that we're gonna be discussing on Friday and that way we'll find out more about what Delegate Bell actually does or doesn't wanna do.

Well, thank you and desperate to drive a nail in this topic to close it out.

I'm just gonna read the next item of new business and we'll move on to that.

A report on the Board of Supervisors Strategic Plan Review and Capital Planning Work Session in regards to broadband, which was strategy number nine.

Okay, thanks everybody and appreciate the discussion item here.

I think it's a good opportunity to have.

Mike sent out an email over the weekend with an update on Monday, I believe, that actually shared the timing of the board discussion last week around the strategic plan, capital plan,

and it was a great discussion supervisors of Palmer and Price will certainly weigh in in this discussion to provide their perspective but I wanted to just summarize that there was strong support and consensus around the funding of broadband

continuing and moving forward with great urgency.

The County Executive, Jeff Richardson, kind of landed that collective of comments before we moved on to kind of the next agenda item.

with staff taking an action to come back in January as part of our really kickoff of the 22 budget process with recommendations on broadband funding.

And we covered some different areas on that.

So the memo that Mike shared with the authority was work that he led and actually started about six weeks ago.

He and I worked together pretty extensively on it.

John Lorine, who has been contract serviced support to help manage the CARES Act funding, the projects that we looked at a few minutes ago, was able to lend an eye to it as well as some other staff within IT.

And really, it's trying to capture the work that we've done, the reflection of what it's taken just to execute the VADI projects,

and the impact of the pandemics and what that means for the future.

So that really was kind of the work that we did as staff.

I have briefed up the county executive office, our chief financial officer with some potential scope and some program levels.

We've even talked of looking at some affordability, what might be achievable for the balance of FY21 and then to FY22.

And so we were hoping today to hopefully had a chance to look at the memo that Mike provided.

And if you haven't get a chance, go and listen to the board meeting, but we're hoping to get some feedback around

what, you know, some of those recommendations might look like.

And I'll say, you know, really the approach that we took to advance our broadband priorities is a funding stream.

You know, ideally it's a combination of one-time and recurring that can cover near-term kind of triage issues that have been

exacerbated during the pandemic on the need of connection, long-term objectives, as well as to adequately staff this effort, which the effort has been significant to absorb within our county structure to date.

Two kind of main components.

One is our infrastructure component.

And we really, we referenced the strategic plan work that we did this spring and summer, Bucky, that you led as kind of our guideposts on kind of on how we'd want to move forward.

Within the infrastructure, it is, you know, we're saying is kind of a continuing to triage to meet current urgent needs of access.

the fixed wireless program that's underway, some of the CARES Act funding projects and expanding on that while executing the longer term plan of getting fiber out and continuing to partner with ISPs, trying to maximize the amount of grant funding we can draw down and really kind of doing that in parallel.

Secondly,

and it's in the strategic plan as kind of a noted yet unfunded area but an area that got a lot of discussion around by the board and I think has certainly risen as an incredible priority for the county which is really applying an equity lens to where we're spending our money and where we're moving the program and so you know rural area certainly has been our focus and rightfully so

But what we've learned through this pandemic and work that the schools have done is that we have an affordability issue in the county.

And, you know, especially in some of the urban ring areas, our development areas, where folks just can't afford the access that they need to have, you know, behind me, you see my wife's whiteboard.

You know, there's two teachers working out of my house right now.

and then my son sometimes works here or not.

Unfortunately, I'm in a location that I have good connection, but if you're not, that puts a big strain on families.

And so, we really look at a program that could be both the infrastructure side and the affordability side.

Mike has done some really good due diligence through programs that we've used this fall that we could potentially continue with some funding.

And then finally, I have talked to our county executive about the potential of creating an office of broadband access that's really modeled after our economic development office.

And that really is to reflect our current levels of support that we're doing for broadband and managing all the work we do.

And I think by going that route, it's a formal commitment by the county of the importance of this.

And it's more than just our VODI project.

It's all the customer service management that we can do and maybe can do more on.

it's bringing in some other resources from the county that have the expertise in our in our capital project management that might help us you know work with the ISPs that maybe can even help move these projects out quicker so that's really kind of the summary you know we we made some

some thoughts or created some thoughts around what those funding levels might look like.

But I wanted to just kind of tee up the why did you get this memo and some background on it.

And then I would certainly love to hear from our supervisors that are on our authority about their perspective and input that they have.

And I'll mute myself for now other than for questions.

One question.

When we had discussion before about the affordability and actual equipment in the house and paying for the service, we talked at that point about using the CARES money to do some of that.

And wasn't some of that done?

Didn't we put some kind of money, COVID-related money to that?

I'm just forgetting.

No, yes.

I can try to answer the question, Supervisor Palmer.

I think it really needs to go to the team that did the human services part of the CARES funding.

It's a program that they have set up with the United Way.

What I've asked for from them, and it's happening, they're providing utility support.

And as part of that utility support,

Residents can apply for and receive subsidies for broadband bills, so internet bills.

What I haven't received yet is the the detail of how many

Families have applied in that way.

We know that there's many families that are applying for other utilities relief, but we just don't know how many people are on the internet side of that.

Hopefully I can get that information to you.

But great question.

It's been asked.

The program's already in place.

It's something that we may be able to leverage going forward.

with non-CRF funds, so with non-coronavirus relief funds.

Yes.

Can you also talk a little bit about the schools program and what they've done?

Yes, one of the great programs that the school division put together early on, they realized early on that a number of families, especially in the urban ring, would have difficulty with paying their bills

And what they put together was a voucher system with Comcast.

So what happens with those particular families is they submit an application to receive those funds.

The school division looks that over and decides whether or not they are appropriate to receive the funds.

And then the voucher is provided and they can sign up or just

Redo their bills, so the bills are actually coming back to the school division.

So far, the latest count that was of early last week, 52 families have signed up for that.

A couple of notes on that, it's a great program, but again, it's relegated to where there is Comcast service.

So we want to expand upon that to include all ISPs, as well as beyond just ASPS.

Albemarle County Public Schools, families.

So we want to include people who are on fixed income, folks that are not in the Comcast service area, et cetera, et cetera, the list goes on.

Okay.

Well, the board certainly is going to want that.

I know you'll provide it.

The only other things that I'll add to Trevor's discussion

as a board member was there's tremendous frustration associated with those islands that Waldo was talking about earlier where you get these small little places where their next door neighbor has fiber or has some good internet service and there's nothing next door.

And I know Ann Mallick attended some of the VACO

Sessions on broadband, and I was not able to do that.

I don't know if Supervisor Price did, but I did go back and look at the PowerPoints, and one of the ones she brought up was Orange County and did a large, I can't remember how many millions of dollars, but they did a relatively large fiber

and to the home project.

I have trouble seeing how an Orange County model sort of fits into our model, but I don't know.

I couldn't glean much from going through the PowerPoint and reading the additional things.

But I think some folks are interested in larger projects where

As you said, we're applying not with the ISP, but as Albemarle County and how that would actually be built out, I don't know.

Just to be clear, I am not at all in favor of Albemarle County being responsible for what I would call hardware

or infrastructure responsibilities.

I support Albemarle County being able to financially entice providers to do that.

And I thought, my understanding is that's really what Abba does, that we are not looking to be any sort of a provider.

The long-term expense, I mean, data equipment is

being upgraded and obsoleted so fast.

I don't think we want anything to do with taking on that kind of responsibility.

I really appreciate what Waldo said and others have echoed.

These little islands of isolation out there, we cannot allow that to continue or there will be no incentive for them to be covered.

And I don't have the expertise that any of y'all have.

I just want to see us do whatever we can to expand broadband to as many of our residents and businesses as possible.

I mean, that's really the only thing I know.

I certainly agree with that.

I don't think there's any interest in anybody to go into the ISP business.

Trevor, as I think about the Office of Broadband Support or whatever they might be called in parallel to what the EDA has, that strikes me as just an incredible resource in so many areas, but absolutely vital when we try and address the equity issues, because that's way beyond the scope of what this group can effectively do and administer.

and we might be able to help set policy, but really beyond that, there's a lot of toting and carrying that goes on when you look at that.

And I know people in my community near where I live who some kind of internet passes by their house and they don't have it.

They don't have it because they can't afford it.

So they don't have any bills to turn in because they never got hooked up, which means now their kids don't have online school.

And

I don't see a way out of that unless we make this more affordable, either by paying for it ourselves or offering incentives to the ISPs to lower the prices or something.

Yeah, I agree.

And I think it may mean that we, as part of the equity aspect, we, the county, have to contribute towards

that last mile of delivery, which may be why some families don't get it, and as much as we can to put pressure on the providers when they make an offer, that they include all of the households along those lines.

Not allow them to pick the 100 most beneficial return on investment for them and leave out the 30 or 40, whatever it may be, that it's gonna cost them some money.

I think it probably has to be a combination of both.

We put more pressure on them to expand, and we have to contribute more to get to that last mile for people.

Maybe if they pay the 400 feet, the county contributes whatever the cost is for the differential to get to the 1,000 feet.

I don't know the calculation, but we can't leave the individual households left out.

I'd like to point out that we are there's a bit of a conflict here that

No county in the country has seen 100% broadband coverage.

It just hasn't happened yet.

We're not going to be able to do it either.

The conflict here is between our method of accomplishing that is solely through attempting to entice the private sector to do things that are decreasingly enticing.

And so the cost will become higher and higher to get them to do it.

It's Zeno's paradox, like you can never actually cover the entire distance.

You just get half and then half of that and half of that and half of that and half of that.

You can't ever complete it.

But the challenge is, as we attempt to entice them,

To further this, the build out, we're going to get into increasing problems with equity because where they're not covering is skews heavily toward areas that they regard as less desirable as customers for economic and other reasons.

So what we have is them extending service to people who are more on the margins of people who can afford to maintain that service and take advantage of it.

But we are not between the ISP

and the customer.

We're not the customer.

Those people are the customers and so we have no authority.

We can't go to, say, CenturyLink and make demands of them with any authority whatsoever because we don't give them the checks.

We give them a check and then we go away.

We can't hold out anything.

We can't stop giving them something.

As a customer, I can tell CenturyLink I refuse to pay anymore, and they don't care.

I'm too small to negotiate with them.

But if I were represented by an entire broadband authority, along with 10,000 other customers,

Then you really get somewhere.

So my work for years has been in federal contracting with big technology providers.

And I'll tell you, when you're not the customer, as a government agency, the big technology providers don't care what you have to say.

It's just like the grown up characters in Peanuts.

Just mwah, mwah, mwah is what they hear.

This is going to become increasingly wrong.

Just to put a fine point on this, as we get access to more people who don't have access now and are less traditionally attractive to CenturyLink as customers, if we are not in the middle of that relationship, then we're going to set people up for difficult relationships with CenturyLink, et cetera, whomever else builds out there, which will come back to us, which we'll have no authority to do anything about.

Trevor?

I'm just curious.

Great concern raised, Bucky.

And we certainly, you know, our approach, we wouldn't want it to kind of continue and worsen an equity issue.

But what do you see as ways out of that?

I'm sorry, I meant Waldo.

Yeah, no, it's OK.

I won't belabor this because I've gone over it before.

But I am absolutely convinced that our only path forward with these unserved and underserved areas that doesn't end up with a monopoly for huge chunks of the county and all of the bad things that come with a monopoly is Albemarle County becoming a middle mile provider that then builds out fiber and leases it out once it's in the ground.

to ISPs, they can name their own hardware, we don't care.

We just put glass tubes underground and lease it out for 20 years at a time.

That's the only solution forward or only path forward that I see that doesn't lead to giving out funding over and over again to cover and recover areas as new technology becomes available to never covering everybody.

That we be that vendor.

as is done in municipalities across the country.

This is like a super normal thing at this point.

I would be surprised if we're going to be able at this time with this amount of preparation to actually solve, you know, have the solution template for this problem.

But awareness is the beginning.

Making sure that we're aware of the problem that

To only if we're prepared to what to say, then we're not going to fund you.

Well, obviously, any negotiation, that has to be a possible step.

But if you're managing your relationship well, you don't get there very quickly.

So I would encourage us to be there.

But I'm not sure that further discussion, unless someone has been hit by a bolt of lightning on this topic, is going to solve it at this moment.

Oh, Richie, Richie.

Oh, I don't have a bolt, but I don't know if this moves the ball forward or anything, but

I've always thought that the broadband authority should have the granting authority that the EDA has, and whether that, if we were to have that authority, whether that gives us more local control over what the ISPs do, again, I don't know, but

I know we're going and we're getting fatty and they have their rules and we have to comply with their rules.

But if we had our own authority to issue grants or to manage a grant program, we could change the rules.

And you're back to legislative initiatives here, because that would require a chance.

But I just I mean, even when we look at CVEC, that grant doesn't go through the broadband authority.

Mike negotiated it and the broadband authority approved it.

Right, because we had no ability to administer those funds under the Virginia Wireless Services Authorities Act.

So, you know, that would be a simple amendment.

It's not really a gangbuster kind of thing.

But it would surprise me that some of the wireless services, some of the broadband authorities around the state, particularly those who are more engaged in

creating their own structures.

It would seem like this would be handy for them too.

I don't know.

We can't be the only ones who would want that.

Well, what Mike and I have talked about and again kind of looking under

some affordability lens from carry forward money and CARES Act work that we're doing and what might be available as well as some other funds that the board created in their strategic, it's a strategic priority fund that basically has been in reserve.

What may come forward is

Something on the order of about a half a million dollars for the balance of 21.

And then, you know, somewhere on the order of maybe $2 million for 22.

Again those are just, I think what I've said to our budget office and county executive is based on the work that I've done with Mike and looking at the work that potentially is out there, we probably could spend as much money as we could be giving

But with that said, knowing what other priorities are, really looking at one-time money, understanding the pandemic, and really not committing too much until we get into January and see what the future forecast is going to be looking like through our real estate numbers.

Those are numbers that we've kind of penciled in as some potential.

And so is there a reaction

from the authority on those numbers, good numbers, or not even close to where we should be talking about.

Well, there's a lot of fiber to lay, a lot of folks to connect, a lot of services that need to be met.

I don't think any of us have a number.

If I only had $47 million, I could get it all done.

We don't have that number,

I would love to have that number but I would have it and the next day it would be invalid because something would have changed so I think our strategy of whittling away at the mountain and hoping the mountain gets smaller is probably reasonable given the resources we have but I don't think there could be any question that the amount of money you've mentioned is money we could put to good use hopefully leveraged with state and or federal monies

I would love to know how many households in Albemarle County are presently unserved and at the current, let's just pretend it is exactly as cheap to serve all houses it has been so far, we know it won't be, but at that rate, how much does it cost to serve the rest of Albemarle County?

I feel like we need the thermometer that goes up as people donate money.

How's it going?

Because inevitably the cost will go up.

I mean, probably something close to exponentially or at least geometrically as we get closer.

But if it were linear, what is it?

I don't know.

Is that 2 million?

Is it 10 million?

Is it 100 million?

I also wonder whether or not some sort of funding program where you guarantee a certain level of service.

So if they have so many pass bys, they have 100 pass bys and they think they're only going to get 40 connections.

What if we said, no, there'll be 100?

You know, somehow we'll subsidize that and there would be a hundred.

Would that then get them to say, well, you know, if you're willing to say, if you're willing to guarantee a minimum 10 megabyte service at this rate to 100% of the pass bys, we'll build into those pockets because then we know that there's going to be a revenue stream coming in because

If that person says, you know, I don't know if I can afford it or not, but the county's gonna subsidize up to 10 megabytes.

Okay, I'll do it.

I don't know how much it would cost.

Yeah, I mean, it's right, it's, you know,

And then there's always the people across the street.

Right.

Yeah, it's always something.

No, but I like your thinking about it's a crazy idea.

And I wish that we had more time ginning up crazy ideas.

I never thought in those terms.

And clearly, that's a really important stat for ISPs.

What's the take rate going to be?

And to be able to say, we guarantee an 8% take rate or whatever.

Yeah.

Right, so if you, if you, and then, you know, does that change the dynamics?

And does it change the number?

Instead of giving you $640,000, we're gonna, we're gonna give, in one year, we'll give you $640,000 over the next

four years or five years or whatever it is because we're guaranteeing a take rate.

Does that change the dynamic of the number of people that get served?

I don't know.

Well, it's kind of what we're doing with CBA because we're saying we're not going to tax you on any structure.

Yeah.

Um, I'm going to have to take off hearing

hearing people come, kids and dogs barking.

Before you leave, you have any thoughts on the Christmas EV meeting?

I was just the next agenda item.

Noting that it's the 23rd, I know it's not a 90-minute meeting, folks, I get that, but staff, everybody has really been working hard through the pandemic, but we've had a lot of staff that have been just standing on their head, and we were really in the executive office trying to block off

Those last two weeks of December, as best we could, to not have meetings and additional outside commitments.

I know our meeting is on the 23rd.

I'm going to be off that week, but I'll make the meeting because I can.

I just was wondering, would the board be interested in moving it up?

to the previous week, maybe on a Tuesday night or a Thursday night.

We have a board meeting.

The second board meeting is in the previous week.

So this may not work.

I just thought I would raise that as a question.

And I certainly would be interested in bumping it up a week earlier if we could.

I mean, I noticed today at the grocery store, there was a uplifted spirit that I have not seen among customers in months.

I'm good on the 15th or the 17th.

Do we need one for December?

Only if the authority wanted to see kind of what the likely formal recommendation that would be going into the budget process, if you guys would like to have a circle back around.

It's basically this program, but

but with tightening up numbers based on working with our budget office and affordability as part of the process that would then be presented to the Board of Supervisors in January.

So Mike, you may have other things on the agenda.

That would be the one for me.

Either of those nights work for me, Bucky, just by chance.

I'm sorry.

I'm just going to bring up the process question board, and that is

As we put together our prior request, it turned into a memo that was signed off by the broadband authority.

I think that's all that has to happen.

I don't know that we need to vote.

I think we can just, the broadband authority can authorize the treasurer and the chief administrative officer to put together a memo that would go in front of the board of supervisors and the budget office.

I'm with Liz on not having a meeting at all if none is needed, but we do need to work quickly on if the broadband authority is looking toward funding mechanisms, whether it's for FY21 or into FY22, we need to make sure we've all signed off on that quickly, meaning it's got to be done before the end of the year.

And then I can keep everyone abreast on what's going on with the Broadband Advisory Council.

So I don't need a time to report out.

I'll just send some Word documents.

I just wanted to bring up the process question.

I was just asking the question.

I wasn't trying to cancel it, but yeah.

Well, in the interest of resolving this issue and letting Liz go, let me move to cancel the next meeting.

And we'll talk through the details of what to do about this once you go away, Liz.

But all those in favor, let's run the list.

Donna?

Aye.

Bill?

Yes.

Waldo?

yeah Liz yes and I vote in favor as well so that's done I'm open for anything so you know so we were not quite finished before we diverted I don't think we were quite finished on the strategic plan review and capital planning work session

It seems like there are a million good ideas.

We should not have this at the 90th minute of our meeting.

We should be having this conversation at the 20th minute of our meeting.

I think we've had good discussion and input from Mike and I to be able to move forward with some recommendations.

I also think there were some discussion items that I think would be really good to have maybe some future work sessions on.

I'm still learning about broadband and many of you on this board have forgotten more than I'll ever learn.

But I would love to hear more about some of the ideas that Bill and Bucky have raised today, and certainly kind of from an equity lens and what could we do programmatically?

I think that can happen.

Let's get some funding in the queue so we have that out there to actually do something with

while we look at our, you know, look at our strategic plan and look at the things that we might do that we can tweak it or expand it to help not create those islands of underserved areas in the community.

How about you?

The one thing that I have a little bit of concern about with funding, and I think if I say it, it'll take care of the concern, is that is if the funding is tied down so tightly that we then come up with some great ideas, if it's put in one bucket, it makes it difficult to move it to another bucket.

So we need to make sure if we come up with a brilliant idea and we go, oh, well, we put it over here for a grant, but we decided if it went over here for a grant, that'd be better, so we're gonna come back and take it here and put it over there.

Just some sort of awareness that this is money for broadband.

We're putting it here, but it might get moved to where it's more effective later.

I don't know how to do that.

I know it can be done.

That's a good observation, Bill.

Thanks.

All righty then.

Let's put a pin in.

This conversation is done for now, but something we'll certainly revisit in the future.

We kind of sorted the Christmas Eve, Eve meeting question by not having one, which seems like a reasonable way to go, particularly given, well, it's 2020, right?

So it'd be nice to be in another year.

No?

All right.

Well, I listened to the video that Mike sent out the link on.

I'm sure his head got maybe eight times bigger as Jeff was talking about what a wonderful guy he is.

And I hope that factors in your salary negotiations, Mike.

That's all I can say.

No, but it was certainly recognition well earned.

And with that, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Very good.

All those in favor signify with the upraised thumb.

Yes.

Secret ballot.

Good job.

Thank you all very much.

Have a happy Thanksgiving and please be safe wherever you are and whatever you do.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.