Albemarle Broadband Authority Meeting   6/25/2025

My name is Bucky Walsh.

I'm going to call the cleaning of the broadband authority.

I note the presence of a quorum.

We have two absent members, Mr. Andrews and Mr. Henry.

So let us proceed.

The first item after the quorum is approval of the agenda.

Bill, I believe you have a suggestion for amending our agenda.

The amendments we'll be considering are the main minutes, not the February and March minutes.

Are you OK with that?

Good.

Having already previously been approved for the February and March minutes.

Very good.

Any other changes?

Then that'll be the agenda we have.

Are there any announcements from authority members?

Hearing any, we'll move right on.

Public comment.

This is the opportunity for members of the public who are on the call or in the room to raise their hand figuratively or literally.

Anybody's joining?

Jim is joining our movement.

Is he on some particular date?

Yes, I understand.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

I can hear the room now.

Yes.

Thank you.

When the recording started, I could hear.

And I'm here at 901 Hatherly in Towson, Maryland.

Good.

I move that we accept Mr. Andrews' participation in this meeting.

Is there a second?

Seconded.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Jim, you're on the team.

All good.

OK.

So public comment.

We didn't have anyone else from the public commenting.

So we'll move on from there to the consent agenda, immediately on the next sheet.

I have.

The two things I want to highlight, I adjusted the 522

I'm sorry, to reflect the last amendment, not the current one, and that's what leaves us with a remaining encumbrance after all attendance was for this project, $85,143.

What else can we do?

Well, the evening can come and there will be a total of some 40,000 lives that cover 20,000 lives in this battle.

Now, that one isn't too thin and it helps more broadly.

But you can see the invoices submitted for payment.

And that gives us balances that accurately reflect zero across the board.

And the naming impedances for about a 22% of $2.4 million, which we consider, that was the invoices submitted for work done in January and February.

I think it's good to be approaching the half point at this level.

Just a comment.

I wouldn't mind approaching the 90% point.

That'll come in a few months.

Agreed.

OK. With that said, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved.

Seconded.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none, this understanding is approved.

Now we come to the approval of the May moving minutes.

Bill, were there any changes or alterations to those minutes in the settlement?

They were a good read, even though I wasn't here.

I said the right version this time instead of the notes.

Always a help.

Is there a motion to approve?

Second.

All those in favor of approving the May minutes, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none, those are approved.

It's been a long time coming, but back to our position right now.

That's what we need to do.

That's what we need to do.

1,015 locations left in the oceans.

I kind of unbeknownst to them, they have actually added additional locations from the networking areas to this project.

I'll just go on for a little bit.

They agreed to that amount and they used to be permitted

The contributions are $2,109,248, the adjusted hours are $54,677,000, $40,000, and those invoices will be sent to us for payment. Once payment is confirmed, those checks will be sent back to the University of Washington. Awesome.

and Michael Martin.

We are currently waiting for the approval of the document, and it's definitely on the subject.

That is something that, in general, they want us to accomplish within 30 years.

So that was June 16th that we got submitted on there, so by July, we should have a schedule.

If there's any changes to that, I would like you all to know, but hopefully,

We will not be discussing this again next month.

Any questions?

I'm having a little trouble understanding you, Jason.

I will get closer to the microphones.

Hearing no questions, let's move on to body 2022.

So the quarterly meeting happened last month, the stakeholder meeting, and this is a slide from the presentation at that meeting.

The highlight in terms of the largest portion of the news is that the project

They are planning to request an extension all the way until June 2026.

I'll point out two things that are important to that.

One, that still puts us ahead of the ARPA when it goes away component of December 2026.

and despite that they still plan on Albemarle's portion being completed by no label than December 25th.

So that is the current expectation.

There are a couple of project areas that just slipped largely related to waiting for partners to do their portion.

and two project directors, the Earlysville and Williamsville Project Area and the Slumpoint East Hand Project Area, both accounting together for about a thousand passes, so about one fifth of the project, that are being delayed and I'm getting ahead of myself, so I'll just talk about it.

are being delayed because they are looking for locations within their traffic limits to install some fiber huts where you'd be able to provide multi-vit space across the streets.

And that is the decision that they make.

So that rather than moving forward, they'll limit themselves in those two areas with a single-vit service where they can find another location for a fiber hut and actually multi-vit service at all locations.

At most, during the fall, I suggested this would be a two-season slide into fall of 2025.

But in general, we've been talking about the end of 2025 as the mission to project the Albemarle Fund for a reason.

So there were previously on the on the left side there

A lot of those RAC and RISE project days are slated for spring 2021-2025.

We can expect a lot more updates to this page in the next few weeks as they

Given the number that slid from spring to summer, it would not surprise me to see some of the summers become falls.

It is notable, Dominion gave fair update as well.

This is the same slide as last month's and there's some progress in terms of miles completing up to 171 miles, that'll take 11 miles to complete.

That they have, they're at the point where a lot of these can be far

Often, they've got the lines up, they just haven't tested them.

They can't release them until they've been tested.

We probably all would have been surprised if there weren't some delays in the project,

It is even on that earlier page, that earlier clip.

That earlier slide, he highlights great progress across the area, most of the background construction to keep that progress, but not all.

Very maybe basic question, but I'll explain what seems like an impossibility to me.

We're being told that the backbone is projected to be finished in on or before December 2025.

And so the background component is both what Dominion and somewhat Firefly and the Appalachian Power Area is building on existing power facilities.

And so that precedes the actual connecting and varying additional fiber.

We're possible.

Firefly has been going ahead and burying stuff and they know where it's going to go.

What makes earlysville and the Stony Point area tricky is that we don't know where the fireworks are.

We don't know where all of the other components are.

and so that's one of the things that I thought of in the system.

They can have all of the middle mile construction done by the end of the course.

So what I'm hearing is that the backbone and the middle mile are entirely

I want to make sure I'm understanding.

Maybe the final mile.

I want to make sure because I previously assumed I can communicate to the public based on their project area.

that are presented in this table, right?

It's sounding like that's not strictly true if the Middle Mile is actually finishing later than some of those.

One, at the bottom of this slide and on their construction of these fields, they've run the end date for each of those seasons.

And so this is when the Middle Mile constructions will be complete.

They've got another month.

It's September 22nd.

September is when the cover season ends.

To test, connect, and then light the project areas that are expected by summer that haven't slipped.

That's why we'll keep a close eye on that.

Ordering is guaranteed to happen for those areas that are completed by summer by the end of September 22nd.

So delivery of service is not necessarily in the summer, but the possibility of that removal of service should be in the summer.

Three and six months ago, they were having trouble with rights to debate.

I've asked, and there hasn't been any suggestion on issues that they were seeing related to permits and rail crossings and those sorts of things.

In terms of

communities that have been struggling with anything that's one that doesn't have been resolved, and then one that is technically taken into account, that is still an appropriate issue.

I think this delay, which is not the opportunity to reach a resolution about that issue, we certainly did bring some members of that community to voice their concern with us and also inspire

The fiber hut location.

Is that related to like the available space on easements that exist?

Identifying a suitable location.

The hut to be described before is the one on Yancey.

It's, you know, used to be a 20 by 20 pad in the 12 by 15 building.

It's all prefabricated.

They are looking at either private access or private land.

They are also looking at the private stations as possible, whether

Those are the most suitable locations, the most easily accessed locations.

Certainly they can make sure that they put it on the far side.

Yeah, big sign on it, I don't know.

Okay.

Could you say more about the multi-gigabit options?

Is that, is the idea that would be sent to their entire service area here?

Yeah.

Okay.

I think you're talking to a half gigabit and launching whatever you recommend.

Launching the small stuff.

That's great.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's pretty good.

Very optimistic news on their part, so it doesn't bode ill.

It's a good mix of good news lines.

Well, I didn't expect they would stay on schedule.

I just wish I had fiber internet now, trying to temper my expectations.

Any other questions?

Let's move along.

All right.

A brief VAA update, when covering the cancellation of the Digital Equity Act, I'll get to that in a moment, but all of these continued work on our digital equity thing as well as updates on VAA.

Following a social media post, an 11th in the Virginia Office of the Broadband at the Department of Housing and Human Development, the Digital Equity Act funds a digital skills delivery and devices program has been paused.

I spoke directly with

the director of the office to confirm that they're not canceling, and they did actually keep reviewing their applications, make determinations, and then just call them until funding is available.

There are lots of international efforts to develop an initiative to bring in the state-based funds, which the mechanism is also professionalized additionally, but for now, that funding is available

You owe us at least $400,000 to begin doing regional design terms of work, supporting human organizations, and expanding our community with that.

It's our hope to continue to do what we do and the funding that we have.

Can I ask a follow up on this that's maybe out of your wheelhouse?

Am I correct?

I feel like my understanding from when something like this happened previously that they can only pause it for three months.

about the congressional actions.

I mean, I think if you asked an attorney, particularly one that specialized in constitutional issues, they would tell you that there is actually a mechanism by which the person can cancel legislatively funding programs.

So, you can say all sorts of things, Michael.

I don't know.

Somewhere there's a court of appeals that will answer this question at some point.

Do you not want to go to court and give us that money?

That is a question for beyond the profit.

I will go ahead and find that you need to get the judge to consider our standing based on the possibility of the grantees.

You actually filled in the form.

Sounds like you were in good shape.

Any other questions on that one?

Sorry.

And no other questions.

Our developer community plan.

Given recent developments, we are going to take advantage of our existing Virginia

Affordability and Adoption Funding Grant, which extends to about $50,000 to actually bolster our digital equity program.

She's opened to a more extended timeline.

Her current consulting is actually black and white.

If you want to consider doing a survey to

We're also going to look at potentially using this funding as a pilot for a tool that would help us with client and partner relations management.

I think it would be really interesting to see if we could also run a pilot sprint where we can have a simple minimum viable product with stakeholders across the region that would be putting this together and see what do we get ahead of potential development opportunities.

I wasn't going to suggest exactly that thing.

You might have had an experience once or twice.

And I'm with a non-profit that helps.

And the other idea that we had, this is a point that we want to be able to, in long ways, be well represented as we spread it to community partners, to family partners, and also

So we're also going to bring some of this money into a higher production printed version for hanging out at events and also a well-made, attractive, informative website.

So any questions on that?

Okay.

The Department of Commerce introduced their benefit of the bargain, guidance.

This means guidance put out via NTIA that requires states to reopen occupational environments if they consider them.

To recap, the state had actually completed its hallucination round and was ready whenever NTIA allowed them to announce provisional awards.

and move forward with the final proposal and getting this once in contract.

And DHED has decided to really push the envelope in terms of speed to try and do most of the work at the heart and around.

The guidance did also remove regulatory considerations and also equalized wireless technologies like fiber and it removed any local involvement and

They planned on opening their letter of intent the same day the guidance was issued, closing it just a couple of days ago, and then start to receive applications.

I was able to obtain the full

Compliments of letters when the pen was submitted.

Previously, Brightstein and Comcast submitted an R region.

We created applications in our region.

We submitted letters to Comcast and recent.

Both of those are once again applied, as well as most of the other things that some of the buttons are intended for our journey, some of the applications for our annual 20 weeks, we're going to notify

I'm going to go to the next slide.

Submit that to NTIA and then we're approval.

If you want to do that by now, that is the earliest, but we will find out who has received, you know, word in Liberia in the reference in terms of one of the issues that remain in Albemarle County after a lot of film is done.

And I'll note, the one thing that

the state did to perhaps reflect on the prior one.

These let me establish the 50-point credit for the prior, I believe it was 50-point, for the prior permission, so as long as the bids are in 15% of each other.

Now, for those who does not win, you submit them to a point system, and in the point system, the provisional will be president of the committee.

Well hopefully they will be submitting a final proposal by the August meeting and that will be submitted publicly for comment.

Okay, good for them.

Good for them, keeping it secret.

They have how many years to build out under this contract?

There are points for getting work done sooner rather than later.

There are points associated

the scoring round for speed of completion.

Oh, if they claim, they can get a complete defense.

You were claiming.

The first threshold to achieve points is 38 points from all contracts.

The opposite of that, actually.

That's awful.

OK. OK.

It wasn't an encouraging thing to see that our concern with the whole time was that the standard locations

are going to be the last ones in on the opportunity to get service.

And the machine, if because of logistics of a large project, used to be having locations down the timeline, there's sparks across the entire county.

It is one of the reasons why all, you know, our level of intent, I mean, we've accomplished contests

expedite this project, and if they are the awardee, we will work with them to try to come up with a timeline for these community members that is, I hope, reasonable for both parties.

And we'll do that for whoever to work.

But we're still waiting.

What you doing?

Thank you, sir.

Is there any new business?

Any other matters you just want to chitchat about?

Not a lot of great news this time around, but.

Not a lot of news, but no new news.

Get the hand that's been dealt to us.

We need to have better news if we're going to have meetings.

Just saying.

I hold you personally responsible.

You were the one who did that.

I will endeavor to find you some good news.

Our next meeting is scheduled for July 25th.

If we don't have any particular business or news, we could cancel that meeting.

I think we're doing as much of those as we can.

If there is no other business, is there a motion to adjourn?

All those in favor of adjourning, say aye.

Aye.

Jim, thanks very much for participating today.