##VIDEO ID:GPPeKNd76AI## all right good afternoon everyone today is third is Thursday August 1st welcome to August time is 6 o'clock pm we're here in the select Board conference room this is a meeting of the high-speed internet subcommittee why don't we do a roll call we'll go to my left Doug mlin present Jim Johnson present Marlin quinland present Ryan PE present Chris Boyd present Bob Boyd present and on Zoom Ian Creswell present tom Crowley thumbs up from over there and uh I see Jim Crowley as well he's on mute check that all right unmuted there you go how are you I'm good how's everyone fantastic I guess we're just around who's going to be remote and who's in person it's Ryan's turn to be here good to see you um first order of business today did anybody get a chance to take a look at the minutes from uh our last meeting which was what July 18th yes yes um under discussion where it says Chris Boyd updated everyone with the numbers on the spreadsheet it should be Bob boy boy what a guy I don't want to take credit for [Laughter] it we corrected that um they had Jim Johnson p however it was James I think it was Jim cloudy that wasis yes well no down there is Jim cwy okay so so it's actually the same thing may exist with the cwes is it yeah so at the last meeting was in two places he was absent and here but he was here he was not abent folks tell me that I have a split personality yeah yeah I see they have you present and absent at the same time okay which CLE accounts for my [Laughter] indecision okay do we have a motion for the minutes as amended unless there's more over on the other side uh depending on how you want to cross it off is it that last one there the last adjourn it has me over on it has me as James Johnson saying yes voting yes but on side I'm absent so if you could yes I'll fix it and would you like to be Jim or James H Jim's fine I have no so that's okay if I have your name as Jim Johnson here on a minutes that's why I think I got confused between James and Jim yeah okay okay thank you sorry about that now we got two gyms two boards you can call just don't call me Elite for dinner fair enough okay any other discussion on the minutes move move to accept as amended correct as amended is there a second second okay uh we have to take a roll call vote Doug mlan yes Jim Johnson yes Marlin quinland yes Ryan peas yes Chris Boyd yes Bob boy yes Mr coer yes Mr Crow hear yes yes Mr Crowley yes Mr yes yes that sounds about unanimous to me okay and um for those that are here um Chris Boyd was nice enough to print for us actual size copies these are actually the same size is the town of Southwick maps of the proposed fsas so these these are the Fiber service areas I don't believe they're numbered in any particular order like fsaa 1 is not the first one built and FSA 17 is not the last one built they just broken out by area but if anybody needs one Ryan would you like one copy I I can see if you got no you can have one take home copy thank you very much and then just for reference I print when I sent this out to every one you'll notice on the there's a bunch of other yellow markings and red markings those were just being used for part of the grant preparation so those are locations of town facilities least facilities I.E the schools um and then I added Wally Park and then you'll see the water and sewer infrastructure are pumping stations and the green ramps the North and the South ramp so um those that's just for your reference so you can kind of get an idea with the muni fiber grant that we got you know where what we used as the basis to Overlay onto the town itself to interconnect all of those town-owned facilities or at least facilities um as part of the grant process um one other update before we dive into the financial discussion was I did receive correspondence this past week from eversource I think it was eversource they needed copies of our bonding and um Insurance certificates that was provided from town hall direct um that kind of just got a little bit lost with some transitional stuff in town hall um but they now have copies of all of poll applications have now been submitted so now is when it starts to get a little bit real because all everything's been driving around and taking pictures and doing drawing so now that we actually have the applications in front of um eversource and Verizon and as soon as I get the final submitted copies of those I will forward them off to the whole committee to have copies thereof and they are awaiting one of those two utilities is waiting for a letter of authorization and I reached out to whip City to have them send back to me a draft letter of authorization that they must have used 100 other times for other communities and themselves that you have to send to basically tell them that you're giving them permission that they have authorization to do the work that's being asked to be done so as soon again as soon as I get that back from whip City we get that the select board can can vote to just send that into into them so do you want to pick up where we left off on the the spreadsheet did anybody have a chance to take a look at that in a little more detail than we did the other night or two weeks ago and uh I think Tom and Jim this is where it's going to get really interesting for you guys as well with with some of your experience in this [Music] space I did send out a new copy U around 4 45 or so that added a few extra um variables that we can swap out okay yeah thank you for doing that if I were to comment on the spreadsheet it's good but you already have to know what it's about oh definitely and and so as I was looking at it I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking at on each of the sheets yeah and so and basically each one of the sheets is input up until the summary right but I didn't know what each one stood and so if this is going to be seen by other non community members blah blah blah blah maybe have greater elucidation of what folks are looking at I think the intent was to go to the select board with this right I'm thinking uh yes at some point we need to get back in front of them to kind of show them the financial modeling correct and I I toss out the idea that have it labeled in such a way that you don't have to be privy to previous conversations to understand it let me bring this up on the screen if it'll let me were we able to get any from the uh the hilltowns that we're building out that were previously done by whip City fiber I know um two weeks ago you're going to have the town request to uh if they would provide any of those for us I did not see anything back that doesn't mean we uh even asked for it to be honest with really could you make me a co-host or something so that I can share Quick Share and allow the one to the right I think no down there by the share not there cancel that please next to the share button there's an ER that one yeah uh oh yeah that's going to work um question on the service area map did they give any information of what they expected the number of dwellings inside each service area to be or do we literally just have the geographic representation right now I just have the geographic yeah they they should have that number I would expect and and base that on how they wanted to size the geographic areas yeah because some of these are geographically very large and some are small so if you bring up the summary tab gonna try let's see I just I have a question about it yeah sure um like do we know how much we have to start paying back and when we have to pay it back I went based on the Assumption of uh semiannual coupons on the municipal bonds so is that so you're saying like every quarter you'll make a payment is that twice twice a year okay twice a year so it's a 5% that's an assumption I'm assuming I don't even know exactly how typically that works usually from a budgeting perspective you make it you annualize it because it's part of the Town budget which is voted on a town meeting so I don't know how the you know they have a principal and interest section on bonds so because if if I'm looking at it you go to column K and so is that are you saying that that 75,000 that's the payment that's the payment on probably 5% or 2.5% of the uh principle of the bond and the principal that's after you the the number over here is I'm just I just want to make sure I understand the numbers that's after the we're taking the $900,000 we have plus now the the the grant we're getting so then it would be the 2 million6 that's like a bond we're taking the three million is what the bond is yeah okay so you basically have to play with that whole money that money all the way until the end when it's due back okay in the meantime you're just paying that semiannual coupon to B holders so let's say we initial initially the process we start the process and we take out the the loan like how long do we know like what like from the map like how many subscribers are we going to get like in the beginning cuz it it looks like it was about 200 something like if I looked at the inputs where's the number yeah the original version just took the total number of dwellings and divided it yeah I see it right here so if you go to the service area it shows that so like are we're estimating that the first Buy in would be like it would be service area one and that would be the initial after we pay the initial like fees and everything we're like thinking we're only going to have about 276 subscribers so like I just I I just want to make sure I understand the numbers and that's okay that's perfect yeah so that represents Bob Bob used an estimate of of 50% uptake on this um to to to use a conservative estimate um you know we we you batted around various estimates and and that one like I say is probably conservative ideally would pull a little bit higher R than that um but we really won't know until we start to roll it out I honestly I think that uh I think that 50% is is probably the best we could ever hope for in our dreams I think we should be much more conservative um just considering the competition and and uh you know what most towns are looking at so I I think 30% is probably something that's going to give us a a better picture I'd have to agree I'd have to agree with that believe Westfield's at uh 50% and it took them eight years to get there not mention they're the municipal so they've got a big Advantage there yeah so when when a when a customer moves into town they're they're calling up for um electricity that's when they have the opportunity to sell them the internet where we won't have that opportunity they'll be calling ever Source oh that's a good point yeah they've got it on their trucks they've got the uh you know real there a is a big advantage to to being a municipal electric just having uh you know that exposure not to mention most of your electric customers are big fans of yours because they're saving quite a bit of money versus the ever sources of the world so a couple of the big variables here that we don't necessarily know the answers to is take rate um what the amount of residents in in a given service area are going to be uh what the bond rate is going to going to be and basically everything else is kind of known we know how much it's going to cost per subscriber um we know approximately what the buildout is going to be um is takes the total buildout breaks it down evenly amongst the service geographically doing you know a small area probably isn't going to cost as much as a large area but you know absent knowing exactly what those numbers are um those are the kind of the knobs that we have to tweak today but you'll see I also added in um business counts and just said hey we'll say 60 businesses and assume the 50% take rate on those yeah I think the whole premise here was to give us the framework to work with as we start getting some more real numbers for some of these unknowns well I mean at this point haven't we kind of got like the numbers and like I I mean unless I don't really see see it like I don't know how that's going to get paid for I guess is my question I feel like coming in with that four million Make Ready is like that's a pretty large number compared to what was presented to the group a few years ago I mean I I I I don't know the number specific like to the to the T I didn't look it down there but I mean per looking at at this as a resident I don't I'm concerned about it I I think this is a big red flag and that's where I'm my where I'm coming from and I'm trying I want to leave tonight feeling better and I don't know how we're going to get there with I think like compared to Westfield we don't have the density of residents so like you're going to you're going to do these different areas and are we going to be able to obtain enough people quickly to to pay the Bond and I guess like I mean you could have money I I don't know how government totally works for paying back bonds so I don't know like can you have like money left over from the say you take out more than you need so you have like a buffer is that something that can happen but then that's more cost to the town right well you know you typically are you we have an like we have an authorization to borrow and then at some point you go and execute either you can do them in short-term notes and then convert them to a long-term Bond that's usually what happens right you borrow in tranches and then in shortterm I.E under a year or so and then you convert that to a long-term note a 10year note or or a 15year note or what have you um once you've completed all the borrowing that you need and if you if you're uh if it's less than what you anticipated well then you don't have to bond for you know we only need a two and a half million right we borrowed short-term 2 and half million and we long-term Bond and and the town actually takes care of that at a level above each individual board so I give you the for instance if if we need to buy a fire truck at the same time we're bonding something for this they may do a larger coupon overall because you get a better rate if you borrow more money and they'll put the fir truck in with the internet stuff it's not like you have to I understand bifurcate that but on the budget when you go to town meeting you see principal and interest and you see the actual items that you're paying on and like I'm not the guy that like I want like internet in town oh 100% like like I like I don't I don't want to be the negative guy but I'm the I'm going to be the negative guy here looking at looking at the completely get it and I think you know one of the things that you know I played with this for you know quite a bit looking at this and you know I was kind of looking forward to where did it go um you know having the other guys here is I think we probably got to get Westfield whip back in front of us to kind of hone these in and get you know take some experience back from I mean something I I can't believe that that came back like I don't know if I missed that meeting I must have missed it because like $4 million seems pretty ridiculous up from Two and I'll be honest like reading through like the costs of like the installation and stuff like there's a lot of line items that seem kind of ridiculous considering like my street right now they're replacing all the poles there's not a cop out there doing traffic and in in the budget for doing the install there's like there's almost a million dollars to pay for traffic MH so I would definitely think whip City needs to kind of come back and explain those costs and justify a $2 million increase and then I did have one last question about that make ready and and I and I apologize I looked and I didn't see it we we had talked about the current installation of like a 1 gig system but we also talked about the the next gen stuff that's coming out was that make ready cost of one gig or is that the nextg stuff that we if we don't upgrade we don't install in the beginning we're gonna have to upgrade down the road no Make Ready cost is just for the polls so that's that's uh more or less fixed based on a number of polls that have to have work done to them so uh I I don't know if the surveys have been all completed yet but you know as those come in and they get a look at everyone that's when the the costs will start to come in to to give us real numbers on that well I thought I thought we got that and it was like $4 million well that's what was in the contract but that was just the latest test okay I think it was estimated on $700 a poll which that's unfortunately that's kind of a realistic average uh there's a lot of Replacements that have been going on so we can hope that it's going to be less but you know as far as early budgeting it's it's a safe number to work with no I mean I'd rather have higher numbers than lower numbers you know I don't want to get the pitchforks after us well I think from where I sit I mean what I what I've hung my hat on this whole time on this whole thing is we can't cover the town with this service have it at least pay down its debt to zero in a reasonable amount of time then we really need to rethink what we're doing as far as making sure that um that this is a workable project and then we don't want to leave the town's people or the taxpayers of the town on the hook for some you know we get through this thing 10 years from now you know we decide that this isn't a tenable thing and we're done but we're we're still owing $5 million okay well then the taxpayers are on the hook for 5 million bucks you don't know like the technology I mean there's Wireless technologies that are going to they're in the pipeline oh 100% but I think I I still think from you know there is Wireless technology that's out there today people are starting to adopt it there's satellite technology that's out there today people are starting to adopt it but I think what you want to call it Wireline or Fiber Services still have a very secure place for I would say a decade in my opinion just looking at it I don't have a Crystal Ball but no it's always going to be more reliable than anything Wireless or satellite just buying of its nature it's not affected by weather no it's not affected by you know a lot less affected by congestion than or more easily remedied for congestion than um than some of the wir less stuff I work in fiber and I ask a lot of the same questions and the answer is those Wireless Technologies rely on fiber fiber I I get that not the satellites but they don't right and then and then the other just one other comment sorry was I was looking at this again and again and was part of the drawing and I wonder if these fsas and it's a good question I'll have to ask whip City and have them come in for our next meeting I wonder if these fsas are roughly equalized by population they are yeah it to me like if you like FSA 19 and then FSA 01 are huge um and you know two three and then 13 is relatively small and 14 is tiny but looking at the the number of units in that area my guess is that they're equalized so that's probably right yeah that's how they want to size it so um believe we asked them to size it to up to 288 subscribers and you want you want to take into consideration any future uh dwellings that'll be built there so you know you don't want to just count the houses till 288 and then say that's your FSA so you know they it should be you know I would say you know maybe about 225 on average I would think some a little higher some lower gotcha one big thing I did notice with the numbers when I put the uh the waiting in to the first few Ser Ser the first five service areas representing 50% of the population of the Town um the summary numbers got a hell of a lot better yeah and like I said not knowing the real numbers I don't know if it's realistic or not but it does make a big difference well I mean if you're paying back $75,000 a quarter I mean you we'd have you'd have to make you well it's half a year right yeah the less you have to borrow the much better off you are well that's why we got you we got we had a you know well over a million dollar Head Start yeah that does help that helped but then it got obliterated by The increased costs well we got yes but we got a million dollars worth of you know the the uh arpa money plus now we'll have the mun Grant to help us too plus the first trunch actually the first small trunch of uh arpa money was 30 or $40,000 I might even been less that we used as just very preliminary monies for the establishment of the of the municipal entity plus some legal Plus some other stuff plus Town resources that have been invested not cash you know Town town uh employee time to do a lot of the brown work to get even this far uh has been you know was very well leveraged so but before we go spending you know anything far north of what we spent we really just need to do this kind of Sanity check and you know if the answer is let's get whip City in here and um kind of talk through the numbers kind of go through the poll earings look I haven't done this before I've never done a munif fiber project and and um yeah you know I think this is and but you know Jim and um Tom have so that's why I'm really lucky that we have them there because they can kind of Sanity check some of the numbers that we have so far from here and Sanity check the numbers that we're getting from whip City fiber to say okay these are totally realistic or totally not and then you just take a look at how you pay could it would there was one more item that I looked at looked at some other models and uh we don't have a depreciation schedule on this and it's something that we might need to add into it I'm not an accounting uh person by background but um you know I've seen other budget estimates where they do uh put in a depreciation schedule which you know also uh takes away from the bottom line why would we I guess if you were doing describing the assets you would have to depreciate them because it's not like we have to do a tax return right but I I think because it's essentially a a you know service or business um you know that we'd have to have it in there there's also no inflation taken account so kind of offsets some of the depreciation any other side of it is too that we've got a fixed cost for the subscriber fee that we're paying to uh whip City and that'll be set for the length of contract so when we go that far um and then I'm sure renegotiated once that contract is up so I did notice in our early discussions it was 25 and then most recently it was 28 yeah they were all but that's like that's expected over few years the cost of bandwidth generally goes down over time but the cost of Labor and support that's that's what's going to offset that right the other thing I think we need to have in here is some sort of a Revenue sheet so we show how many subscribers ramping up from year one to year two um you know what that revenue is going to look like so we can see what income we're actually generating to be able to pay those bills yeah that's these are all great things yeah if you click on the summary tab you can see the income from Subs subscribers is its own line okay column yeah you got column B plus the income activation the for the AC ation fees and that's B that's based on the uh rate yeah minus the the expenses and what where do that expense number come from that's income and the expenses the $28 per subscriber um income is the $85 per subscriber because there's also there's also going to be other expenses along the way um Dig Safe ticketing um you know drop replacement for damage drops a tree takes a drop down you know somebody's got to pay for that there's maintenance there's um pole make not poll make ready but pole transfers there's car accident or um tree comes down and may not be a car accident you can go after an insurance company for that but a tree comes down uh now you got to reslice fiber there's going to be expenses for that so there's other there's other expenses that are going to go along with this we do have uh an allocation for annual uh Insurance expense as well as $100,000 for uh maintenance per year okay if the whole thing is built out so it's prated for however built out it is up to that point yeah I think that's a good number for the annual maintenance uh the insurance we could probably get a better number on that but I think it's a safer number to use 100,000 a year right now I think we had some information from some of those other hilltowns that have actually been built down and actually been operating it would give us a better idea where we are or where we're going to be ideally if we get some numbers from somebody who has Comcast in their yard as well see what their uptake was with uh uh Comcast in the town as well I know some of the hilltowns didn't have anything um uh I think some of them did the ones that did maybe the better ones to talk too about as far as what their uptake was on the mun fiber and uh all of that so just just a suggestion yeah to that point in uh so most of the hilltowns um towns in Western mast at Westfield has his uh customers right now they they have no competition that's why the the state provided some some funding to to match their local funding to build those out so in terms of a municipality that has has competition um that is not already a municipal electric we're we're kind of pioneers going there I think the only other town I'm aware of that's actively building um is West Springfield so they they built out uh part of the Town um but they're they also don't have their own Municipal electric so you know we're in a similar situation to them gotcha another possibility to consider is the R subsidies for um the service at the subscriber level no idea what that's going to look like that may increase your take rate or decrease depending upon comparable towns say that again sir government subsidies for the subscriber rate you mean like a loow income one or something like that well actually it was in the news this week um I didn't read it in its entire but I think the federal subsidy has run out and so itching it and saying okay forget it if there's no government subsidy we're not offering the the the low income rate but I think you actually have to look at that if there was a government subsidy to it from the way you would manage it you wouldn't have to manage it at all it would just be a second income stream like it was 60 bucks it might increase the take rate though oh absolutely but if there was a lower income one toer point yes it would increase the take rate but it would from a revenue side it wouldn't matter it's is where the money came from right yeah I know Comcast does have a service called Internet Essentials that uh essentially any household uh that's eligible for free school lunch well back when it wasn't free for everyone um whatever the income guidelines are Comcast is out a service and it's uh it's either 10 or $20 a month they've had that for quite sometime but that was based on a subsidy them receiving a subsidy from that from the government correct I think they were offering that before the government started with the subsidies um I I know they've been doing it for since well before the pandemic gotcha the other thing I was wondering about I someone remarked about when somebody moves into town it's not like they're going to have information on this service but maybe there would be a way when somebody does move into town that that's part of the information that they get you know like they could be organized in such a way that when somebody closes on a house you know they right up there with the right to farm thing that no one gets okay they to be it's tough because there's so many there's so many attorneys and so many real estate agents and the turnover is so high I'm not trying to be negative Nelly here but you know the right we just had this discussion on a in a different group we're a right to farm town right you will follow tractors you will see animals doing crazy things in the field right blah blah blah and it's in the bylaw that every attorney is required under the law to give every person who buys a home in the town of South a copy of these things it never happens right and it's just and it's impossible to police yeah it' be great like and I remember back in the in the olden days there used to be kind of like a Welcome Wagon right that gave you you got a little basket of stuff from local businesses for the the florist and the funeral home and the this and the that and the other they just don't exist anymore so it's really not an easy way to to do it um and a lot of people if people and to be honest with you Comcast is actually pretty smart about this when you go to disconnect your service they ask you if you're moving and you want to transfer your service they you can do it right then and there of your new address and it just kind of happens um so it is a it is a kind of a competitive deal but I think once people I think the demand is here from the the people in town if the math works I think the the take rate you know the whip cities take rate in Westfield and you were right point taken about them having their own utility but their take rate when they came in with whip City fiber and ran past existing people that are already had Comcast so very similar to what the situation we're in their take rate was in that 50% range years ago though yeah yeah it took them probably close to 10 years to get to that point well that was their take rate and maybe I'm maybe I'm misquoting it I don't want to so put an aster next to my statement was what in their first fsas that they did it was 50% is and North not to get to 50% now but like they went into an area and if they went past 100 houses that had Comcast 50 of them switched so that's pretty amazing because that's a huge sway versus you know you work into an area where you don't have any like in the hilltowns and you get oh we got 80% well that's great but you had no other choice but where they were actually able to switch customers over from the incumbent to a new supplier like that um so I mean we're similarly situated in that regard they're also offering a $70 rid or of 69.95 rate yeah correct and if you look at uh chipy and South Hadley where they also have competition from Comcast and Charter I think their rates are right in line with that anyone know what what West Springfield rat's going to be West Springfield yeah I don't know what they're setting it at um I actually don't know what their number of customers connected are right now but they there may be some online yeah online they're saying 7495 on the whip City uh oh they are 85 the take rate you're looking at and that's what we talked about last at the end of the last meeting too I think we might have to be looking at that I don't think Chap's got anybody on yet they were about on par with us as far as the Make Ready work and everything else springield you mean uh sorry yes West fortunately dropping the uh subscriber rate or the the price that's the only source of Revenue so that's a a direct bottom line yeah but I mean if you looking at the spreadsheet and if you I mean it's if you can get like 200 people in the beginning like that's kind of like the the hurdle I mean another thing we can look at is you know sign up and pay for a year and get $5 off your rate for the next three years or something like that just to get that Revenue up front that's true that's actually a good point yeah do like a a Buy in in the beginning that would be helpful not a contract but well it kind of is right yeah um yeah yeah onee contracts are are very helpful when starting up just to get people to lock in again biggest part of the cost here is aside from the infrastructure is the bond payments yeah so that's I mean just taking it down we do it this way it it's 12 five like you need to make 12 five a month to pay it six every six months it's around 800 bucks right that right 75 bucks 900 bucks at $75 a month if you prepay obviously got to give a discount right if we I just took that rate down so 70 let's say 65 right 780 so I'm just saying it's not a it's a sign ific an expense but it's not a ginormous one like say had $5,000 from somebody to sign up for a three-year deal but if for a one year for a year service is 780 bucks at 70 bucks or 65 bucks uh for to prepay because to your point you would be able to defr some yeah but you got to take 20 you got to take $26 out of that to cover the cost I just lowered the price five bucks from 70 to 65 so however you want we can play with the math just just to whatever the promotion is to yeah well you have the the actual cost like to pay for the service is 20 oh oh oh right there times 28 I'm just saying this that's constant but this would just yeah that's constant this would just generate $780 in cash yes you have to take the well no matter 330 yeah 336 out right but it's it's part of paying the it back so 100% all right so let's let's put a plan of attack together so we keep moving so we let's get whip City in front of us in two weeks yeah I guess the question for them and I just want to make sure we don't know it is like do they have like their first initial Target area that they want to do or they they're trying to figure that out right now still oh I think if if it were me I if I follow the rail trail folks and I believe it was FSA 1314 uh okay 13 14 that's the town hall and stuff right here yeah but for wood Birchwood um it's near the rail trail it has access the um some of the mun fiber and don't forget there's not we have to build the Hut and sight theut and build the Hut um yeah we have to get the feeder fiber from the Hut out to the fsas so you know hopefully you know that that's where Make Ready could stop you right there you can have one pole in a span of 50 poles that's holding you up so you just can't run your fiber to get out to an FSA so we'll want to look at them uh you know the estimated cost to build for those uh combined with the density of population and then uh you know what the Make Ready cost is going to be for that we just have to sort them out that way and it may be an insignificant detail but if the Hut is on the premise of this campus which I suspect it should be or would be yeah we already brought the fiber from the rail trail to the campus so and then and I mentioned that the rail trail being a key part of getting that to there and then whether you go which way from there but to get over to burnwood Birchwood I think that's the area only because of the density and then you've got the um like they the fiber they ran they don't have to run anything else it's like I don't think so okay usually a bunch of strands in each cable I understand I just was asking that question again I I as when we pulled that fiber and they actually dug up the road to do it yeah I said please don't make us do that again right for this other project we knew that was on the horizon and it wasn't it makes sense it it had no cost because they were gonna have to do it so yeah okay perfect yeah that that's good yeah but in terms of the design we're we're going to have to you know pick a an exact spot where the the Hut's going to be um just so they can design and get fiber footages to that spot so that we'll know that that's going to be critical so one of the big questions we would need from Westfield is to know all right with these service areas are they all residentially equal or are some of them heavier than others and how quickly they can build them out which may rely on how fast Make Ready can happen you not Westfield's doing but because if we're able to do five service areas that represent 50% of the town in the first year yeah great we're done but if it's only 5% in the first year and five service areas okay that's very different well I don't think that I was gon ask does w does Westfield have a uh a schedule or an estimate of how long it will take make ready to be complete from the time they submit the applications I haven't seen it like I said I I didn't finish up my email from this week but I did see the um sure I don't lose you guys here the other thing would be uh to have Make Ready done in such an order that would follow the fsas we want to build first and the fiber feeds going out to those fsas absolutely and my model basically says as soon as um Make Ready is is available then you begin the build out and then you start signing people up right I'm making that assumption I don't have it right in front of me right now but I think and also looking at what they did in Westfield correct me if I'm wrong but it's not like you just say oh we're going to build FSA 18 and you're done in a day it takes time to build out each FSA and they may have concommitant work in multiple fsas at the same time depending on what's going on so you may have you know FSA 4 and 13 being built out around the same time and obviously FSA is going to take a lot longer to complete than 13 just based on the density and what they do what what several towns do and that I think Westfield will concur with this and and help us set it up but um you want to get expression of interest from the residents and encourage them to submit online uh it'll be a web page that Westfield's going to set up for us and uh it'll track their address so that you're looking at the Clusters so if they say you know I'll pick an FSA FSA 7 if that has a higher percent of people that say they want to subscribe to the service and they're looking forward to it then you know that's that's another uh tool that you have that'll direct you to you know build in the right areas in the beginning so then you got to bash that against where your make ready costs are and your schedule for that and then also you I think you also look to the business Corridor too because they they pay more and so you look up and down say College Highway um and then out in the industrial park you don't have a lot of density but you do have the businesses over there yeah and we'll have to establish a business rate yeah um there is there was some language in it in one of the contracts you know so we'll we'll be looking at that also I know that uh for the Metro e type services that larger companies or companies that businesses that have uh you know higher bandwidth needs and and service level agreements I believe that Westfield in their contract they want to get either 25 or 50% of that Revenue so we would get the rest but you know that's that's really for just some of the big hitters you know on average we would just want to set a rate for the small business which you know may be 50% more than a residential yeah I think they had suggested 140 um which would have the exact same cost to us of $28 they basically say anything above that it's 20% of whatever we charge the customer 140 for fiber for a business is still very good rate yeah in that case we'd be competing against cable modems for business so know as far as reliability fiber is the way to go that's no so that that'll have to be our selling point and there is fivr service available in town from other providers too not just Comcast I don't know what no I don't either but oh I'm sure I'm sure it it's available a horizonal run fiber to a business it's a you know for the right Services uh Comcast will and um you know there's other third party providers that'll also do it all right so my goal here is to make uh we're how does everybody's calendar look for two weeks from now Thursday okay is Thursday the the new night is that what we're leaning towards I'm flexible in any which way except for Wednesdays is non-negotiable for me uh I am not here two weeks from now yeah actually that's the 15th but the fall the 2 second I'm not available yeah 15th I should be around you should be I should be around yeah I I think I'll be around um I would push for Tuesdays if if that's ever available but okay anybody have a better day or Worse your day Tuesday or Thursday that works for me and it does avoiding Mondays because that's usually select mid night but you don't want to miss those no well well um no and I know we are meeting on the 12th so um what about the 13th I can't do sorry I can't I can't do the 13th I'll be out of town okay so 15th who who's good on the 15th I'm good on the 15th everybody they got me I was say I'm I'm good on 13 or 15 all right let me talk to whip City and see what they can muster up and then we'll schedule something cool I mean I'm I'm good any day of the week really honestly it's just the 22nd my kid's birthday well can't meet on his birthday then can't have that he's gonna be 11 he's gonna have another one next year come on I'm kidding or if you're going to have a cookout we could come to your house and meet we could do that we're going bowling oh even better bowling spare time yeah oh that's what like all the kids want to do um okay any other business before we adjourn this evening I just want to say again thank you for on the spreadsheet like can't emphasize that now thank you welcome it's very difficult and it for all the information it is pretty clear so for what it's worth um the sentiment you were having with these numbers just don't work I struggled that with myself putting this together and it's like gota be a way to make this work yeah I I really hope we can do it and realistic we can always play with the numbers to make it work but then it doesn't actually work in in practicality right no better to walk away than to end up in a mess 100% And that's you know it was it was a big selling point of this whole thing at um town meeting when we when we propos the two votes to authorize the creation of Municipal utility but especially around the bondet and you know the town was resounding in in giving us the authorization for that first Bond but it was you know I kind of explained from where I sat that I don't want to leave the taxpayers on the hook for a red Penny right if we do this thing and in 10 years or 15 years we say okay this was great but now this you know some other technolog is available and it's surpass pass this and we retire this but we've retired the bonds then okay that's great but I don't want to leave the town's people um and the taxpayers on the hook for for dollars all right I'd entertain a motion to adjourn so move second all in favor I I thank you all thank you have a good night folks have a great night