Burlington Telecom Advisory Board — October 2017

See something happen quickly.

This is a frugal organization. Just printed one. Right. Tight budget. We're a digital organization.

Okay. I'd like to call to order the Burlington Telecom Advisory Board for 10/11/2017. First item on the agenda is the agenda. Any edits or amendments?

Seeing none, I entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Is there a second? Thank you. All those in favor, say I. I. I. Opposed? Thank you. Next item on the agenda is to approve the minutes from this July 12 B tab meeting.

Entertain a motion. I move to approve the minutes. Is there a second?

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Next item on the agenda is public form. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak?

Good evening. Hi. I'm Carolyn Bates and I've been a resident here since 1973 and I started working here in 1971 and skiing here in 1965. I am in Ward 5, a homeowner, and sorry, just a phone sorry. I've been a beta user of b t. Sorry. And I've been a financial member of KBTL since it started. My photography business needs BT for its survival. First, I wanna thank everyone from KBTL, especially Alan Matson. Secondly,

I want to thank everyone from BTAB in all their incredible time, especially David Provost. I strongly do they need to do something? I strongly support all the values of KBTL and the idea of a local co op. It would be my niche that they were chosen. All we needed was another cool 20,000,000, but the 20,000,000 did not drop from heaven as I'd wished. So my idea, I've not told anyone else, is to do this. As Shures, I think is that how you pronounce them? Shures. Are from Indiana,

and some very nice people have sent me information on them. Seems to have very much the same feel as Burlington and KBTL. Small town, South Bend, Indiana. They've been there forever, and they're very excited about opening a new branch in a new field by buying Burlington Telecom. So I'm suggesting that you advance KBTL and Shores to the next bidding session and create a way for Shores to be the financial backing that $2,030,000,000 dollars that we need and a large experienced company with great variety

and hire KBTL to run Burlington Telecom as a local entity and a new expert for shores and broadband for and someone who Burlington citizens support and will stay with. That each user of Burlington Telecom at some point in time may buy back his

shares from Shores. This way over time BT can become a co op, but with financial and business marketing backing of

our team of proud leadership

of

like I now have with BT. And That there's financial support for those special needs programs and the people who can't afford the full amount for BT can have the services. And that there's special financial support for all of various programs like BT Ignite, that BT is never sold. It has to happen if it has to happen that all city council, the mayor, and all users of Burlington Telecom choose where it is sold and have first rights of refusal to buy Burlington Telecom.

That if we find ourselves suffocated by the new owner, we can buy back Burlington Telecom over time. Please, please install guarantees that will keep BT as close to the values of KBTL. Keep Alan Matson as your leader to help write any contracts and do your best to have KBTL either the next owner of Burlington Telecom or in partnership with Shures so we have the 20,000,000 that didn't drop from heaven. Thank you all very much for your time. Thank you.

Others? Yes.

Hi. My name is Deb Flanders. I have been a group tour and travel consultant for Goodspeed and Bach for the past seventeen years in Burlington. I am a new customer of Burlington Telecom since your service just became available on Upper Church Street. I'm very pleased with your rates and, customer service. It's a wonderful contrast from my team.

Proud

And

world.

Business decisions I've made this year. Now that Burlington Telecom is up for sale, I fear rates will rise and service will decline if your company is sold to an outside corporation. Keeping this telecom business local is a guarantee against arbitrary rate increases and capricious customer service. After attending several meetings with Keep Burlington Telecom local, I was pleasantly surprised at their offer on the table. They have a solid financial plan and support from Ben Greenfield, founder of Ben and Jerry's and other businesses such as Pete Jewett of Burlington Bites.

To quote a fellow supporter, Amanda Hannaford, the Onion River co op winning bid to open City Market was equally risky. Larger companies, Price Chopper, etcetera, bid against City Market, Onion River Co op, but the city chose the co op because other grocery stores had served Downtown Burlington early area poorly for decades. It is unlikely there would be a lively grocery store that so much more than sell groceries. City Market gives thousands of dollars each month to the food shelf and other nonprofits. The Vermont brand is small and local,

but of high quality and very strong. I would like to keep Burlington Telecom powered by citizens and not by corporations outside corporations. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Yes, please.

Hello. Good evening.

My name is Kit Andrews. Thank you for opening this up for our feedback. I live in Ward 3.

I've been impressed by hearing small business owners speak about what KBTL means to them.

I have here one of the petitions.

One of the volunteers for keep Burlington Telecom local,

collected 24 signatures of owners and managers on Church Street and very close to Church Street. A lot of these small business people,

have BT now and are very nervous about what it'll mean for their business to have BT owned by a large corporation,

as the former speaker spoke about her experiences with a large corporation versus local BT.

The, Keep Burlington Telecom Local Cooperative has a very solid business plan that shows with very conservative projections that, they can easily meet the obligations of their loan and of running the business. And, what I wanna share with you today is that when City Market was formed, they had a very conservative

set of projections with their business plan, very excellent business plan, conservative set of projections. According to their projections, they were confident that City Market would be in the black within three years of opening. In fact, City Market was in the black in less than one year of opening.

That's the kind of expertise. I have this information from Don Schramm, who was chair of the Onion River Co op board and who, was very instrumental in developing the business plan and who shepherded the entire thing through. So I I know this to be the case. And so this is the kind of expertise that's behind the Keep Burlington Telecom local cooperative business plan. It's it's, grounded. It will work.

The private companies will get their million and 0.5 to $3,000,000 from the sale, which to the people of Burlington, that that's enough. And

BT will be kept local. It'll have the community control. That is absolutely necessary in this world,

including to our business people here in Burlington.

Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay. I will close the public forum. We're going to hear from management. I'm going to first give a sales update, and then we'll hear from

Steven Barracla and the management team on updates. I'll start with the sale update. Terry, are you back? I am. Terry Dorman from Dorman and Faucet is joining us, on the phone and, I'll turn to our city councilors to fill in any gaps. City council, as you know, we moved, four, proposals to the city council. The city council has, been working through that process over the the last month. The council is having a meeting on Monday evening, of next week to with the plan to, narrow

to two buyers, as one of our speakers tonight indicated.

And Dorman and Faucette would then negotiate with those two remaining potential buyers through the document stage. You remember when we last met, we talked about the desire to move two forward so that if we lose one of the, bidders during the document stage, we're not starting from scratch. The council, has maintained that thinking through this process and has been working with the administration

through the process. There have been developments with the proposals since we have seen them. Dorman and Faucette has been working with them, working with all three of the remaining bidders. The

bids have evolved and are getting better, meeting some of the needs that we had addressed and are becoming clearer. One bit of information that we staff sent to you all this week was the Shores.

There's a development from Shores in that they bought out HBC, Hiawatha. For for the ones of you that have been with me since the beginning, like you too, you remember, Hiawatha and HBC was in fact the the telecom company out of the Midwest, Winona, Minnesota, that actually helped us, in advising us when we were first faced with the issues, of Burlington Telecom. And I would add that really the game plan that turned BT around was part and parcel of advice we got from HBC. So I think Stephen

can speak to more about that deal, but that was announced on Friday. So, and the most interesting part about HBC is they have expanded from Winona now to 17 communities, 22 communities, which of course was something that BTAB had identified as an important element of criteria.

Terry, do you want to touch base on some of other changes to the proposals that have been discussed over the last couple of weeks?

Sure. Today, they're largely clarifications and an indication of willingness to make certain changes. So it's probably premature for me to cover what has actually been changed, but there will be clarification coming in from King on certain elements of their proposal, and I am expecting another turn of that shortly. As soon as we get it, I will circulate it.

One one change that I think has evolved, Terry, since the last time the BTAB met was Ting has agreed to keep the BT name?

Yes. So They have they have, not necessarily in perpetuity, but certainly for

for a while. And we'll we intend to ask them exactly how we're looking for clarification on that, and I expect they will provide it.

Okay. Thank you. Stephen, anything to add on sales process and change?

No, only what you want. Go the mic.

Those of you who've been around

longer than I've been around, which is scary, know that we actually did model ourselves on Hiawatha. It wasn't just they were helpful in our recovery when I first came on board and really didn't know one end of a telecom from another. Then not only did I rely on Gary Evans, but visited HBC and several of their staff visited us and we found that not only did we share very common values, for me they were an obvious locally

owned build to model ourselves on. And although we haven't stayed that close in recent years, model ourselves on HPC, we did. And interestingly enough, after not speaking to him for more than a year, I did get a call from Dan Pekarena yesterday, who's the Chief Executive of HBC, who I've known for almost seven years as well as Gary.

Was that municipally owned at one time? It was not municipally owned but it was started by the owner of Fasenal who's a billionaire now. And it was started because there was a desire to provide better communication to schools and public places in the city of Winona, started off as a non profit and evolved over time into a for profit initially centred on Winona in the past several years. They've really expanded

in two ways. One, they've expanded into 22 contiguous communities. They actually bought their own building company to do that. And they've actually expanded their product range. So, they've been a believer that a triple play alone isn't going to be enough going forward. And they've focused on becoming the backroom for small and local businesses. They've gone into wholesale. They've gone into wireless. Really just multiple different revenue streams to try and fill gaps that they've seen.

Is Comcast or another big player in most of the markets that they're in? Charter is in most of the markets. Charter

Communications.

Dan yesterday told me that even though they're not the incumbent in every market they've expanded into where they've been there for three years, they have at least 50% market share and in many markets, 60 to 70% market share.

Actually I was going to mention that as well that they are an overbuild HPC and in Winona they have about a 70% market penetration with against a Comcast like But my question actually doesn't specifically relate to Shure's and Comcast. My question relates to something that happened at the council meeting. And if you'll indulge me, I didn't get an answer to that question and I think it might be of everyone might have an interest in it. And that is

at the council meeting, we were each basically given the opportunity to ask one question and since there are 12 of us, that meant 12 questions of each of the four entities, that's 36 questions and that was sort of how the meeting was run. I asked one question and only got half the answer. And so I appreciate being able to ask it now. One of the questions that I had or one of the question that I had asked, and I don't believe it pertained to SURE's, but I think it was just in general, was the ongoing relationship, if there will be any ongoing relationship with any of these entities with

Dorman and Faucette. And I believe the way that I had asked it was Dorman and Faucette, and I think Steven you were also sitting at that table, and I had asked you as well. And I Terry gave an answer about Dorman and Faucette's association with any of the three entities going forward no matter who gets Burlington Telecom. But I wasn't really I didn't feel as though I actually got an answer from you and was hoping that you might be able to answer that today.

Mean, Terri's already answered on behalf of Dorman Fawcett. If you're asking me as an individual,

I'm not disqualified by association with DNF, I think my position is unchanged from what it was earlier and some of you may not have heard it and that is that my position has been that I'm at a certain age in my life and I look at continuing to work in five year increments and at the end of BT, and by the end of BT, I mean the conclusion of the sale of BT following the approval of the PUC and a reasonable handover,

then I am determined with the next five years of my life to do to put myself in a situation where I can make a real difference. I'm not interested in a job for the sake of a job, a paycheck for the sake of a paycheck. I'm really focused on being involved in something where I can shape it and make a meaningful difference. If any of the future owners of BT have an interest in talking to me about what that might look like. I have very clear views on the

future potential of BT, both in Burlington and beyond Burlington and as really an economic potential economic engine and driver. And I think the opportunity for BT is actually incredibly exciting, more exciting than at any point in the past that I've been associated with it. But I have no interest unless, one, I'm able to do it and two, somebody shares that vision.

Does that answer you? Yes. Thank you.

Other questions on the sales process?

Doctor. Shannon. Thank you.

I was wondering

a point that that has concerned me for a long time, as you all know, is about the protections we're getting in the second sale. And I just wondered, Terry, if, as you continue to talk with, these folks, if that is a point of discussion now, I will say it continues to be what I hear in the community. Certainly, hear a lot of support for KBTL. Part of that is because there's a belief that that's our best protection

against being absorbed by Comcast or some other large corporate conglomerate. And and I think that's a really broadly held opinion in Burlington. So just just wondering if if that's been part of recent discussions. If not, I hope it is part of future discussions.

Joan, we expect that it will be part of the ongoing discussions. It's in our view, it's a critical part of the legal document phase. We have not advanced any specific language, but we our expectation is that that will be a critical piece of the final selection.

Okay. Thank you.

Oh, can I ask? Yes.

The other thing that has come up more recently is how each of the organizations would treat our data. And that's not actually a I don't think we've had a whole lot of discussion about that in terms of how BT currently treats our our data and privacy. But I did think that it's something that we should be thinking seriously about as we become increasingly aware of our data being used in ways that many of us would consider unscrupulous or certainly a violation of our privacy,

which is happening. It seems it's happening all the time to us and it would be good to be forward thinking about that. And

I know perhaps from my quest when I asked this question at the city council, perhaps it has raised some discussions. But if it hasn't been part of the discussion, I would also like that to be considered going forward.

Mean, Terry can answer about potential buyers. BT's policy on the selling of data is very straightforward. We don't do it. We won't do it.

End of conversation. It's it's it's it's our policy not to sell data.

Well, somebody had brought up to me that it's not just a matter of not selling data, but really protecting it and encrypting it. And that word is probably the limit of my knowledge of what even can be done. But I just think that it should be on the radar screen that we should be paying attention to those policies and make sure that people who can speak to it better than I can are are satisfied with the level of protection we get from from anybody. Jeremy,

do you want to comment on the level of protection that or not that customers of BT and you're on the date that BT holds

about Just in case Terry has trouble hearing from that table. No, I could not hear that. Steven just asked Jeremy to come up to respond to that. Sure. Jeremy Bacher with burlington.com.

So we do operate as a traditional ISP. So basically, we are offering unfettered access to the public Internet. So consumers can always choose to encrypt or VPN or do anything they want with their data in that regard, but we do not have specific measures for encryption specifically of different flows of data. Inherently, that's not how the Internet works today. Clearly, that's where people are trying to move things towards connections from end to end for all communications. So in terms of data retention, the only thing that BT really keeps is because

customers of ours who want email, they have certain amounts of email storage and that lives on our servers and that is in an encrypted repository. So there really isn't much data to gain access to beyond the actual streams themselves if they're intercepted.

And that's just people who use BT's

Internet. Right. Currently, if you're sitting here in Contoy City Auditorium, get on the BT public access.

Correct. That is could be accessible by people who would want to access it. As long as long as anything else is on the Internet, it's basically the same inherent risk that everybody shares. Everybody has anyway. What about

customers' data that we collect?

Steven just asked about customers' data that we Names, addresses.

Okay. So that would typically be what is considered, you know, BSS, billing services, billing systems. So that system is isolated from from the Internet and functions as an internal office system, And we work with a vendor, Mid Mid America, and they basically they host that data for us, and they have their own secure connections for doing that. But, again, that that data does not live within the control of BT. I mean, we control it, but it's not if you're talking about, like, address, phone number, email, just standard type account stuff, that level of access,

that is in our billing system, and that is also in a database that is encrypted.

Jeremy, do you think that this is an issue that can be negotiated with or an area of concern or you're kind of satisfied that,

know, maintaining the basic policy that that BT has is sufficient into the future?

I think it's really important that BT follows best practice and trends going forward. So if the industry moves towards solutions or equipment that does provide end to end encryption on all connections, that we move forward with that. That's inherently not how the Internet operates today. As far as consumer data protection, we believe we take the same or similar measures than any other company would, whether it's Burlington Electric or Verizon Wireless or anyone who holds consumer data in terms of account information such as names, birthdays, things like that. Those systems are protected and generally they do not live on the internet, they're on an internal system. Okay, thank you.

Other questions on the

sales process? I I got one. I don't know if I can even ask it, but, Steven, you've been recognized. You and your team is such a vital part of the turnaround, and and I totally understand your answer about working in five year thinking in five year increments. I've reached that point in my life. I don't think so. But I mean

When it gets to one, you wanna worry. Weeks or years.

But when it I mean, who who would you wanna work for? The three that we have out there. Or have you had discussions with them and, you know, I I I can honestly say I have had no deliberately had

no discussions with anyone. And my belief is that it would be wrong for me to comment in public on that at this point in time. I don't think it's right at this point for me to influence by answering that. I'll just reemphasize what I said. BT has been built with a set of values, a set of principles, a set of beliefs. Many people believe it's because it's part of the city of Burlington.

I actually don't believe that. Nobody in the city of Burlington has ever tried to impose or influence how we believe in, you know, we we operate. I think it's been become part of our culture and our DNA that you can be an outstanding corporate citizen and be, I hate to say it, a for profit business. And that's how we've tried to run and model ourselves. And I certainly wouldn't the closest I'd come to answering that is I'd certainly have no interest in working for anyone who wasn't really

focused on maintaining and improving that. I do believe you can be both with every fiber of my being. And I'm an old guy and most of my working life has been fortunate enough to be with businesses. Some of them huge that share those beliefs. I've seen it work. I know it can work.

That I hope that's enough of an answer for you. Thank you.

Do you think it would be appropriate for the council to hear from the BT team and staff

on their thoughts on this? It's a good point you raised that I that think there's nothing that the BT staff would appreciate more than actually somebody wanting to hear

their views as operators or their beliefs as operators. I'm not saying they'll be unanimous because I've been very careful on that front as well, but I think they would very much value an opportunity to share whatever views they have with the council and really feel that they were being listened to as people who've really made the difference here on a day to day operational basis.

Thank you, David. Thank you.

That's something they ought to try to put together.

Yeah. I can talk to the councilor president if you guys think it's

Somebody else had, you know, a constituent had asked that too if if we had asked the BT staff what their thoughts were and I told them we had not.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that everyone is claiming that keeping it local, keeping the staff local is very important and I think would be interesting to know their perspective.

Yeah. Final.

So, before we move into the management update, I have not been asked by the counsel from the BTAB for any additional information and recommendation. Our charge was to send the names forward. The meeting is Monday evening. I would encourage BTAB members to attend, and share your thoughts. This group was very clear, in its recommendations. Our recommendations, have now been released, for the bidders that we sent forward. The information about the bidders who we did not move forward was redacted,

but our comments were, sent forth to the council and are now part of public records. So I do believe the council does know how we feel and how we felt, but I would encourage others if you're available on Monday to attend

and return to our fellow counselors if you want to add anything to that or you think that's a good idea.

It's a great idea.

And last on the well, I'll close with this after we hear the management update. So you want to give us an update? Just a short one.

Just a number of really bullet points. Next month is the month that we'd normally have a more detailed financial update because we'll have our first quarter results to discuss then. We have our first quarter subscriber numbers. And interestingly enough, we are for the first quarter, we are now ending that period at the end of September at 7,224 subscribers.

That's an increase of a net two forty three million in the quarter, and that is 35% higher than the increase for the same quarter a year ago. So I continue to be amazed by the resilience of our customers and new customers signing up with what's going on around us. Having said that, we are starting to be impacted by what's happening around us really in a couple of ways. One, we've lost a couple of people in customer service

and currently we are not really able to replace them. One,

I'm not sure we get any decent applicants. And two, more importantly, I believe it would be wrong for us to actually try and entice someone to change their employment and join BT, given that we are about to imminently have a new owner. I think we've got to wait for that situation to happen before we can do that. So that's a situation that the longer this before we have a decision, the more we'll be impacted by. I say two people in customer service, two people is 50% of customer service.

It's a big deal. We have temps in at the moment and we're managing quite well. The other good thing is we've just moved from the end of our really busy six months to now our much quieter six months. We have to hope much quieter isn't too quiet.

Second point is we are for the first time, although business remains robust, we are, for the first time, getting indications on two or three of the more exciting potential developments that we're discussing. And I'm willing to share more in executive session probably next month if you want to do that. I don't really want to tell Comcast and First Light what that news is. But

three of the more exciting prospects we're discussing at the moment of indicators to us that whilst they are very interested in continuing the discussion, they're not going to do so until they know who the new owner of BT is and have a view on that. And so it's not surprising to me It happens in almost every situation.

Right. So your assessment is we're seeing some softness in numbers around business clients waiting for the sale, but it sounds like not as much so in residential.

Right? Not at the moment, no. Not at the moment. So again, great first quarter, I mean, good first quarter. We're actually spot on plan.

The Questions go ahead. No, I'll

take questions. Any questions with regards to the

continue? All right. On the build out, we're also on plan. We'll do Shane's here tonight in case you have any questions. We are hard at work in the New North New North End, and it's kind of exciting. We as many of you know, we took a storefront in the Ethan Allen Mall several months ago now. We've been unable to open it, and we never expected to before now because it was our busy season. We are tentatively scheduled to open that on November 1. And

even with only two customer service people, we're trying to figure out how we're going to do that. Chances are the management team will take it in turns to have someone up there all the time. And we're excited about that build. We're excited about the interest we're getting. In the next between now and the next meeting, not only will we have first quarter results, but we are going to be looking very carefully at the potential implications for the full year of those first quarter results, although always

mindful that any slowdown could have a meaningful impact on those. Our focus is very much if we see that we're ahead of the game, do we believe we'll actually be able to find a way to possibly even accelerate the build out of the new North End and the other unbuilt areas of Burlington if BT's cash flow would support that. So that's where our focus is going to be. Will we change our numbers? We forecast GBP 10,000,000 in revenues, up from GBP 9,000,000 and GBP 4,000,000 in EBITDA, up from GBP 3,600,000 remains

to be seen. My gut feeler has always told me we that there's a chance we could get GBP 4,250,000 in EBITDA this year. It's just too early to forecast. I don't know until I see the figures whether we'll feel comfortable taking the forecast up at this stage.

But so far everything's good.

Getting more and more distracting for the staff, more and more distracting for the management team and it's always really hard for people to focus and remain

in the operation as these things go on and on and on.

I think the only other thing I want to mention with another hat on is that next week is Innovation Week. Big week for BTV Ignite. It's an event that was kicked off by Mike Schirling, created by Mike Schirling a year ago. Abby Tycokie is not here tonight because she's almost full time on it at the moment. It's a series of events that the start of it is

the Mont Hack, The end of it is Tech Jam. We're really focused on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of next week. If you go on the BTV Ignite website, just click on it. We have a pretty exciting list of events this time around. Fewer than last year, more focused than last year. It's all about jobs, innovation and entrepreneurship. It starts off on Monday night with an event at the boat House that's really sponsored by Vermont Works, which is a

new social impact fund that's being raised in Vermont. They're attempting to raise $50,000,000 The Governor will be giving a speech there. It promises to be a really exciting event. We also have, I suspect, although I don't know partially due to Mr. Provost Middlebury is participating in it this year. There will be an event in Middlebury on Wednesday night, which I'm going to. And then the end of it is the FreshTrax event,

which is on Thursday night, runs from five till 09:00 with lots of other good events in between. Bill Wallace will be here on the Tuesday night. I'd urge anyone to go who is able to go to that. The it'll be a keynote. There'll be Bill Wallace. Mike Schirling is going to be there in his new position as secretary of commerce. Dennis Monahan will be there. He's the new head of BTV Ignite, who's so far has hit the ground running much faster than any of us could have could have hoped and has really started to make things gel.

And the mayor will also be participating in that. Roadhouse or the sailing center? Sailing center. Sailing center. Sailing center on Monday night. Tuesday night is at UVM somewhere. Again, if you go on the The Alumni House. You go on the BTV Ignite website, everything's laid out really clearly. Abby's done a fabulous job. There are events every night and during the day, every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. It promises to be a pretty interesting week. That's it from me, unless there are any Thank you. Questions to Steven?

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. I want to close by a couple of thoughts. One is, first,

I cannot thank the management team and the staff enough. Your patience and commitment to Burlington Telecom has been unwavering and

quite impressive to be able to grow and build Burlington Telecom in a term of uncertainty as our press writes wild stories about what's going on and our city officials and councils struggle through this process. I'm sure there's been some very interesting times and moments for you personally and in your homes of what the hell are you doing from a spouse or from a family member.

But your ability to guide this through is incredible. So on behalf of the BTAB, I want to recognize those efforts publicly and thank you.

To Stephen, and Dorman and Faucette, Terry and Stephen, you guys have, been incredible guidance for this group.

You have bitten your lip many times when we've gotten off base and you being the subject matter expert had plenty of times when to put us back on base, but allowed us to do our work.

When we found Dorman and Faucette and you came into our lives to help us, we're forever grateful. We wouldn't have ended up here, in front of the city council next week with a decision, had it been not for you. So thank you. And to my fellow BTAB members, we are not off the hook yet. Until this thing is passed on, we do have a role in helping management make decisions as Stephen presented, reviewing the financial results.

But thank you all for your time. As I've reminded people, as this gets scary towards the end and more political,

Your time volunteering to this is great is very appreciated by many, and I I don't think we would have been here had had counselors and

members of our community not volunteered their time. So thank you. Would you allow me to expound upon something you you just kind of touched on?

In terms of the gratitude that that I think we all have for Dorman and Faucette,

When we started this process and Karen was right there in the in the room with me and a few others and we were interviewing different groups that might help us navigate

our nonpayment of the loan to Citibank and move forward and really likely we were looking at a sale at that time.

Had we not found the talent that you bring to the table, I really don't know what would have happened because the other folks that we were talking to did not have the combination of skills that Dorman and Fawcett brought to the city of Burlington in that they were able to bring a skilled manager, Steven, who at the time didn't really know too much about running a telecom business. Anything.

But you were wise enough to find the help that you needed to do that, and you have become really the best manager that we could have hoped for for the business while at the same time working through the process with with Citibank and now working through the process of sale very deliberately each step of the way. That is not really what would have happened, I don't think, without without Dorman and Dorman and Fawcett and those very specific

skills and outlook that they brought on how to handle a situation that we quite honestly had did not know how to handle. And I also appreciate you, David, and what you brought to the table in dealing with this always matter of factly focused on, you know, you we started with the blue ribbon committee and there was the charge to the committee and David had that plastered on on the front of his folder and kept waving it in front of us. This is what we're supposed to be doing and I do hope that we are approaching

the finish line now of what's been a really tough seven years, and I appreciate you being by the side of city of the city of Burlington the whole you know, every step of the way here. So thank you so much for your service.

Erin. You know, David, you had when we first started this, we we asked you if you would be willing to help Burlington Telecom for about maybe three Ninety days. Four months. Three or four months turned into seven years.