amendment to our agenda councilor roof yes thank you all move to a man than adopt the agenda as follows the agenda item three point zero two a communication from city twenty blackwood regarding me concerning burlington telecom  any opposed we have or agenda the first item is a public forum and we have a public forum on every meeting and will have a seven thirty time certain public forum for the regular city council meeting so this would be a public forum for on topics related to the purpose of the work session so is does anyone interested in addressing the council of this time ok scene then we'll move on to item three point zero one  and i'll go to the mayor to describe the item and then we can have a motion on executive session as some think you present we have an update for the council regarding the ongoing negotiations we've discussed before with them and champlain college regarding additional payments from those institutions to help fund the sustainable infrastructure plan i think it would be advisable to have this discussion and executive session ok thank you very much so city attorney blackwood can we do to two sets of executive sessions anticipating the second topic i think you could yes two sets of motions yes i think you should do two motions right now  that you go right from one executive session and the other ok so a first motion would be that the public disclosure of negotiations would put the city at a that matter subject to our next executive session motion thank you is there a second counts the roof second it any discussion seen on all in favor please say i and your post on the legal issues concerning the bt sale this regards potential litigation yes and getting legal advice concerning potentially litigation thank you that would be the finding for the exact of session motion from any opposed and again like we have the crucible council paul so this time we will be going into executive session will take a few minutes to clear the room and i anticipate that we will be coming back and starting  somewhere in the seventh probably close to seven thirty we can launch right into the public forum you very much we'll get right to the public form after taking care of the agenda kells the roof all right i will move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows no corrected version of consent agenda item three point one nine communication laurie lemieux board clerk board of electric commissions regarding electric commission attendance record for councillor bush or no revised version of consent to dent a three point two seven resolution two six resolution authorization to enter into a license agreement with the snyder construction company l l c to extract to obstruct a portion of the city's right of way on flynn avenue and pine street pine street deli license committee per city attorney's office note revised version of consented and item three point three zero resolution authorization for public improvement bonds for city's downtown to district board of finance per cd office note revised version of the consented  three point three one resolution authorization to amend cooperative agreement to the champlain parking parkway project revised board of finance person attorneys office per council of bush are no revised version of consent agenda item three point three three resolution update just asking structure of burlington international airport revised board of finance person turns office know the consent agenda item three point three four communication regarding boeing to tech company for ting with the motion to waive the reading except the communication in place and on file add to the consent agenda item three point three five communication charles winkleman member library commission regarding resignation with the motion to waive the reading except the communication in place and on file advertised the vacancy will be in the eleven one seven days edition and send a letter of appreciation to charles whitman thanking him for his time served as a member of the library commission add to the consumption and i don't fully point three six communication barber nor fe regarding celebrations in telecom with a motion to waive the reading except the communication in place and on file add to the consent to deny them three point three seven communication city office regarding boarding commission openings with the action away of the reading updated version of the consent agenda item three point three eight per dean note the additional documents posted on the agenda four point zero one per chief of staff low note updated communications posted for agenda item four  second bush or is there are there any any discussion on the scene then all in favor of that motion please say any opposed we have our agenda will go right into the public forum  set the clock for two minutes and it's great to see everybody and we really appreciate your sticking within the two minute time frames of that you know weekend here for many of you tonight we will listen period everybody  and i'm the executive director of the center for media and democracy and i'm a resident at twenty nine harrington terrace i think some of you also know that i've been in the cable television business for thirty four years since bernie sanders had the mayor's taskforce on cable t v and we were able to convince cox cable that it was in their interests to pay the city a million dollars rather than the city go into the local ownership of the cable business so this trajectory has started many many years ago and i believe that all roads and all points on that trajectory lead us to this evening where we have a vote ahead of us to keep our telecommunications asset local in fact i think that it is actually the only sensible choice this is a city that values sustainability and resilien we had the forethought to keep and preserve our waterfront we were not intimidated by a lawsuit with the railroad we had the foresight to make sure that we could control our local food distribution with the co op and we can see how successful that co op has been opening a new facility in the south and employing people for thirteen thousand square feet of space plus nine thousand additional square feet of space we also had the foresight to support burlington electric department which i think some of you know had a very rocky start more than one hundred years ago but we're here tonight to take the long view because when we think about those people who made the decisions to go in and start be easy to keep the waterfront open to make sure that we had a food supply that we could rely on and to make sure that we so in conclusion i would say that this proposal meets the state's emco criteria the public service board will support it the economic development driving factors are without dispute and all that really is missing tonight is the political will to keep this asset locally controlled so that years from now we can look back and say thank you to the folks here at the city council tonight thank you very much  the silent applause because it just takes time and the slows things down and it can be you know so there would be great if we do really appreciate that aaron malone and then russ scully my name's aaron you know we're not going to teach customers and future customers like what a cooperative this i think one thing would be interesting for everyone to think about is how many cooperatives they individually belong to you sit down think about that  e usually right i think this model works in our community and i think with the leadership already committed to the transition team success is imminent also as an individual and international corporation would shake up the landscape maybe but more likely the options would have less salient differences the value propositions would be more similar i think a cooperative telecom makes all these companies in this space  work a little harder to better serve the p t v for the residents all of us and the business and then finally the potential the fire assets is that and i don't think this community has even begun to realize  the economic potential as a local fire the cooperative will absolutely do the best for the greater beauty area to attract new business support entrepreneurship and just prepare us all to compete locally and nationally as a resident entrepreneur the next speaker is addressed scully and we're going to take a minute and get that sticker off the mike pl council in favor of k b t l i just want to let me just drive how this looks from my perspective right now escape b t l were to advance tonight as the winning offer i think we know that there's a number of events that are going ensue starting with a lawsuit from citibank which ultimately will create some pressure on that front to telecom assets when that happens subscribers are going to start dropping and when that happens revenues are going to drop and the valu of our utility is going to suffer tremendously there's also the advent of at least three possible vetoes at the end of that decision and so from my perspective this isn't really a matter of who's offer is better this is really a matter of does burlington telecom live or die at the end of tonight we have a very prosperous future with a very capable operator in taking and i would love to see the assets in the ground right now work to the best possible opportunity for economic development in burlington and i see that happening with things offer if we go ahead with k b t l tonight i really don't see a future at all for billington telecom i think you're going to see a lot of subscribers jump ship we're all going to switch to comcast and we're going to watch burlington telecom drift into the ether and i would hate to see that happen please consider that from my perspective that's really what this looks like so i hope that you'll dig deep and do what's best for the city of burlington tonight and the other decision i really question whether you're really acting in the best interests of the city because otherwise it really is confusing in terms of what the agenda looks like thank you thank you john callow and then ted adler and to improve its position i'm curious in terms of how you feel and now not you personally but still in general from my perspective it hasn't really changed when you look at  the this transaction in terms of the past the present in the future rice it ting is that the option that the city needs to move forward on from the past that optimize s the ability to rectify past financial mismanagement of the original bt in terms of the present it has taking seems to have the experience and capitalization  record a track record to back that up and hits on more of the criteria that the city provided in its own or of pay in terms of looking to the future i think it's clear that this is much more than just maintaining affordable cable t v t v was that tang rather than the local music player is much more apt to optimize the economic development potential of the city so for those reasons i urge you to move in that direction thank you thank you ted adler followed by leslie mckenzie good evening so generally i try to support things that are local i try to buy my food locally a member of the co op when it comes to supporting local businesses i try to do that and i do that in part because i live here i've lived here for twenty years run a company in burlington and i've always sort of felt that part of what makes this place special is the tension that we put towards local along the lines of that when i was approached  to be the first commercial user of burlington telecom about a dozen years ago or so i said yes because i wanted to support something that was local and you know over the time candidly there were some you know pretty rough spots i got to know the support person on a first name basis and if i can tell you anything about your telecom you don't really want to know your support person on for we stuck it out and i think in the end  you know the product that we've had in the service that we've had probably wasn't as good as it could have been but i'm proud that it's here that being said the second worst president of my lifetime had a terrible quote about fool me once for me again not going for me again what not and i'm here to tell you that as the first commercial subscriber to burlington telecom if you keep growing telecom local is my new management company done it doesn't have the backbone  doesn't have the experience it doesn't have the capitalization this is also very straightforward to anybody looking at a balance sheet and it's not if you're looking at it from a passion standpoint i passionately believe in local but i more passionately believe in a good sustainable telecom and i really believe that team will provide that for us thank you thank you lesley mckenzie and then david provost and b to have members good evening i'm lesley mckenzie i live in burlington have students school here have a business i'm really into and and i'll keep this brief i'm here to strongly support the proposal i believe i believe this is an incredibly straightforward decision that the facts make it obvious and i did send you all an e mail about a week ago and i have a copy of this so i won't paraphrase all of this i'll just share another copy with you but i believe the financial strength of the offer or the terms of the offer of the capabilities of this for far outweigh the option that we have the other option we have on the table and honestly i find it almost unfathomable that this is even the two options that were down as well as intended as it may be i believe this is a straightforward decision that the city put way too much at risk that we are all out millions of dollars and as a citizen i'd like to see us make a smart and wise decision ago this december by this city council the commission later became the burlington telecom advisory board the four of us here before you have been the public members for the last few years that have successfully developed the criteria for the sale of b that this council has approved and brought forward the four finalists the advisory board has also provided meaningful monthly board governance to be tabbed management as part of the major turnaround bronson telecom we will not rehash the last eight years of our work as a citizen as citizen volunteers just know that our guidance suggestions and recommendations are not political they were developed and presented with the best interest  burlington in mind none of us hold a political seat and none of us are looking for credit praise or personal gain from our recommendations you have years of work and effort in what we have moved forward  we hope our work and the criteria will guide you in making your decision thank you thank you kelly divine and then charlie kelly divine i'm the executive director of the burlington business association and i also have a prepared statement that i sent to counsel and i have copies with me tonight and they detail why our organization is supporting the bid for taking to cause  i'm really a little bit frightened right now folks may remember i spent a lot of hours in this very room in two thousand and nine i'll never forget being on vacation in disney world and coming back and finding out that  the city was deeply in debt and it was a really really frightening time i believe the debt at the time was estimated to be between fifty and sixty million dollars which is roughly equivalent to the general funds annual amount our bond rating tanked our credit rating tanked and not only was i worried for the future of the telecom but also word for the future of the community at that time a lot of people dropped burlington telecom over the years thanks to the work of the b tab and the counsel of this administration i got hope again because i saw the telecom service improve more people signed up it has grown and prospered and become strong and now we are faced with a really big decision after looking at the bids and analyzing them really closely and thinking of them in terms of what could be best for the future of the city we our group came up with a really clear support of tang in cars and that's because of the financial strength of the offer the added benefit of investment in burlington's economic future the operational strength of the organization and the large amount of capital investment they plan for the future of the city we had hoped that over the weekend the k t tail off of a strengthen and at one point we heard that it did and then all of a sudden we heard that it had it was unchanged so that's unfortunate cousin really for me like to do things local but  knowing all that tonight i waited till i had that information and we are coming for the support letter and support of thank you thank you charlie you know me and then ryan  frank just something a little different so we live in a representative democracy a representative democracy that means that we elect people to city councils and congresses and legislatures and we as we hope that they do what the public wants but whatever they decide that's what we're that's what we have ideally people on those boards and commissions they do their best to reflect what the public wants sometimes w the public wants is the best possible thing and have the best outcome and sometimes it doesn't work out so well but the fact is ideally it's the responsibility and the duty of people who sit on boards and commissions to do what the public wants u for a year or two about changing the rebels name from instead of the south burlington rebels to something else like wolves and so i personally filmed on c c t v some of the meetings of the city council itself and if three of those  meetings i heard the superintendent of schools herself erling tin and chair of the school board say that literally and they were questioned about this later and they still agreed to it they said well we don't care what the public wants we don't care with the voters or we don't care what the residents of the taxpayers want we're going to change the name of the south burlington team and i was very dismayed to hear that because to me that's a violation of their responsibility  the only thing that i regret of this whole process that has happened over the last few years is that there wasn't a question on the ballot for instance last march which would have asked the public specifically do they favor selling to the heisman or indeed a favor selling to something local because that would clear up this whole thing this evening would've been very simple and we could all thank you thank you ryan frank and then chris hi my name's ryan for and i currently live at one twenty five court but i think of lived in about half your districts over the years so people from both sides asked me to talk tonight because i'm actually currently attend customer they are my provider for mobile phone service and i'm also burlington telecom subscriber burlington telecom has really good customer service really worked well with them over the years tng is the only company i've ever worked with that's even a little bit better than burlington telecom and i'm saying that because i i'm actually one of those people who like i really love thing i have actually gone out and talked to my coworkers and told them to sign up i've talked to my friends and family and told them they should sign up and it's because whenever i've had a problem or just a question i call them and they immediately pick up and i'm immediately talking to someone who knows more about phones and internet than i do and i actually used to work in telecom  are level one tech support people are the best that i've ever gotten i would actually challenge anyone here to give them a call and just ask them a question tell them you're a potential  customer they really are that good so i just wanted to come here tonight and say that it's it's really good being a teen customer and i was really excited to see that they might take over brillant in telecom i like the idea of keeping a local but could be used for other projects such as saving more auditorium community health center or refund to taxpayers five times larger annual community contribution five times larger infrastructure investment and that's where the higher potential for tech jobs that will serve thank you i come here in support tonight of the local option and i come in support for their specific reasons other people can tell you the benefits some of the benefits can tell you better than i can but what i'm here to ask you not to do is to sell our franchise one of the reasons that i moved to burlington was brilliant in telecom because i was living in richmond and paying comcast to take my money that i paid to them and and spend it against net neutrality and against my interests i came to burlington i found that my personal information is not going to be so local option is very important and democracy is very messy you all know that you deal with it all the time it's not cheap and it's messy and sometimes it fumbles as it apparently did when the original telecom mess happened but that should not deter you from keeping th asset local people from all over the country say to me why would you do that why would you sell your franchise when you have the could droll and you have the ability to own it now the reason one of the reasons that you shouldn't you shouldn't sell this is that selling this to a corporation is selling it to comcast and i don't care what promises they make you a novice freshman economics student will tell you that any corporation will tell you what they need in the moment but ultimately the responsibility of the directors and the management of that corporation the fiduciary responsibility is to their stockholders so what's going to happen a year down the line when comcast or some other large corporation comes to them and they're going to because consolidation in this industry is rampant and they're going to offer them a great deal and it's going to be their food f responsibility to take care of themselves and not us so bottom line don't sell our franchise stay with democracy and don't let citibank dictate what we do in burlington vermont which price and then alex good evening my name is richard price winds and i are residents of ward one i brought him here is a civics lesson for him see how things get done in this town i work in the south and and i work in the creative marketing tech space and every day we're competing with new york and boston and san francisco and other places so i'm very aware of both the challenges and opportunities burlington faces when competing on a global level  incredibly fortunate to be one of twenty cities to have gigabit infrastructure but to continue to attract top talent entrepreneurs businesses that see burlington as a place that they can grow we need to make smart decisions ones based on display dispassionate facts the burlington telecom advisory board on ambiguously graded kate b t l eight out of eight bids most basic level the city council is tasked with to do share the responsibility of the city so please don't make a decision based on sentimentality or politics even good evening city council president good to see you and i don't envy your position tonight or any of your fellow councillors but i was brought here and what kind of last minute because i read this citation from a seven day story that citibank was claiming on suing and attacking the city of burlington from multiple fronts if i recall the wording from the seven days story correctly and all the sudden i was brought to this bracing confrontation with exactly the future that i warned everybody who would listen to me was going to happen in this world if we kept on the path that we've been on for roughly the past ten years since we let the financial oligarchy destroy our economy commandeer control of it and subsequently subject the most desperate had covered for television and for our viewers to view he seems like a very nice fellow and seems like a very adept service but i'm not paying the people who acquire burlington telecom to provide add up service i'm paying them to insulate me from the savagery of the open market and we all know what that looks like when it comes to telecom service so again going back to seven years ago the mayor was kind enough to keep showing up day after day for coffee even though i was along with anybody else who would listen to me i kept a reining him day after day said we've come to a point in history one of two things will happen financial institutions will break the power of sovereign people sovereign people will effectively challenge the power of those financial institutions have a great thank you thank you elise said well done alyssa nelson and then our paul burlington cus telecom subscribers some of the very first hookups my heart wants to move forward because they follow the original city vision there is a promise that the long term profits might be greater under kavi t l but the low capitalization and high interest rate promises are not guarantees the financial lives issues and the promise of lawsuits mean we need to make the decisions with our heads and not our hearts the fiduciary responsibility of the sin city council means we need to go with the strongest upfront financial package and i believe that's to thank you based burlington style and the vision and hope for success that it was similar to that of the amazing success of burlington electric sad when fortunately the management was very poor the problems were then compound it by administration which i supported said the promises the city has made should not be broken yet again the council and be tab of form your own service in their due diligence they find ting appears to be a well run and customer centric unlike poor reputation of huge conglomerates while offering a very competitive bid that should avoid yet another fight this is not been an easy decision but at this point if you feel it is time put this episode growing consistory to bed and start the healing thank you and you a local concern for community is one of the seven cooperate of principles and that is that the in the very identity of all cooperatives market based businesses like ten to cows in contrast are driven by their fiduciary responsibility to return value to their shareholders unless all of burlington's residents are the shareholders of tang then their business model does not incentivize them to support and benefit the city in factory choir's them to find ways to extract money from this community and return it to outside n expressing interest in providing a much lower interest rate loan on a portion of that and i'm sure that the board will continue looking for other financing options including options like the co op capital in a few years they have operational history in a much more appealing investment for financial institutions and can refinance that higher interest loan from a private highlighting this high interest rate seems to hide the fact that equity is not cheap itself shareholders demand a higher return a return of the same rate on the much higher valuation by taking well like are likely require as much if not more growth than that of the keep the local bit much has been said about the alleged risk pertaining to the keep the deal local bit but one of the risks of t to house have we consider the externalities of market based businesses that are only here to make profit if concern for community is not profitable then we can expect tax payers and i will call government to be on the hook to clean up behind them the status quo has given us a change in climate and flooding in the south and fires in the west or evidence of coming climate migrations and a recent study by mit economist peter time and shows that both us political and economic structures are aggressing to that of a developing nation thank you guys we're hearing from opponents of k b t l a lot about how we have to stay rational and keep our emotions at bay or that we need to simply look at a balance sheet  before we get too deep into the idea that this is just a passionate outburst by those who want to keep our internet here i just looked to talk about the different ways of looking at these economic decisions we're hearing a lot about fiduciary responsibility and that's obviously  something that can be defined in a number of ways we could argue all day about that but how far into the future you all are supposed to look obviously there's an influx of cash potential now that would be great for our credit rating outlook if we're judging ourselves by moody's criteria that's the same company that was penalize eight hundred plus million dollars for their role in mortgage crisis in two thousand and eight for top but i'm not sure this is really how we want to judge ourselves as citizens and i say this with a sober and overly analytical lens because that's how i am we don't want you to assess our well being using wall street metrics  algorithms were complex human beings with complex wants and needs in twenty seventeen many of those are tied to the internet in the age of trump we need to do better than judging ourselves by status quo metrics we need to do more than declare victory using existing wall street criteria we need to ask ourselves is if this late capitalist paradigm is even working in the first place and affect areas within this lens applied to the many or just the few when assessing the health of our community we need to do better than wall street likes us thanks for your time continued hard work and devotion to the community and the community members who make up this wonderful city thank you thank you walter judge and then richard bragg thank you very also a member of the food not only is the bid so fundamentally uncertain so fundamentally shaky i mean is it a fourteen percent loan is it an eight percent loan that they're operating under will that debt service allow them to expand service will it allow them to maintain the existing service will they even be able to pay off that loan but it's so fundamentally bad as an offer compared to t lawsuits that were once theoretical hypothetical are now certainties and as a taxpayer in the city of burlington not only would i be aggrieved at the prospect that the city is going to take such a fundamentally low bed but that then as a taxpayer of the city of burlington i would be taxed to pay for the defense of the lawsuits that will be l against the city thank you thank you richard bragg and then charles really reject the narrative that's been going around i think that i think this is let's talk about what this really is this is a gift going forward to whoever gets this whoever whatever side right why do you think why do we not care about were two things getting their money from i don't care who cares you know why because they're going to get their money whoever gets this is going to do fine in the long run i reject this narrative that's going around that this is not the case it's pretty clear that whoever gets this is going to be in the driver's seat in the long run thank you thank you thorpe and then jeff nick good evening my name is charles thorp i'm from or two i think we have to admit that there is fear on both sides the people that support burlington telecom are afraid of what will happen to brilliance in telecom if a corporation buys that we will lose things like valuable things like local control and net neutrality we know for instance from our newspapers in the country now six corporations control almost all newspapers and the result has been the homogenization of the news so that americans are served with better less news and poor quality news fewer reporters are hired so selling the burlington telecom to a corporation could in fact result in poorer net neutrality and other services that kind the people who supporting are afraid because they're afraid of monetary problems you know fiduciary things and think what the their argument is also an argument of fear so let's look at what's happening burlington to and what we've got now burlington telecom has become a profitable organisation and shirts and know that that's why they're making bids they know they've got this is almost a fire sale they're getting something dirt cheap burlington telecom has become a goose that lays golden eggs they want those golden eggs for themselves and we're just saying you can have article and argues that lays the golden eggs and you can have the golden eggs too we should be keeping this for the citizens of burlington who paid for the founding of this corporation so that we can have internet i'm less internet interested in television you can get your television where that's not it you know that's just entertainment but the internet is a twenty first century an s s city and we need to provide that to our citizens that  keep with the spirit that really it's in telecom was founded local control and you know helping the citizens have what we really need and that is something that is not controlled by a corporation so our view is on any subject can be put and it was rather ugly for everybody today because of a lot of hard work for everybody here and this is ministration we find ourselves in a very strong position however it could have got a different way very easily could have gone south tonight  you have the opportunity to recoup some of the taxpayers funds that was pushed towards us had never pay off our lenders strengthen our bond rating participate in an equity position moving forward ovoid a cost lawsuit and put this whole chapter behind us with keep releasing local however noble that mission might be i see risk everywhere lever highly leveraged high interest rates and industry this ever changing competition that is out there and it is just too risky to put the taxpayers in this position so i hope you do the right thing and vote for the taking opportunity thank you thank you  then alexander friend  so i'm not from here i've only been here for about four years originally i was born in new jersey and i got out of there pretty quickly when i was eighteen college in new york city and i stayed there for about twelve years at sort of the end of that seven years ago i was deciding where i wanted to live and i had a whole bunch of cities in my roster i was looking at san francisco austin boulder colorado and portland oregon and places like that and and i decided to choose burlington because of the community co op and it is like burlington electric and a newly formed and at that time which was burlington telkom and that made a huge impression on me and was part of the reason why i actually moved so i think that this city council and a lot of people in burlington sort of focus very my optically on what this my actually mean for very small budget i mean if you're really thinking about the budget of the entire state we're really talking about very small amount of money coming from new york city but i think that we might not realize that the eyes of the nation are really on this city in a big way and that we can't really see it from the inside and i think that this deal tonight is way more impactful than it's given credit for and i think that the fiber infrastructure the intent to bring community owned internet infrastructure like anywhere at all is original and i think it's important so i would like to grow my four businesses that i just formed while been here over the past four years on the back of community resources and i believe in burlington and i hope that you do as you will and i hope you do you will go allan thank you alexander friend and then zandi wheeler good evening president  nobel i just wanted to thank the members of the council the mayor all of volunteers who have worked on this issue hundreds of hours you've given the matter who you support because it shows public engagement and i think more public engagement is great i'm going to come back to that in  second i just want to we've heard a lot about the risks so to sociate it with keep going to the telecom local and i haven't heard hardly anything about the risks associated with taking and i just want to be sure that you properly evaluated the risks of that company if you've dug into them for the first six months of the year seventy four percent of the revenues were from domain services twenty five percent from reselling sprint mobile services one percent from providing internet services  they have less than two years experience of providing fiber to the home billing to telecom has twelve they have far fewer customers than burlington telecom currently dogs about they've been actively seeking to turn burlington telecom into a cooperative for five years this isn't a new concept so much wondering is if our elected leaders at least the majority of them had promoted the co op model from the beginning i think the money and support would have flowed in favor of it i and other volunteers have been knocking on doors and talking to people around the city for the past few weeks and i have to tell you that the groundswell of public support for the local try to find a solution that will retain local control and satisfy the other party's thank you thank you then carolyn good evening and thank you very much for years of work and service on this particular issue it is truly tempting to believe that one visionary and progressive choice tonight would protect us from corporate greed while ensuring a measure of success and financial security a kin to be edi and the coa i've been a business owner here since seventy four and a landowner member of the co op and i think the question tonight is are we going to repeat history or learn from history we have no more assurance today that we can predict the future and there are many of bents that could rock our national and local economy and a fledgling and under capitalized co op here a couple that i've thought really begun to think about just in the last year alone how would we deal and how would the co op deal with the serious outage caused by cyber terrorism or worse how about economic disruption to the states and burlington's largest employer brought on by a broad changes to health care funding how about dramatic changes in tax policy that might eliminate state taxes from deductibility on the federal return when we have four thousand residents in the state of vermont who pay a whopping sixty percent of all state income taxes and we're losing six employ employees a day in vermont they don't have to live here we don't get a do over and it's not time to double down with katie with the co ops offer primarily because there are a lot of unexpected things that win over thank you very much we should not risk customer service with debt service over value enthusiasm over experience confidence over competence let's properly balance for to share a responsibility against enormous popularity and good intentions thank you thank you carolyn bates and dean co pearlington far more than we the them it's so obvious they keep throwing more and more money at us now it's thirty million to buy and fifty million to put in a new telecom center in burlington they admit they do not know how to run the telecom business we have to run it for them and teach them how to do this so that they can make a big profit off of our knowledge k p l's conservative bid has a payback of one million to one and a half million a year and that's at the fourteen percent as burlington telecoms profit is three million dollars the k b l payback is very doable with ting whose entire source of money is a loan their pay back with thirty million is at least three million a year equal to the total amount of profit of burlington telecom with the additional promise of fifty million over ten years that adds another five billion a year in payback where will to get this money and they have also promised a fast build out where will that money come from by upping the rates of course upping our rates and selling bt if they run into financial trouble what will they do in a downturn has anyone asked them have they done as conservative a forecast as k b t l has done and therefore they understand that they should keep their loans close to the ten to twelve million dollars excellent dean coren and then michael seaver evening and thank you i'm doing corrine from ward one in burlington i've been i'm glad to live in a city with a big heart and also a lot of brains and if and if you haven't seen the resumes of the board members who have put together the over the last several years and done the work and made the pro forma that is incredibly conservative and come up with the results it has i really encourage you to look at their website and read those resumes because we are blessed in burlington with the people who can put this together now i know i've talked to you a few times and i've gone to some of the more local meetings and i've wondered why it is so difficult for us to come together and see for everybody to see what other people see and i can use a picture i need a picture the assumptions behind the pro forma of the co operative are reasonable in every respect it assumes less revenues then bt currently predicts it assumes higher costs than bt currently predicts and it includes the worst case financing option as never assumed anything better than that this is what we're looking at in the long term a short term fronting a short term amount of money on the order of a quarter of the twenty eight million dollars being proposed and that's it that's it the co op is offering this people of burlington member shares and now they're also offering us those of us who have hundred fifty megabyte because we need it for our business we go to one gigabyte so we are just flying high and we supported it even before that but the city if it takes its equity it could take it in cash but if it takes its equity it has a potential long term and not even not even as long as here and we all know over the fifty year horizon telecom could change entirely and local communities that control their own like port au go are doing new things that they decide on but the potential for the city is tremendous the potential for its residence is tremendous as opposed to a fixed one time infusion but the real risk associated with all of these is that the people up there are the only ones in the world who know how to run a fiber system in the city of  thank you for having us here tonight and giving us this opportunity for resident i've been thirty six year resident of the city of burlington i think it's important we've heard a lot of references to community ownership we've referred to be b e d is a regulated monopoly we're not looking at that opportunity here we're looking at a build over we have one of the strongest probably the strongest cable company in the entire country here and we have and under capitalized company coming in to compete against them we are you're asking our community to take on a risk that you asked us to that a prior administration and city council took on many years ago it failed it put this city in deep jeopardy and what's amazing to me is that we are here today with a group of folks as well intentioned as they may be who after five years we heard that they've been trying to put this together in june when they brought their proposal it was described as being the weakest incomplete not even fully thought through so what confidence should that give us if they had been working on it for five years and the first proposal they delivered is that weak but let's step back and think about in november of two thousand and fourteen we're were in a dire position and we were going to lose the entirety of burlington telecom but this administration supported by the city council was able to negotiate in good faith that we would take this company we would make it better and then we would sell it in order to recoup we made a deal and you guys are now thinking of not holding up to the deal that you negotiated i mean how can we not take the responsible deal with a a well financed company it's it's beyond me that we're going to tell citibank you're a big company so we don't have to stand up to what we negotiated with you the nation is looking at us and if the nation is looking at us and we better stand by our word thank you we have a word thank you very much the last two speakers went burlington there's a lot of great passion in this room a lot of good intellect and we're all working hard i know everyone in this room has the best interests of burlington at heart and more are coming at it from different angles so i just want to say that i've been a burlington telecom customer devoted i'm proud to live in burlington and proud to be a customer with burlington telecom and i'm one of many many residents are really ready to invest our time and money to keep this a local local bid i believe strongly that this will help keep our tech economy thriving and growing as a standalone local company the co op telecom is already embedded in our tech community and has the ability to work directly with local tech innovators to manage investment in the most efficient and effective way possible a local tech leadership committee is being fostered with homegrown experts who have taken our local tech economy to the next level they will guide and advise the k b t l tech innovation program i do not believe ting has the best interests of our community at heart as a multinational investor owned utility that is traded publicly they're bound to meet the fiduciary needs of their shareholders first and burling tony and last that's a very unfortunate set up in addition our local bid has a very good chance of receiving the c p g that we would mean and none of the current legal analyses claim otherwise the public utility commission has different levels of due diligence for telephone and cable the requirements to receive a telephone c p g are basic and keep local would easily meet the criteria so i'm asking to please support this really smart and fit and fiscally viable choice this is the best direction for burlington in so many ways i really appreciate all of your hard work and your good listening thanks thank you barbie alsop and then elliott not i thought i'd be the only customer to come and talk to you today and i have to say that i have them from my cell phone and i think their customer service people are very nice but they can't do much if you call with a question such as can i change my bill due date because i'm social sick on social security and i'd like to pay my bills all the same week no we can't do that we're working on it they've been telling me that for three years the only way i got my due date changed was to cut off my service for a month and then rejoin on the right day so i could pay my bill they don't listen to the needs of the  i also do not get either text or internet on my cell phone it's an emergency phone that means i don't have to pay an additional six dollars a month which matters when i'm poor and about every six months i have to call and remind them that they're supposed to be blocking it this is not the kind of customer service i think we expect from burlington telecom and this is on a cell phone that is what a third maybe a quarter of their business week cable t v is one or two percent they're using us they're using us because they want to build out through chittenden county they want to turn us into a mega hub they're not interested in burlington they're interested in making money thank you we have elliott no so i've had the opportunity to address all of you a couple times in a couple different locations you know this really is a remarkable i'm amazed at the number of people and i thank them who have come out in support of us tonight but tonight i really want to focus on the people that i haven't had the chance to address tonight those are the people who are here supporting cave e t l and who are bringing an amazing amount of energy into this room and into this process first of all you should all be proud of yourself this was a bid that has now lasted through multiple rounds where nobody really gave  have done a remarkable job but tonight i want to say something different if we are lucky enough to be successful in this process i know that there will be a lot of people disappointed here my deep belief in the belief of everybody who works at the team is that for some of you in six months for others of you in a year some in three years some five you will all come to appreciate us as being a part of this community and every one of you will have had a positive customer service experience and experience with an organization that we've supported and helped simply for the benefit of the community you might know or have relatives who are employees either today or in the future they might be students of u b s you v m or champlain college who now stay in burlington as opposed to leaving because of the opportunities that are here we do not view this as an jerry councilors down president thank you for your service to our city i'm here today to ask you to support keep local in their bid to purchase burlington telecom i'm a twenty seven year old burlington resident who is on the verge of buying a home and starting a family in the city that i love the reason i want to live in burlington is because of our city's long history of supporting the public good of all residents not just business interests supporting the public good has always come with fierce opposition from those whose primary goal is to make as much money as possible in residence our beautiful public waterfront is a testament to this mayor bernie sanders used public trust doctrine to reclaim our water front from the rail companies they fought him all the way to the state supreme court but in the end the people of burlington won that case imagine if bernie had decided that the risk of litigation was too great to move forward what would arbor what would our waterfront look like today what will our telecom look like in thirty years if we make the choice to sell to a canadian company only out to make a profit for shareholders instead of burlington residents who will use this resource for the good of everyone in our city decisions made for the common good always come with risks opposition and often a threat of litigation what has made burlington great is that previous leaders have acted with bold and visionary leadership  conceded to pressure from the banks and business interests i'm asking you today to continue our proud legacy of supporting the common good just like our city previously chose to create our waterfront save northgate apartments buil church street start the housing trust model and show city market over conventional grocery stores you can now choose to see burlington telecom for the people of burlington not a canadian company only out to make as much money as possible our children and grandchildren will need to live with the choice you make today i hope you make the right one and support keep eating local for all of burlington thank you jerry colby and then  we've heard about the threat of a lawsuit that has come from some offices at citibank some of you may be aware that threats are commonplace in competitive legal strategies to control an opponent to give the threat make of the best possible deal often to the disadvantage of the opponent in this case the victim of the threat is the community of burlington and the politicians who may fear political reprisal for not seeming to be quote unquote responsible as citicorp offices of course see in their minds what responsible is but let me tell you about the last time i had an citi corp that had a low liquidity because they had overextended themselves in loans of third world countries corporate mergers and midwestern businesses at that time you have to testify before the house committee i raised to the city corp executive who was by the way working the whole the citi corp itself was a risk wasn't it i pointed out how much citicorp have recently been exposed by charges that it was parking assets as well as liabilities and quite possibly liabilities to deposit is in offshore brass plate banks in the caribbean he simply gave me a knowing smile and a wink intrastate banking did indeed come into the mind and we now have an example of an interstate bank city demanding terms that it has no right to bake according to the last agreement signed between the city of burlington and citi corp run out of time but i want to say one more thing burlington is not for sale that's better that's great thanks shar dan it and then matthew dodds oh dear i have to follow my husband well anyway we both recently moved back to burlington after thirteen years we lived in cambridge for we're back in burlington boy is it great to be back  folks anyway i'm an attorney i'm an investigative journalist i'm not weighing in as an attorney because what i've read from telecom attorney i want to approach this issue as a journalist and as someone who cares deeply about democracy and the erosion of democracy in our country as we are watching it before our very eyes unlike one of the speakers is that i don't care about television but i do care about internet well i do care about television too i watch it a lot because i'm a journalist and because we are the watchdogs of democracy if we don't get the news out to the people correctly we are in deep trouble and they know it i've heard that some of the best t v reporting on the presidency is happening right now in the skies the journalists know what's going on and what's at stake and that is the issue before us i recently read that the f c c is revising its rules and is allowing the elimination of a rule the permits more local control over  television stations and i just want to read a little segment from an article in mother jones recently published ready for trump t v sinclair bras broadcasting which is a right wing broadcaster is plotting to take over your local i want to end by just saying will you leave will you yield to threats of large corporations or we'll listen to the will of the people will you base your vote on the bottom line or we were will or will you take a strength from the people in their struggle to maintain local control and local democracy thank you thank you very much matthew dad's dogs and then curry counsellors is working their way money's matthew dogs and i run a business called brenda poetry for the last twelve years on plane street i also serve on the vermont technology alliance on the board and i'm here today to talk a little bit about what i think are some of the challenges with the key i do think that there are risks involved in terms of the financing and i want to step back a bit to say as a marketing person some of the challenges in trying to sell vermont because one of the things have been active in doing is trying to talk about the city and to raise this jewel that it we all agree with this gigabit infrastructure that we have but it's always been that with a bit of an asterix to it i can't sit around  lord the city for the last eight years of that's got this you know federal marshals ready to take the servers away that's kind of tough so what i'm looking to do is to find a way forward when i look at the different periods i see there's a lot of risks involved with moving ahead both from the potential litigation but also from just the financials in as a business owner i always look for a certain amount of liquidity to move forward and let's remember that it was financials that doomed the first burlington telecom so i think it's a legitimate concern and all and by saying i really in regardless of which moves forward i really want to have some closure on this as a business community to be able to promote this city and hopefully with the good infrastructure that we have is really important for us because tech is such a great potential for our  thank you for holding so many public hearings on this issue i just want to make point one k b t l is taking a lot of heat today for prematurely claiming access to a lower interest rate but no one has  the fact that tng claimed that they would hook up twelve thousand subscribers in the last community where they bought the local fiber optic network but that has not materialized either ting's expertise is in customer service and domain names not in telecom so their experience is only about two years deep and that's all readily available information so this community has a long history of standing up to big money interests we now have one of the greatest senators in history spreading the economic development message that burlington pioneered our economic success as a nationwide brand and as a result we grew and attracted small businesses like lake champlain chocolates union media wind and waves and the rest of pine street we have seen church street marketplace retain a seventy percent local ownership rate on national chains like j c penney american apparel and taylor olympia sports j crew and more have folded up demonstrating less staying power and sustainability governing through fear of dubious litigated posturing going to move forward in its heyday when mayor sanders and caldwell understood what it meant to be an activist government response of to its community and more importantly understood how they analyze risk that would allow us to drive our resources to create and sustain nationally recognized and award winning economic development programs that fueled local ownership and rejected the myth that wall street can save main street and i just want to put out there there's a dangerous narrative tonight that there's liquidity issues and interest rate problems when in fact b t l has a one point five percent debt coverage ratio and everyone who works in finance understands that the debt coverage ratio is what mitigates the risk not the interest rate and that we're also hearing this myth that there is some relationship to taxpayer taxpayers money and k b t l is a cooperative economics one a one not reliant on taxpayer money thank you brian pyne and then charles simpson the name thank you for the opportunity i've been doing some homework to more fully understand the issues that you're facing with this decision and to better understand the canadian company to which you are considering selling our interest by all accounts appears to be a very good company there innovative and seem to embrace the power of the internet as a force for positive change by the way doesn't offer land lines or cable t v and so that term triple play kind of turns into a fielder's choice here so they really can only get one out we can get three out because we're providing services that people in our community are needing and demanding but that's beside the point  they have some really great videos on their website which actually features mr nasr it's called ask an exact and in one of them i'll paraphrase what the customer asked this question she said i feel like every time a great independent company stands up starts up and gains momentum someone like google or amazon just comes along offers jillions of dollars and it's just something you can't turn down in favor of your own family wilting customers ever have to worry about this or big rate increases and it was interesting to hear mr knox his reply i really respect mr dawson think he runs a great company but his reply reflects i think the key issue here we're not in this to sell our parent company to cowes is  established company we want to make as many people happy as possible it's a great sentiment really it's possible that we could get an offer from some big telecom that we can't refuse but that would likely include them recognizing that they want to do what we do and they would bring us into run the show wouldn't that be great i think that's an important point really that's a critical point i watch several these videos and but they're pretty impressive but ultimately that's what you're being faced with today is the decision essentially sell a piece over infrastructure that becomes a significant asset on the balance sheet for a company that is in the business to make money there's no guarantee that we will be faced with this problem in a few years thank you thank good evening i want to tell you a fairy story and i wish i could say i made it up it's one i'm hearing tonight this evening it's about a white knight from the north who will defend us helpless fear damsels who incidentally have a dowry that grew by thirty seven percent in just the last year all c e o s of multinational telecoms however handsome war well spoken seek maximum profits and edges close to monopoly market control as they are allowed to get the maximum return to shareholders doesn't privilege net neutrality not selling our data support for community television support for new enterprises keeping low rates and strong subscriber  service let's trust ourselves keep the power don't trust a deceptive white knight that will as quickly as possible wring out the twenty seven point five one thirty million from share from subscribers service in terms of the story without social value of local ownership bt may well tank taking with it the city's perhaps twenty percent of equity so let's free the damsel let's let her make her own decision thank you thank you jason lover and i'm jason lorber former state representative and business owner and bt subscriber and i would want to thank everyone here for all your hard work and for for your and the mayor's office have such a big impact on who we are and our history and thinking about the the local innovation and looking at our burlington successes whether it's a co op  the waterfront church street keeping church street smokefree expanding our bike path in protecting that and all of that work was hard and took it wasn't the conventional approach and that you've done it and a lot of these these efforts weren't easy wins that sometimes you had to go back and back fill and figure out how to make it work when you hit something blocks but you did it with tonight's decision it's a big decision and certainly we can go the conventional route with the idea perhaps that you know no one was fired for hiring i b m or for listening to the corporate approach but i also urge you to think about our legacy your legacy and who we are and i urge you to  take the local approach community approach the burlington approach thank you very much and then michael long greetings thank you all for putting up with us tonight really my big question is why are we here look at all the support for both sides and honestly i think there's not a wrong answer for either bid they're just out there for very different reasons right you have the tin bid which could bring some good short term gain for the city pocket five million a run and then keep b t l which could more think of it more of the long term investment so to speak  where we get all of our money back and then some as a city and that's why we're here right we went through a public process didn't we this is this was your thing you wanted to public input we're supposed to chime in and tell us what's important and then number one was on that list was local control and so that's where i grow a little bit confused as to why we continue with repeating the same comments especially with let's face it probably all have your minds made up you've educated yourselves pretty well on this issue and main thought is that if we go with taking it we're locking in a twelve million dollar loss it was not that long ago when i believe the community wanted that the full money the seventeen million it was all the talk of the town where's my seventeen million right we got to get this back people have sued the city and they lost but nonetheless it was an important thing for this community get that money back and now people are willing to take a twelve million dollar hit by accepting things offer so here again you have a choice it's a great short term investment ting i think a b t o is a good long term investment that's probably why you wisely chose the two there are very distinct solutions so again it does no wrong answers here no answer ridiculous so please know that we all have our reasons and i thank you for your time thank you very much michael long and then  evening i'd like to speak in support of the k b t l bid a lot of energy has been spent trying to discredit that bid in suggests that it is not viable but i believe it that it is indeed a viable bid and in fact the irrational and emotional elements that have come into the debate i think stand in large measure from a worshipful adulation of corporate wealth and know how  we cannot count on the corporation to take care of us the corporations obligation is to it shareholders and and not to to this community whereas we had a great idea for the long term the road has been rocky but it was but it was a good idea and local control control really remains a good idea the team bid is a good is a good deal fourteen it's a good deal for city does better with that and blue water holdings does does does very well doubling its investment in a matter of several years and so forth but it but it's not a good deal for  the community and the taxpayers and those are the folks to whom your primary fed you cheri responsibility is connected thank you very much thank you steve good kind and then kit and thank you president and more this process goes on i think someone earlier said the easier or the obvious the decision we should make becomes and from my position i think it should be quite obvious we should be selling bolton telecom and we should be looking for ways not to sell it some people say well it's just a business deal the bluewater agreement is not a business deal that any business entity that saw its future as local control and good for its investors would be engaged it's a liquidation deal plain and simple that's what it is from the point of the taxpayer maybe from someone else's point it would look better the taxpayers are going to get twenty twenty five cents that a dollar maybe of their twenty million and it is twenty not seventeen million this city has shown he can run the system it had a rocky start running it now it can be done and i think there's no reason for us at this point to somehow ditch it go through what is basically a liquidation it's time to stand up for the system s we can do and do it for the good of all of our citizens so i say really keep it all to local world telecom local and don't sell it like hit andrews and then lisa either lax or have lisa lax good evening and thank you my name is kit andrews i'm a resident of ward three i'm going to start off tonight by speaking for a man matthew walters the owner of the archives a small business ho  at one ninety one college street the former home of the burlington free press he's not able to be here tonight when mr walters was opening the archives in two thousand and sixteen he ran into some major problems getting his internet properly up and running the problems developed a few days before his opening for which he'd already done all the promo so he was in a serious emergency situation mr walters wri bt saved the day with a last minute request when other servers when the other service provider was unable to meet our needs installation was smooth and easy and we've been completely pleased with our service i'd recommend bt to any burlington business owner who needs fast personalized straightforward service with no surprises he added bt gives great service by great people who care not many companies provide service anymore but burlington telecom goes above and beyond their service is second to none mr walter is strongly in favor of keeping bt local with the co op now i'll say a few words for myself earlier a speaker ended his remarks by saying that if the co op buys bt he really thinks a lot of customers will jump ship but he gave no citations in fact my sense is that his opinion came from his heart and not from his head well here's some fact based information i've spoken with scores of small business owners all of whom are bt customers and i've spoken with over one hundred residents all of them want to keep bt local and this includes residents who have comcast but a good number of them were concerned that k b could not make it and they were very relieved so thank you sir it's a process my name is lisa lax and i'm a thirty year homeowner and resident of tivo parkway in ward one i'm here tonight to ask you to support the choice of a locally operated cooperative for the continuation of burlington telecom i've been following this issue closely and believe that the financial risks of keeping bt local are being overplayed in the press and by parties with economic interests in the outcome i know that the council i know that you want to make a good decision a good financial decision however i fear that government in general tends to get manipulated by business and economic interests at the expense of what's right for the community and all of its citizens here in the u s and dare i say worldwide we're in an era in which private corporate interests have enormous and ever increasing power over communities this is an opportunity for you to resist that trend and preserve the community ideals of our fair city and provide an example of what's possible and other municipalities in our nation i spent some time door knocking in more one on this issue and i was surprised to find that ninety eight percent of the people i talked to support the keep local the people i talk to expressed whole hearted support for keeping a local yes for the affordable cost in the high quality service but primarily to preserve local control over a basic utility thank you thank you david landscape and then pot go to franc i live in burlington i'm a business person and i am part of the tech community burlington business council chamber of commerce in the tech kill kill do not speak for me as councilor right pointed out a couple local and i ask i'm really puzzled because as i read the b tab criteria i saw a local control is the number one issue and i don't understand how tank can be can can meet that criteria decisions about control who gets to sell my house my partner and i who gets to sell my car i do who gets to sell my business i do who gets if taking wins this bidding who gets to sell bt is it the board in burlington or is it the board of two cow or team in toronto  michigan that's what control is about if there is any meaning at least the way i understood local control when i answered the question in the survey of what's important  successor to owner of bt local control means local control to who buys next to my eyes the co op meets that where we're bidders from outside outside are you know recognize that and want that you know want to keep that asset for community for generations to come however i'm a strong supporter of  proposal mainly because of the risks associated with going with cave e t l bid for taxpayers like myself not to mention the missed opportunity costs that we have recouping over six million dollars for i do find that some aspects of the k v deal committee is making to be a little bit have some trustworthiness issues there based on you know thursday comments when they put in the final letter of intent that clearly indicate an eight percent interest rate still you know in the neighborhood of a junk bond not a lot of faith from any creditor you know can willing to give a stable business and eight percent interest rate but you know that and then that on sunday learned to be not the case that was not you know in paper so there's some big issues with this proposal you heard about the you know debt coverage ratio it's not sufficient evidence to service that debt well that's because they're only taking out ten million dollars of debt on the on so that they themselves are saying should be a valid should be evaluated at fifty sixty feedback here is mr brenner here ok i have a let's go on to don tram please and then excellent job running bt b t s hard times are behind them bt is on the verge of an enormous expansion within and outside of burlington on that basis alone it is not a good time for the city to lose we should have paid more attention when b tab released their sales criteria some pride tyria were watered down citizens were not asking for net neutrality for three years five years ten years they were asking for forever sure they wanted a local presence but really they want local ownership and control and that to forever so honestly with the sale of bt to taking local control in ownership are immediately lost and  neutrality may only exist here for a few years k b t l meets all of the established great area some might be considered tight but k b t l meets them all the city itself will maintain some direct control as a member of the new co op board co op members are fiercely loyal and such a loyalty is highly valued by telecoms or other concerns are outside the immediate sale but resolvable these concerns are not part of the established criteria brunson citizens will benefit from a sale to the city's a larger subscriber and benefits the most from stable low cost services the most of any patrons refund will go to  e the largest purchaser of services thank you the people of brighton are counting on you to make the right decision thank you very much be booked chian and then an take the money and then all the problems will be over in one minute except that five years from now we won't the  internet the infrastructure and we as a city because we don't own these things will be there the rights for consumers will go up the service will go down and that of very very scientific prediction based on what corporations do thank you an fine well my name's any mcnamee and i just have a few things to say this is not a decision that's based on emotion or sentimentality this is a decision that should be made to protect the people of burlington privatization has led to decreased service and increased costs around the country and around the world saying this asset would take away the voice of burlington and make internet an affordable and accessible you must represent the people who won't be able to afford the imminent price hikes who will lose their voices with the loss of net neutrality the people represented by local leadership in ownership protect the people of burlington from corporate control and keep eating local thank you thank you j f carter and new buys are and then robert ba that so many in city hall are refusing to support the co opted despite the overwhelming public when we tried to create burlington's waterfront in our center of community life we were sued by the railroad company bernie's administration way back in the one nine hundred eighty s fought big business all the way to the vermont supreme eventually winning that struggle the state of vermont was sued by monsanto when we passed a law requiring g m o labeling the state of vermont is currently being sued by comcast because they do not want to expand service to rural community or support public access stage whenever we have tried to make significant progress in the fight for economic equity big business and the political establishment have tried to have tried everything in their power to stifle our efforts while standing up for economic justice and local ownership isn't always an easy choice it's imperative that our elected representatives do so now thank you you thank robert bacchus nice job fox thank you and then brian sheena good evening councilors rob back as word six between two thousand and three and august of this year i think i came to the city council three times to talk on issues this is now my third time on this in only four weeks and i'm here because i believe passionately that keeping the burlington telecom local is important for the future of our city i am thinking not of five years down the road or ten years down the road because frankly when you look at a corporate bid that's about as far in the future a hue could look i am thinking more like when i was raising children and i was looking at them and wondering what that i have to do as a parent to help them  successful happy adults a thirty year forty year perspective i know that there's a lot of guesswork in that but this city council in the past has talked in those terms with that kind of perspective on how do we maintain our city as a viable place for the long run the history of telecom in this country if we think about it fifty years ago those giants i believe they're all gone there's been a total turnover in shake up if we sell to  we completely lose the ability to control our future at all if we keep it local like the like the burlington co op which has now been on our community i think somewhere around forty years we are planning for the long run at the property owner and a businessman in this city in a business that employs ten people and pays them including myself fortunately i know that burlington telecom is the choice that will support me in my work and that will also support me at home in everything i need to do at my home you know my mom is ninety seven now i think if i can follow her track i've got at least thirty years in me i want to know that thirty years from now this city will still be run by the city and not by outside interests thank you very much brian shana and then  no i don't know why that's happening right thank you i'd like to start by just expressing my appreciation to to the city council and the mayor i know how hard it is and to the people who don't we don't know me my name is brian i'm a resident of burlington i live in the old north and i have a business in burlington i'm a i have a private practice and clinical social work i'm also a community organizer i've served on the school board and i'm currently a state representative for burlington and i know what it's like to sit in the in those seats literally and to have to make difficult decisions on their pressure and i appreciate you hearing us all tonight i hope that even if we disagree on this issue that we can keep working together on the things we have in common because there's a lot of work we need to do for the people together as elected official it is indeed our responsibility to manage the finances of government however we also have to make decisions that align with the vision of the people that we represent it's not just about how our decisions will affect profit it's about how our choices affect the people and it's a tricky balance i grew up in the new york city area and i've witnessed what happens when profits of the few trump the interests of the many i've watched entire neighborhoods sold off to developers who take advantage of public benefits to gain private profits i do not support the policy of selling off our public resources to the highest bidder although such transactions may reap some tempting immediate financial benefits what are the long term consequences of such policy how does this connect with our vision we have a responsibility to the people to consider the impact of our current decisions on both present and future generations a locally owned cooperative would provide many benefits for burlington in both the present and future and you've heard a lot of people say them so i'm not i'm going to skip this part right now and just say that please don't let big business interests and out of state banks intimidate you we must stand up and defend what is ours burlington telecom was created with public investment so it should be preserved in a way that most allows the public to retain ownership and local control thank you thank you so are white and then karen long the sarah white and i have a question for the city council you all don't need to answer it how many people did you guys have to email call and text to come here and talk about taking because there have been at least ten or fifteen people talking about tng when there are only two or three talking about both and sure as a couple weeks ago when you had your first vote it's really confusing to me you see we see you guys every day even if you don't see us i've seen all of you on church and church street at least twice and i need you guys to know even if we don't want to watch you we see you we see everything that you do and you need to be concerned about our welfare thank you thank you karen would that she was going i think both were ok i'm karen long i feel that choosing over katie would be another instance of favoring private interest over public interest when i look back at what's happened over the last five years or marina was privatized we're a lot of discussion about selling memorial to you v m turning it into a hockey rink i was totally against that i don't like that taf school which is in my ward ward one has been rented to you v m for the price of a two bedroom apartment and we've signed like a ninety year lease so i mean they're getting a rock star deal we gave them arena developers a rockstar deal morea i don't know what that was going to be and i really don't like the idea that we would so out this you know network that we have a mean of can be a real mistake and i look at the people that are up there that have been working for us and they've made the telecom war and it's earning my understanding is three million dollars a year it's not going to fail and give it a chance i mean if it does fail can't we come back in three years or five years or whatever and somebody is going to sell buy it for you no more i think it cost sixty million dollars to to build we've kind of looked into that so it's a lot of money not nothing is enough but really if we give it up i think that's a big thank you gregg ever would and then if he's here keith because it didn't really make a lot of sense because i didn't i was unable to finish but i wanted to just point out one thing that i only heard one person talk about tonight and it's sort of like brand loyalty where we'll be two weeks in telecom if it were owned by the co op  you know i was early on a supporter i was subscriber number five i think really to telecom and when richard donnelly was marketing director and he set up booths here and there he gave a little badges that said  burlington telecom volunteer so i wear that and i was helping out you know promote the system the one thing that that that we will have with the co op is a loyalty that is kind of like love in other words where how many people will volunteer to promote team two cows says just think of that if we own it let's say seven thousand households or subscribers households and businesses are subscribing if ten percent of those decided to become sales persons and say you know i'm going to promote because i own it and i would like to keep it going that's a i don't know how to quantify that in terms of dollars and cents but it's something that is real it's intangible but yet it's tangible and so i think that's one thing that we need to keep in that that is worth a lot of money and and like i said last time i was here these folks will have your backs in any kind of situation that might arise thank you very much is keith brown are here ok so that closes the public forum selection of the buyer of burlington telecom like to acknowledge councillor paul at this time thank you thank you president no dell over over the weekend in continuing the task as we all have done in performing our own due diligence on this issue i have discovered and confirmed that i have a professional conflict of interest in the matter before us i have tried to work through this issue as late as four pm this afternoon despite this i find that i must recuse myself from this matter after being actively engaged in the burlington telecom history for over eight years and investing what is now hundreds of hours to be part of the solution from b t s darkest days i would much prefer to vote on this issue this is not the position that i would like to be in in my nine years on the council i believe that i've recused myself three times i can council meetings i'm not able to speak directly to this conflict but i would like to state that my conflict has nothing whatsoever to do with the parties interested in purchasing burlington telecom i respect each of you at this table and the understanding that many of you have given me i wish you all the best as you deliberate on this very important decision thank you thank you council paul so we have to potential buyers that are before us for consideration and i can open open the floor to any discussion and i anticipate there's some point if  you know it's respected to vote tonight but we can have some discussion beforehand and mayor of course we want to hear from the mayor at some point if you'd like to hear from us but the floor is open for whoever wants to get started  now only with counter paul's information about her stepping out now with a conflict of interest but also casting votes along the way to get here and now readers i have a huge issue with in this process and i'm not so sure that legally where we stand with that at the eleventh hour we have a city counter the steps up and says i can no longer participate because i have a conflict of interest but all along have cast votes to get us to the situation i don't feel good about that so i would like that if we select them tonight that you can say what you want with blue water save a blue are said that he would veto the agreement so your bank now has taken that threat of maybe suing to suing i take that very seriously as a city councillor and where this puts the city on the decisions that we have to make and i feel very uncomfortable tonight after what we've heard and we're casting a vote i'm going to make a motion that we postpone action and get legal advice where we really stand on this issue given the circumstances that we're under now and ask maybe if i would recommend a council work session mid week and a revote monday night i don't feel good about making the decision tonight based on the new information that we have learned so i would like to make that motion is there a second to the motion to postpone counsel jang seconds that motion recusal we really didn't get your input so i'm hoping you can weigh in on whether the law the refusal of counsel or paul should you know impacts our vote tonight or our ability to move forward i'm not aware of any way that it would impact your vote tonight she has recused herself and i don't believe it impacts any prior votes so based upon that i would i will not be supporting the motion to postpone we've got a room full of people that came here to listen to us debate and have us make a decision we have one better that traveled ten plus hours by car to be here i'm not hearing any reason from the city attorney's office why we should not be able to vote tonight so i will be opposing the motion to postpone thank you cancer thank you in some ways i don't think that we really have heard anything anything new  tonight we have gotten another letter from citibank being more explicit than the previous letter that they will sue but they did pretty much say that before and we've had discussions about that for weeks we have we have already postponed to get to this point the bluewater discussion bluewater also hasn't said one way or another what they would do but we always suspected we always knew that they had the ability to veto based on a first time operator so that's not really news either i mean it is the letter that we got more recently is more explicit about what their thoughts are but it's something we always knew was there  supporters have said to me along the way that they've had some frustration with the extensions that we've done up to this point that that makes it hard for them and we have who drove through this storm to  here and be here tonight i don't think postponement is respectful to either the process or the people who have made an effort to come out tonight i think that we have had ample time to gather information and it's time to make a decision one way or the other things have may or we wish your hand up or you want to hold off or all off ok cancer and we'll come back to the second round thank you president on the last city council meeting i did request for the consul in also the city to have both being back here to have an informative session with the community yes there's a lot of thirty minutes or even maybe two minutes public forum i don't think that's enough we are going to make one of the biggest decision for the city of burlington yes we would elected by constituents in my own understanding we owe the community of burlington more than that having an informative session where they can ask a direct question to ask a direct question to keep detail i think it's a very reasonable yes we did also receive a bid hello eyes but in those we have some questions but we don't have the opportunity to ask them directly and i think that's really one of the reason why i would like to postpone the first today and make sure that the both entities will talk to the community directly thank you thank you i came prepared to vote tonight i came prepared i did the work i talked with many of the people in this room many many more like we all did we all did that work each and every one of the people around th room the folks that are not in the room that are watching at home that i i told them i came to a conclusion harder in conclusion i'm not going to support the motion to delay room tonight and for the people that job eight hours i appreciate that i think you all know that if you know the day you're not sitting where i'm sitting and then make your own informed decision on this and to be put in legal jeopardy and quite honestly i have been threatened to be sued personally through this whole process ok and then again tonight to hear the that possibly there's a city council through this whole process casting votes that had a conflict  her her votes might have had influence on all of us through this process i'm not sure if other counties feel the same way or not but i'm not come to voting tonight and whether we put postpone or not i'm not casting a vote tonight i will not cast a vote tonight  i have councillor busher who has not spoken yet thank you i came tonight also ready to vote and then you know we had our executive session before this meeting began and we learned a couple of things that councillor hartnett has touched upon i don't feel ready to vote tonight because i feel that the process that brought us to tonight has been flawed and it's been flawed for some time it wasn't it was a difficult process to begin with but we started out with eight potential buyers we now wrote that down to four and then we were to embark on reducing that to two but before we even had a chance to do that one of them was eliminated and not in a way that i thought was appropriate and still don't i feel that this other wrinkle in our process now with the counsellor who has identified a conflict of interest is another flaw in the process that i need to digest if we move forward tonight i really don't want to vote either tonight but i i was hesitant to second the motion only because i have a health issue and won't be here on wednesday night or thursday so that timeline doesn't work for me however it's a really important decision and i don't want to suggest to any one of you from ward one or from the city that i won't cast my vote call in or something but i will be there representing you so because of all of these flaws in the process a process that didn't have to have those flaws i believe  i'm not ready to vote i need more time and if if indeed it was up to me for all of you to know this i would go back to having the four proposals before us and go from there to restart it and i don't care who's gonna call foul or say the timeline doesn't work that's where i would be because that's where the integrity of it broke down for me and if anything we should have integrity in this process and that has been eliminated quite a while ago the i think i ha because like everybody else said i planned on coming here to vote tonight we had some wrinkles in the process with recusal that certainly has thrown a wrinkle into the process as they said and but but the bottom line is we are where we are and we are going to have to vote with a lot of encounters whether we are happy about that or not that's the way it is in terms of the legal questions i do agree what counts are shannon sat in the sense that the information that we got tonight is not really different from what we've already heard we've already heard that there was the language was used that it was a virtual certainty that we would have a law suit from from city and they made that virtual certainty absolute certainty and we had heard the concerns from blue water as well they said that they were not going to insert themselves into the process they simply stated what we already knew that they they could object depending on what we do so i'm trying to figure out what where we really get by de lay i think it i think we we need to move forward in one way or another whether we're deadlocked and we move into some other solution or whatever it may be i'm trying to figure out and i haven't figured out yet i do understand  understand counselor bush's frustration with the process i feel equally as frustrated with the process over the last several weeks and even more recently however i'm not sure that a delay is going to solve any of that  and i'm not sure that it's going to solve these other questions either so i'm still trying to figure that out thank you thank you counselor i've councilor shannon thank  you i want to speak a little bit to what counselor had mentioned his discomfort with the recusal process and just because the public may not know that these things do come up for councillors and we've had too many of us have had to recuse ourselves and i know for myself that i had been voting on the moran project and at a point someone raised an issue with a conflict of interest which we looked into and then i stopped voting on the marion process for a period of time and so those things unfortunately happen i am particularly disappointed because i believe that councillor paul was going to vote the same way that i planned to vote in this process so i was not happy but i completely respect the fact that an issue simply came up and that's all that it is there's not something nefarious going on here to council or bush or point in frustration about who the finalists are you know that some people would like to bring companies into this process who are not in this process now because people did not vote for them when we had the opportunity to vote for them and one was taken off the table due to a conflict of interest when the conflict of interest was raised they withdrew and we went through a process of trying to bring them back which i know president know dell you know diligently tried to bring them back but they're they're not here and i think we have to deal with the reality that our choices are the ones that we picked to use two weeks ago in the idea that we might postpone in order to bring companies back that we did not choose through this process that we all agreed room and the thousands more who are following this closely out there to make a decision and it is time for decision it should be a decision that we are excited to make frankly we have a chance tonight two and a long long journey that has been very straining and very problematic and we have a chance tonight on october thirtieth two thousand and seventeen to achieve some very important things for the people who brought them first and foremost assuring very high speed affordable internet access with great customer service for burlington tony and for the forseeable future we had chance to bring to an end for good nearly a decade of turmoil and challenges related to bt we had the chance for clarity for the bt employees who very much need clarity it is not fair to them either to suspend and continue to the delay action and we have a chance sitting here in the room at the chance finally to reclaim six million dollars of the lost taxpayer resources that we pledged to try to get back we've got a chance to ration here tonight to upgrade our credit rating it's time to vote and see if we have the political will to do that to make good on the agreement that we fought for that i fought for and i'll say it again the only reason we're having this conversation tonight when it was when bt had been run into the ground when it was on the verge of being put into receivership or maybe even worse the fiber ripped out of the ground the reason we're having this debate is because we together and i personally fought extremely hard to get us the right to direct the future of this asset an asset we never really owned we certainly never we never paid for fully we had it we fought for the right to do this process and it's time to see if we have the political will to bring it to a conclusion that's what this is about here is is the council have the will to make a decision a tough decision it is a strange thing is happening and if it people are watching here is that the supporters for telling are sitting here ready to vote and  other first round ok count counts are tracy and i've got you queued up there so i certainly you know understand a lot of the sentiment surrounding the table and i'm just you know having been very upset at certain points in this process certainly understand the feeling that the process was not as strong as it needed to be and at times really deviated from what we had previously announced and that's incredibly unfortunate i however do not feel that delaying at this particular time will answer any of the questions i think that citibank's threat will remain citibank's threat i think that blue our understanding of blue waters deal will stay the same well i think that  that the different offers may continue to change i don't know how that necessarily continues to help us in this in this particular decision making process i felt like today it was incredibly difficult to keep everything straight because we had constantly flurrying offers and i think that we can only expect for that uncertainty to continue in the coming week so i'm fully confident behind the vote that i'm going to make tonight to vote for k b t l i feel fully confident in their abilities to make  a strong you know a strong investment burlington and i'm i'm perfectly ready and willing to make that vote so i will not be supporting postpone are you i have cancer  cancer mason go ahead thank you president and sorry i'm hearing some concern on legal issues and i would say you know to those who are advocating in favor of postponement to address legal issues to remind us that we do have the opportunity to go into executive session and address any legal issues thank you yes thank you happened earlier we made sure what we were asked if we wanted to go visit two cars two cars yes can be the mother of thing but what i what i'll go see in maryland virginia how thing is operating there i also want this council to take the time and go talk to the bt employees i met with them and none of us nobody here is going to you are ready to make a decision and no one took the time to sit down with them and ask them what they think and i would like that to happen then why i would like all of us i'm just asking for us to delay to make sure we do our diligence going visiting the right places where to operate and also to talk to the employees that been running this company for years thank you cancer and cancer heart been under a tremendous amount of stress and i do worry about us making important decisions and i just would like us to be very aware of and the stresses come from many many sources and i think many people in the room understand what i'm talking about so the floor is now back open for discussion on the sale cancer thank you it has been noted that there are a lot of burlington telecom employees in the room and i wondered if council president would see if it invite any of speak to us if they wish to share their thoughts with us and appreciate if they're not comfortable doing so but i did at least want to because they are here tonight want hope we can make that offer i don't want to put anyone on the spot but lucretia your being here if you would like to come and speak to the council now worst little bit later in our discussions you would be most welcome to do that do so so yes and i would also like to say that through steven berkoff i did put out a request to hear from the employees through e mail or by coming here tonight like to ask a couple of questions about the two cows letter of intent if somebody is willing to answer those don't know if it is do we have so i read this with interest and i do want to disclose that that two cows reached out to i believe all of the city councillors and  some went to toronto i went to mayor of bells which for breakfast and and met with them so that was my journey but i very much appreciated the offer and i took them up on it as one of the two finalists and so as a result of our meeting i read with interest your final letter of intent and wanted a little bit of clarity with some of the phraseology if you're willing to address that so under bt staff retention we believe bt is a solid is solid operational leaving no reason to make drastic organizational changes can you define drastic for sure i think the best way that i can answer that and thank you for this opportunity i do want to let you pull the mike up a little bit sure thanks that you know i got the chance to myself in a couple of our other folks got the chance to meet with bt staff you know we we've been in this business i've been in this business the i s p business my whole professional life  that is a great group of people and we were quite taken with both their their passion for the business and with their fit with our pricing for thirty months and it goes on but then it says some of the current packages may be streamlined yes so does that mean and i'm going to i'm going to paraphrase this or i'm going to say this is what i this is my concern or caution yes you could be offering less in a package for the same price so that would be absolutely incorrect what we mean is something very simple here the vast majority of bt subscribers are in three or maybe four packages yet there is about thirty five or forty packages that are offered you know we've learned you know years in telecom  that simplicity is very important it allows customers to make decisions more easily and it allows us to support the business of provide a higher level of care so what we're talking about there is taking you know some of the things that are in the vast majority and i'm talking you know north of ninety percent of the customers packages won't be touched and if we're ever in a situation council bush or where we're moving something a little to the right or a little to the left we will do that in almost every case in the customers if they're moving from something that was a little bit less interlude a bit more in terms of the offering or a little bit less interlude a bit more in terms of money we're going to make that correction in the streamers favor that's our history you don't take my word for it you can you know do your digging on us with our thank you and the last the last thing is something that i really was looking for so when i met i was  i had given some feedback to them about why where they were and in my pecking order of who was first second third etc in the three remaining offers and then gave some insight as to why they were where they were and one of the things had to do with a minority interest and i was looking for i am not certain that the city would be able to afford a larger minority  was looking for something more significant than what i had read and i have to say that i read this and i was i wasn't satisfied with the statement at all actually and i would just like you to just expand for a minute on what minority interest what what the what the maximum one already interest could be practical level that would probably have to be closing with you know if we were fortunate enough to be successful that would be when the p u c did that i would note we'd probably jointly want to come to some sort of agreement like that maybe a month or so weeks before that so we could work through the details of what that minority stake would look like and you know what the various puts and takes were around it but you know as as as i said to you and we were a breakfast we would really enjoy the city as a partner we think that that kind of relationship would be novel today in the five or world in the u s and we think that it would be a great opportunity for burlington to set a standard or an approach that the rest of the country could follow so you're your first question was around the amount of it you know i'm not really married to any number you know we had kind of gone into it thinking of of you know sort of the the equity stake because we didn't think that the city would want to go into their pockets from that would kind of get to twenty five percent then we found out that that was the bluewater debt that had to be repaid that took that to i think nineteen or twenty percent we'd be comfortable at a higher number i mean if you wanted to suggest you know the north of thirty we'd probably have to talk about it and i'd want to understand why but we would be you know we'd be open to discussing that but i you know i'm not married to anything we're not married to anything in that regard and if you made me choose between the city participating or not i think i would choose participating because i think it has the chance to make a greater mark on  thank you came down thank you thanks for being here both of you appreciate us thank you very much we can do that again get a picture ok so i was really excited last week when i saw the new ally with interest rate came down and and then we found out yesterday over the weekend that it actually had come down i'm wondering if you could speak to that yeah through this entire process there have been a huge number of things that we have been working on and they're still you know this process does not end tonight it really would begin tonight for either one of us things that are going on that we can't talk about publicly and the reason we can't talk about publicly because they're not certain and we've worked extremely closely with maine five or four you know you know stretch of months now that we've gotten to places we've had significant discussions about what they can do what we can do and prior to putting in the final offer last wednesday we had had a significant discussion of structure that was going to be eight percent fixed with we were going to have significant they could make some if any more with an expected probably return of fourteen percent but the balance was going to be based on the projected value of the company or not just the projected but the actual value of the company in the future and that was an understanding we had and it was what we put into our ally when we came and actually put that down in the paper so that we could put it you know in a binding document between the two of us i think we ended up at a place where we felt as if it didn't really reflect that it really reflected nothing different from what we had in almost all scenarios and our approach has always been that we want to be straightforward with what we're doing we want to make it as understandable as straightforward as possible and in the end we said this really is not in almost any scenario different from what we already have we should stay with what we have we cannot improve and we understood that you know we understood that we had been too optimistic on that but the appropriate thing for us to do was to say this is the opera we have this other is not materially different thank company and and how you would ensure the public criteria that we established in this process that are so important to burling tony and in the event of a sale and then also can you speak to your commitment to the wonderful public access television that we have in the city of burlington to see them right here doing great work making this particular evening accessible to folks that's great thanks especially appreciate you asking me that first question  you know i thought that my words were what was characterized in the guy would say as they were repeated what i was saying very clearly was you know the nature of our company is such that it's all of the people in the culture and anybody who wanted to buy our company doing so they would first of all have to pay a significant premium you know much above what typical other just sort of your run of the mill company would take because we have such a dedication to purpose and city of operating we not in this to sell people ask me all the time you know what's your exit what's your plan we don't have one we've been operating this for over twenty years and intend to be operating it for decades to come so what i was saying very precisely was if anybody was going to bias it would because they recognized that the way that we operated was the way telecom should be operated not the way it is operate and we believe that what we're doing is really being the first company to bring internet sensibilities to telecom and if somebody if a big company you know trying to imagine this today you know we have the most satisfied customers  in the world in mobile phone service today our internet company customers are happier than our phone customers you heard from supporters of both sides who actually you know are pretty satisfied customers of  and if somebody if a big company were to buy us and put us in charge and say you know what what you guys do is the way this should be done that would be to everyone because then what you would have is us taking what we do which is putting customers and employees first and having that spread more broadly and that's a good thing and you know counsel tracy you've spoken a couple times about fiduciary obligation you know we've been very clear publicly you know this is this is this is a public proceeding this is going out to the world anything i say here i promise you i have investors sitting at home right now watching i will say here what i say to them is that we think that if we make our obligation our employees happiness and satisfaction and our customers happiness and satisfaction that investors benefit but not by putting them first but by putting employees and customers from the people who invest in our company understand that v you know we had a nice conversation about that earlier today we are not only do we support what c c t v does generally i'm thrilled with the way that it is here in burlington you know i was describing it as you know this is my new binge watching because i've watched hours and hours now you see t v jan you know we're in a number of other markets today and we have to negotiate video agreements with city staff we've had on multiple occasions three that come to mind right away where what we see the incumbent lawyers doing is negotiating down the number of c c t v channels that they want to provide in their renewal we go to those cities and we say how many do you want we're happy to provide you with more how can we help that at a facilities level we think it's a great opportunity for people to just also do debates in the open format here your on thank you president no del in coming into tonight's meeting if i were to have guessed that i would not have ever guessed that this was both of these gentlemen unplanned and so i'm going to go off my script for just a moment first took to mr madison we talked today on the phone i called you a little after four pm to inform you you know for him from me to you that i would be supporting the  offer and we had a really positive conversation and i just want to say thank you for the work that you've done we've got i've got to see it we've all got to see it not just in the bid not just in the details but throughout the community i have a i something i witnessed you do while public comment was going on there was a customer that came up and talked about how their their bill what they want to happen with their billing and i think when no one was watching you snuck around and  and that is what i took away from my visit to toronto where those intangibles sneaking away when no means looking in talking to the customer service rep or talking to one of the engineers to see what they thought about working for the organization i do the council the public with a write up from the major some major points from the q and a discussion which i'm not going to go through point by point given the hour but i do want to ask you to talk about one thing that we talked about that some of us talked about in toronto which was your experience and your staff experience and meeting with the current browns and telecom please could you give in account or attackers ation from your perspective of of how that went and what it means to you to be employing folks that right media culture fit there here and i really i'm a bit hesitant to try and put words in their mouth so i'm going to i'm going to make these statements not these are these are my statements so i want to get your character on of your experience with you know i felt like they are the people who are you know kind of in the middle of this tug of war you know we talked for a long that not only you know where they were just the kind of employees that wanted to join us and to work with us not only were they a great culture fit but that the things that  we felt like we could bring to them to help them do their jobs better were exactly the kind of things that they were looking for and these were simply you know these were more technical than anything else they were they were technologies and practices that applied to the customer service function the billing function the building and mapping the fiber the outside plant function and you know we you know we we were speaking with fellow travelers and you know we felt like they were excited by what we we could bring to them and i think the best way to think about that is in all of our jobs we have an element or portion some portions of the of that work that is a bit dreary and repetitive you know when you when you are able to bring efficiencies to that work and you take out those things stand in the way of doing what you love to do you know that's helping people that's building and connecting you know the fiber plant up to more places you know i think that  the last meeting was a very minimal amount of working capital available to key b t l and i noted positively in materials that were vital to us that you believe that you have secured you as far as i know can you say who those parties are and are there any agreements that you have written that you can share with us that provide us the shuras that you really do have that probably not because the third party investor has said  that you know only in the case of us being selected you know does the money get committed and will the third party commit to that they are not investing in us directly they've been very clear about that but they would do that to help with the working capital they see it as a much less risky and a different sort of investment you know they're not looking to put direct equity in they're not looking to put direct lo in but they would do that and unfortunately i can't do any more than that for you as i think i stated before there have been a lot of things that we haven't talked about that we gene i need a motion we need a motion to suspend the rules to keep working which requires a two thirds vote we have also a local control commission meeting to do so process of the emotion to suspend the rules to finish this item and to do the local control commission meeting councilor shannon i make that motion thank you second from counsel roof all in favor that motion please say i post ok so we can keep working so any more questions for either mr not we did have the pleasure of spending some time together in toronto on friday and i noted that you said that whatever you say is on the record here in your investors are watching so i to make sure we get you on the record here ok t j kling was in the room when you said everything in toronto but some of the things we talked about there was a concern i'm going to go through a list here and then let you respond  there was a concern that you would shed the video and telephone service and and i'd like you to speak to that we talked about the lifeline program and you you brought up some ideas about how to better serve the low income community with one gig service and like you're on the record there these are some things that are not actually in the l o i and the employee benefits today fifty percent of the employees my understanding is fifty percent of the employees get retirement last one first what we were we were talking about in toronto wasn't retirement benefits it was short term disability and long term to see or that some significant portion of the existing bt employees weren't covered under the same benefit plan video kind of hub for the eastern part of the country we are not planning you know as well as some have to get rid of video we think that that existing video so when i say that i mean traditional cable t v service is something that's going to still be around for ten fifteen twenty years despite cord cutting you know we all know people love watching asking for it we would certainly continue to support it here here as as as in other markets that we have looked at you know there's it's provided by a third party to maintain that here you have a lifeline the existing lifeline program particularly around fixed internet as access is a bit what we have is incumbents continually law being to reduce what lifeline is sufficient today in our view to be competitive we think that we should explore different options what we talked about in toronto is something that's been a pet project of mine that i've spoken with a couple of the cities that were in we're in discussion around and we hope to have a trial in one of our markets a little later this year where what we do is we work with the city and local foundations with us being a significant contributor to th and instead of providing a lesser service for some small amount of money we should provide a gigabit symmetrical for ninety nine so i i'm you know i this is an active vibrant community modeled for the rest of the country so i mean if there was if there was more more detail that went into but i think that the most important elements there are actually you know rather than taking you know digital you my my apologies i thought you had said that p t employees will be covered by your for a one kate oh yeah that's right there is a four one k match program that we have they would be covered by the thank you ok within the information we get when we're evaluating a purchase like this within the data room there is a fairly well spelled out need to move the equipment that is currently in memorial out of tory i'm in large part because the status memorial in the auditorium is up in the years as you all know and it's approximately a million dollar project by what we have you know seen in the  documentation the view would be that that could be done in our discussions over a two year period so while it doesn't say that it's in the l a y beer is five hundred thousand dollars in each of the first two years in our forward looking pro form financials to facilitate that move i think that you know that's a move that i think everybody probably understands who put offers in and would probably be looking at do it in a somewhat similar fashion i think there's also uncertainty about whether or not that needs to happen but if you know memorial term is going away when everybody will need to do it we expect that we will need to do it but on the other hand there is you know there's always a possibility that it doesn't happen but more than likely it will you know as far as the vision and you talk of thirty years i think that there's an aspect of the internet pipeline that has truly is truly becoming much more of utility and you know perhaps even electricity it is a way we all connect with the world and i think in the you know ideas of you know utility you want it to be something that is provided for everyone within your community it's available to everyone you know within your community and the excitement in the services that it can provide likewise and this is not just for residences but it's also for businesses and so a group that is leading this utility needs to make sure that it is doing the kinds of things that the community is asking for out of this and you know the analogy as someone pointed out between burlington electric and burlington telecom it's not perfect but if you think about what we're able to do it brings an electric as we own it we are able to go out and have entirely renewable resources providing the electricity for growing and electric we've been able to work on many efficiency projects with burlington electric many things that have been good for the community maybe not exactly what a traditional regulated manip utility would do but those are the kinds of things that over the long run as the internet remains and becomes you know even more important that we would be able to build and sell the services off the internet i think there's a lot of standard thinking along the lines of what's going to happen with all the different in and out appliances within our homes and how you know pretty much every home at some point being offered gigabit services will allow for there to be all different sorts of controls and behaviors with the living spaces that we have but i think even more importantly will have a local will have a local network that connects us all and i think what comes out of a network that connects us all can be services among between businesses and among businesses between people and among people as well as i think there's going to be significant opportunity and  creating content because the content is what is going to flow over this and i there is going to be while video will remain a part of the package and it draws customers in it you know is something we really pass through the costs really of the commodity and i think we're seeing that revenue going to our content creators like people providing you know the video streams this evening there's going to need to be a change in that model and i think that's something that our group has talked about that we need to get in front of and that you know change is going to go from a regulated area of our business which is cable into an unregulated area of our business such as you know the internet and so i think that we need to be looking as the change and how these other pieces change what else can we provide for the community and you know the co operative world basically asks the three questions you know it asks to whom for what price to what end and you know i think that all of that being based on the community you know we want to make sure that we're providing the highest level of services that you know the the prices that make sense for the community and you know to what end is really to build both the residential as well as the business community and make growing to thrive  thank you for coming to burlington and quick question for you what are your policies around hosting white supremacists website  what are your policy you have to thank you for asking me that question because i've heard you speak on this issue a few times so you used a very particular word there and i think that's important you said hosting of this whole debate as it's existed in the context of burlington telecom is that we've been both accused of  promoting or supporting white supremacists and of being somebody who would be a threat to net neutrality the fact that we keep our domain registration platform neutral is us demonstrating in the midst of a very public business process how much we support what we do now i want to not just talk about the fact that we support net neutrality and i should note i have been a public active supporter of open internet causes for the duration of my twenty years and ship greater than twenty we the company and me as an individual have signed numerous letters that have been submitted on behalf of tech groups supporting net neutrality organized by people like the a c l u or the e f f in the middle of this process we stuck to our guns despite what people said about us despite what people accused us of despite the multiple articles that were written in in the local press about this we stuck to our guns and i want you to understand why because what happens this is net neutrality now not free speech we can talk we can have a separate discussion about what happens when controls are placed on core infrastructure like to main registration is it is invariably used against people who are protesting political causes against dissident groups and against the very people that i think you and i would share great concern for you know we have the second largest demand registration platform in the world over thirty million names we're under attack literally cyber attack every day very often we'll be spending tens and hundreds of man hours to keep a site that is a site that belongs to a protest group in a country that has a dictatorship because they're paying people to take that site down i personally have been involved in the i can process which is the regulator of dumaine names since there's been an i can process since the late ninety's on one side tends to be governments law enforcement intellectual property interests and on the other side tends to be noncommercial interests and myself along with some other regist our record is long and public on this i understand that for most people and i totally appreciate this you know i've been a it's a good step back you know we've been in the domain registration business since there's been one my mother still doesn't understand what i do my partner still doesn't understand what i do most of my friends still don't understand what i do people do see it as hosting we have had numerous inbounds around all of these issues from people who want to take that down what we do is we help them get in touch with the hosting company and we help them get in touch with the resellers who are the proper parties for those protests i think that that again are our record around net neutrality is long and clear and our record around supporting public interest interest causes and not supporting white supremacists is back we presumably may be facing a vote here at some point tonight and it could i expect it could go one vote one way or the other but i'm going to ask a question and i totally respect that the mayor chooses not to answer this and then i have a question for the city attorney if if a vote passes through to your desk mr mayor would you sign that or veto that clear i would have to look very carefully at what actually gets the desk before finally making that decision i can't give you a final answer tonight thanks and the city attorney if a vote were cast that the mayor voted the mayor did veto and the vote was sustained by the council where would that leave us in the process i just would like to know that actually you're saying that if the council voted for then then there would the city would not have taken any action and there would have to be some decision making about what would be what would happen then and so the council be back at a point to decide how we're going to go forward the council and the mayor i think will both be involved in thinking about what would the how the city would proceed from there thank you i am going to  make a motion to reconsider my vote to postpone action from earlier i think that i made a mistake in not voting to reconsider to postpone action now i think we're winding on and on into the night and  this is going to be a very difficult vote and i think some of the issues that were raised were legitimate and i think that a having voted in assuring the president council they voted in the prevailing side i would like to reconsider that vote hartnett and the way this process works in the city attorney will sist me is that if this this vote has to prevail with a majority and if it does then we would really vote the motion to postpone as everyone understand the process yes councillor tracey and how much is a vote to postpone the simple majority simple majority yes so floors and this is a debatable motion  tonight and i know there's people here to say we owe it to the people who are here tonight and for people who are child eight hours i feel that we owe it to ourselves that we get our all the right information that we know what's really facing us and we don't have it and i take issue with the mayor that says telling people are the only ones issue already here to vote tonight that is not true i think everybody at this table is ready to vote as long as they know what's ahead of them and the responsibility and some of the things that have gone on here just in the last day and the last two hours before this meeting i forgot to mention that things and another proposal early this morning that quite honestly i never saw because i was working and for this council to to make this decision the biggest decision we're probably going to make and to make it based on some of the actions that again that have been here tonight ok councilor shannon mentioned was very often  council just decide that they have a conflict of interest and they're going to sit out that is true not two hours before a meeting of the final vote i've never heard of that before you know you have a and votes were taken up to this process where that conflict of interest i'm sure existed and i think that puts us in some legal jeopardy and i'm not comfortable moving forward tonight i'll say it again i think it's not responsible of this council to move forward tonight to cast a vote i don't care who you are voting for taking heat t l it's not responsible for us to do it so i hope you guys will reconsider the ones that voted no to postpone i think it's wise for us to do it so the floors up on the motion to reconsider counts are mason thank you president oh may i either have your indulgence or make a ok so we were and if memory serves we were on the motion to reconsider and are repaired to vote on the motion to reconsider the motion to postpone from earlier this meeting and we're ready for just raise your hand of your post so we have more tracey and bush or and all of those in supports of the motion that motion to reconsider carries so this time  motion to postpone is in order and i have counselor hartnett for that i like to make a motion to adjourn to next monday no member six i think continue the same order of business pm to continue the same order of business is their second counts the right second in that so just to clarify that means that we would come back on monday and just pick up this meeting right where we are right now it would be as if we were just continuing this meeting this is a debatable motion cancer's shannon thank you president no del just to clarify because we're picking up this item where we're leaving off we would not then be planning or required to have a public forum the public forum from what we've had today continues to hold and we would continue t and that they would be encouraged in the meantime to communicate with the councillors i know that i've talked to several bt employees and there's while they want to they very much want to share their thoughts they also are understandably nervous about doing that publicly so i think it would be helpful if we encourage them to contact city councillors as well as give them an opportunity to speak at the next meeting so the floor is so that people understand that the very thorough public forum we had tonight would essentially be the required public forum for  i just want one more to provide one more opportunity anyone from the burlington telecom staff to chime in on this thank you cancer roof roof my name is abbey takaki i am an employee of burlington telecom however my comments tonight are my own and do not represent the views of my employer but with their permission i am also speaking on behalf of fellow staff members stacey trudeau and on monaghan who reviewed this to thank you everyone for staying a few minutes later to hear what i have to say i would first like to acknowledge the members of most of whom are ardent and loyal burlington telecom customers for their years of support i would like to thank the management team of teaching for taking the time to meet with us and share their vision i heard president nobel mention that the council is under a lot of stress i hope you'll forgive me for not feeling terribly sympathetic to that cry as the stress around this process appears to have been mostly self manufactured instead i am heartbroken and resigned to the fact that there is nothing that i or any of my coworkers could say that could sway your votes which are apparently not going to happen tonight i've been disappointed by invitations for the staff to have a voice in this process all of which have been half hearted at best and so requests for meetings have been denied we've also as a staff been largely discouraged from from speaking up throughout this process i joined burlington telecom only two years ago the hard work had already been done the settlement had been reached and i was welcomed onto a team of dedicated and loyal city employees working with lean staffing and carefully allocated resources to deliver on our charge of making bt attractive to potential buyers and while not many people were paying attention burlington telecom became so much more than anyone ever thought it could be that happened because every single member of the staff of burlington telecom worked holidays and overtime and did whatever was necessary to achieve our goals this public process has indeed been very long but the information has always been available to anyone who cared to know about it and i speak tonight not to offer my opinions on the bettors though we do all have very strong opinions about the bids but to remind everyone here that we're not pawns on a political chess board we are people we are employees of the city of burlington and we're exhausted we are stressed and enough is enough so i appreciate the postpon but i ask i implore you to gather what information it is that you feel you need and put this to a vote as soon as possible thank you mean i think when people take the time to take an airplane to go away outside of the country to visit an entity that interested in buying our telecom i think it would be very what i learned today it's incredible and i felt so bad reason why when i heard it raised two i totally said yes to invite every city council to take the time not the two options before us and i think there are aspects of this decision that they have not been fully despoil explored and fleshed out and i look forward to having the opportunity monday to do that expect so when you go to vote in favor of this motion to adjourn to a time certain of next monday november sixth at seven pm please they are there and you post i have counselors tracey and more and bush are but it does kerry i would move to adopt the agenda yet with a motion from commissioner dean to adopt the agenda as presented and commissioner busher second on favor of of that motion please say i i any oppose i carried unanimously two point zero one is a first class restaurant bar liquor license for lincoln's at one ninety one college street commissioner jang pleased to conversations outside we're trying to do business we're doing a little bit business folks so if you could  move out into the lobby the degree or be almost done commissioner dean move the approval of the two thousand and seventeen two thousand eight hundred first class restaurant bar liquor license application for lincoln's one ninety one college st with the following conditions city permits need to be closed out all standard conditions and contingent and contingent upon fire marshal approval thank you second  commissioner bush or yes so i know with all the items we had this seems minor but when i looked at this menu they only had one food choice which is chili ma and i don't care whether it is so much is the fact that we are granting a liquor license to an establishment that has limited food offers and i was somewhat surprised at that and wondered what the license committee thought about that ok if i could ask president if i could ask you can ask commissioner dean or he can hand it off to someone else i'd like to say yes commissioner of really to address this please i thought those particular as well however state law does say that anyone that carries a liquor license is only required to that is the minimum and that is a standard so they can they can have that and meet the  but having said that i expect more from from the establishment that do business in burlington and i really think that there should have been more food options and not a lot more than just one food option they just meet the standard just made it and i think they should have been asked to do more but i'll be supporting this but i'm i'm really looking to the license committee to kind of hold our stylishness to a higher standard thank you any other commissioner seemed an all in favor the motion to approve this first class restaurant bar liquor license for lincoln's police they are in the opposed that carries you know honestly is there a motion to a