(last updated 9/25/2016)

Along with the Letter or Recommendation, your MBI Program Manager will produce an MOA for proceeding with the pole survey. This is a contract between the town and MBI. If you chose MBI to manage the project, there is no charge. The original had wording that towns may be charged for the pole survey should they decide to not have MBI manage their project. When objections were raised, MBI changed the policy to drop this. The final draft of the MOA does not incur any financial risk to towns should they later decide to not have MBI manager their project. MBI also agreed to supply the pole survey data upon request.

Also, the original draft MOA that MBI provided to Rowe to begin the pole survey said that MBI had not completed a sustainability analysis. Rowe asked to add the following:

The Town and MBI jointly acknowledge that a full analysis of the financial sustainability of the Project has not been completed by MBI and that MBI will not subject the town to further analysis of it’s sustainability plan;

We don’t want to get far down the road and then have MBI challenge the plans to be part of a regional network with WiredWest. We stated this intention in our Readiness Submission Form, and there is mention in the Letter of Recommendation to be signed by Peter Larkin, but without this statement, there is nothing to prevent MBI from revisiting the issue. MBI decided to drop all mention of this in the MOA, though we expect this will come up again when we negotiate terms for the project agreement. We will insist that towns be allowed to operate their networks as they wish without interference from MBI. Here is the latest draft MOA.