Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont hemp industry has seen significant growth but with that growth has come uncertainty for farmers. The partnership between Trace and Bia Diagnostics is intended to help farmers test their product which will help ensure it meets legal requirements and can attract more buyers through Trace’s hemp exchange.

Trace helps connect farmers with potential buyers through its exchange. Over the past month members of the Trace outreach team have visited farms across the state to help growers get their crop onto the Trace platform. Today there are more than 145,000 plants on the Trace Hemp Exchange.

Vermont Business Magazine Vanguard Renewables and Vermont Gas (VGS) received the 2019 American Biogas Council Up-and-Coming Biogas Project award for the Goodrich Farm Anaerobic Digester project in Salisbury, Vermont at the organization’s awards ceremony on October 29. The project is a unique partnership between Vanguard Renewables, VGS, Middlebury College and the Goodrich Family. It will generate biogas from manure and food waste and convert it to pipeline quality gas for use by Middlebury College and VGS's customers. This project is the first to sell renewable gas to end customers and is not bringing diversity to the industry by developing markets for RNG.

Vermont Business Magazine Green Mountain Power (GMP) is preparing to respond to severe weather forecasted for Thursday night and Friday, with meteorologists calling for up to three inches of rain and winds topping 50MPH in Vermont. Winds are expected to kick in Thursday evening. The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for Vermont starting Thursday at 11pm. Scattered outages are possible with this combination of weather.

Vermont Business Magazine Barbara Duffield, a national advocate on childhood homelessness, spoke Friday at the COTS Annual Meeting & Volunteer Appreciation Breakfast on the nationwide rise of family homelessness and negative impact that is having on children.

Duffield has spent her entire career advocating for children and youth who experience homelessness. She is the executive director of the SchoolHouse Connection, a national nonprofit that works to overcome homelessness through education by partnering with early childhood programs, higher education institutions, and service providers.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont’s congressional delegation announced Wednesday that the Vermont Fire Academy and fire departments throughout the state have received more than $2 million through 16 federal grants.
 
The awards are part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) program, which helps fire departments, fire academies, and EMS agencies obtain critically needed equipment and training to better protect the public and first responders.  This year’s AFG grants will help departments purchase equipment including air packs, vehicle extraction tools, and a fire truck, and it will also fund paramedic training.
 

The Small Business Administration Vermont District Office is accepting nominations for its 2020 small business awards. 

Previous Vermont winners include Ben and Jerry’s, Mamava and 14th Star Brewing Co., the 2019 Small Business Person of the Year winner.

Since 1963, the SBA has recognized the outstanding achievements of America’s small businesses for their contributions to their local communities, and to the nation’s economy.

Vermont Business Magazine Four Vermont schools have joined CFES Brilliant Pathways’ growing network of programs across the US and Ireland in support of students becoming college and career ready.

Vergennes Union Middle/High School, Brighton Elementary (Island Pond), Miller’s Run Elementary (Sheffield) and North Country Union Junior High (Derby) signed on as CFES schools for the 2019-2020 schoolyear. They join new schools from Texas, Hawaii, Florida and Pennsylvania and an overall network of 25,000 students in 150 schools from 30 states.

Vermont Business Magazine The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) today released the nationwide performance results from the 2019 assessments in reading and mathematics. The NAEP is administered every two years to students in grades Four and Eight across the nation.

Students in Vermont scored above the national average in all the 2019 assessments but Grade Four mathematics. However, while Vermont students continued to perform at or above the national average, students showed a decline in average scale scores compared to Vermont’s 2017 results. This decline follows a downward trend going back roughly a decade or more.

Vermont Business Magazine Attorney General T.J. Donovan announced today that his office has reviewed the officer-involved shooting incident that occurred on August 9, 2019 in Montpelier, Vermont. The Attorney General’s Office is declining to prosecute Montpelier Police Department Corporal Chad Bean for charges related to the fatal shooting of Mark J. Johnson. The Office concluded that, based on the totality of the circumstances, the use of deadly force to stop an imminent threat of bodily harm was reasonable and justified. In reaching this decision, the Office reviewed materials provided by the Vermont State Police, who conducted the investigation.

Vermont Business Magazine Castleton University student journalists are teaming up with University of Vermont students to provide news stories for local papers that otherwise might not get written. Funded by a $2,000 grant through UVM, Castleton students will be working with Castleton resident and former New York Times freelancer Martha Molnar to report and write stories that will be published in the Rutland Herald, Mountain Times, and Lake Region Free Press. The stories will also be published simultaneously on the Community News Service web page on the UVM website.

Vermont Business Magazine As demanded by Burlington Miro Weinberger, CityPlace Burlington developers have met the city’s first set of demands to get the long-delayed project back on track. Brookfield Properties (BTC Mall Associates LLC), at the City Council meeting Monday night, presented a new, sketched-out development plan that they say is less expensive than the $220 million plan previously proposed by former Developer Don Sinex. The scaled back plan also drops the controversial height of the project from 14 stories to 10. It also retains the former Macy's building, which will be redeveloped as a mixed use commercial/retail/office space. The existing mall space, which is largely vacant and accesses Church Street, also will be redeveloped but will remain a mall, if much smaller than before. Meanwhile, the envisioned reconnection of St Paul and Pine streets will continue to be part of the new plans.

​Vermont Business Magazine Super Thin Saws (STS), a Waterbury-based tool manufacturer, recently received a grant totaling $39,839.75 from the Vermont Training Program (VTP). The funding from VTP will be used to help prepare the company for the retirement of two key salespeople. STS has unique product offerings and a niche customer base, making finding qualified applicants within the state a challenge. STS will train 22 of its employees in areas of leadership development, growth planning, and principles of lean manufacturing. Through these trainings, employees will receive the technical experience they need to help the company continue to grow.