Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, hailed House passage Wednesday of the American Rescue Plan, which will bring much-needed financial relief to Vermonters and help to Vermont communities. The House passed the final version of the package that the Senate had passed on Saturday. Leahy said that through direct assistance to Vermonters, financial aid for the State of Vermont and local municipalities, and dozens of other programs, the package will direct more than $2.7 billion in formula funding and economic payments to the state and to individual Vermonters. The bill now goes to the desk of President Biden, who has said he will sign it.

​Vermont Business Magazine Park Burlington, a public-private partnership between Burlington Business Association and the Department of Public Works, has announced the release of a new interactive parking map covering downtown Burlington. The map was created by Lauren Grimley, Lee Peters, Jon Russell, and Michael Muzzy, as a capstone project at Burlington Code Academy.

Vermont Business Magazine It is said that honesty is the best policy. It's a sentiment shared by noted business strategist Renée Mauborgne, who maintains that a company must make an honest assessment of where it is as an organization and where it stands in the marketplace if it is to develop a road map that will lead to future success.

"I think a lot of organizations live an illusion about themselves," said Mauborgne, a professor of strategy at INSEAD, one of the world's top business schools, and co-author with W. Chan Kim of Blue Ocean Strategy, which has sold more than 4 million copies, and their latest book, Blue Ocean Shift.

Vermont Business Magazine Norwich University has been awarded a two-year $1.6 million grant from the National Security Agency and is the lead institution in the Evidencing Competency Oversight Project, supporting the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) Program. The project consists of three simultaneous efforts defining experiential education in higher education cyber programs.

Vermont Business Magazine The COVID-19 vaccinations rollout continues ahead of schedule. On Monday, people 55 years and older with certain high-risk health conditions were able to make appointments. It was announced Tuesday that the State will be opening vaccinations up earlier for Phase 5b — Vermonters ages 16 and older with certain high-risk health conditions. This group will now be eligible starting this Thursday, March 11th (originally March 15th). Teachers, school staff, and public safety personnel are also now able to book appointments.

Vermont Business Magazine Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) released the following statement Wednesday in support of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act that was reintroduced in the House of Representatives: “Reauthorizing VAWA is long overdue since the law expired in 2018. The bipartisan bill introduced in the House mirrors legislation we introduced in the last Congress. Unfortunately, that bill was blocked in the Senate last Congress and didn’t even receive a vote in committee"

Vermont Business Magazine If the thought of launching your new business during the pandemic has stopped you in your tracks, new data has revealed that success could be around the corner should you pursue your startup. And while Vermont has the lowest rate in the nation for startups, it also has the overall lowest failure rate. Vermont and Alaska have the lowest startup rates (6% and 7.1%), with an average number of 16.8 new businesses created per week in Vermont and 18.9 in Alaska. However, Vermont, alongside Iowa, is where a business has the highest chance of surviving its first five years.

Vermont Business Magazine V/T Commercial Real Estate Sales & Leasing, based in Burlington, has announced recent transactions.

Vermont Business Magazine State officials announced at Tuesday’s press conference that people age 16 and older with certain high-risk health conditions will be able to make vaccination appointments starting Thursday, March 11. This group was initially slated to become eligible on March 15, but the timeline was moved up due to the state’s supply of vaccine and ability to accommodate large numbers of appointments. Also, among loosening of guidelines, those who are vaccinated can gather in small groups inside together without social distancing or mask wearing. The VDH also reported today that there were three more deaths for a statewide total of 211.

Vermont Business Magazine Today, Mayor Miro Weinberger announced that the City has made significant progress on a slate of five housing policy reforms that the Administration presented to the City Council for action in October 2019, following the Mayor’s two well-attended Housing Summits earlier that year. These five policies were all designed to make housing in Burlington more available and affordable. Currently, three of the five proposals have been approved.

Vermont Business Magazine Representative Peter Welch (D-Vermont) Tuesday introduced legislation to connect every household in America with high-speed broadband service capable of supporting remote schooling, online businesses and remote work, telehealth appointments, and entertainment streaming. The most recent Federal Communications Commission Broadband Deployment Report indicates that 18 million people lack access to broadband service.

The Vermont Department of Public Service estimates that nearly 70,000 Vermont households lack access to broadband with at least 25 megabits per second download and 3 megabits per second upload speeds. Most experts agree that the FCC report understates the lack of broadband access across the country.

Vermont Business Magazine The University of Vermont is one of over 200 campuses in 37 states and the District of Columbia that has been designated as a “Voter Friendly Campus” for 2021-2022. The designation is part of an initiative led by the national nonpartisan organizations Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project (CVP) and Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (NASPA), which held participating institutions accountable for planning and implementing practices that encourage their students to register and vote in 2020 elections and in the coming years.

The mission of the “Voter Friendly Campus” designation is to bolster efforts that help students overcome barriers to participating in the political process. UVM was evaluated based on a campus plan for registering, educating, facilitating voter engagement efforts and ensuring students turned out to vote in 2020—all in the face of the upheaval caused by a global pandemic.