Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded $772,881 in grant funding to farmers, producers and small businesses in Vermont under the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). Ridge Line Maple Works of Jeffersonville is among this year’s REAP grant recipients and will receive $20,000 to integrate a reverse osmosis system into its sugaring operation. The investment will save the company an estimated $17,000 annually— roughly 83 percent of its energy costs.

Vermont Business Magazine The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Vermont announced that a federal grand jury returned a 19-Count Fourth Superseding Indictment yesterday charging Krystal Whitcomb, 28, formerly of Waterford, VT, Michael Hayes a.k.a. Moe, 38, formerly of Washington, DC, and John Welch, 34, formerly of Woodsville, NH, with using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, during which Whitcomb, Hayes and Welch caused the death of Michael Pimental by murder.

Vermont Business Magazine The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Vermont stated that a federal grand jury returned a Third Superseding Indictment on September 15, 2020, which charged Sean Fiore, 36, of Burlington, Vermont, with murder for hire, conspiracy to kidnap and murder a person overseas, and five child pornography offenses. A second person was charged with Fiore in the Third Superseding Indictment, but the identifying information about that person is currently under seal by order of the court. Fiore will be arraigned on the indictment before US Magistrate Judge John M. Conroy on a date to be scheduled in the future.

Vermont Business Magazine The Board of Directors of Heritage Aviation announced today that Matthew Collins has been promoted to be the company’s Chief Executive Officer, succeeding David Stiller who served as company President from 2014-2020. Collins was previously the director of fixed base operations. Stiller has moved into the role of chair of the board of directors. Collins joined Heritage Aviation in 2008 as a line service technician and was promoted to director of fixed base operations in 2016. In his time with the company, Collins has overseen all aspects of the fixed-base operations including customer service, safety, quality control, and airline operations.

Vermont Business Magazine Simon Perkins, president of the Orvis Company, a luxury clothing retailer with headquarters in Arlington, accepted a gift of appreciation from Tom Dee, president and CEO of Southwestern Vermont Health Care (SVHC) for contributions of more than 750 masks during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vermont Business Magazine For the first time since America’s COVID-19 outbreak started, a federal public health agency released county-level testing data. On Sept. 3, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published a dataset showing COVID-19 test positivity rates broken out by U.S. county. While this dataset has not been highly publicized, it provides key information about the state of COVID-19 testing and outbreak control across the country. The Northeast is now showing the lowest positivity rate as a region; Vermont has the lowest positivity rate of any state in the US.

Vermont Business Magazine Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, will speak at Governor Scott's Tuesday COVID-19 press briefing from 11 am to 11:30 am. The governor had teased last Friday that they hoped to have a VIP Tuesday and Twitter immediately speculated it was Dr Fauci. Meanwhile, Vermont had 28 new cases of COVID-19 since last Friday.

Vermont Business Magazine Today Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos issued a reminder to active, registered Vermont voters that they will be automatically receiving a ballot for the November 3^rd General Election in the mail, sent to the mailing address on file with their voter registration or pending ballot request. Ballots will be mailed to voters starting on Monday, September 21^st. Voters should expect to receive their ballots sometime after the 21^st through early October. Any voter who does not receive their ballot by October 1^st should contact their Town Clerk to get a ballot.

by Paul A Cillo, President, Public Assets Institute To make the system understandable for voters, the state needs to choose one of the two options for a statewide tax paid by residents with rates that can be set in each school district based on spending per pupil. Property and income are the two options. We recommend an income-based tax as the fairest, simplest one.

Vermont Business Magazine Burlington School District (BSD) invites members of the community to participate in a School Safety Task Force as requested by the Board of School Commissioners in a resolution passed on June 25, 2020. The resolution charges the School Safety Task Force with reviewing the role of School Resource Officers (SROs) and presenting recommendations to further the District’s policy goals of implementing all elements of Restorative Practices (RP) as part of the District’s priorities of ensuring equitable and safe inclusive schools.

Vermont Business Magazine Bennington College has received a $25,000 Presidential Grant for Alternate Academic Delivery from the Davis Educational Foundation, which will support both the technology upgrades necessary for the Fall 2020 term’s pivot to a hybrid model blending in-person and remote instruction, as well as the continuation of a faculty pedagogical workshop series that focuses on hybrid teaching techniques. The grant was received from the Davis Educational Foundation established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc.

Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets The Agriculture and Working Lands Assistance Application combines three different bills and a variety of eligibility components into one application. We’ve built this application to do most of the difficult thinking on the back end, and in doing so, we understand that has caused some confusion for applicants.