Current News

by Seth N Blanchard Are you dreaming about moving into your first home? While home hunting can be exciting, the process of buying a home can be somewhat challenging. Purchasing a home is a big financial commitment – potentially one of the biggest purchases you’ll make in your lifetime. With some planning, you can be ready to commit to a home with confidence. Here are some tips to help you get your finances ready for purchasing a home.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont Fire Safety Director Michael Desrochers and other fire officials are encouraging Vermonters to leave the fireworks to the experts this Independence Day. Most fireworks are illegal in Vermont without a permit and pose serious injury risk. Possession, transportation and use of fireworks in which explosives are used, including those that are propelled by explosives, like firecrackers, torpedoes, sky rockets, Roman candles, cherry bombs, and others are illegal in Vermont.  The only exception is when a permit has been obtained from the appropriate municipal authority like a Fire Chief, Police Chief, Select Board, or City Council, depending on requirements of local laws.

Novelty items like sparklers, snakes, party poppers, glow worms, and others with no more than 0.25 grains of explosive mixture do not require a permit and can be purchased in many stores throughout the State.

Vermont Business Magazine - Working farms and forests give Vermont its beautiful rural character and unique sense of place while serving as an important part of the economy for many communities throughout the state. This fall, one event celebrates those great aspects of Vermont.

Vermont Business Magazine Johnson State College has been designated Vermont’s premier public liberal arts college – a recognition that establishes JSC as the public version of Vermont’s more selective and costly private liberal arts colleges, such as Middlebury and Bennington. The designation comes from the board of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC), which voted unanimously at its annual meeting last week in Utah to approve JSC for membership in the organization.

COPLAC recognizes institutions that “commit to providing superior liberal arts and sciences education to their students” and generally accepts only one college or university per state (or province, in Canada) for membership following an extensive application and review process.

Vermont Business Magazine College of St Joseph, Rutland, will offer an Associate of Science in Health Science with a concentration in Medical Coding and Billing beginning this fall. College of St Joseph added the concentration in Medical Billing and Coding as a way to respond to needs in the health care community, as well as providing good-paying careers for our students," said Dr Jonas Prida, interim vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty. "Consistent changes in the field of electronic medical records mean that employers are looking for people with the most up-to-date skills, and our program provides them."

This 60-credit, undergraduate program can be completed in just two years. The faculty, consisting of experienced professionals, will educate students in basic health science principles, as well as more focused areas of medical terminology and medical coding and billing practices.

by Mike Faher/The Commons Several times a week, a tanker truck leaves Vermont Yankee carrying 5,000 gallons of tritium-tainted groundwater. But there may be a more convenient — and likely, more controversial — disposal option in the works: Entergy administrators and state officials have begun discussing the idea of discharging the contaminated liquid from the Vernon plant into the nearby Connecticut River.

Vermont Business Magazine Three icons of the craft beer world will discuss and compare craft brewing in two northern locations: the Nordic country of Denmark and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Lead instructors of the School of the New American Farmstead class “Small Batch Brewing,” Anders Kissmeyer and Jan Paul, along with Master Class instructor and Hill Farmstead founder Shaun Hill, will present “Comparative Craft Brewing: Vermont and Denmark” on Tuesday, July 19, at 7 p.m. in Simpson Hall, Classroom 3 on the Sterling College campus. This talk is free and open to the public. Kissmeyer, Paul, and Hill will entertain questions from the attendees. 

“The quality and character of a beer is the result of the passion, philosophy, and methodology of the brewer,” says Kissmeyer. “I look forward to discussing the practice and craft of place-based brewing in both Denmark and Vermont.”

Vermont Business Magazine More than 125 supporters and friends gathered at the Gifford Medical Center in Randolph on June 28 to celebrate the closing of Vision for the Future, the largest capital campaign in Gifford’s 113-year history. “In planning our campaign we believed that every gift was important, large or modest, and that the willingness to give to support others in the community was significant,” campaign co-chair Lincoln Clark told the crowd. “We have raised $4,685,548. Our largest gift of one million dollars came from the Gifford Medical Auxiliary, which laid the foundation for a successful campaign and the hundreds of gifts that followed.”

Vermont Business Magazine On the day that Vermont’s first-in-the-nation GMO labeling law goes into effect, Governor Peter Shumlin urged supporters to take to social media to show the rest of America how common sense labeling can work. The Governor also urged supporters nationwide to urge Congress to abandon its efforts to undermine Vermont’s law.

Governor Shumlin (at the podium with Senator Leahy to his left) at the State House Friday with GMO labeling supporters. Courtesy photo.

As the GMO labeling law starts to get implemented over the coming months, the Governor is urging Vermonters to post pictures to social media of labeled products using the hashtag #WeLabeledGMOs. Already, companies such as Mars, Kellogg’s, and Campbell’s Soup have started labeling products.

Vermont Business Magazine Speaking from the steps of the Vermont State House, US Senator Bernie Sanders thanked Vermonters for standing up to powerful special interests and vowed to do everything in his power to defend Vermont’s first-in-the-nation law to label genetically modified food. The Vermont measure, which went into effect today, is being threatened by legislation in the US Senate, introduced by US Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Pat Roberts (R-KS), that Sanders said would create a confusing, misleading and unenforceable national standard for labeling genetically modified food.

Vermont Business Magazine Weekly unemployment claims fell as anticipated last week. Claims tend to spike in June and fall back. They rose to nearly 1,000, but fell to well under last year's totals, as the transition from the end of school moves into the summer employment trend. For the week of June 25, 2016, there were 629 claims, down 367 from the previous week's total and 102 fewer than they were a year ago. By industry, claims increased by a handful for Construction, but were down about half for Manufacturing. 

Altogether 4,699 new and continuing claims were filed, an increase of 36 from a week ago, and 15 more than a year ago.

The Department processed 0 First Tier claims for benefits under Emergency Unemployment Compensation, 2008 (EUC08).

Vermont Business Magazine For the second time in a week, Green Mountain Power is preparing for a strong wind, rain and lightning storm  that is expected to hit Friday afternoon and evening, causing outages across the state. Many parts of the state could be affected, as the storm is expected to hit Addison and Rutland counties first, then head up through Barre and Montpelier and into the Northeast Kingdom. A second wave is predicted to affect Bennington, Windham and Windsor Counties.

“Getting lights back on quickly as we head into the holiday weekend is our top priority,” said Kristin Carlson, GMP’s Chief Communications Executive. “Our crews are ready to respond and we are lining up additional contract crews to ensure that we get the lights back on as quickly as possible.”