Current News

Vermont Student Assistance Corp has announced its fixed rates for Vermont Advantage education loans for the 2014-15 academic year. Available to both undergraduate and graduate students who need additional financing for postsecondary education or training, the Vermont Advantage offers rates as low as 5.85 percent APR. Vermont students attending college in the US or abroad or students from out of state attending a Vermont institution are eligible for this financing.

“The Vermont Advantage is good option for students and families to help make up the difference between the total cost of education and the various kinds of financial aid they already may have received,” said Scott Giles, president and CEO of VSAC. “As Vermont’s postsecondary education and training information resource, we are dedicated to working with Vermonters as they continue their studies after high school and helping them finance their education.”

About VSAC

What do an animal shelter, audio systems, softball camps and salads made with local greens all have in common? They’re all part of several entrepreneurial ideas and business plans developed by over 40 statewide high school and technical center students who submitted plans in the 6^th annual VT REAL (Rural Entrepreneurship Through Action Learning) High School/Tech Center Entrepreneurship Business Plan Competition. A special awards reception was held Thursday at Vermont Tech in Williston and presented by the Vermont Small Business Development Center to honor the top winners in the competition for their creative work.

Landmark College will receive a $1 million gift from noted economist Paul McCulley, an executive with the Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) and the father of 2014 Landmark College graduate Jonathan McCulley. The funding will create the new Morgan le Fay Center for Advances in Business and Entrepreneurship Instruction at Landmark College. It will support development and refinement of progressive pedagogy for students with learning difficulties (LD) in the fields of business, economics and entrepreneurship, as well as research, training and related innovations for educators in the field of LD.

Governor Shumlin has released for public comment the Climate Cabinet’s Draft Vermont Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Action Plan (linked below). This plan is an important step to meeting the commitments the Governor made in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) he signed with seven other governors to put 3.3 million ZEVs on the road by 2025. ZEVs include pure battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. The partner states are California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Peter Shumlin signed the cell phone bill Thursday that would prohibit the use of handheld cell phone use while driving. The bill to make it illegal to use a handheld mobile devices while driving was signed at the VTrans Maintenance Garage in Colchester. The governor initially was not enthusiastic about the bill because he believed it did not go far enough to prevent distracted driving, but he became a late "convert" to the it. Drivers will not be able to talk, text, use social media or even look at a device while holding it. The law will take effect October 1 and requires a public information campaign to inform motorists of the change.

PC Construction, based in South Burlington, has been awarded a $4.9 million construction contract for an expansion project at Oxford Networks Data Center in Brunswick, Maine. Located in a 52,000-square-foot former secure data and communications center for the now decommissioned Brunswick Naval Air Station at Brunswick Landing, the project involves the modernization and renovation of the 1980s building.

PC Construction has been on site since mid-March deconstructing a portion of the building, removing walls and electrical systems to create an expansive 6,500-square-foot data room. Teams are now beginning to install extensive electrical components to comply with the redundancy requirements for the data center’s electrical distribution system.

Aspects of the project also include the construction of a 3,200-square-foot electrical area to house electrical and mechanical systems away from data servers, as well as upgraded plumbing, fire suppression and alarm systems.

Shap Smith, the Morrisville lawyer who has served three terms as Speaker of the House, has filed a petition to seek re-election to the Vermont House of Representatives. Smith is seeking a seventh term as a member of the House. This coming legislative biennium most notably will feature the development of a funding scheme for Green Mountain Care, Governor Shumlin's universal health care plan. Also, in the session recently concluded, legislators, who had to struggle to balance the budget for fiscal year 2015, which begins this July 1, indicated that next year will be even worse.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) Thursday secured unanimous bipartisan committee approval of the nomination of Vermont Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Crawford for an upcoming vacancy on Vermont’s US District Court. Crawford earned unanimous support by the committee for his nomination to fill the vacancy that will occur this weekend, on June 15, when Judge William Sessions takes senior status. Leahy, who recommended Justice Crawford to the White House and presided over his confirmation hearing last week, welcomed the committee’s timely and unanimous approval for the nomination.

Vermont Business Magazine New Vermont Electric Power Company CEO Tom Dunn sat down with VBM to talk about the next era of electric transmission in Vermont. VELCO has completed most of its major upgrade projects and remains ahead-of-the-curve for most of the states in New England. Vermont is also a beneficiary of its location as an electric corridor, which could become greater with several gigawatts of new transmission lines proposed to route through Vermont from both Quebec and upstate New York. While Dunn sees this as a potential windfall for Vermont, there is much work to do to convince him of how those projects would be structured and how they would benefit VELCO and the transmission system in Vermont. A company called TDI has already started the permit process to bring a 1,000 megawatt DC line from Quebec and run it under Lake Champlain before turning east and terminating in Ludlow.

Governor Peter Shumlin and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) International President Lee Saunders today signed the first contract for Vermont’s homecare workers’ union, AFSCME Local 4802, Council 93, representing significant advances in standards for homecare providers in Vermont. The contract allows for a new floor for homecare workers of $10.80 an hour, and a 2.5 percent raise for those currently making over that amount. Respite providers currently earning $116 per day will earn $150 per day, and a 2.5 percent raise for those currently earning above that rate.

“This is a new day for homecare in Vermont,” Shumlin said. “These hard working women and men provide vital services to some of Vermont’s most vulnerable residents. This contract gives a voice to these providers and respects their work with a fair wage and protections to allow them to focus on the important work they provide across the Green Mountain State.”

VTel is hosting a ribbon cutting event on July 1 in Hardwick to announce the official launch of its statewide, high-speed wireless network, and to share other VTel technology developments with the public. The broadband wireless project will reach more than 20,000 homes and businesses across the state using 4G/LTE. Among other services, VTel will discuss its fiber-to-the-home project, which is bringing the fastest Internet in America to over 17,000 homes and businesses in rural Vermont; VTel states it has the lowest rates in the country for this service.

VTel Wireless

• On July 1^st, we will commercially launch our high-speed wireless broadband service in towns across Vermont, reaching more than 20,000 homes and businesses across the state. We will continue to bring more towers online every week between now and next summer.

NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation selected UVM as one of five universities to design systems, concepts and technologies to enhance capabilities for deep space missions for the 2015 Exploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge. The UVM team was selected for their proposed “Smart-Structure” deployable airlock design.

The selections are the first milestone in a yearlong design and development effort for these five projects. Throughout the 2014-2015 academic year, the teams must meet a series of milestones to design, manufacture, assemble and test their systems and concepts in close cooperation with members of the NASA Exploration Augmentation Module (EAM) concept team.