Current News

Vermont tourism officials are expecting another brilliant foliage season this year and encourage visitors to take advantage of midweek deals being offered through the fall.
Dozens of inns, hotels, attractions, historic sites and museums are offering a variety of midweek specials during the fall foliage season as part of the statewide ‘Midweek Peek’ promotion organized by the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing. Deals range from discounted lodging to reduced admission prices. For details, visit www.VermontVacation.com/midweek.
‘Visitors can find a diverse range of options for lodging, dining and activities during Vermont’s legendary foliage season, and midweek is the

Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery announced today that their Bonne Bouche won second place overall at the American Cheese Society’s annual cheese competition in Seattle WA. The reserve champion award was among six ribbons that the company received for their creamery’s crème fraiche, cultured butter, quark, feta, and Coupole. With record breaking entries, Bonne Bouche was judged among 1,462 cheeses made in North America.
‘This is the most exciting award of our 26 years of making cheese and entering contests,’ said company co-founder, Bob Reese. ‘Not only did we win for the aged goat cheese category, but we also won among the 92 first place winners across all 350 categories.’ The American Cheese Society’s annual competition is considered one of the world’s most influential and prestigious competitions in artisanal and specialty cheesemaking.

The Vermont Chamber of Commerce is holding its annual meeting luncheon, revolving around the upcoming election, followed by its annual awards gala and dinner. Both events will be September 21 at Sugarbush Resort.
Vermont Chamber Annual Meeting Luncheon
The Stakes are High: Predicting Vermont's Political Future

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. (GMCR) (NASDAQ: GMCR), announced today a price increase on all K-Cup® portion packs for its Keurig® Single Cup brewing system sold in North America. The increase will occur across all sales channels and will be effective beginning October 11, 2010. Consumers could expect to see a purchase price increase of approximately 10 to 15 percent over the next several months as a result.
The increase is in response to several factors affecting the coffee industry including a sustained increase in the price of green coffee, differentials for premium quality coffees, increases in prices of other raw materials, as well as higher packaging and transportation costs. Over the past three months, green coffee prices have increased from $1.45 per pound to $1.90 per pound, or approximately 31 percent.

The College of St. Joseph in Rutland has received a grant from the Hilda & Preston Davis Foundation for its pioneer STEPS (Students Taking an Effective Path to Success) program. The foundation, based in Greenwich, CT, gave the college $10,000 to further its work in the STEPS program. This is the second $10,000 grant the college has received from the Hilda & Preston Davis Foundation, which provides charitable funding to organizations that aid in the development of the lives of children and young adults. In particular, the Foundation recognizes organizations that focus on providing education for the underprivileged.
STEPS is a unique program designed specifically to meet the needs of Vermont youth transitioning from state custody to college. Fall 2010 marks the third year of the College’s pilot program. STEPS is the first program of its kind in the state of Vermont.

Vermont Technical College today announced the beginning of a public campaign to raise $250,000 to rehabilitate the historic Allen House situated at the entrance to its Randolph Center campus. The college has already raised $550,000 of the $800,000 needed to complete the project and will ‘break ground’ once the remainder is secured.
The renovated building will house the college’s Center for Sustainable Practices, an organization dedicated to applying emerging green and sustainable technologies and practices in the areas of energy, buildings, agriculture, and land use. ‘This project shows how we can ‘walk the walk’ by improving energy efficiency while conserving embodied energy’ said Donna Barlow Casey, Director of the Center.

Edward Crane III, President of the Cato Institute, will speak on "The Prospects for Liberty" at Sheraton Burlington Conference Center, University Amphitheatre, on Wednesday, September 22, 2010, at 7 pm.
Ed Crane is the founder and president of the Cato Institute. Under his leadership, Cato has grown to become one of the nation's most prominent public policy research organizations. Crane has been a pioneer in framing the political debate as one, not between liberal and conservative, but rather between civil society (the voluntary sector) and political society (government power).
Crane was at the forefront of promoting personal accounts for Social Security reform and was one of the first national leaders of the term limits movement. He is the coeditor of several books, publisher of Regulation magazine, and is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Governor Jim Douglas today awarded a $1 million Community Development Block Grant to a proposed multi-level retirement community located adjacent to the Porter Medical Center campus in Middlebury. At a ceremony on the 40-acre site of the proposed Eastview at Middlebury facility, Governor Douglas said it was expected to employ 29 people within the first two years of operation and could create up to 45 jobs.
‘Not only will these jobs help strengthen the economy of Middlebury, but the seniors of this area will have more options for housing and continuing care in the community,’ the Governor said.

A free presentation is offered on Leveraging the Vermont Brand on Sept. 13, when Vermont Chief Marketing Officer Christine Warneke will report on the recent Vermont branding research study and explain how the results can be used to maximize business potential in the state. The presentation is made possible through the collaborative efforts of the State of Vermont, NEKTTA (the Northeast Kingdom Travel and Tourism Assoc.), IWoW (the Incubator without Walls), and the NEK Chamber of Commerce to bring cutting edge research to NEK to aid small business owners.
The study investigated perceptions about Vermont and how they affect decision making as related to vacation choices. Vermont has been promoting its brand as a vacation getaway since 1891, and, according to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, the ‘brand is well-established and consistent.’

The Organic Trade Association (OTA), which has called Greenfield, MA, home since 1990, today is celebrating the upcoming move of its headquarters to the Graduate Center building in downtown Brattleboro planned for later this fall.

Vermont State Auditor Tom Salmon reported today that Entergy and the State of Vermont had expected controls in place for managing and monitoring over $400 million of decommissioning trust fund assets. However, he suggested several improvements to increase the likelihood that adequate assets will be available in the future to cover the costs of decommissioning the Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon, primarily through more timely and complete monitoring of the trust fund by the Vermont Public Service Department (PSD).
‘Entergy has established a range of policies and procedures to safeguard and manage assets which you’d expect to see in a trust fund and the State has instituted processes to monitor the sufficiency of the trust fund,’ Salmon said. ‘However, we identified several points of concern and have made suggestions to provide greater assurance that the trust fund will have adequate resources in the future to pay for site cleanup as required by the State.’

A $1 million gift to the University of Vermont will fund an endowment for athletic scholarships.
George H. Schofield, UVM Class of 1951, named UVM as beneficiary of a $1 million life insurance policy that became payable this summer. Mr. Schofield, the retired president, chief executive officer, and chairman of Zurn Industries of Erie, Penn., died in 2008 at age 78. He was co-captain of the football team while a student at UVM and with his wife Barbara, also UVM class of 1951, was a long-time donor to the university. Barbara Schofield will celebrate her 60th UVM reunion in 2011.