Current News

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.

Northern Power Systems, Inc, a next-generation wind turbine company and leading manufacturer of community wind direct-drive turbines, today announced the acquisition of Knight & Carver Wind Group’s community wind turbine blade manufacturing business in South Dakota. Terms were not disclosed. This acquisition, combined with Northern Power’s deep design and manufacturing experience as well as robust quality control systems, will further facilitate the high-quality domestic manufacturing and assembly of key components of the Northern Power 100. Knight & Carver has been a supplier of blades to Northern Power.

Governor Jim Douglas has appointed nine new members of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, the first step in establishing a program for state recognition of Native American tribes in Vermont.

A new law that set up the recognition process revised the makeup of the panel and increased the number of members on the commission from seven to nine, and also imposed a Vermont residency requirement for the first time.

‘These new members of the Native American Commission represent a broad cross-section of Native American communities and geography, and will bring a fresh perspective to the task at hand,’ said Giovanna Peebles, State Historic Preservation Officer and director of the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation.

The Banking Insurance Securities and Health Care Administration (BISHCA) conducted their annual hospital budget reviews in Montpelier and South Burlington this week. While hospital budget reviews have been in place for 15 years, this year hospitals had to comply with additional requirements created by the Legislature last session. This new law, Act 128 of 2010, is intended to slow the rate of hospital budgets through setting targets for net revenue growth at 4.5 percent in 2011 and 4 percent in 2012. Hospitals met this target and the additional target that BISHCA established for aggregate rate requests to be no higher than 5.9 percent. The average rate request is 5.7 percent.

From a snow groomer waxing philosophic, to an apple grower explaining the art of "pie-chi," the characters starring in the new video vignettes featured on ThisIsVT.com offer viewers a glimpse into some of the personalities that are the life of Vermont's vibrant tourist industry. The short films were shot as part of a campaign for the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing that emphasizes the state’s diverse human assets.
‘Our recent research on the Vermont brand showed that vacationers are looking for ‘good value,’ ‘diverse experiences,’ ‘unspoiled landscape’ and ‘warm, friendly people,’" said deputy commissioner of tourism and marketing Steve Cook.
‘With this in mind, Spike and VT Tourism conceived and created ThisIsVT.com.’