Progressive Rutland: Mayor Christopher Louras

It also makes Rutland, an historic city famous for its marble quarries in the 19th Century, the seat of political power in Vermont through World War II, and drugs and decay by the end of the 20th, one of the most progressive 21st Century towns in the entire country. 

“The business and educational community are extremely supportive of the refugee resettlement here,” said Louras. “Security measures in place solely assess the risk to the public, which there is none. Those who have concerns, the concerns are based in a fear of the unknown. We have to educate the public. Rutland is an extremely compassionate community. I see no downsides at all to embracing a rich, diverse culture. That’s the history of Rutland.” 

Louras, 55, reasons that Rutland has done this successfully before. His grandfather, for example, was a Greek from the island of Chios who immigrated to the United States to escape persecution from the Ottoman Turks in 1906. 

“So I’m Greek,” Louras said. “We know there are a lot of Sicilians, Italians, Poles, Russians and Eastern Europeans here. At the turn of the last century, when Rutland was a growing, booming community, we took advantage of an immigrant population to grow our economy and grow the city exponentially.” 

Immigration has been a hot-button topic in the US for many years, and since 2010, states have passed approximately 160 anti-immigration laws. Almost every state has passed at least one or two — even Vermont. 

Most of these laws — whether you consider them fair or unfair — have been concerned with Latino immigration. But last year, as the national political scene heated up in advance of the upcoming presidential election, anti-Islamic rhetoric and fear-mongering turned immigrants from war-torn Syria and other Middle East countries into red-hot bargaining chips. Compassion was thrown out the window for political gain. 

Even so, last year, President Barack Obama announced that the US would accept 10,000 refugees. By last count, however, only 13 percent — 1,300 people — have been admitted, while at least 30 governors have announced that their state borders are closed to Muslim refugees. All but one of these governors is Republicans. 

By contrast, Vermont’s Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin, joined six other states in announcing that Vermont was open, ready and willing to help resettle this desperate population. 

“So when the governor spoke to this issue, I saw that as an opportunity,” Louras said. 

The only oddity here is that Rutland is known as a Republican town, and Louras, when he ran for the Board of Aldermen, won his seat as a Republican. Mayors in Rutland, however, do not need to run on a party ticket, so despite some criticism from Republicans following the party line, Louras has simply dropped the designation. 

“The only R next to my name now is Rutlander,” Louras said. “The Republicans at the national level have got this one wrong. And those who repeat their fears and concerns have it wrong.” 

Louras is quick to point out that in Vermont, Republican Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott supports the immigration plan. 

“He was here just last month and he spoke of the need to embrace immigrants and refugee resettlement as a component of our economic future,” Louras said. “So he gets it.” 

Castleton University President David Wolk is another person who gets it. He says that Louras’s decision to give a home to 100 refugees makes him “a person of significant courage and vision.” 

“I told him from the beginning that we would welcome refugees with a warm embrace of a loving family — because that’s who we are,” Wolk said. “Castleton expects that we will educate the students, and when we have positions, we will employ refugees. We have faculty and staff who are interested in embracing these families. My grandfather, who is from Lithuania, came here in 1897. My grandmother escaped from pogroms in Odessa, Russia. They became part of a community of merchants in Rutland. Whether you believe in the theory of evolution or the story of Creation, either one, if you trace your family roots back far enough you realize we are all one family. We have great respect for the vision and courage that Chris has shown.” 

Rutland City is seven-and-a-half square miles surrounded by Rutland Town, a separate municipality. Rutland City has a mayor, Louras. Rutland Town is managed by a board of selectmen. Rutland City has 16,500 people. Rutland Town has 4,000. Each municipality has a billion-dollar grand list. 

Is there conflict between the two entities? 

“Always,” Louras said drily.“Because we control the water and the sewer.” 

Louras became mayor of Rutland in 2007 and is now serving his fifth consecutive two-year term. So he must be doing something right. Or as he put it, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.” 

Thanks to Rutland’s Project Vision initiative, the city has dramatically reduced drug-related crime and the chaos associated with it. As a result, downtown Rutland is thriving. The renovated Paramount Theater has been a strong economic driver, bringing people downtown to see shows and eat in restaurants. 

Downtown enjoys a 98 percent occupancy rate, Louras said, hosting new branches of Small Dog Electronics and the Phoenix Book Shop. Adding to the activity downtown, Castleton University has a Rutland campus for its Center for Entrepreneurial Programs, Center for Schools and Center for Community Engagement. 

It also has several art galleries. In August it will open a new downtown student housing building. 

“Chris has been an excellent mayor,” Wolk said. “He has overseen the rejuvenation of Rutland and, particularly so, the rebirth of downtown all on his watch. Castleton has been proud to be part of it.”

Louras calls downtown Rutland “a destination hot spot.” 

“You couldn’t buy a needle and thread in downtown Rutland in 1992 or 1993,” Louras said. “The Wal-Mart plaza — the first Wal-Mart in the state — has also helped make a centralized business location in downtown where we can serve all demographics. Rutland’s downtown serves the entire county-wide community. It’s not eclectic. It’s a practical mix.” 

In terms of manufacturing, Rutland’s largest employer, GE, has two plants that manufacture compressor and fan blades for aircraft engines. The company employees 1,050 workers in jobs that start at $26 an hour, according to the Rutland Herald. (The second-largest employer is the Rutland Regional Medical Center, which also employs over 1,000 people.) 

GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, speaking to the media in response to a campaign attack by presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, wrote about the Rutland plants in The Washington Post. 

“It’s a picture of first-rate jobs with high wages, advanced manufacturing in a vital industry — how things look when American workers are competing and winning — and Vermont’s junior senator is always welcome to come by for a tour,” Immelt wrote. 

Immelt also praised Rutland workers on National Public Radio. It makes Louras very proud. 

“The Rutland aviation plant is the gold standard for GE aviation,” Louras said. “It has a highly motivated, highly trained workforce that puts out the best products in the world, And that’s not me saying it. It’s Immelt saying it.” 

When Green Mountain Power absorbed Rutland-based Central Vermont Public Service, in exchange for taking many of the jobs to Colchester it signed a memorandum of understanding to turn Rutland into a “Solar City.” And GMP has made good on its promise. 

“There have been a lot of ingredients in that Solar City initiative,” said Steve Costello, who has the unusual title of “GMP’s vice president of customer service and ambassador to Rutland.” 

One ingredient: GMP has used Rutland as a laboratory for testing its new solar and energy-saving systems. 

“We’ve been piloting new products and services in Rutland,” Costello said. “That has created a lot of jobs in the solar industry. We really developed our whole heat pump system here in Rutland and that has led to hiring dozens to businesses to do installs, energy audits, weatherization and the like. Multiple solar businesses have opened in Rutland. SunCommon and GoSolar have come. SameSun has grown significantly.” 

GMP has become deeply involved in Rutland life. 

“We had a role in Project Vision and the creation of the Rutland Blooms and I Love Rutland,” Costello said. “We’ve worked hand-in-hand in recruiting new businesses like the Vermont Butcher Shop, which will be opening on Route 7 in June. Several dozen businesses in the downtown area, in particular, say their presence is at least partially influenced by our investment in downtown.” 

What else makes Rutland the “Solar City?” 

“The Paramount and several churches installed solar panels using grants we’ve provided,” Costello said. “We’ve also provided grants to several dozen nonprofits, most of them in the city. We’ve gone a lot further than we ever anticipated and really become partners with the city. We’ve developed more than 10 megawatts of power in the City of Rutland in three years. That has led to tens of millions of dollars being spent locally on everything from electricians to installers to concrete work. The city has benefitted in somewhere around $100,000 a year in income as a direct result of making Rutland the solar capital, and that includes the $30,000 we pay to the former landfill where we have a sizable solar array.” 

Costello said that Louras has been an excellent partner for GMP. He is “a really complex character,” Costello said. 

“He’s very smart, he’s very determined, very intense, and if he focuses on something be assured it will have his complete attention,” Costello said. “I sometimes joke he should lighten up. He’s dedicated to the city and has a clear vision of where it has to go. Sometimes it ruffles feathers, but he has by far the thickest skin I’ve ever met. He doesn’t get dragged down by difficult problems. He takes the good with the bad and doesn’t seem to be pierced by the occasional arrow that someone with a thinner skin might find devastating. That’s a real strength of his. He can deal with adversity and take positions that may be unpopular, but he feels they’re right and he stands behind them and he can sell them. even to people who originally doubted him.” 

Revitalization couldn’t have happened without a massive team effort to solve Rutland’s drug crisis. (Locals once called the daily train “Amcrack.”) It may have been Louras’s most difficult task. Three years ago, Louras and then-police chief James Baker embarked on Project Vision. The results have been remarkable. 

“We’ve driven down burglaries down 60 percent over the past three years,” Louras said. “We’ve driven down thefts and shoplifting by 50 percent. We’ve driven down disorderly conduct by 30 percent. We’ve driven down the number of children born to opiate-addicted mothers by 40 percent. How? We don’t know what the secret sauce is. Three years ago we went to David Kennedy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He’s a rock star in the criminal justice world. We explained Rutland’s situation and he helped us develop a strategy that proved to be successful. And now other communities are coming to us.” 

Baker, who is now a director at the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Alexandria, Virginia, praises Louras’s political courage and his vision. 

“I don’t think he gets the credit for how deep his vision is,” Baker said. “He loves the city. He loves his job. He’s one of the most energetic guys I’ve ever met. He’s got a huge heart — an incredibly huge heart. He’s incredibly bright. I found he was someone I could go to with a problem and get good advice.” 

Early Life 

In Greece, Louras’s paternal grandfather was betrothed to his future wife when she was born. 

“That was even though there was a 20-year age difference between them,” Louras said. “It was like they just said, ‘She’s yours!’ She came here 10 or 12 years after he showed up. It worked out great for the generation down the road. But it didn’t work out real well for my grandmother.” 

Louras’s grandfather died in 1938, leaving a young widow with eight kids. 

“There were two sets,” he said. “Four older ones, then a gap and then four younger ones. The gap is because the fifth child died. Of the four older ones, two were girls and two were boys — my dad and my Uncle Pete. Uncle Pete was 14 or 15 when my grandfather died. What my dad and Uncle Pete did was trade who went to school each year. One went to school while the other worked. Then the next year, they traded places. The oldest daughter in the whole crew ended up not getting married, so she helped support the family. My dad never finished high school, although my uncle did.” 

Instead of school, Louras’s father was mentored by a local businessman named Sam Frank. 

“My dad ended up buying the business from him,” Louras said. “It’s called Sam Frank Inc. It’s a local, family-owned tobacco and candy wholesaler which also has a retail shop. My brother and my sister run it now, and that’s what I did before I got this gig. My dad is 90 years old and he still opens the business every morning at 8 o’clock. He’ll stay down there for three or four hours, go home, eat lunch, take a nap, maybe go back and maybe not.” 

Louras describes his mother as coming from “a multi-generational family of hill farmers from the wilds of Mt Holly.” 

“She graduated high school in 1951,” he said, “She worked just until the kids were born. They had three kids, Niko, Valerie and Christopher. I’m the baby. It’s a Greek family, so if you’re not named Nick, Chris or Pete, you’re not getting a name.” 

Louras learned about business from his father. 

“I grew up on Center Street in the family business,” he said. “I was so immersed in it as a child. Going down to work are some of the earliest memories I have. When I was putting tax stamps on packs of cigarettes, I must have been seven or eight years old. Each pack had to have a tax stamp. My dad used to have a cigarette machine vending business and on Saturdays we’d go around with him and count all the quarters and dimes afterwards. I learned a lot about customer service. If you take care of your customers, they’ll take care of you. That same philosophy served me well when I was in the military. If you do your job to the best of your ability, you won’t have to worry about your career prospects.” 

Louras was the first in his family to earn a college degree; he studied political science at the University of Vermont. 

“My brother, even though he’s three years older, got his degree later because he continued his education while he was in the family business,” Louras said. “I went four years straight.” 

After UVM, Louras worked in the private sector for a year or so — he describes it as “kicking around” — but it didn’t feel right to him. 

“So I joined the army to be a helicopter pilot,” Louras said. 

He joined as a warrant officer. 

“In the Army, most warrant officers are helicopter pilots because the Army has so many bleeding helicopters,” he said. “I hadn’t flown anything before that. I was a maintenance manager/test pilot. We were responsible for insuring that all the aircraft are serviceable, flyable. And if they break, the maintenance officer is in charge of working with the maintenance guys to fix it. Then we test fly it to make sure it’s airworthy.” 

The job entailed production control, quality control and being immersed in all aspects of the management of a helicopter fleet. Louras worked out of Fort Campbell in Kentucky and Fort Hood in Texas. 

He also served in the first Gulf War. 

“I was six months over in the sandbox, in 1990-1991,” he said. “And then, while there, I also had a three month humanitarian mission down in Honduras.” 

Returning To Rutland 

Louras left active duty in 1994 and moved back home to join the family business and raise his children. He has four — 28, 29, 13 and 16 —from two marriages. 

“I came back for the quality of life,” he said. “Having been stationed for 10 years south of the Mason-Dixon Line in larger communities that didn’t have much of a sense of community, I just wanted to move home. I wanted to let my kids grow up in a community like Rutland with the quality of life we have in the state of Vermont. I was very, very fortunate to have the benefit of a family business that was able to absorb me.” 

The business, however, didn’t absorb Louras entirely. 

“After serving on active duty for 10 years, I felt a void in the area of public service,” he said. “In my sense of self. I was making a difference and contributing on a national level through my military service. But once that was cleaved out of my life there was a void. I felt the best way to fill it was public service on a local level. So in 1995, I ran for the Board of Alderman as a Republican and won.” 

Modestly, Louras jokes that his first win was mainly due to name recognition. 

“I was gone for 10 years, came back home, was here for six months, ran for the seat and was number four out of six,” he said. “My uncle Pete is an extremely well-known businessman who had a newsstand named Louras's. He himself had previously served on the Board of Alderman. I’m convinced that some people voted for me because they thought I was my Uncle Pete.” 

In 1998, Louras ran for the House of Representatives and lost. He ran again in 2004 and won. He served for one biennium, from 2005 to 2006. 

Louras served on the Board of Aldermen from 1995 to 2002. Then he took two years off to “recharge my batteries and gain an outsider’s perspective with an insider’s experience to draw on.” He came back to the board in 2004 and won the mayoralty in 2007. 

Louras said his time on the Board of Aldermen taught him some valuable lessons. 

“I was the chair of the recreation committee in 1997-1998, and I had a big hand in killing an initiative for a bike path,” Louras said. “That was one of my two biggest regrets as a board member. I was able to learn from that, so when I became mayor in 2007 I worked with the Rutland Creative Economy Recreation Committee and we are now building the bike path that I killed in 1997-1998. I recognize now that investment would have paid huge dividends. I learned from that mistake and have embraced recreation and Rutland being a recreation destination.” 

The other lesson came with a vote on whether or not to provide post-employment benefits to a specific set of retirees. 

“One of our greatest liabilities on the balance books in the City of Rutland is the rich retiree health care plan with no way to pay for it except for ongoing budgetary line items,” Louras said. “It was ill-thought out. There was no actuarial analysis done. And it was supported for very, very short-term, one-year fiscal gain. Really, it has ended up being a real detriment to long-term financial planning. What I’ve learned form that? Now everything I do is from the prism of what it’s going to look like 20 years from now. I do not make short-term decisions. All decisions I undertake as a public official come from playing the long game.” 

Rutvegas 

For many years, Rutland had a reputation as a tough town — for some reason, people called it “Rutvegas.” 

In order for the town to change, the opiate problem had to be addressed and solved. Citizens wanted a traditional, hard-headed, lock-’em-up approach, said Chief Baker. 

What was the driver for Louras and Baker’s decision to search out a better way? Animal complaints. 

“We started by taking a look at the police department and how they responded to calls for service,” Baker said. “The narrative in the city was that it was a dangerous place. No one wanted to live, play or work there. We started digging into the data, looking at service calls, and we came to find out that the number one call for service — for almost three years straight — was animal complaints. You had to go deep into the statistics for crime. It’s because of the chaos factor. If someone who’s addicted to opiates can’t take care of their kids, they can’t take care of their animals either.” 

Next, the city applied for a million-dollar US Department of Justice grant which it failed to win. Baker said losing that grant was the “best thing that could have happened,” because the city’s government agencies, nonprofits and development organizations were forced to come together to solve the drug problem without any financial interest or reward. 

“What came out of that was a recommitment to work together,” Baker said. “Relationships were built on going in the same direction. We would narrow the problem down to streets and blocks. We would bring every resource to find a way to resolve it. Nine out of 10 times, it wasn’t a criminal problem. It was something to do with an opiate problem. We brought all the players to the table and Project Vision was born.” 

The catalyst was a tragedy that shocked the city. In September of 2013, a popular and accomplished high school senior named Carly Ferro was killed while getting into her father’s car at the same time it was rammed by a car driven by a young man who had been “huffing” chemicals. 

“He passes out and loses control of his car,” Baker said. “Inside that car with him were two other individuals. The operator was out on bail for a drug charge in New York State. One was out on federal charges and the other was under supervision of probation. All of them were doing something they were being told not to do by some court order. It galvanized the community. We went from looking at addresses to looking at the people we knew who were causing problems.” 

Louras and Baker started thinking about how to interrupt the drug market. Their thinking was based on ideas promoted by Professor. Kennedy of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He earned his “rock star” reputation for cutting youth homicide by two-thirds at the height of the crack epidemic in Boston. Louras and Baker wondered if the same principles would work in rural Vermont’ 

“We asked him, ‘Can the same strategies that were used to reduce drug-related gun homicides in large inner cities be used to drive down quality of life crimes in rural America?’” Louras said. “His answer? ‘Don’t see why not.’ And so we came back, did a lot of local research and brought what we knew to be the drug market in Rutland on paper to David Kennedy. He drew out a strategy on a white board and we incorporated that strategy.” 

The goal of the “Drug Marketplace Intervention Model” is to stop the violence attached to drug addiction. 

“Kennedy knew they couldn’t stop the drug market, but they knew if they did it the right way, they could stop the violence and killing associated with it,” Louras said. “They were very successful and we brought that same strategy to Vermont. The chaos and dysfunction within the city that was associated with the opiate crisis manifested itself on the law enforcement side where people were stealing to maintain a habit. It was destroying, frankly, the quality of life of the community. And we were working on this a full year before the governor spoke to this issue in his state of the state speech.” 

Project Vision recognized. 

“We can’t arrest our way out of the problem,” Louras said. “However, we can’t treat our way out of the problem either. Rutland’s response is a community-wide strategy bringing together, monthly, all the different stakeholders — police, therapists, health directors, Department of Children and Families, domestic violence counselors, prosecutors — at a large meeting, and working together daily in a collaborative way.” 

The project operated on two fronts simultaneously. 

“As you increase treatment service and support for those struggling addicts, at the same time you increase and become more aggressive on the law enforcement side,” Louras said. 

Sharing information between the Rutland Police Department, the Rutland County Sheriff's Department the Vermont State Police and the Vermont Drug Task Force addressed the supply side and tried to dismantle the “social network” — the hidden marketplace. 

“Everyone suffering from addiction has their cell phone, and that is the discrete drug market,” Louras explained. “When — and not if — a shipment arrives, whether it’s an out-of-state individual bringing product in or a local person who has gone to Springfield in Massachusetts or New York or down to Philadelphia, once that product shows up in Rutland, a guy doesn’t set up shop on the street. He needs to be able to plug into the social network. Our goal is to disrupt the supply chain coming in by working with state, local and federal partners as well as the New York Police Department, the New York State police and the New Jersey state police. We disrupt the supply line coming in and dismantle that local infrastructure through supplying the services and supports to individuals who are suffering from addiction locally.” 

Opening a methadone clinic in November of 2013 was a big part of the program’s success. 

“The opening of the methadone clinic was a game changer,” Baker said. “We found that people addicted didn’t want to be addicted. It wasn’t the lifestyle they wanted for themselves. The mayor’s courage in standing up for that place was amazing. People wanted hard-headed law enforcement. They weren’t interested in treatment.” 

Rutland’s opiate problem became personal for Louras when his nephew was arrested on heroin charges in 2012. His nephew is now in recovery and doing well, Louras said. 

Louras does not support the legalization of marijuana in Vermont, but his reasoning has nothing to do with opiates. 

“I don’t agree with the assertion that marijuana is a gateway drug to heroin,” Louras said. “The gateway drug to heroin is prescription opiates and the unconscionable acts of the pharmaceutical industry. The success of Project Vision in bringing the community together to address our opiate problem is one of the reasons that Rutland is ripe to absorb and embrace a refugee population. We wouldn’t have been able to do it five years ago.” 

Project Vision has been so successful that other towns and cities want to learn about it. In May, Louras and other civic leaders addressed the National League of Cities convention in Texas. 

Immigration 

To solve its workforce development challenge, Rutland expects to accept 100 Syrian refugees, or 25-30 families, who will be arriving, on the average, of one or two every few weeks beginning in October of this year. 

Much thought went into the process of resettlement. 

“The idea began with the national-level conversation associated with the presidential election back in September,” Louras said. “Where the conversation turned toward immigration and refugee resettlement, and a number of governors said they would close their doors. And our governor said he wanted to open our doors. That presented an opportunity for us.” 

First, Louras called US Senator Patrick Leahy’s office. 

“I needed to speak with conviction that the security measures in place are such that the screening is of such high quality that the city of Rutland will not be at risk,” Louras said. “I spoke to high-level people at the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security. I asked a lot of hard questions and got a lot of honest answers. I circled back with other individuals at a high level of law enforcement, to make sure the information I got was accurate. The reality is there are no concerns — with the security measures in place as it relates to refugees — and especially with Syrian refugees.” 

When he was convinced that there was no threat, Louras contacted the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. At a three-hour meeting, they “explained what the whole initiative looks like in the state of Vermont and what needs to be addressed,” Louras said. 

The State Department provides some funding for the refugees, but the City of Rutland “doesn’t get a nickel,” Louras said. “Then it is the goal — and Vermont Resettlement is very good at attaining their goal — of ensuring their clients are self-sufficient in six to eight months.” 

Louras determined that jobs for the refugees were available, depending on language and work skills. 

“I’m still receiving phone calls in my office from employers saying, ‘Put me on the list. I have jobs that I cannot fill, that people won’t take, or if they take ‘em, they won’t stay with them. We want to take advantage of this immigrant population,’” Louras said. ”It’s much like the employers at the turn of the last century, and how they took advantage of the Italians, the Greeks and the Poles. We’ve got the clear capacity. It will be an economic benefit, if not a boon to the community. That’s been demonstrated, at least anecdotally, in the Chittenden area and in places around the country that have embraced an immigrant population.” 

Refugee resettlement is a complex business. 

“We used last November until now to assess the capacity of Rutland to absorb a refugee population for jobs, housing and English language learning — especially entry level jobs while people build their English language skills,” Louras said. “Obviously, the job piece is tied in with the language skills piece. We have a clear capacity for entry level positions and positions of a more professional nature beyond that.” 

A requirement is safe, sanitary and available housing. 

“And we have that,” Louras said. “We still have housing stock for our 1970s population of 19,000 people and right now we have 16,495.” 

Rutland does not have a mosque or any Syrian immigrants, but “whether the refugee population is all-Muslim or a mix, it’s anticipated it will be a majority Muslim population,” Louras said. 

Between now and October, Rutland will be working out logistics. 

“We’re doing outreach to employers and to housing providers, so when the first family arrives in October, they can find the jobs and housing they already have a list for. Generally, we get 24-48 hours notice that the family is actually on their way. It’s extremely exciting.” 

The Future 

Clearly Louras has a lot on his plate, but he’s also looking toward the future. Plans are being drafted to replace the city’s 19th Century water infrastructure. Another long-term plan will repair bridges and roadways. 

“We also want to redo our wastewater treatment, as much as we can do that with the changing environment on the state level,” Louras said. 

Louras intends to remain in office for at least the next three years. 

“I’ve committed, absolutely, to run again in March 2017,” Louras said. “Project Vision needs to be seen through. But I can tell you — and put it out there now — when I’m done being mayor, I am not going to run for an elected position ever again.” 

Why not? 

“Over these past nine years, I have seen workings of government at all levels,” he responded. “I’ve interacted with those elected to most positions. Other than mayor, I have determined that I find no other elected position appealing to my skill set and style.”

Joyce Marcel is a journalist who lives in southern Vermont. She is currently writing a memoir covering six generations of her family caught in the sweep of history across the 20th Century. She is writing another book about Vermont businesses. More of her work appears at her Web site, joycemarcel.com.

This story first appeared in the June 2016 issue of Vermont Business Magazine.