Archive - 2009

Vermont Wood Pellet Company, LLC, the state’s first and only wood pellet manufacturing facility, is creating jobs in Rutland County. The owners planned this facility as a community based heating fuel source. In fact the company’s motto is Heat Local. All the raw materials come from a 30-mile trucking radius and their finished product is sold and burned within 50 miles of the Clarendon plant. The company receives enthusiastic letters since their opening in July, verifying the lab testing that reported these wood pellets in the super premium category.

Stafford Technical Center is as successful as it is today largely in part to the strong relationships it has cultivated with area businesses and the local community.  Through the Cooperative Education Program, Students at the Stafford Technical Center receive hands-on, on-site job experience that will prepare them to be vital and contributing members of the community.

According to the Green Mountain College's official history In Loco Parentis, students living in the school’s original academy building in 1837 were warmed by wood-burning stoves. Each student was responsible for toting wood up the stairs to his room in the evening, and each was encouraged to keep a pail of water in on hand in the event of a fire.

Whether one calls America’s current war, the Global War on Terror (GWOT), Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), or the Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) the fact remains – to date, there is no state War Memorial honoring all Fallen Vermonter’s who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that we may continue to revere our Liberty and Freedoms. Our first President, George Washington, had the foresight to say the following:

David Hauser joined FairPoint communications in July 2009 after retiring as chief financial officer from Duke Energy. He was with Duke for 35 years serving in a variety of accounting positions. He became a senior vice president in 1997 and in 1998 was named senior vice president and treasurer. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in business administration from Furman University in South Carolina and a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina. Prior to coming to FairPoint as CEO he served on FairPoint’s board of directors.

To the Editor: We read with interest your interview with Commissioner Bruce Hyde of the VT Department of Tourism and Marketing in the October issue of Vermont Business Magazine, as well as the piece by Art Edelstein that compares this summer’s tourism statistics with those from last year.

Vermont's Upper Valley region has so far managed to withstand the global recession with comparatively few job losses. The unemployment rates for Orange and Windsor counties – 5.5 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively, in September – were significantly lower than the seasonally unadjusted statewide figure of 6.4 percent for the same month.

With fewer than 30,000 residents, Orange County ranks among the smallest of Vermont’s 14 counties. But unlike the three even more thinly populated counties that make up the Northeast Kingdom, Orange enjoys relatively low unemployment as well as a steady influx of newcomers. Its 5.5 percent joblessness rate in September was almost a full percentage point lower than the statewide average, and Orange County’s population has grown faster than that of Vermont as a whole in the decade now ending – 2.4 percent versus 2 percent.

The latest monthly and quarterly economic indicators from around the globe confirm that the world economy has begun to recover from the recent recession. As a result, we begin to see signs that foreign demand for goods made in Vermont are on the mend. The nation's supply executives in manufacturing industries surveyed in October by the Institute for Supply Management reported that their indicator of incoming new orders from abroad rose for the fourth consecutive month, following nine consecutive months of decline.

You could not ignore Ted Bridges, nor would you want to. Ted was bigger than life – in the Vermont hospitality industry, in the Rutland County business world, and in stature. He seemingly was everyone’s friend. Just before Thanksgiving, Ted Bridges, 66, died from complications following heart surgery. Ted was one of those people you were thankful to know. He was best known as the innkeeper of the now closed Cortina Inn near the Killington/Pico resort. He started there as barkeeper when the inn opened in 1966.