Officials with Ice Factor, the Scotland-based company that planned to build an ice-climbing wall in Burlington's abandoned Moran power plant, say they have not been kept adequately informed of Mayor Miro Weinberger's decision to kill the Moran redevelopment plan. The company adds that it is disappointed with Weinberger's move, which he announced at a press conference on Monday, and blames the city for the complex deal falling apart.
In a statement e-mailed early on Tuesday, Ice Factor managing director Jamie Smith says, "We have yet to receive any formal update from the new mayor or his administration on the future of the Moran development." Smith adds that he has learned from "a number of reports" that Weinberger intends to review the Ice Factor plan for Moran in September.
Weinberger said at his press conference on Monday that he had spoken with Ice Factor about his decision and that the company, while disappointed, said it understood his position.
Asked for comment on Smith's subsequent assertion that he has not been updated on the mayor's decision, Weinberger said on Tuesday that he has been in regular contact with Phil McCully, a Montreal-based member of Ice Factor's board of directors. The mayor added that Smith, in Scotland, is referring only to a formal communication that he said will soon be sent to Ice Factor.
Weinberger actually gave that notification in a letter dated July 2 and addressed to Smith; the mayor's office sent a copy to Seven Days on Tuesday. Weinberger's three-paragraph "Dear Jamie" letter concludes in part by saying: "Please know that the City of Burlington would be willing to consider Ice Factor in our future development plans...."
Reached by phone on Tuesday in Montreal, McCully said it was he who had initiated contacts with Weinberger in recent weeks in an effort to learn what the new mayor intended to do in regard to the Moran plant. In a conversation last week, McCully recounted, the mayor told him the Ice Factor plan was still under review. Weinberger subsequently gave him the impression, McCully said, that Ice Factor's involvement in Moran remains on the table and is being assessed with the intention of deciding its fate in September. McCully added that Weinberger was "encouraging" in regard to Ice Factor having an ongoing role in Moran's redevelopment.
"We're a bit disappointed at how it's turned out," McCully said. He noted that the company has spent "a considerable amount of money" in trying to advance the project. Executives have flown to Vermont from Scotland on a number of occasions, while he himself has made 35 trips to Burlington from Montreal in the past four years, McCully said.
It's not Ice Factor that has stalled the project, but rather it has been the city's inability to execute its end of "an incredibly complex deal," McCully added. "The city had asked us to put a fair amount of cash in escrow for the project," he continued, "but we said we couldn't do that because we're not the Disney Corporation" — in other words, a cash-rich entity.
Sweetwaters owner David Melincoff has been watching with trepidation as a disruptive Church Street Marketplace construction project creeps toward his restaurant's front door. And now he's fighting to delay the dig that's scheduled to rip up the pedestrian mall's City Hall block for much of August.
Melincoff collected more than 700 signatures in less than a week on a petition he's circulating — on the social action website Change.org, no less — that calls for the lower-block portion of the project to be postponed for a month.
He fears that the noise, dust and unsightliness associated with the electrical rewiring work will hit Sweetwaters hard.
"August is our busiest month of the year," Melincoff explains. It accounts for 17 percent of the restaurant's annual sales and 32 percent of its net income, he calculates. And a majority of summertime diners choose a table on the Church Street portion of Sweetwaters' sidewalk cafe, he says.
"What's happening, in effect, is that they're jackhammering our dining room," Melincoff declares.
Sweetwaters' business will be off by as much as 50 percent as a result, he warns. And that will whack the wait staff right in the wallet, with employees' combined income likely to drop by $60,000 or more, Melincoff says.
Marketplace director Ron Redmond says city officials are striving to mitigate the project's effects up and down Burlington's four-block-long retail epicenter, but suggested it was unlikely the project would be delayed. He notes that work on the Church Street trench stops each weekday at 4 p.m., and construction fencing is scaled back at that time, which means "the outdoor restaurants should be fine for the dinner hours." Construction directly in front of individual outlets on the Marketplace does not last for more than seven business days, Redmond adds.
Shops, restaurants and vendors currently or previously experiencing the dig offer varying assessments of its effects.
Some pedestrians were covering their ears as they hurried past Three Tomatoes Trattoria late this morning. A cutting tool was producing an unpleasant smell as well as a piercing whine that ensured most of the restaurant's outdoor tables would remain vacant. Three Tomatoes manager Julia Mattison says she's bracing for a sharp downturn in revenues due to the project that started on her block earlier this week.
Restaurants are being slammed harder than stores, says Marissa Stokes, manager of Ecco, a women's clothing store on the corner of Church and Bank. "But," she cautions, "when people come down here to eat they also shop." Street vendors have suffered too, Stokes adds.
A woman setting up the Hawaiian Shaved Ice stand who declined to give her name says she didn't work at all last week because the dig had eliminated her usual spot on the Marketplace.
But to Sam Longe, manager of furniture store Pompanoosuc Mills, the dig has been no big deal. "There was a little downturn in traffic," he says, "but for a construction project of that magnitude they were pretty quiet and kept it nice and neat."
Redmond concedes that the projected six-month-long project is producing headaches for some merchants. "There's never a good time to do this," he says, noting that asphalt plants start shutting down in November, making a fall start-up unfeasible.
Work was initially scheduled to get underway in 2008, but that's when the Great Recession started to bite, Redmond says. By the following year, the vacancy rate had climbed to 11 percent on the Marketplace. "It would have been totally insane to do this project then," he observes. A survey of merchants last year showed sales were "starting to move in a positive direction," so officials decided to start replacing the antiquated electrical wiring system as soon as this past winter ended.
Four-fifths of the $2 million cost is being paid by the feds, with the city's capital budget covering the rest. The installation of a far more efficient lighting system should be completed by November, Redmond says.
Sweetwaters owner Melincoff says he appreciates the efforts being made by the Marketplace and especially by Mayor Miro Weinberger's office, which, he says, has been "extraordinarily responsive." Melincoff insists, "I'm not trying to be obstructionist. I recognize the importance of the project, and I'm willing to have it happen here in September, October, November — just not in August."
He offers this analogy: "Would University Mall jackhammer up their floors in the middle of the Christmas season?"
Photos by Kevin J. Kelley
Welcome to Cheesegate: Cabot Creamery's decision to change its logo is still making waves (or should we say wheyves?) in the Green Mountain State.
In case you missed the kerfuffle last week: Cabot dropped the state, and name, of Vermont from some of its packaging. The company says it began quietly making the change about a year ago to better comply with state rules. The rules stipulate that three-quarters of a dairy product's main ingredient must come from Vermont in order for a company to use the state in its marketing.
Now, instead of imposing Cabot's name over an outline of the state of Vermont, the new logo features the silhouette of a green barn and the words, "Owned by our farm families in New England and New York since 1919."
The change ruffled more than a few feathers. As the Burlington Free Press reports today, the logo change churned up a fair share of political debate. Gov. Peter Shumlin is bemoaning the change, saying in a news conference last week, "I believe that when we have the Vermont label on Vermont Cabot, that's a good thing for Vermont farmers and a good thing for Vermont's value-added food products." Meanwhile, challengers for the attorney general's office played the Cabot card in accusing AG Bill Sorrell of pushing too hard on one of Vermont's iconic brands — to which Sorrell responded that Cabot made the label change on its own.
Adding to the quagmire is this latest accusation, from dairy farmer Karen Shaw of Hardwick: Shaw says the new label is still inaccurate. She claims that, contrary to popular belief, Cabot's parent company isn't really a farmer-owned cooperative. Although Cabot was originally a Vermont dairy cooperative, the beloved cheesemaker hitched its wagon to the multistate Agri-Mark cooperative in 1992. (Agri-Mark is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Massachusetts.)
Agri-Mark collects milk from dairy farmers throughout New England and New York. While Cabot still operates processing plants in Vermont, much of the creamery's milk crosses state lines, and some products (such as Cabot butter) are made out of state.
Shaw was a founding member of the Agri-Mark co-op in 1980 and shipped milk to Agri-Mark for 17 years. But in the early 1990s she began pressing the co-op for more information about how much Agri-Mark's top executives were paid, and asked for access to Agri-Mark's membership rolls. She eventually took the request to court; Rep. Peter Welch was among the lawyers who represented Shaw pro bono.
A Vermont judge initially sided with Shaw, allowing her access to Agri-Mark's records, but the co-op appealed. Because Agri-Mark is incorporated in Delaware, the case eventually landed in the Delaware Supreme Court, which overturned the Vermont ruling and denied Shaw access to the records.
"Agri-Mark’s defense was, 'We are not a cooperative, and she is not an owner, and therefore she is not entitled to this information,'" interprets Bob Gensburg, a St. Johnsbury lawyer who also represented Shaw.
The court found that because Shaw was not a shareholder — only the board of directors, which is elected by Agri-Mark farmers, hold stock — she did not have the right to review certain financial documents. The court decision reads, in part, that the appellants' argument, that "they should be recognized as 'stockholders' of Agri-Mark since they are the 'real' owners of the cooperative," is unconvincing. ... "Our corporate law has traditionally limited the rights of stockholders to stockholders of record."
The decision did say that Shaw could assert certain rights as an "equity owner" of the corporation, but that those rights didn't extend to those of record stockholders. Gensburg wrote in an email, "In other words, according to the court, Karen and the other Agri-Mark members are not Agri-Mark's 'real owners.'"
Obviously, Agri-Mark interprets the decision differently. Spokesman Doug DiMento says Agri-Mark members "wanted their privacy," which is why the co-op limited Shaw's access to membership records. The co-op is "100 percent owned by dairy farmers," says DiMento. She points out that democratically elected members of the board of directors have access to budgets and other sensitive financial information. He adds that the past five years have been the best ever in the history of the co-op, and Agri-Mark has returned record profits to its members.
"The co-op is voluntary," DiMento adds. "If you don't want to work with the other farmers, you don't have to."
Shaw's argument hasn't made much headway in the 17 years since the court decision — though the "Agri-Mark isn't farmer-owned" sentiment crops up periodically. Royalton farmer Steven Judge invoked this in 2011 in a letter to the Herald of Randolph. Judge shipped milk to Agri-Mark for three or four years in the late 1980s and early '90s, and remembers an "underlying frustration" growing among some farmers at the time about the "lack of transparency" in the company.
Later, when he began marketing milk for a smaller, independent co-op, he began attending meetings in Boston where Cabot's sales team arrived in the "most expensive suits and most expensive hair-dos." He shrugs off the co-op's assertions of democratically elected board members, who in his opinion are groomed and selected "based upon their willingness to go along with the program."
"Meanwhile, the farmers were going out of business," Judge remembers. "It seemed to me that there was a real lack of justice."
As for the labeling kerfuffle, Judge concedes that it probably doesn't matter much in the long run how Agri-Mark markets itself to consumers — though he thinks shoppers should know who they're supporting when they fork over dough for cheddar. "Personally, I think if Agri-Mark were farmer owned, it would have been run a lot different," he says.
The recent labeling debate isn't the first time Cabot has butted up against allegations of misrepresentation. In 2011 Agri-Mark agreed to pay the state $65,000 to settle claims that the co-op, in emails to customers and on its Facebook page, misrepresented some of its products as rBST-free — assertions that violated the state's consumer-protection law. Agri-Mark also agreed to donate $75,000 worth of dairy products to local food banks.
It's exactly that issue of misrepresentation that riles up Cambridge lawyer Charlotte Dennett, who represents the group Whey to Go. The group opposes, on environmental grounds, Cabot's practice of spreading dairy wastewater on fields. But in the continuing logo saga, Whey to Go and Cabot seem to be on the same page: Whey to Go is issuing a petition urging Vermont's leaders to support the decision to drop the state from Cabot's label.
"Some of our political leaders are extolling the virtues of Cabot Creamery as this Vermont icon," Dennett says. "What's troubling to me is they're turning a blind eye [on their environmental practices]. We don't want to look at uncomfortable facts that are staring us in the eye."
During the pitched Statehouse fight over a proposed merger between Vermont’s two largest electric utilities, both sides raised the specter of the big, bad opposition quashing the just and the true with lobbying and advertising cash.
Rep. Patti Komline (R-Dorset), who opposed aspects of the merger between Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service, repeatedly accused electric company lobbyists of intimidating lawmakers who signed on to an amendment she supported. Meanwhile, Gov. Peter Shumlin, who backed the merger, said he and the electric companies were drowned out in the message war by an out-of-state advocacy group: AARP.
So who outgunned whom?
Lobbying disclosure forms recently filed with the Vermont Secretary of State’s office paint a portrait of the opposing armies — though not a complete one.
During the first three months of the year, Green Mountain Power hired 14 outside lobbyists to coordinate the company’s advocacy work in the Statehouse, in addition to two in-house employees — Donald Rendall and Robert Dostis — who also lobby legislators. The price tag? $54,183 for the first quarter — roughly $14,000 more than the company spent on lobbying during the same quarter last year.
GMP spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure said the company has a long-standing contract with KSE Partners to provide general lobbying support for a host of issues before the legislature. The company brought on MacLean Meehan & Rice to focus specifically on the merger. GMP also contracted with former VP Stephen Terry, while KSE subcontracted with independent lobbyist Jeanne Kennedy.
“We have always had a lobbying team in Montpelier because it’s important for legislators who are passing bills to understand the effect on customers,” Schnure said.
While Green Mountain Power’s owner — Montreal-based Gaz Metro — first announced its offer to buy CVPS last June, much of the action under the golden dome happened during the last month. The recently-filed disclosure forms only cover lobbying costs through March 31 — so the full lobbying price tag won’t be clear until July.
In total, GMP spent $124,764 on lobbying last year. Those expenses cannot be billed to ratepayers and must come from shareholders.
CVPS, meanwhile, spent $27,350 on lobbying during the first three months of the year — up from $23,820 last year. Of that, $22,000 went to a five-member team at Downs Rachlin Martin headed by Montpelier mayor John Hollar and $5350 went to CVPS vice president Brian Keefe, who coordinates lobbying and communications for the electric company.
In total, CVPS spent $42,638 on lobbying last year.
“I think we’re very attentive to the business over there, including the legislation related to the merger,” Keefe said.
AARP, which has emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of a portion of the merger proposal, reported $129,818 in lobbying expenses. However, only $15,000 of that went to a lobbyist: It accounted for a portion of AARP in-house lobbyist Philene Taormina’s salary.
The rest? The organization reported $76,027 in television and print advertisements and spent the remaining $38,791 on direct mail, a telephone town hall meeting and fees to a lawyer arguing the organization’s case before the Public Service Board.
Those figures do not include the entirety of the organization’s advertising campaign, which called on the electric companies to return a disputed $21 million to ratepayers. As Seven Days previously reported, AARP’s extensive media campaign included close to $100,000 in television ad buys. But because many of those ads ran in April, the full cost of the campaign won’t be clear until the next filing.
Gov. Peter Shumlin, a staunch defender of the deal his administration cut with the merging utilities, has criticized AARP’s ad blitz, arguing that its simplified, populist message drowned out the merits of the merger. At a press conference two weeks ago, he called it an “out-of-state” media campaign designed to boost the national organization.
“You should ask AARP that, but I think you’ll find that they have this national policy and they have decided — and I say may, because I don’t know this as a fact — to use utility rates and mergers as a way of building support for AARP nationally,” Shumlin said. “I don’t think they’re just in here spending this money because they think the little state of Vermont is going to make a big difference.”
Indeed, AARP’s national headquarters announced last year a “multistate campaign” to help members “take action to fight utility bill increases.” AARP national spokeswoman Tiffany Lundquist said as many as 30 state chapters were engaged in utility regulatory or legislative fights, making use of a staff of three employees and other consultants who work on such issues. Lundquist cited recent fights in Colorado, West Virginia and Oklahoma, where AARP state branches won rate decreases.
“This is a really close-to-home issue for many older Americans who are frequently deciding whether to keep the light or heat on or pay for their medications,” Lundquist said. “This work can really make a difference.”
Greg Marchildon, AARP’s Vermont state director, says that while his organization’s fight against the GMP-CVPS merger may be part of a national effort to focus on utilities, it has been directed entirely within the borders of the Green Mountain State. He takes umbrage with Shumlin’s comments.
“That is the biggest bunch of hooey crap I have heard in the 20 years I have been doing this kind of work,” he said, arguing that his in-state staff of five was outmatched by the electric companies and the Shumlin administration. “The notion that somehow the governor has been outgunned by this big, bad out-of-state lobby is the stuff that comedy is made of. It would be funny if it wasn’t so cynical.”
Of course, gauging just how much money has been spent on persuasion and lobbying in the merger fight is a futile task. In addition to AARP, 17 other advocacy groups, trade associations, utilities, unions and businesses formally intervened in the merger’s Public Service Board case — and many of those outfits have lobbying power of their own in the Statehouse.
For instance, Vermont Electric Power Co. — the state’s transmission utility, whose ownership structure would be dramatically affected by the merger — reported $43,500 in lobbying expenses last quarter, a portion of which also went to MacLean Meehan & Rice. And the state’s community action agencies — which would receive $12 million in weatherization funding if Shumlin’s merger deal is approved — paid lobbyist Bob Stannard $20,000 for his work this legislative session.
Furthermore, while AARP included advertising expenditures in its disclosure forms, the utilities did not. Schnure and Keefe explained that while both underwrite Vermont Public Radio and Vermont Public Television, the resultant on-air announcements do not mention specific advocacy issues, such as the proposed merger.
Schnure said GMP spent roughly $37,000 last year on advertising and underwriting, much of which went to VPR. CVPS, meanwhile, spent $23,162 last year and $12,576 so far this year underwriting VPR and VPT.
The utilities have found other ways to tout the virtues of the merger to the masses. Both CVPS and GMP have included color inserts with headlines like “GMP Offers New Benefits for CVPS Customers” in the bills they send every customer. Though the inserts argue that the merger will save customers millions and direct the reader to a pro-merger website, Keefe says they are “informational” in nature. As such, they do not have to be disclosed as issue advocacy and can be charged to ratepayers.
“We’re trying to get customers familiar with the new look and feel of the new company, so it’s something familiar, as opposed to, ‘Where did this come from?’” Keefe said.
Schnure agreed.
“We have an obligation and responsibility to keep customers informed about major developments affecting their electric service, which we do every month and have for decades,” she said.
"Eat More Kale" t-shirt artist Bo-Muller Moore is having a roller coaster of a week. On Sunday night, he was thrilled to discover that the Kickstarter campaign to raise money to fund a documentary film about his legal tangle with fast-food giant Chick-fil-A had raised roughly $86,000, exceeding the original goal by $11,000.
Two days later, Muller-Moore learned his quest to register a trademark had hit a sobering speed bump: In a preliminary ruling, an attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office determined that there's a "likelihood of confusion" between Muller-More's "Eat More Kale" slogan and Chick-fil-A's "Eat mor Chikin" marketing campaign.
"It makes me sick to my stomach," says Muller-Moore of the news, though he quickly recovered his signature chutzpah. "There's still a lot of fighting to be done."
Muller-Moore received a cease-and-desist letter from Chick-fil-A this fall, a few months after he filed to register his own "Eat More Kale" trademark. The company also asked him to turn over his website, the second time in six years that Chick-fil-A had tried to shut him down. Since Gov. Peter Shumlin prominently stepped in to support Muller-Moore and formed the advisory Team Kale, Muller-Moore's case has garnered widespread attention. He received thousands of orders for his t-shirts and tons of national press. Donations for the documentary he's making with Burlington filmmaker James Lantz, A Defiant Dude, poured in from across the world.
The trademark attorney's letter explains that the office compared the two slogans — "Eat More Kale" and "Eat mor Chikin," — on the basis of "appearance, sound, connotation and commercial impression," as well as whether both are used in similar ways — in this case, on clothing — and the maxim that people "are more inclined to focus on the first word, prefix or syllable in any trademark or service mark."
"Both the applicant and the registrant in this instance are providing essentially the same goods, namely, clothing, and services featuring clothing (imprinting decorative designs on t-shirts)," the letter concludes. "Therefore, with the contemporaneous use of highly similar marks, consumers are likely to reach the mistaken conclusion that the goods and goods and services are related and originate from a common source."
"Obviously, I think this is the wrong decision. We're going to submit filings to show that there is no, has never been or is likely to ever be any confusion," says Dan Richardson, Muller-Moore's attorney. The letter doesn't mean that Muller-Moore needs to back down just yet; Richardson and the rest of the legal team will assemble evidence to support Muller-Moore's trademark request.
The confusing ins and outs of trademark law aside, "This has become a galvanizing issue. Bo is not unlike a lot of small businesses out there. What he's getting is essentially the billion-dollar cold shoulder from Chick-fil-A, and I don't think anyone thinks that's fair," observes Richardson.
"It's totally absurd what's happening here — you have a conglomo whose counsel is doing exactly what the company pays them to do, which is clear the field," says Jonathan Pink, an intellectual property attorney with the law firm Bryan Cave. He has loosely followed the case from his Los Angeles office and penned a blog post about it earlier this week. He muses that the company seems to be trying to own the phase "eat more" as it applies to practically anything. "How far do you take it?"
Muller-Moore says that after he broke news of the letter, he received a flood of t-shirt orders via his website, which he and his team are hustling to fill.
"I've been selling t-shirts for 11 years. I've had thousands of conversations about my t-shirts and no one had ever brought up this parallel or similarity, with the exception of Chick-fil-A's lawyers and one federal attorney in the trademark office, " he says. "Who are these people? Do they have any conscience?" It's such a gross misstep of intellectual property rights law. I don't know how the lawyers pursuing it can sleep well at night."
With classic southern aplomb, he vowed to keep pressing his case. "It ain't over yet, sister."
Sharp-eyed readers of the Seven Days classifieds may have noticed an intriguing tidbit in the Jan. 25 and Feb. 1 listings: Two years after opening in the Queen City, the Burlington Hostel is for sale.
Former Seven Days writer Lauren Ober spent a night at the hostel in 2010, shortly after Brian and Olga Dalmer opened the 48-bed dorm at the corner of Main and South Champlain. The couple moved up from Connecticut to open the hostel, touting the city's lack of affordable hotel beds as the perfect opening for a new business.
Now, says Brian Dalmer when reached by telephone in Arkansas, the couple is looking into selling because they may not be in Burlington much longer. Dalmer wouldn't say more on the subject, but says the possible sale boils down to personal circumstance and not the business itself.
Dalmer wouldn't say whether there he's gotten any offers but emphatically added, "It's not going to close." With reservations already on the books for May, he says and his wife will be returning to Burlington to reopen after the scheduled winter hiatus "unless something changes."
The sales listing touted a "fully operational" and "profitable" business with a prime location, furnishings and 48 beds. With that many beds, Dalmer says it's likely the hostel will never be fully booked.
"We should be able to handle all that Burlington throws at us," Dalmer says.
The listing also says that revenue at the hostel increased 85 percent in the second year of business. Dalmer says the business turned a profit last year (though he wouldn't say how much), and anticipates another strong year this season.
"The business should do really well," he says. He chuckles. "If it were to sell, we’d probably kick ourselves two years from now."
Any takers?
Photo by Matthew Thorsen.
As reported in today’s issue of Seven Days, a possible moratorium on hydraulic fracturing is wending its way through the Statehouse. In a preemptive strike, lawmakers are considering putting the brakes on the controversial method of drilling for natural gas more commonly known as fracking.
But despite the state’s apparent squeamishness over fracking, Vermont is moving ahead with plans to expand its natural gas network.
Right now, Vermont gets about 6 percent of its energy from natural gas. There's only one gas utility in the state: Vermont Gas Systems, a subsidiary of Montreal-based Gaz Métro, which since 1965 has piped natural gas from the Canadian border to customers in Chittenden and Franklin counties.
Now Vermont Gas Systems is looking to expand. The utility won approval last fall from the Vermont Public Service Board to funnel $4.4 million annually into an expansion fund, with an eye toward extending its reach into Addison and Rutland counties as early as 2015.
Natural gas “doesn’t do sprawl well,” says Steve Wark, Vermont Gas director of communications. That means the utility is looking for places with a population density to support new pipelines. And that population — especially when it comes to local business — is hungry for natural gas. Cheaper fuel means bigger profits.
“Right now our focus is on helping businesses and residential consumers save money by using natural gas,” Wark says.
Natural gas is also singled out in the Shumlin administration's comprehensive energy plan, released in December. The report says natural gas could serve as an engine for economic development; as a possible means of powering transportation fleets; and, potentially, as the fuel for small or medium-sized electricity generating plants.
While acknowledging that new extraction techniques — meaning fracking — raise “significant environmental and emissions concerns,” the plan calls for Vermont to increase use of natural gas and bio-fuel blends when it isn’t possible to use renewable energy.
The reason? It’s cheap. Right now, gas is 40 percent cheaper than fuel oil — and it’s cleaner burning than other types of fossil fuels.
“Before hydrofracking came forward, people were really pushing natural gas as an environmental boon,” says Ken Smith, the director of the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Chenango County, New York. Smith is on the front lines of the debate over fracking along the Marcellus Shale in New York.
“There are great benefits in Vermont to switching to natural gas,” Smith says. “That doesn’t take away the other negatives … but I think it’s important for people to consider that as part of the equation.”
Smith points out that Vermont is downwind from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest — and their toxic emissions that carry powerful toxins like mercury, which is responsible for acid rain. Smith argues that the state stands to benefit if its neighbors make the switch to natural gas.
Not everyone agrees. Paul Burns, the executive director of Vermont Public Interest Research Group, says that natural gas prices are arguably too low.
“They are low enough to be making it difficult for truly green technologies on the renewable sides of things to get a foothold,” Burns says.
This much is certain: The state’s potential moratorium on fracking will likely have no bearing on the natural gas market. Vermonters’ natural gas comes from Alberta and travels east along the TransCanada Pipeline. The province is rich in natural gas reserves, producing 75 percent of the gas extracted in Canada each year.
Joe Choquette, a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute In Vermont, estimates that between 30 and 45 percent of the gas delivered to Vermont’s border comes from hydraulic fracturing in Canada. Wark won’t guess at a percentage; he says it’s too hard to know how the gas is extracted.
For activists like Burns, that's all the more reason to move away from all fossil fuels — cheap natural gas included.
“I think environmentalists are having to take another look at gas and whether or not it should be considered a so-called bridge to a cleaner future,” Burns says. “We need to be going even more rapidly toward renewable energy.”
= The 6000 block of Shelburne's Route 7 is on its way to becoming an epicenter of food culture.
On the west side side of the road is Shelburne Vineyard; across the street is the brand-new Fiddlehead Brewing Company, as well as Folino's, a flatbread eatery due to open this spring. On the hill behind the brewery, a group of visionary architects and builders have been renovating the 73,000-square-foot former home of Shelburne Industries, with the eventual intention of turning it into a food hub under the loose name of the Vermont Food Project. Eventual tenants will include a bakery and café, and possibly a miller, distiller, creamery and chocolate maker.
There's also tons of office space inside, too. And after more than a year of construction, the complex is about to take its first significant step forward. The ever-growing EatingWell Media Group will relocate its offices here by the end of the month, along with its 30 or so employees.
Over the last decade, EatingWell has grown from an adless quarterly to a thriving media giant, all from its offices in rural Charlotte. It lures four million unique visitors to its website each month, racks up James Beard awards for its cookbooks and articles, and recently increased print circulation from 350,000 last year to 500,000.
Some of that growth has been buoyed by Meredith Corporation, who snapped up EatingWell last summer. At the time, some speculated (and worried) that the very local EatingWell would be moved out of state. Their worries were for naught.
"Our new owners really decided they wanted to invest in keeping us in Vermont" says Lisa Gosselin, EatingWell's editorial director. "This was also a terrific opportunity to be in a brand-new LEED-certified building." The new locale offers more space, two photo studios, a video kitchen studio, "brand-new" test kitchens and better connectivity (cell reception was poor in Charlotte).
Gosselin notes that Meredith has been "pushing to own the food space." Last year, the company also launched recipe.com and purchased allrecipes.com as well as Every Day with Rachael Ray, with an impressive 1.7 million monthly circulation. EatingWell represents the "healthy food brand" in that trifecta, says Gosselin.
The complex where they'll reside is being called Shelburne Green. Its former flagship company, Shelburne Industries, was owned and operated by the late governor Richard A. Snelling. Those who run the Vermont Food Project chose to remain anonymous, but are close to tapping a constellation of agricultural producers for the space. Burlington's J. Graham Goldsmith Architects, which owns the site and building, has led the renovation.
"We're hoping it's going to be a food hub," says Gosselin of EatingWell's new home.
It's been a big year for the Center for Cartoon Studies. The nation's only cartoon school, based in White River Junction, kicked off 2011 with the announcement of Vermont's first, official cartoonist laureate, James Kochalka of Burlington.
In August, CCS did battle with Tropical Storm Irene when the White River poured into the building housing the school's Charles Schultz Library (they saved all the books).
This week, CCS announces a very happy culmination to the year: a new building.
Well, a new old building. CCS closed yesterday on its purchase of the historic post office on South Main Street, which was constructed in 1934. The Colonial Revival-style brick structure has also been a Vermont District Court and a private office building.
It's about to become the school's HQ, housing classrooms, much-needed faculty space, and the library. Existing tenants in the upper floor offices will remain and their rent will help to pay the mortgage on CCS' first fully-owned building.
"There's so much discussion about the post office now," notes school co-founder Michelle Ollie. Earlier this month, the feds targeted WRJ's mail-processing facility for closure, a decision that would eliminate 252 local jobs, and which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) got postponed until May. It wouldn't be the first disruption in the town's postal functions. The distribution center, built in 1964, supplanted the post office in WRJ's historic district.
"We'll be occupying a building that hasn't been used by the post in decades," Ollie observes. "It's positive news, a positive reuse. It's kind of answering a lot of things."
She reveals that the seller of the building, real estate developer (and CCS board member) Bayle Drubel, gave CCS "a price point that is just unbelievable — a couple hundred thousand [dollars] below market value." And so far, the school has received $93,000 in pledges to help pay for its new digs. After renovations, she and CCS co-founder James Sturm will greet new students there in fall 2012.
The Center for Cartoon Studies, which launched in 2005, offers one- and two-year certificates and an MFA in cartooning, as well as summer workshops. Students and graduates of the school contribute to a biweekly comics page, Drawn and Paneled, in Seven Days.
Illustration by CCS alum Alexis Frederick-Frost
A for-profit company that wanted to buy Fletcher Allen Health Care's five outpatient dialysis clinics announced today it's pulling the plug on the $28-million sale.
FAHC announced last year it wanted to sell off the clinics because they were losing about $1.8 million annually. Fresenius Medical Care proposed to buy them and run them through its subsidiary, Bio-Medical Care Holdings, based in New Hampshire.
State regulators panned the proposed sale earlier this month.
Steve Kimbell, commissioner of the Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration, issued a preliminary denial of the proposal on the grounds that the sale would result in lower-quality services at higher cost, without any improvement in access to care.
Rather than appeal Kimbell's preliminary ruling, Fresenius and FAHC have agreed to let it stand as the final word.
Officials representing Fresenius and FAHC blasted Kimbell's draft decision in separate letters, claiming it misrepresented facts and, as a result, drew improper conclusions.
In a tersely worded, seven-page letter to Kimbell, interim FAHC president and CEO John Brumsted said the healthcare organization disputes many of Kimbell's findings and observations.
"In short, Fletcher Allen disagrees strongly with your decision, but we recognize that it is not likely to be changed by further administrative or legal proceedings," Brumsted wrote. "Fletcher Allen believes that its decision to sell put the interests of our patients first. It would have assured the continuation of high-quality outpatient dialysis in Vermont at the existing locations for at least 10 years, while permitting Fletcher Allen to relinquish what is for us, at best, a financially marginal service and to strengthen other core services. Your decision, we recognize, overrides Fletcher Allen's decision, approved by our Board of Trustees, but we continue to believe strongly that [our] decision was the best one for our patients and the communities we serve."
Brumsted said FAHC believes Kimbell set a dangerous standard in his interpretation of the state's certificate of need law as it applies to this sale. State law requires regulators to determine a consumer "need" for the sale to occur.
"The approach taken in your proposed decision, if consistently applied, would raise an almost insurmountable barrier to any purchase transaction that is subject to CON review, unless the seller is in extraordinary financial distress. In essence, you decided that our proposed sale to Fresenius is not 'needed,' because Fletcher Allen had not decided definitively and declared publicly that it will close its dialysis clinics without a sale," wrote Brumsted.
FAHC and Fresenius argued that the sale would keep the dialysis clinics intact for 10 years and maintain certain minimum staffing levels. Kimbell questioned those assumptions, skeptical of the resulting increased charges to insurance carriers to ensure that Fresenius would earn back a return on its investment. He also questioned whether FAHC couldn't do a better job with the existing facilities within its existing budget.
In its letter, Fresenius disputed Kimbell's conclusion that estimated the company was showing a 20 percent decrease in nursing staff.
"The applicant has, in fact, extended conditional offers of employment to each and every member of the current nursing staff," wrote Annie Cramer, of Primmer Piper and Eggleston, the Burlington law firm that represented Fresenius. Any staff cuts were made by FAHC and reflect current head counts, not proposed ones, she added.
Cramer also wrote that Fresenius was upset that it was given no opportunity to address Kimbell's concerns and claims during the review process. Its only option was to respond once Kimbell made his proposed decision public.
Fletcher Allen operates five outpatient dialysis clinics, in South Burlington, St. Albans, Berlin, Rutland and Newport. They collectively serve about 241 people, with another 26 people receiving services in their homes. The total sale was valued at more than $28 million.
“Bio-Medical’s decision to withdraw closes the docket in this matter,” said Clifford Peterson, BISHCA’s general counsel. “The Department will work with Fletcher Allen to assure continued delivery of high-quality outpatient dialysis treatment to Vermonters.”
Brumsted complained that FAHC cannot simply raise its rates to cover losses as Kimbell noted in his proposed decision.
"Raising rates (charges) for hospital services does not result in a dollar-for-dollar increase in hospital revenues. Hospitals are not paid what they charge. This is especially true with respect to outpatient dialysis services, for which Medicare is the primary payer and provides fixed reimbursement that is non-negotiable and completely unrelated to hospital rates or charges," Brumsted noted.
For FAHC, Medicare provides roughly 90 percent of the reimbursement for dialysis services. Less than 10 percent of FAHC's outpatient dialysis services are currently paid by commercial payers, and on average, commercial payers pay only 64 percent of what FAHC charges, Brumsted noted in his letter.
"Commercial reimbursement is also subject to negotiation or renegotiation of payment contracts with insurers. Health insurers are highly resistant to payment increases. Payment increases may also require separate approvals from health insurance regulators," Brumsted added. Given these dynamics, Fletcher Allen's ability to increase dialysis revenues is complex and highly uncertain."
Download full letter from FAHC to BISHCA: Kimbell letter 12-19-11
Download full letter from Fresenius to BISHCA: Withdrawal of CON Application