June 1, 2010

Contact: David Mace (802) 828-5229

Two Start-Up Companies Approved For $230,000 In Job Creation Incentives

New companies could create 41 jobs

MONTPELIER, VT. – Two start-up companies, one a sales firm and the other a wood products manufacturer with plans to reopen the shuttered Stanley Tool Plant in Pittsfield, have been authorized to earn up to $230,094 in Vermont Employment Growth Incentives.

The companies, if they grow in or locate in Vermont, could create 41 new jobs over the next five years, according to officials with the Vermont Economic Progress Council, which authorized the incentives late last week.

The Original Vermont Wood Products, Inc. was authorized to earn incentives totaling $100,604. The start-up company plans to re-start production at the former Stanley Tool plant in Pittsfield and bring most of the Stanley employees back to work.

They would lease the plant and equipment and make wood component parts for other customers. They also plan a new line of custom post caps, trellises, pergolas and wood sheds.

The Stanley Plant closed in 2008, bringing unemployment in Pittsfield to one of the highest levels in the state. The area also has low average income levels and the plant is the only production facility in the area and is a major source of property tax revenue for the town.

These factors allowed the Council to consider an enhanced level of incentives for the project under state law.

“The Council took into consideration the economic condition of the region and the impact of the Stanley plant closing on the residents of Pittsford and authorized the maximum allowable level of incentives,” said Karen Marshall, VEPC Chairwoman. “We elected to support this start-up to the fullest extent possible because of the potential benefit to area residents, which would also reduce the demand on state and local public assistance programs.”

The company hopes to start hiring immediately and begin production this summer.

“We are very grateful for this early vote of confidence from the Vermont Economic Progress Council,” said Gary Springfield, president of The Original Vermont Wood Products, Inc. “We are hoping to re-open the former Stanley plant as soon as possible and put local residents back to work there producing high quality wood products.”

A new company that would be established in Vermont by entrepreneurs Chris Foran and Gregory Dunne was given initial authorization to earn up to $129,490. The new company would provide inside sales services to their existing company, Mansfield Sales Partners, Inc. of Woburn, Massachusetts, and other existing and new clients.

Mansfield Sales partners, Inc. is a sales consulting firm that helps small and medium size companies increase revenue by building up their sales pipeline, penetrating new markets, and opening new territories.

The new company would provide lead generation services to the senior sales consultants at Mansfield and provide similar services for other clients. They plan to lease a facility in Chittenden County and begin operations in late 2010.

“We are excited to be working with the state of Vermont on this start-up project as a part of our overall growth plans,” said Chris Foran, President of Mansfield Sales Partners. “Locating the business in Chittenden County will provide us with access to a high quality work force for these new positions and is a great area to locate this new business.”

Under reforms proposed by Governor Jim Douglas in 2006 and passed by the General Assembly, the VEGI economic incentives are authorized based on potential job creation and capital investments that must occur before the company earns the incentives and then the company receives incentive installments over a period of years.

The companies are eligible to earn the job creation incentives only if they meet and maintain payroll, employment and capital investment targets each year. Overall, these projects could create 41 new full-time jobs and $1.4 million in new payroll over five years.

The Council approved the applications after reviewing nine program guidelines and applying a rigorous cost-benefit analysis which showed that because of the economic activity that will be generated by these projects, even after payment of the incentives the State will realize a minimum net increase in tax revenues of $68,000.

The Council also determined that these projects would not occur or would occur in a significantly different and less desirable manner if not for the incentives being authorized, the “but for” test.

The Vermont Economic Progress Council is an independent board consisting of nine Vermont citizens appointed by the governor, and two members appointed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, that considers applications to the state’s economic incentive programs.

The Council is attached to the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, whose mission is to help Vermonters improve their quality of life and build strong communities.

For more information, visit: http://economicdevelopment.vermont.gov/Programs/VEPC/tabid/124/Default.aspx

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COLCHESTER, Vt., June 1 – With about 1,500 Vermont National Guard members deployed in Afghanistan, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie today announced continued funding for a model outreach initiative and a new childcare program.

“When these soldiers were deployed, Vermonters made a promise to them that we would do our best to protect them and their families when they were in combat and when they returned,” Sanders said. “All of us should be very proud that Vermont has come up with programs that have become, in some ways, a model for America.”

At a press conference at Camp Johnson, the senator and the Vermont National Guard adjutant general detailed how $2.4 million in federal funds allotted at Sanders’ request is continuing a Vermont outreach program that has become a model for other states.

“In most states, the flag-waving hasn’t translated into substantial long-term support for reservists. They are left on their own to make the tricky transition from combat to civilian life. Some are grieving combat losses, others face divorce. And some end up fighting the Army itself…But as the unprecedented reliance on reserve forces continues — they make up about half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans — a few states are realizing more has to be done,” according to a May 24 front-page article in Stars and Stripes. “The Pentagon and Veterans Affairs are betting that one state — Vermont — could become a national model.”

The program allows the Vermont National Guard to hire trained outreach specialists, many of them veterans themselves, to proactively contact returning and deploying service members and their families. The program makes certain that guardsmen and their families receive the physical health care, mental health counseling, and other assistance that they need.

Sanders secured another $1.6 million Supplemental Childcare Support for Families of Deployed Vermont Reserve Component. The childcare services for guard families are similar to those provided by Operation Military Child Care, for families of deployed Vermont Reserve Component service members. The services include programs at state-licensed childcare centers, licensed family-care facilities, or licensed before- and after-school programs and camps.

Contact: Michael Briggs or Will Wiquist (202) 224-5141

VTDigger

NEWS RELEASE

For Information:
Jodi Manning

802.236.5458 (cell)

Darren Allen

802.839.8618 (cell)

June 1, 2010

Teachers Picket Before School, Make Case for Negotiation

More than two-thirds of members show solidarity and seek to get board back to the table

RUTLAND TOWN – More than two-thirds of the members of Rutland Town Education Association picketed before school Tuesday morning in a show of solidarity aimed at getting the school board back to the negotiating table.

The 24 teachers held signs along the road and at entrances to Rutland Town School, garnering the attention of parents, administrators and the community. The picketing will continue through the week, and was prompted by the school board’s decision last week to walk away from the bargaining table and impose working conditions on teachers.

The teachers have been without a contract for the entire school year, and have sought to compromise with the board. The board has refused to consider the teachers’ numerous offers that would have addressed the district’s economic situation and guaranteed an end to annual negotiations.

“We want to send a message to the board, and that is: talk to us, return to the table and make a deal that is fair to us, to the community and the students,” said Jodi Manning, Rutland Town EA president. “By imposing working conditions on us, the board is showing its contempt for the bargaining process.”

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CCTV’s Anniversary Picnic and Silent Auction – Friday, June 11th from 5 – 8 p.m., Shelter at Oakledge Park in Burlington.

Celebrate CCTV’s 26th Anniversary with an early summer picnic on Friday, June 11th from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. at Burlington’s Oakledge Park (Shelter by the Park Entrance). Join your free speech friends for food, drink, cake, Free Speech Heroes and bid on all the wonderful items at the silent auction. Parking at Oakledge is $5 per car for Burlington residents and $8 for nonresidents. Family, friends and free speech supporters all welcome! RSVP Today!

Silent Auction items may be viewed in advance at:

http://www.cctv.org/news/cctv-anniversary-silent-auction-items-available-bidding

Whether one can attend or not, proposed bids on items may be sent to Meghan at morourke@cctv.org

CCTV’s Center for Media & Democracy provides channels, tools and training for community based organizations and activists to expand their reach and impact and to make social change happen. For more information go to www.cctv.org or contact Lauren-Glenn Davitian at davitian@cctv.org and 802.862.1645 x12 CCTV’s Center for Media and Democracy is home to *Channel 17 and CCTV Productions.* *Channel 17* provides government access and public affairs programming to the Comcast cable subscribers of Colchester, South Burlington, Burlington, Essex Town, Essex Junction, Winooski, Williston and St. George as well as to the subscribers of Burlington telecom cable. Channel 17′s mission is to make government more accessible and accountable to Chittenden County residents and to provide citizens with a direct link to public policy makers. *CCTV Productions* provides affordable high quality production services to area non-profits and community organizations.

VTDigger

The burbs, stockxchng.com

Happy New Year! Out with the new! In with the old!

Let’s party like it’s 1994–back when Howard Dean was governor; Ben and Jerry owned their Chunky Monkey, not Unilever; the Dog Team Tavern was still spinning its relish wheel and proffering sticky buns; and Taft Corners was mostly hay fields.

Though 1994 is really not that long ago, it definitely feels very last century. Since I moved here 15 years ago, the Chittenden County landscape–physical, sociological, cultural and commercial–looks like it has undergone a bad face lift.

Of course, there are those who will argue that Chittenden County is an anomaly. “The nice thing about Burlington is it’s so close to Vermont,” it’s been said. But for those who think that the Champlain Valley is not a microcosm of the state, or at least a bellwether, I suggest taking a good look around your own county.

Do the changes I see locally reflect what’s going on in the rest of the country, where the divide between the haves and have-nots is still widening? I’d say here in Vermont it’s a more subtle divide between the “Have mores” and “Have lesses”– the upscale and the downscale.

For the more affluent, Starbuck’s is the new Dunkin’ Donuts; Sushi is the new fast food; yoga, the new jogging; and meditation, the new happy hour. And for the rest of us Denny’s, snowmobiling and hunting will suffice. Hold the arugula, and pass the chicken pie!

Start with just our neighborhood, for example. While we live in a town with a very strong land preservation movement and plenty of open vistas, there are still some changes on our little corner of Mt. Philo Road. I guess you could say that we now have more than twice the carbon footprint, since the population of the private road adjacent to our small horse farm has more than doubled.

Where there used to be only three houses, there are now seven, four of them built in the last 15 years. While the neighbors are affable, more people means a steady stream of heavy equipment–road and driveway maintenance, fuel deliveries, lawn services, garbage trucks and almost daily visits from UPS and Fed Ex. Factor in two, sometimes three vehicles per domicile, 1.5 barking dogs a household and miscellaneous children and visitors and some days there is more or less constant activity.

Adding to the hubbub, traffic on the main road has increased exponentially. It’s now a popular motorcycle (the high-pitched Japanese kind) and bike-tour route. And during the week, the huge Mactrucks prefer it to Rte. 7– heaven knows why. We can’t ride our horses along Mt. Philo Road anymore to access the bordering fields and woods, because almost no one “slows for horses.” Their idea of slowing down is to keep or exceed the speed limit, crossing to the wrong side of the road, giving us a wide berth, but not much peace of mind. We often would see other equestrians riding by–but no more! Perhaps they’ve just given up.

One of the houses on our neighboring road is an especially notorious symbol of devolving Vermont, It’s a big Victorian repro that has had its share of troubled occupants over the years. Back in 1994, it was home to Jeffrey Nichols–the mother of all “deadbeat dads,” who made national news. We remember the time “60 Minutes” came looking for him.

The next resident was Bill Boettcher whose recent tenure at Fletcher Allen sent him from his big house to the Really Big House.

And speaking of big houses, housing developments are now everywhere you look, filling up empty fields along Spear and Dorset Streets with veritable McMansions. Whatever happened to smaller homes? Who needs that much space, with wall-to-wall marble and gourmet kitchens and Great Rooms? (More importantly, who wants to heat it!) In our funky old 19th-century house farmhouse, all our rooms are sufficiently great, thanks for asking.

No one can deny that the traffic has gotten worse everywhere, trying everyone’s patience and bringing vehicular rudeness to Vermont. It used to be unthinkable to honk your horn or cut off other drivers.

Now it’s more the norm, especially during the endless nightmare that was the widening of Shelburne Road, which has brought with it more quick stops/gas stations, motels, and big grocery stores (when

I first moved here, it was Grand Union or nothing!) than we could possibly need. And while Shelburne Road was less than picturesque 15 years, widening it did nothing to improve the view.

Sunset over Lake Champlain, stockxchng.com

And what happened to good old unpretentious American food, the kind Perry’s, Jake’s, Cactus Pete’s or the Sirloin Saloon served up—all gone out of business? Now on the dining menu are fast food and chains or swishy bistros–food with “’tude”–with precious names and fare (wilted spinach, remoulades and red-wine reductions). Where can you still find “a nice piece of grilled fish,” as our neighbor Bobby calls it, and a humble salad bar?

Bigger is better in public architecture also. The hospital, thanks to Boettcher, looks as much like the airport as the airport, maybe more. When I used to make a weekly commute to Washington, D.C., back in the days when there were no nonstop flights there, it was still one lone terminal building. Oh, I suppose we needed it, since the number of passengers has gone from around 450,000 10 years ago to just over 700,000 this year (thanks to Jet Blue). But the old airport had a certain homely Vermont charm after all those sprawling major hubs so large they should have their own zip codes.

Even the annual fall hunting ritual has succumbed to the 21st century. The red-check wool hunter’s garb has now morphed into super-camouflage, full Desert-Storm-type gear.

Could we say, perhaps, that this is overkill, considering the opponents are unarmed, helpless deer?

Which brings us to the biggest change–the big Kahuna of them all–Taft Corners in “Williston, New Jersey,” as one editorial writer (full disclosure, my husband) once put it. While we’d rather not go there, go there we must, mainly to buy horse supplies. For those who missed it, the sprawl that is now Taft Corners unleashed a huge controversy before it was finally permitted, literally and figuratively.

Could they build all those cavernous stores, and if they did, could the one lane road that was 116 handle the traffic? Could we really have a Walmart here in Vermont? Why, it went against our identity, our very Vermont-ness.

On one side were the people who wanted cheap goods, the more the better, on the other those who wanted to buy local, and preserve the open space that still remained. Well, okey-dokey, it was decided, we could have Walmart, and all the other huge soulless box stores, as long as it was “planned” development. Ah yes, that made everything just fine. Half of it is actually planned, and half isn’t. Honestly, can you tell the difference? And the so-called road improvements, merely created two lanes of bottleneck instead of one, still not adequate to handle the traffic to and from Dick’sBestBigBuyDepotMart & Beyond, especially on a Friday afternoon.

If the Taft Corners controversy happened now, would the newspapers even cover it? With all the Vermont papers mere shadows of their former selves, who’s watching our collective backs?

Oh, yes, and another change: There are fewer farms, unless you count Lang Farm in Essex–not a farm at all, of course, but yet another mall. Not much milking going on there.

And crime has gotten much worse. People are now forced to lock their houses and their vehicles. Gone are the days of leaving the car idling at the grocery, keys in the ignition, to run in and buy milk.

Even the wildlife has evolved–witness the wild turkey population in our pasture, often more than two dozen at a time, getting bigger and bigger every year and positively thriving. Some say the wolf has made a resurgence, mating with coy dogs to make bigger coys. Then there are the more frequent “catamount” sightings. Hmmmmm. Turkeys and predators. What does that imply about our changing Vermont culture?

Gone are the days of leaving the car idling at the grocery, keys in the ignition, to run in and buy milk.”

I’m not saying by any means that we might as well all just move back to New Jersey. There is still plenty of the old Vermont left. Subaru is still the state car; WDEV still has the “Radio Rangers” and Music to Go to the Dump By” on Saturday mornings; our maple syrup is still the best on the planet (sorry, Canada); the sunsets over Lake Champlain are still breathtaking; and Bernie is still Bernie–Senator Bernie to you.

The old Vermont continues to thrive in the guise of the local businesses that did not get swallowed up whole by the giant maw of Taft Corners. It may be that the old and the new can peacefully coexist long into the future. Vermonters are just contrary enough not to let the state get totally hijacked, but the Philistines are definitely making inroads. Just keep your eye on the giant descending New Year’s ball. In another 15 years, I really don’t want to have to say I told you so.

Barbara Ann Curcio is a former reporter and syndicated columnist for The Washington Post.

VTDigger

Photo from stockxchng.com

The Vermont Community Foundation released the study “Giving in Vermont: A Case for Growing Philanthropy” last week, which analyzes Vermonters’ contributions to charitable organizations against giving in other states. The Green Mountain State got a D- in the fiscal generosity department: It ranked 48^th nationally in 2005. We got a solid grade A though on the volunteerism front. Overall average: C-plus. For a state that’s so used to scoring high marks in other arenas, such as health care and education, our tightwad reputation is an unusual streak of mediocrity.

-Anne Galloway

The 63-page report and an executive summary are posted here.

Giving in Vermont, full report

Giving in Vermont, executive summary

Stuart Comstock-Gay, the president and CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation, will present the study at the Common Good Vermont annual meeting for nonprofits on Jan. 11 at CCTV in Burlington.

The following is a fact sheet derived from the report.

National research into the value of grantmaking shows that every $1 contributed to a nonprofit organization generates an average of $8.58 in total economic return.

Across the country, $43 billion in grants by private and community foundations is estimated to have indirectly generated $512 billion in household income and created 9.2 million jobs in 2007.

Vermont ranks 9th in the United States for volunteerism, with approximately 35.6% of residents giving their time to support charitable organizations.

Vermonters volunteer an average of 20.6 million hours of service each year, accounting for an estimated $416.2 million in value.

In 2007, Vermont’s average charitable contribution per itemized return was 25% less than the national average ($3,445 vs. $4,623).

Even after adjusting for income, Vermont’s average contribution places it in the bottom 10 states in the nation.

In the United States, a “philanthropic divide” exists between those states with the most resources and those with the least. In a ranking of states based on foundation assets within each state and per capita grantmaking by in-state foundations, Vermont places 48th.

The top 10 states held $368 billion (nearly 67%) of the nation’s total charitable assets, while the bottom 10 states held $7.66 billion (1.4%).

Like Vermont, nearly every state with the least resources is rural.

The “divide” held true even when population was taken into account. While the national average of per capita grant making was $117, Vermont’s grantmaking was $35.

Full disclosure: Vtdigger.org was a recipient of a $6,000 Vermont Community Foundation grant this fall.

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The international firm, TPI, won a $499,000 contract to assess the state's IT system. Photo from stockxchng

TPI of Stamford, Conn., which describes itself as the largest sourcing data and advisory firm in the world, was to have completed work on 35 “deliverables,” or sets of tasks, by Nov. 25 for the Vermont Department of Information and Innovation. Two-thirds of those deliverables are behind schedule. An additional 34 are due next week.

Under the contract with the state of Vermont, TPI is performing an independent assessment of desktop, infrastructure and networking technologies in all state agencies and departments.

According to a press release from the company, it will “compare internal costs and performance with data from the public and private sectors,” and identify options for “best practices for reducing costs, improving service delivery and enhancing data security and IT governance.”

The state agency inked the half-million dollar contract with TPI in September. The original schedule called for an August start date, but that was pushed forward to Sept. 21.

The project, which includes about 80 separate sets of tasks, is now due by Dec. 18, according to department documents.

David Tucker, commissioner of the Department of Information and Innovation, says TPI is charting a "roadmap" for the state's IT systems.

David Tucker, the new commissioner of the Department of Information and Innovation, says he will present the data collection and assessment information from TPI to the Legislature as part of proposed recommendations for changes to the state’s IT system. Tucker wouldn’t say what he thought those recommendations might be: He says he is waiting for TPI to “give us a variety of options,” a cost-benefit analysis and “a road map if the state should choose to go in any particular direction.”

Tucker says he anticipates that the project will be completed on Dec. 18.

“We do not revise project plans every time there is a minor change in schedule. There is a lot to the data collection piece of the project, and that has taken a bit longer than originally planned.

“Project due dates are designed to serve as check points in the planning process,” Tucker says. “It is not unusual for there to be minor date changes, and it is acceptable project management practice to allow for those, provided the overall final project due date doesn’t slip. We have no reason to think that it might. The fact that we have detailed project plans reflects best practice for management of IT projects.”

Under the contract with the state, TPI is conducting an independent assessment of the state’s two data centers, mainframe, local and wide area networks, desktop support, server and system support, security and purchasing and funding. Four company officials have been collecting data from agencies and departments throughout state government; they are working out of an office in the Chittenden Bank building on State Street, Tucker says.

The Department of Information and Innovation has 82 employees in all and provides IT support for a handful of state agencies and departments including the tax department, the Agency of Human Resources, the Department of Commerce and Community Development, the Agency of Agriculture, the Public Service Department and the Agency of Administration.

“We started to pick up smaller agencies and departments where we’re providing direct support but a lot of the information technology is still spread out,” Tucker says. “Count the number of departments and that’s how IT’s been delivered. That’s one of the things this assessment is looking at: Is that the best way to provide IT services in state government. I don’t know what the answer is but that’s one of the things they’re looking at.”
The department doesn’t keep track of the number of information technology staff that work outside the department who implement IT programs for individual agencies and departments, Tucker says.

The Vermont State Employees Association has criticized the decision to hire TPI to do the work, asserting that state workers could have done the job.

Tucker disagrees. In his view, one of TPI’s most attractive features as a corporation is its ability to provide “benchmarks” for the state, or comparison data with other municipal entities and states of comparable size.

TPI announced on Nov. 3 that Vermont was the third governmental entity to hire the firm in a month; the State of Washington and Houston were the others. The company has also provided services for the governments of Australia, Sweden and Singapore, according to a press release from TPI.

A section of the company’s Web site highlights its expertise as an outsourcing services provider.

Tucker says TPI’s independent review will compare Vermont’s IT system to other governmental entities.

TPI was selected from a pool of eight respondents to the state’s request for proposals, which was sent out last May. No Vermont companies responded to the department’s RFP, which was placed on a state bidding billboard, according to Tucker.

Rep. Floyd Nease, D-Johnson, says the agency should have made more of an effort to find an in-state firm.

“My concern is that we’ve gone out of state again, and it seems like with that particular contract there would have been companies in-state that should have been considered, and it’s not clear that they were,” Nease says.

TPI Project Status Report

TPI Schedule with Pricing

TPI Deliverable Acceptance Form

TPI Project Schedule

VTDigger

In the three video clips from Hogan’s speech that follow, he urges the legislature to take concrete steps toward creating a single-payer system, and he outlines the dire financial consequences of failing to substantively address the health care issue.

Lawmakers must put aside partisanship and substantively address health care costs

Hogan says legislators need to form a nonpartisan health care caucus and create a commission made up of experts to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of a single-payer health care system that would include the concomitant economic impacts on taxes, municipal and school budgets, and businesses.

“What is wrong with giving every Vermonter a Medicare-for-all card? Why do we have to make this so damned expensive and complicated?”

The national health care legislation is “a financial disaster,” Hogan says. “You can’t control costs unless there is a publicly financed system for health care. This bill doesn’t even begin to think about it.” He predicts that if we don’t grapple with the issue very soon hospitals in Vermont will go out of business and the numbers of uninsured Vermonters will “explode.”

Editor’s note: Con Hogan is a member of Vtdigger.org’s board of advisors.

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Diane Bothfeld

Ten cents of every pint of milk students at the University of Vermont and Harvard University buy will be passed on to dairy farmers. UVM launched its Keep Local Farms fund-raising campaign on Monday. Harvard joined the program on Oct. 19.

The slight price hike is part of a fund-raising and marketing campaign to raise money and the profile of New England dairy farmers who have seen significant declines in income since milk prices plummeted at the beginning of 2009.

Right now, dairy farmers in the region are making $1.10 a gallon for their milk; it costs them $1.80 to produce it, according to Vermont Agency of Agriculture statistics.

Diane Bothfeld, deputy commissioner of the agency, anticipates that the two university programs will generate $800 to $900 a month for the Keep Local Farms program, which is run by the New England Family Dairy Farms Cooperative.

The program also has a Web site, http://www.keeplocalfarms.org/, that encourages people to make direct donations to the cooperative. For $30, donors get a Keep Local Farms bumper sticker; for $250 “dairy defenders” get a bumper sticker and a T-shirt. Tote bags are available for a $100 donation. (Contributors should know, however, that these donations are not tax-deductible, as NEFDFC is not an authorized 501C3, IRS public charity.) So far, contributors have donated $5,000.

Farmers throughout the region will receive payments from the pooled proceeds twice a year.

Bothfeld says at the moment the money Keep Local Farms generates is a drop in the bucket compared with the mounting debt farmers are facing.

“It’s pennies back for farmers right now,” Bothfeld says. “But it’s a brand new program. We have to build it.”

Bothfeld says with Harvard and UVM signing on, the program is starting to generate momentum. She hopes to create a network of participating universities and colleges throughout New England will come on board in 2010.

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Dairy farmers say government emergency aid funds won't do enough to help the state's struggling dairy industry.

Milk prices are going up in December, and the federal government has said it will purchase $60 million worth of cheese and make $290 million in direct payments to the nation’s dairy farmers.

The crisis, however, isn’t over. Neither of these positive developments on the horizon may be enough to keep more Vermont dairy operators from going out of business.

Farmers say the one-time emergency aid payments of $5,000 to $25,000 per farm from the government will help, but it won’t be enough to compensate for a year’s worth of lost income that on the average 130-cow farm totals $106,000.

“Their stress level is so high. We have conversations with farmers every day who say we can’t continue, how do we go on?” says Diane Bothfeld, deputy commissioner of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.

Dairy farmers are worried because after the last several down cycles, prices rebounded quickly and then reached record high levels, enabling farmers to pay off debt. This time, however, there is no boom predicted in the coming year. Prices will hover near break-even levels for Vermont farmers.

Amanda St. Pierre, a member of Dairy Farmers Working Together, who runs a dairy farm with her husband in Richford, says most farmers are banking on a sharp rise in prices in the coming year that will likely not materialize, even though there is a shortage of milk in Vermont. Typically, shortages spur higher prices.

“Milk prices have not bounced back as quickly as people need to have that happen,” St. Pierre says. “Futures haven’t responded at all. Those continue to be disappointing. Where is the dairy industry going to be in the next 6 months to a year? There’s been a milk shortage in the Northeast and in California. But it hasn’t affected the price of milk. I’m not sure what’s happening with that.”

In fact, the USDA Economic Research Service predicts milk prices aren’t going to rise above the cost of production in Vermont this year. The all-milk price is projected to be $14.70 to $15.60 per hundredweight or 11.6 gallons of milk. The average cost of production in Vermont is $17 to $18 per hundredweight. For seven months this year, farmers earned $11 to $12 for their raw milk.

“They’re not going to pay off the debts they’ve incurred,” St. Pierre says. “The most they can hope for is not taking on more debt.”

In October alone, 10 more (Vermont) farms went out of business, bringing the year’s total to 53, and Bob Parsons, an economist with UVM extension, has predicted 150 farms could halt production by next summer. At last count, 1,025 dairy farms remained in Vermont.

The question remains: How long can dairy farmers hold on?

Many have had to go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt this year and they don’t know when they’ll be able to dig themselves out (of debt).

Come spring, St. Pierre is worried many farmers won’t have the money to buy seed. “Most people have borrowed to their capacity,” she says. “Vendors have capped out as much credit as they can. I just don’t know where they can go. If they can make it through the winter, let’s give them the spring.”

According to a Cornell University price computer modeling report, significant downturns occur in 33 to 36 month cycles. In that scenario, the next milk price drop cycle would occur in 2012, Bothfeld says.

In the 2006 downturn, farmers who took out loans because of low crop yields and low milk prices weren’t able to pay down debt when prices went back up in 2007.

“Some people never got paid off for 2006 when 2009 came upon them,” Bothfeld says. She says those carryover debts likely contributed to the demise of 53 farms in the state this year.

The extreme unpredictability of milk prices has driven Vermont farmers to support programs that would help them better control the milk supply and hence milk prices, Bothfeld says. The Vermont-based group Dairy Farmers Working Together has been rallying support for its supply management plan from dairy organizations around the country.

On Nov. 7, Vermont Farm Bureau members voted to support a mandatory supply management system (see the resolution at the end of this story).

The three biggest member-owned milk cooperatives that serve Vermont — St. Albans Cooperative Creamery, Agri-Mark, Inc., and Dairy Farmers of America — have all supported a voluntary growth management system. Organic Valley implemented a supply program this year.

In the first two weeks of December, DFWT will be pitching its supply management proposal to farmers in Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota and Washington, D.C., and it is looking for support from farm bureaus in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia and Kentucky. The group has also taken a proposed bill to Congress, but it could be months before it moves forward, St. Pierre says.

“The thing is, normally the cycle would tell us we’d have record high prices,” St. Pierre says. “But economists are telling us things aren’t reacting normally. So that’s where you’re getting $16 projections. If farms continue to go out, you might get higher prices. Unfortunately, it’ll be that kind of supply management structure.”

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Vermont Farm Bureau resolution

Vermont Farm Bureau supports dairy supply management initiatives such as the CWT program (Cooperatives Working Together). Vermont Farm Bureau supports dairy supply management initiatives, including mandatory (ones), that will assist in creating greater price stability. We support a state, national and industry-supported, long-term counter-cyclical program addressing the volatility in milk pricing that will provide for the viability of the dairy industry . Any program should recognize the need for regional production of milk for food security purposes.

More on dairy:
Got too much milk? Farmers look at supply management to stem price fluctuations
Desperate times for dairy farmers
How Vermont dairy compares with the rest of the nation
Pillar of rural economy teetering

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