Renewable energy

The county has been searching for a way to attract investment for a while now -- both collectively and individually.
It's pretty clear that we need to put at least many of our eggs in one basket, after CVPS came up with $31 million for rollout and construction of smart grid technology.
As that's, oh, I dunno, about $29.5 million more than pretty much all the rest of the economic development initiatives have done, it seems like we need to be doing more, quicker, around renewable energy. It beats the heck out of waiting for another manufacturing plant to come along.
Not everybody is in agreement, of course. Some members of the economic development community are too busy fighting a losing ideological war against renewables to be bothered to jump on the bandwagon. OK, so the state gave overlarge bonuses to microgeneration last year, but that shouldn't stop us from working on renewables altogether, and the time is ripe, as CVPS's success shows.
And some of the opponents of the Ira wind proposal will stop at nothing to scare people away from anything to do with wind. I mean, if we're going to hold trucking concrete against wind towers' environmental footprint, shouldn't we hold it against nuclear, hydro, solar, geothermal and tidal power as well? Last I heard, they all involved concrete and basic infrastructure, and many of them come with their own additional environmental costs, whether it's the drying/salinating effect of massive solar in the southwest or large-scale flooding of often-pristine wilderness by hydro. And that's not even considering the mine safety or storage issues around nuclear.
It's arguments like these that make neutrals ever more convinced the opponents to the wind projects are NIMBYs grasping at straws. That's too bad, because some of the folks in Ira raise legitimate concerns about ensuring setbacks are sufficient and that the process needs to be followed.
But that's a long way away from the Chicken Little approach to shouting down renewable energy as a viable Rutland County business generator until a handful of special interest groups can tilt the playing field in their own favor, which is what it seems like some folks are trying to do.

LOL

LOL, short for laugh out loud, is one of the often-overused bits of web shorthand. This time, for me, it's exactly accurate.

Attached below is a screen capture from my e-mail inbox this morning.

New Giorgetti plan rocks

At first blush, the plan to expand the arena at Giorgetti Park makes complete sense. I'll be watching with interest to see how it develops:
I've played in bubbles elsewhere (Patterson Park in Baltimore springs to mind). They're a cost-effective substitute for building an enormous gymnasium, and with year-round use, a penny per hundred on the tax rate is cheap, particularly in Vermont, where people on low, fixed incomes get huge refunds on property taxes.
Improving the existing building seems like a good idea, and the price tag is a fraction ($4M vs. $16M to $23M) of the last suggestions to develop a recreation center.
The original endowment from Mary Giorgetti will cover the maintenance, and programming usually more than covers the staffing cost of recreation, so ongoing costs should be minimal.
Putting it at the end of the proposed bike/ped trail also makes sense ... so kids would have a highly visible, largely traffic-free route to get to and from the facility.
Selling quality of life is a big part of attracting employees here, and it's hard to convince somebody about the quality of our recreation programs by taking them to the Dana Center. That goes double for trying to attract business development.

Busy weekend

In chronological order:
Kudos to Castleton State and its president, David Wolk, for a successful launch of their football program.
OK, their were a couple of niggles, like the lineup for concessions and the broadcasters stepping on each others' audio tracks, but overall, a wildly successful debut for a stadium, a team and all the moving parts that made it happen, from security to ticket sellers to marketing to alumni relations, etc., etc.
Want to know why it worked so well?
Dave Wolk, at the (also immaculate) after-party under a tent almost the size of the field, with hundreds of invited guests still chowing down on BBQ and corn on the cob, listing off the fussy little things he wanted to fix before the next home game, in two weeks against Gallaudet, the D.C. school for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, featuring a bilingual program of instruction in English and American Sign Language. That sort of attention to detail goes a long way.

Had a fine time in the agricultural side of the Vermont State Fair on Sunday. (And not just because I got to judge the apple pie contest.) Our boys are at the age where everything is a potential "wow" moment, so lots of "Wow, Daddy, look! I've never seen such a big (pumpkin, squash, tractor, chainsaw, etc., etc.)"

Spent Monday working on the second edition of the Rutland County Express, our new weekly publication for the county. Lots of local news we just can't find a home for in the daily, plus columnists from around the area writing about local issues and people. If your group wants to get its information into print, post it at the Express web site and we will reverse publish as much as possible in the weekly -- with 10,000 copies distributed free around the county.

New weekly up and running

Today marks the start of the new Rutland County Express.
It's designed to pick up the little pieces of information that are hard to squeeze into the daily paper, whether due to time or space constraints. We get so much sent to us and there's so much more out there ...
I figured out a couple of weeks ago that we probably spend between 30-45 minutes on each little nibble of information that comes in and that we run as a brief: reading it, forwarding to the right person, them reading it, copying it into a Word file, editing it, forwarding to the news queue, then a headline gets written, two more edits (the final one for space, usually) and then it goes on the page.
That's why we built a community-input widget on the web page.
Ideally, we'll be able to lessen the time and energy involved, and get a lot of the hyperlocal things into the Express that we just can't find a home for in the daily beyond the Calendar.
I encourage any civic groups out their, from Scouts to the Rotary, from Little League to town clerks, to take advantage of the space and send us their news.
Thanks,
R

Aubuchon's

One of the more interesting and thoughtful discussions (OK there's a couple of SCREAMERS) about the economy over at the story about Aubuchon's Hardware closing downtown. It's a sad story but probably pretty predictable. I don't know how many little cash-and-carry type hardware stores are left anywhere anymore.

One of my staff members pretty much summed it up by saying he always went there when he needed 15 minutes' help finding the right screw for 5 cents. Between Home Depot, LaValley's, Ace and whatever Aubuchon sold that Walmart sells, it's hard to see a good business model in a small downtown hardware store.

I'm going to miss it. Very friendly, helpful staff and convenient for those of us who live near the downtown.

Rutland economic development

I started a conversation with a bunch of people a couple of weeks ago on where Rutland (City and County) go from here ... here being the county with the highest unemployment in the state and no immediate prospects for a quick turnaround.
I suggested, as a starting point, that we might want to look at renewable energy, for a bunch of reasons:
* There's money in it, as in lots of investment capital.
* We have several initiatives under way (biomass with CVPS and Green Mountain College, solar with CVPS and elsewhere, at least two proposed wind projects ... and that's just the start). There's a few things in the planning stages that aren't ready to go public yet.
* We have CVPS, Velco and Catamount Energy right here.
* Possible partnerships with the colleges, workforce development and Stafford Tech.
* Plus the Planning Commission and Neighborworks BOTH have renewable energy projects going.
What we need is community discussion (perhaps the Creative Economy model, which seemed to work the last time) and buy-in from across the county, particularly including local and state politicans.

My friends over at PEG-TV thought it was worth talking about on Insight, and asked me to help get the word out about the discussion with me, Tom Donahue from the Chamber and Laura Vien. Is this what we want to boost our economy? If not, what? It's time to do something besides hope the Legislature doesn't cut the train this year ...

Here's PEG's take on it:

Local TV Show Discusses the Marketing of the Rutland Region

 Rutland, VT - PEGTV, Rutland County’s public access television station, is asking viewers to tune in to this week’s episode of “Insight” on cable channel 21 as panel members discuss what competitive advantages the Rutland region could utilize in an effort to better market the area.

Viewers can watch “Insight” on Mondays at 6:00 p.m., Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m., Thursdays at 9:30 p.m., and Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. or by visiting the video on demand portal via their website. PEGTV is also encouraging viewers to contact them with comments or ideas by emailing pegtv21@aol.com or by posting a blog entry on their website.

PEGTV is comprised of Channels 15, 20 and 21 and is available to all cable subscribers throughout Rutland County. Streaming programming, video on demand services and hyper-local weather forecasts are also available online at www.pegtv.com. For more information, contact PEGTV at (802) 747-0151.

Drying out

We really dodged a bullet with Friday's flooding. It could have been a lot worse, and almost was.
Credit the quick work by merchants along Center Street and the city for keeping sandbags on hand after last year for keeping water from coming in the rear doors to the extent it did last year.
With water coming in the basement through the drains, it's clear the problem is a lot bigger than the accumulation in the parking deck.
One behind-the-scenes note: Vermont Emergency Management is usually pretty good at staying ahead of things, but Mark Bosma, their public information officer, didn't get a flooding warning out until 4 p.m., by which time Rutland, Ludlow and Chelsea were pretty much underwater ...

Flooding ... again

Downtown Rutland has been hit with its second disastrous flood in as many summers. We're still sorting through the detritus, but if the reports of flooding are as bad as we're hearing, it could mean the end of some downtown institutions. Canceling Friday Night Live is only a small first step. Whatever aid the state and congessional delegations come up with at this point is going to seem like closing the barn door after the horse has fled.

Among the sights:
The water left a trail of crud along the West Street sidewalk just east of Merchants Row that looked for all the world like the high-water mark along a beach ... and almost at the base of the building on the corner.
Damp carpet just inside the door at Debbie DuBay's antique shop, where the water was starting to come through her front door.
Mayor Christopher Louras found time to change into work clothes at some point in the afternoon, reappearing on Merchants Row in a CVPS Nor'icane souvenir baseball cap, a grim reminder of the other natural disaster in his tenure.
Staff at Desjardins Jewelers tossing brown sludgy water into the street drain with a hand basin, while around the corner the Fire Department's pumper sat outside the Asa Bloomer building, waiting to be called into service.

It seems this time the water backing up through basement drains was more of a problem than water running in the back door, but the end result is flooded basements all along Center Street and Merchants Row. It's a bad, bad day.

Pete the Political Opportunity Moose

So three weeks ago, during a tour of Rutland County, Gov. Douglas stopped in to chat with the Herald's editorial board about the state budget. After a sober hour-or-so session on the economy, someone in an aside asked the governor about executive clemency for Pete the Moose, scheduled for slaughter to avoid his becoming a throughput for disease in his half-wild, half-tamed state.

At the time (rummages through Outlook calendar) ... July 29, it says here, at 9 a.m. ... Douglas said it would be a shame to see Pete killed instead of, say, shipped to a zoo, with all the sincerity most husbands can conjure up when asked their opinion of the new placemats.
Had he picked up the phone to ask Commissioner Wayne Laroche not to kill Pete? Hrrhhhm, ah, no.

Fast forward to this week, when news of Pete's plight went viral on Facebook, and suddenly the headline from crack Montpelier reporter Sue Allen of the Times Argus reads "Douglas advocates for moose."

Apparently the online moose lobby swings big poll numbers ... at least we can hope it will spare us from PETA "issue" ads during the next gubernatorial campaign featuring some Photoshop montage of Michael Vick and Jim Douglas ...