Prisoners favor new anti-addiction drug

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Posted on May 15, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

by Joseph Gresser

copyright the Chronicle 5-15-13

NEWPORT — Some inmates at Northern State Correctional Facility here are exploring new frontiers in prison contraband. In the past month or so, several people have appeared in the Orleans Criminal Division of Superior Court and admitted trying to smuggle buprenorphine strips into the prison.

Buprenorphine is an opiate that was developed to treat opiate addiction. It is used like methadone, but is believed to be less addicting itself.

While it may appear that prisoners are trying to smuggle in drugs to treat their own addictions, “our experience is that people who use it tend not to use it the way it was intended to be used,” said Pam Bushey, program services director for the state Department of Corrections.

Although most of those who are incarcerated have substance abuse problems, Ms. Bushey said, “We generally do not continue medically assisted treatment past 60 days.”

People who are incarcerated for fewer than 60 days and who have valid prescriptions for a drug like methadone will receive their medications, she said. (The methadone clinic in Newport does not dispense buprenorphine.) But those who have longer sentences have their dosages tapered off and no longer receive substance abuse medications after two months.

Ms. Bushey said that substance abuse treatment, as such, is not a major focus of the corrections system.

“Even though we are the Department of Corrections and part of the Agency of Human Services,” she said, “our main focus is on risk reduction.”

Risk reduction, Ms. Bushey explained, means reduction of risk to the general public from released inmates.

“Generally what the research says is while 75 to 80 percent of the incarcerated population may have a substance abuse diagnosis, the larger issues are antisocial thinking and antisocial personality traits,” said Ms. Bushey.

Drug resembles Listerine strips

Buprenorphine is produced as a tablet or in the form of a strip of film that can be dissolved by placing it under the tongue.

Dominic Damato, interim director of facility operations for the Department of Corrections (DOC), said what he calls “bupe strips” look like Listerine breath freshening strips, but are orange in color.

According to the manufacturer of the films, sold under the trade name Suboxone, the drug works by binding to the same receptor in the brain that is used by heroin or other opiates.

Suboxone combines buprenorphine with another drug, naloxone, which blocks the same receptors. The combination is intended to produce immediate withdrawal symptoms if a person tries to abuse the drug by injecting it.

Because the effects of buprenorphine seem to plateau at a relatively low dosage, taking more of the drug will not produce an increased effect, according to the label information.

DOC officials offered several possible answers to the question of why someone would risk arrest to get a drug that was designed to be difficult to abuse into the hands of inmates.

“Science lags behind the experience of abusers,” Ms. Bushey said dryly.

“You have to understand, many of our inmates who have a lifetime of substance abuse just chase the high. They’d take sugar pills,” said Mr. Damato.

He suggested that the buprenorphine strips, which are easily concealed, might also be valuable as an item in prison commerce.

In at least three cases over the past month, people have admitted trying to pass slugs, containers wrapped in electrical tape containing contraband including buprenorphine strips, through the fence at the prison. In each case the plans were broken up by police who were alerted to the smuggling plot by prison officials.

According to court files, the smuggling plots were hatched over phone lines monitored by prison guards. Mr. Damato said that every phone call between inmates and the outside world is preceded by a taped message that both the caller and the person receiving the call can hear warning that the call may be monitored.

“The criminal mind is willing to take that risk,” he said.

Mr. Damato said that buprenorphine smuggling does not appear to be a national trend yet. In fact, he said, officials at out-of-state prisons which house Vermonters were caught by surprise when the drug turned up in their facilities.

He said inmates have devised a variety of ways of trying to get hold of buprenorphine in both of its forms. In addition to passing slugs through the wire, attempts to smuggle the drug in by leaving it in a bathroom have been foiled and resulted in court charges.

Other methods of trying to get the drugs to inmates include crushing tablets and placing them under stamps or stickers on letters to inmates, concealing them in documents or newspapers, and even using dissolved strips to paint on children’s drawings.

Mr. Damato said the DOC is pretty good at stopping these attempts.

“We have a pretty good security process, but it’s not foolproof,” he said.

It is too bad, Mr. Damato added, that prisoners can’t have drawings from their kids, just because some try to take advantage of sentiment. He said the DOC is working on an e-mail system to allow more contact between inmates and their families.

Much of the problem, in Mr. Damato’s view, comes from doctors who write what he termed “frivolous prescriptions.” The result is a large amount of medically unnecessary buprenorphine at large in the community, he said.

Behind jail walls, the drug becomes part of a prison economy in which anything of value can be used as currency to buy anything from snacks to contraband from other inmates.

“That’s one reason that we have uniforms. It takes the value of clothing away, so inmates won’t change Michael Jordans for contraband,” Mr. Damato explained.

He compared commerce behind the walls to life on a desert island. “Coconuts would be valuable there,” he said, “if you had them and someone else didn’t.”

Discovery program seeks risk reduction

In its pursuit of risk reduction, Ms. Bushey said, over the past two years the DOC has instituted a new way of working with inmates to help them learn how to act in a way that will not return them to prison.

The program, called Discovery, is designed to teach inmates “to avoid rule-breaking behavior,” Ms. Bushey said.

Ms. Bushey said it is too early to have firm data on the success of the program — judged by the number of people who have gone back to prison within three years of their release — but, she said, anecdotal evidence suggests that the program is achieving its goals.

The curriculum for the Discovery program is based on principles of cognitive behavior therapy, which seeks to change people’s actions by giving them new ways to deal with impulses that might lead to trouble, Ms. Bushey said.

Earlier programs, she said, “were doing a lot of cognitive work, but not doing a lot of behavioral work.” The behavioral aspect of the program is intended to give inmates new ways to deal with the impulses that the cognitive portion of the program brings to their attention.

One of these strategies, she said, is called urge surfing. Its premise is that an urge to do something, such as use drugs, may be intense, but if it is not acted on goes away quickly, she said.

The urge surfing technique encourages people not to concentrate on the desire to take drugs, or to fight it. Instead a person is taught to pay attention to particulars of the urge, such as where in the body it is felt, and to notice how it builds in intensity and then drops off, Ms. Bushey said.

She said that inmates are also helped to see what sort of situations provoke urges and, if possible, to avoid these situations. If a person with an alcohol problem — and alcohol is by far the substance most abused by inmates — finds that he faces a strong temptation to drink when he plays cards with his buddies, it might be best for him to skip the game.

Unlike earlier attempts to help inmates, the Discovery program demands a great deal of work from participants, Ms. Bushey said. She refers to more intensive classes as an “increase in dosage.”

Completing the Discovery program requires 200 hours of class time, she said, and at least 14 weeks. When inmates’ work schedules are taken into consideration, that represents a major commitment of time and energy, Ms. Bushey said.

Another change is that the program is no longer filled primarily by people who volunteered to participate. Instead, Ms. Bushey said, inmates with a high or moderate risk of offending are picked.

In addition to working on dealing with impulses that might lead to illegal behavior, inmates are taught social skills, Ms. Bushey said. Among them she listed active listening, giving feedback, dealing with negative feedback from others, negotiating and problem solving.

Ms. Bushey is optimistic about the new program, which she said has already been tried with success in Oregon, Ohio and Washington institutions.

If she is correct the question of smuggling could be lessened as inmates learn to avoid the kind of behaviors that lead to that kind of trouble.

contact Joseph Gresser at joseph@bartonchronicle.com

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Roberts’ death marks end of an era

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Posted on May 8, 2013 by Tena Starr

Marcel Roberts, real estate agent, developer, auctioneer, businessman, and iconic Northeast Kingdom character, died on Monday, May 6. Here he is at a daughter’s wedding looking much like Boss Hogg, the TV character he was nicknamed after. It was a name he found amusing, his family said. Photo courtesy of Jena Stewart

copyright the chronicle 05-08-13

by Tena Starr

NEWPORT — Marcel Roberts — real estate agent, businessman, auctioneer, and lender, the man widely known as Boss Hog — died on Monday after a long battle with cancer.

With him goes a vestige of another time in the Northeast Kingdom, a time when dairy farming was quite a different business than it is today, and when what happened to Northeast Kingdom land was less of a civilized matter.

Mr. Roberts was colorful, controversial, and clever, an iconic Northeast Kingdom character who drove a white Cadillac, wore a flashy diamond ring, and was nicknamed Boss Hogg after a character in the Dukes of Hazard TV show.

He was, however, a far shrewder man than his TV counterpart. A self-made man, a farmer himself at one time, he went on from poor roots to become a well-to-do man and a mover and shaker in the volatile world of dairy farming and land sales during the 1980s, a man who had a mixed relationship with the farmers he mostly made his money from.

Mr. Roberts’ name will forever be associated with a time in the Northeast Kingdom when small dairy farmers were rapidly going out of business, but there were always others waiting in line for the cows, buildings, machinery, and land that Mr. Roberts both bought, sold, and even financed.

In an interview with this paper in 1988, Mr. Roberts insisted there was little future for the small, family dairy farm in Vermont, and made no bones about his own thinking:

“Every goddamned farmer’s got a rope around his neck and his tongue’s hanging down to his toes,” he said in his typically flavorful, and straightforward, language. “It’s a hell of a feeling to see some of them walk away with the wolves snapping at their heels, after them for money, and they don’t have it.”

Mr. Roberts himself was sued more than once by farmers who believed he was, in fact, one of those wolves, a man who lent them the money to get in, or stay in, business, but then turned around and foreclosed, or took back their cows when they were struggling.

That was Marcel Roberts, viewed as a fiend by some, a friend, often of last resort, by others.

“I can’t say anything bad about him,” said Roger Lussier, who calls himself a business friend and was a longtime lender and president of the Lyndonville Savings Bank who often worked with Mr. Roberts. “He was a market maker. He created a market for a lot of people. I begged him to go to auctioneer school. No, I can’t say anything bad about him.

“Years ago everyone was putting farmers in business,” Mr. Lussier continued. “The way the market went there was enough money to operate small farms. I really miss those small farms. It changed kind of fast. I loved doing business with farmers. Far as I’m concerned, farmers were the most honest around. Marcel helped out a lot of guys. He took money from his own pocket when they couldn’t get money somewhere else. His word was good as gold. I can’t say nothing bad about Marcel.”

Mr. Lussier vigorously defended Mr. Roberts in a 1987 lawsuit where the real estate agent was accused of illegally repossessing cows he’d sold to an Albany farm couple. The trial was one of many instances where Mr. Roberts was portrayed as both a sharp wheeler dealer and one of the few men farmers and people with bad credit could turn to for help.

At that trial, which Mr. Roberts lost, Mr. Lussier argued that the verdict would be a serious blow to farmers with shaky credit. People who need co-signers for a loan — and Mr. Roberts often did co-sign loans — will have a far tougher time getting loans if co-signers are afraid of getting sued, Mr. Lussier argued.

“Years ago, when you financed people, they came and thanked you for helping them out,” he said at the time.

“Marcel was basically one of a kind,” said Barton lawyer Bill Davies, who once represented Mr. Roberts in a lawsuit, and who was also sued by Mr. Roberts.

“He was from a different era than we have today. He was very personable and he certainly was bright. I do think that Marcel, while being a shrewd business person, generally thought he was helping the people he was involved with.”

His family said they are aware Mr. Roberts’ long career was often a controversial one, but they want people to know the generous, kind-hearted side of him as well.

His daughter Lori said she’d like him to be remembered for his good heart. “He helped so many people.”

Family members said he helped friends and acquaintances who were short of money to buy Christmas gifts for their children, he paid for one woman’s trip to Hawaii to see an injured family member, and he helped many others with money or time.

“These are all things people never knew about him,” said Stella Roberts, his wife of 51 years.

He acquired the nickname Boss Hogg — a name that amused him — when David Turner, a business friend, bought him a white Stetson hat. “The name just stuck,” Mrs. Roberts said. “He thought it was a big joke.”

He was born in East Albany on the farm his father worked; his mother was a real estate agent. And he was a farmer himself, his wife said in an interview at their home on Tuesday.

“We started out on a 1,000-acre farm in Lowell,” Mrs. Roberts said. At the time, they were 19 years old. “The neighbors said we were like kids playing house.”

But farming is no game. It was a hard life, still is, and it can be a hard one in which to turn a dollar. Later in life, Mr. Roberts expressed little sentimentality about farms, which he believed had to be operated as a business.

“He thought there was probably an easier way to make a living,” Mrs. Roberts said about her husband. “So he went to auctioneer school. By then we had three little girls. He practiced in the barn auctioneering the cows, the kids, everything.”

Sue Rhodes, one of Mr. Roberts’ daughters, joked that she’s still around, so apparently no one bought the kids.

Mr. Roberts’ first farm auction was the Lowell farm that he and his wife had owned and operated for five years.

The family moved to the Lake Road in Derby, and the prime years of Mr. Roberts’ career as an auctioneer took place there, Mrs. Roberts said.

At the age of 12, his daughter Lori, who now runs Roberts Real Estate, Inc., became his scribe, meaning that when there was an auction she wrote down what was sold, to who, and for how much. She said it was not uncommon to be taken out of school to work at an auction.

“I learned a lot more than I would have sitting in school,” she said.

Mrs. Roberts was the cashier.

In 1988 Mr. Roberts was still going strong. In an interview that year he said he had no idea how many auctions he’d held, but he was certain it was a record year. He was holding auctions at night to accommodate farmers working in their fields in the day.

At the time, he predicted that the combination of low prices for milk, lack of labor, and the trend toward automation would continue forcing small farmers — and himself — out of business

“I’m putting myself out of business,” he said. “But I can always jump into something else.”

One thing Mr. Roberts jumped into was the subdivision and sale of land, which he called a farmer’s nest egg.

In 2003 a Washington Superior Court judge ordered him to sell some of the subdivisions he’d created illegally through a plan that came to be known as pre-subdivision, where sellers were asked to subdivide land before sale in order to avoid Act 250 review.

In the end, he sued seven local attorneys for giving him bad advice on the pre-subdivision matter, but lost the suit.

“Marcel was a force in our community for many years and he’s going to be missed,” said attorney Greg Howe, one of the lawyers Mr. Roberts sued.

Hard feelings didn’t often linger in Mr. Roberts’ world. “You always knew where you stood with him,” Mrs. Roberts said. “That’s the way he was.”

Mr. Roberts died at age 70. In his later years he spent more time with family, and with his poker buddies, Mrs. Roberts said. He was also active in the Fraternal Order of Eagles #4329, the Orleans County Board of Realtors, and the annual Christmas Charity Auction.

Friends of Mr. Roberts may call from 6 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, May 9, at the Curtis-Britch-Converse-Rushford Funeral Home at 4670 Darling Hill Road in Newport. Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, May 10, at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Newport.

contact Tena Starr at tenas@bartonchronicle.com

News analysis — Power siting commission issues report

Posted on May 3, 2013 by chris@bartonchronicle.com

copyright the chronicle 05-08-13

by Chris Braithwaite

Type Writer by Anna Baker-pages

Opponents of big wind who have knocked heads with devel

opers in front of the state Public Service Board (PSB), and lost, will find no magic bullet in the final report of the Governor’s Energy Generation Siting Policy Commission, which was released Tuesday.
But they may find a few encouraging words.
Developers of big wind projects will be relieved, if hardly surprised, that the commission would leave the permitting process in the hands of the PSB. It’s a process they’re familiar with, and appear to have mastered.
Developers may, however, feel that in its effort to fix a process that “lacks sufficient clarity, transparency and predictability,” the commission has made recommendations that would make their job more difficult.
One lobbying group, Renewable Energy Vermont, went public within an hour of the report’s release with a statement of “significant concern with some of the recommendations, which threaten to take Vermont’s energy progress backwards.”
Although the commission would probably deny it, its 103-page report is really about industrial scale wind projects. Governor Peter Shumlin didn’t mention renewable energy — let alone wind energy — when he created the small commission with the very long name last October.
He asked it for “guidance and recommendations on best practices for the siting approval of electric generation projects larger than the net metering threshold, and for public participation and representation in the siting process.”
But it was created in the aftermath of some very bitter battles over two big wind projects in the Northeast Kingdom. The Governor, an enthusiastic advocate of big wind, was taking some heat, and the Legislature was about to take up a bill that would impose a moratorium on such projects.
If the commission’s political purpose was to deflect any move against big wind, it seems to have succeeded. As Paul Lefebvre reports elsewhere in this week’s paper, the wind moratorium bill is limping into a committee of conference as a study, which will give due consideration to the recommendations of the Governor’s Energy Siting Policy Commission.
The commission recommends that communities have a bigger say in the power siting process — but there’s a catch.
The communities involved are large, the collections of towns that make up each of the state’s 11 regional planning commissions (RPCs). In this area, that would be the Northeastern Vermont Development Association.
The commission would set the 11 RPCs to work on “energy guidelines, policies, and land use suitability maps as part of their regional plans.”
And it would have the state give each RPC $40,000 to accomplish the task.
Properly drafted, the commission says, such plans should be “dispositive” before the PSB. That would seem to mean that if a developer proposed a project that didn’t fit the regional plan, the PSB’s answer would be a firm “No.”
That recommendation was singled out by Renewable Energy Vermont. Regional planning commissions, it said, “neither have the staffing resources nor the expertise to be energy siting experts. They should not be put in that role.”
But here’s the catch: The regional plans — individually and collectively — would have to pass muster with another state entity, the Public Service Department (PSD).
Here’s the language: “Once updated, the elements of each regional plan affecting energy will need to be reviewed by the PSD, concurrently with other updated regional plans to determine both individual plan consistency and — in the aggregate — overall statewide consistency with the legislated energy goals and the CEP (Vermont’s Comprehensive Energy Plan).”
The commission is careful to say that “for a region to simply opt out or construct a blanket prohibition against any particular technology does not constitute adequate planning….”
Only after satisfying the PSD would regional plans be “dispositive” before the PSB.
And the state’s renewable energy goals are extremely high. Among them, 25 percent of all energy from in-state renewables by 2025, and 75 percent of all electricity sales from renewables by 2032.
The power this proposal would put in the hands of the Public Service Department led one commission member to issue a two-page dissent.
It comes from Louise McCarren, who was the first woman to head the PSB, under Governors Snelling and Kunin, and who also served as commissioner of the PSD.
She writes: “A fair interpretation of the proposal is the that the PSD will have the authority, if it determines that in aggregate there has been insufficient land designated for the siting of electric generation, to specify regional and municipal land use obligations and locations for generation siting….
“This centralization of decision making regarding electric generation site selection reduces the role of municipalities, may relieve developers from working closely with municipalities, and enshrines the non-statutory CEP as the controlling land use document.”
If anyone should understand the levers of power in utility regulation it would be Ms. McCarren. And her dissent suggests that, while appearing to put much more power in the hands of regional planning commissions, the proposal in fact would pass that power up to the commissioner of public service, who is an appointee of the Governor and serves at his or her pleasure.
Ms. McCarren, indeed, puts into simple English something critics of big wind have been struggling to articulate for years. If renewable energy siting decisions are driven by the Legislature’s explicit renewable electric energy goals and by the administratively generated Comprehensive Energy Plan, these become the state’s “controlling land use document.”
That’s what happened to Lowell Mountain, and to Sheffield Heights.
And that realization is what recently led Senator John Rodgers to say that these very specific goals should be scrapped, and Vermont should start to plan its war on global warming all over again.
The commission, in fact, cites an alternative goal early in its report, straight out of Vermont statutes: “by 2028: 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; 75 percent by 2050.”
That goal targets the real culprit, greenhouse gases, rather than a single source that is actually remarkably clean in Vermont, electric power. And that would make possible a much more cost effective attack on the problem that could include the big greenhouse gas sources in Vermont, heating and transportation.
That’s what one of the Lowell Mountain project’s most articulate critics, Ron Holland, tried to tell the PSB in 2011. The board could only reply that, given the Legislature’s specific commitment to in-state renewable electric power, wind was the most efficient alternative. Thus the towers on Lowell Mountain would be in the public interest.
The commission made passing reference to Dr. Holland’s perspective on Tuesday. In a section called “cross-cutting recommendations” its report calls for “consideration of economic efficiency and least environmental damage with particular attention to climate change.”
But that brief, rather obscure sentence, buried in a very long report, is unlikely to save a single ridgeline.
The full report is available at http://sitingcommission.vermont.gov/publications.

contact Chris Braithwaite at chris@bartonchronicle.com

Lake Region ranked third among Vermont high schools

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Posted on May 1, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

by Tena Starr

copyright the Chronicle 5-1-13

Lake Region Union High School has been named the third best public high school in Vermont for 2013 by U.S. News and World Report, which annually ranks high schools throughout the country. Last year it ranked Lake Region seventh best in Vermont.

For 2013, Lake Region is number 1,223 out of the 21,035 public schools in 49 states and the District of Columbia that were reviewed — all of the U.S. public high schools with enough data to analyze.

Montpelier High School is considered the best high school in Vermont, with Oxbow second. In order to receive a ranking, a school must be rated a gold, silver, or bronze medal school. In Vermont this year, nine schools earned a silver medal, and three earned a bronze. The rest were not ranked.

Lake Region Principal Andre Messier said he’s certainly proud. Like any set of statistics, you take them for what they’re worth, the good and the bad, he said. But he noted that the rankings are done by a reputable organization that looks at a wide variety of factors, not just test scores.

The U.S. News ranking takes into account eleventh-grade scores from the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) tests, but it also looks at how well the school serves all of its population — not just the college bound — at how many kids are at an economic disadvantage, and how students perform given their socioeconomic circumstances.

Mr. Messier said it’s in that area, in particular, that he believes Lake Region has made great progress and excels.

Lake Region appears to have closed the achievement gap between haves and have-nots, he said. In fact, recent test data indicates that poorer students have tested higher than their more advantaged classmates at Lake Region

“When you look at the disaggregated data, the free and reduced lunch students had a higher percentage of proficiency,” Mr. Messier said.

“That’s not supposed to happen. I guess we’re an example of it doesn’t matter what your social background is — if you’re impoverished, or your parents are divorced, you can still succeed.”

He said he wants young people to have choices when they leave Lake Region. “We’ve worked hard to give kids that confidence that when they leave here, despite these barriers, despite these red flags, they can succeed.

“Our elementary schools play a key part in that as well,” Mr. Messier said. “Lake Region is getting the recognition, but it’s everyone, it’s the whole supervisory union. It goes back to our communities who support our schools. They want to make sure kids have a quality education, and that can’t be said for everywhere.”

The U.S. News report is the result of a collaboration with the Washington-based American Institutes for Research (AIR), one of the biggest behavioral and social science research organizations in the world, according to U.S. News.

The rankings are based on the principle that a “great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college-bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators,” says a U.S. News article, explaining how the rankings are calculated.

The first step in the process is to determine whether each school’s students are performing better than statistically expected for the average student in the state.

For the schools that make it past that step, the next is an examination of how well their least-advantaged students are doing compared to the state average.

Schools that get through the first two steps are then judged on college readiness, using Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test data. College level classes are offered in high school through both programs.

That third step measures which schools produce the best college-level achievement for the highest percentages of their students.

The report offers the following information about Lake Region:

Its student-teacher ratio is 12 to one, which is higher than the state average. The school has 31 teachers and 379 students.

Twenty-seven percent of the students tested for college readiness passed.

Thirty-four percent of the students tested were deemed proficient in math, which is near the Vermont average. And 81 percent of students tested were considered proficient in reading, which is above the state average.

About 52 percent of Lake Region’s students are considered economically disadvantaged.

Montpelier, ranked the top school in Vermont, had 80 percent proficiency in reading and 56 percent proficiency in math, with 26 percent economically disadvantaged.

Oxbow, which serves Bradford and Newbury, tested 80 percent proficient in reading and 35 percent proficient in math, with 41 percent of students economically disadvantaged.

Mr. Messier noted that in high school only eleventh-graders take NECAP tests. In the elementary schools, several grades take them.

“When we’re consistently seeing our scores up there year in and year out with completely different class profiles, that’s an indication of your program rather than, oh, you’ve got a smart class this year,” Mr. Messier said.

contact Tena Starr at tenas@bartonchronicle.com

News analysis: The high cost of clean power

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Posted on April 17, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

by Chris Braithwaite

copyright the Chronicle 4-17-2013

BARTON — Solar energy may come to town soon at the Barton Solar Farm at 1603 Glover Road. A fairly large project at 1.8 megawatts (MW), it would produce the amount of power consumed, on average, by more than 300 Vermont homes.

The project has no local permits yet, the developer said last week, and still faces the detailed scrutiny of the state Public Service Board under Section 248. What it does have is acceptance as a SPEED program, a key ingredient in the state’s effort to make a major shift to renewable electric energy.

“We’ve come out of the gate,” said developer Robert Grant of Essex County, Massachusetts. “Now we have to start running the gauntlet.”

Meanwhile the voters in Newport Center approved at Town Meeting a selectmen’s proposal for a $200,000 “Community Energy Solar Garden.”

Steve Mason, chairman of the Lowell School Board, is looking into working with a Westminster, Vermont, company called Soveren to install a solar system that would provide power to Lowell’s town and school buildings. Under a deal with Brattleboro Schools that caught Mr. Mason’s eye, the schools will pay none of the capital cost, and save 10 percent on its energy bills.

And small solar installations are popping up at homes in the area at what looks like a steadily increasing pace.

The trend to solar energy is not being driven by the fact that, with no fuel required, it’s cheap energy. It’s nothing of the kind.

But solar energy is clean energy, and in its haste to clean up Vermont’s electric energy supply, the state has compelled its utilities to buy solar energy at prices that make installations financially attractive.

Those premiums get passed on, through the utilities’ rate structure, to customers who don’t have solar panels on their roof or a wind turbine in their yard.

That’s a concern to some observers, who fear that the state’s strong embrace of renewable energy is based on more emotion than reason; that policies were adopted without due consideration of what they may ultimately cost.

There are, indeed, two programs in Vermont, SPEED and net metering, that pursue the goal of more renewable electric energy in different ways, and with no apparent coordination.

It also puzzles some energy critics that this battle to reduce the state’s carbon footprint, thus contributing to the effort against global warming, is focused on an energy sector that is already remarkably clean. Vermonters use relatively little electricity. Vermont residences, on average, consume 573 KWh of power a month, compared to a national average of 940 KWh.

In its “Vermont Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory,” the state Agency of Natural Resources said that, in 2008, electricity accounted for 4 percent of the 8.37 metric tons of carbon dioxide the state releases into the atmosphere. The bulk of carbon dioxide came from heating and transportation.

The end of contracts with the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant may have altered that picture since 2008, but utilities have turned to other nuclear plants to make up at least some of the difference.

One concerned observer is Willem Post, a frequent source of widely disseminated e-mails on the Vermont energy picture. In a recent interview, Mr. Post said he is a mechanical engineer with 40 years’ experience in the utility business.

Mr. Post is concerned about a program called SPEED, which stands for Sustainably Priced Energy Development. It supports moderate to very large renewable projects by offering premium prices for their power.

Any sort of renewable energy gets a premium price compared with the current wholesale price on the New England grid of about 5 cents a kilowatt hour (KWh). But solar power sits at the top of the heap at five times that rate, 27.5 cents per KWh. Other prices, freshly recalibrated by the PSB for SPEED’s Standard Offer program, range down to a “levelized” price (which starts lower and climbs higher over 20 years) of 25.3 cents for wind projects over 100 KW, 11.8 cents for larger wind projects, 14.1 cents for farm methane, 12.5 cents for biomass, 12.3 cents for hydro, and 9 cents for landfill methane.

SPEED projects that exceed the 2.2 MW limit of the standard offer program negotiate rates with the utilities, like the 40 MW Sheffield wind project, or are owned by the utilities themselves, like Green Mountain Power’s 63 MW Lowell project. (One megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts.)

The 2017 SPEED goal, according to its Internet site, “is to have 20 percent of total statewide electric retail sales during the year commencing January 1, 2017, generated by SPEED resources that constitute new renewable energy.”

Vermont consumes about 5.5 million MWh of power a year, so the SPEED goal is about 1.1 million MWh.

According to a recent status report, SPEED projects are already generating an estimated 570,843 MWh, a little over half its target.

That total comes overwhelmingly from big projects outside the Standard Offer Program. Led by Lowell Mountain, nine big projects are expected to make more than half a million MWh a year, while about 30 Standard Offer projects make about 54,000 MW.

Another 213,162 MWh are expected from SPEED projects “in active development,” about evenly split between four large projects and various standard offer projects.

That would bring total SPEED production to 784,000 MWh, 316,000 MWh short of its goal.

Existing Standard Offer projects lean heavily to farm methane (14) and solar (12). But on a list of pending projects that will take advantage of high Standard Offer Prices 18 are solar, five farm methane, and three hydro.

The clear preference for solar power worries Mr. Post, the engineer, because of its high, 27.5-cent cost to utilities.

He calculates that the Standard Offer projects already online cost utilities — and their customers — $3.4-million above the average New England grid power price in 2012.

If enough solar Standard Offer project were permitted to meet the SPEED goal, he calculates, the excess cost would rise beyond $50-million in 2017. And that doesn’t count the cost of the big projects like Lowell, he notes.

In SPEED, he sees a program that was not rationally designed, and is running on autopilot.

He uses the metaphor of a frog in a frying pan of water, with the stove on. The effect may be gradual, he said, “but it will eventually ruin the Vermont economy. We will end up with rates that are significantly higher than other states, put ourselves at a further disadvantage.”

But the man who bears the title of Vermont SPEED Facilitator, John Spencer, said Monday that, with their relatively small, 2.2 MW maximum size, Standard Offer projects can’t close the gap between SPEED’s target and its current and scheduled production. That would mean that the expensive solar projects Mr. Post worries about can’t be hurried forward at the rate he fears.

Mr. Spencer is executive director of a non-profit called VEPP, Inc., that serves as a sort of broker between SPEED producers and the utilities.

Under state law, he said, “I can only take Standard Offer programs at the rate of five MW a year.”

When it comes up against a capacity limit, solar energy is hampered by its low capacity factor of 15 percent.

Five MW of solar power would yield about 6,570 MWh a year.

To fill that 316,000 MWh gap by January 1, 2017, SPEED needs to add about 105,000 MWh a year.

So where will the renewable power come from?

Probably from out of state, Mr. Spencer said.

That is apparently a loophole in the program that has been devised to close the gap. In 2011, when the Lowell Wind project was being debated before the Public Service Board, the SPEED program was key to its economic justification, and SPEED projects were defined then as in-state renewable generation.

But, somewhat to Mr. Spencer’s dismay, “in-state” has been dropped from the definition. Energy from new renewable projects in other states can be counted toward the SPEED goal, Mr. Spencer said, as long as they carry their renewable energy credits with them when they cross the state line. Vermont utilities don’t need those credits, so can sell them to utilities in other states.

Robert Dostis, head of external affairs and customer relations at Green Mountain Power, confirmed Tuesday that his utility is buying SPEED power from Granite Reliable Wind, a New Hampshire project.

That will help GMP meet its 20 percent target, Mr. Dostis said. “It won’t be easy, but we’re working on it.”

Net metering

Net metering is a program designed for smaller renewable projects that are linked directly into a utility’s lines through a meter that spins backwards when the customer doesn’t need all the power he or she is producing.

For wind, methane or hydro systems, net metering offers the local utility’s retail rate for power from small renewable projects up to 500 kilowatts (KW) — compared with the 2,200 KW limit on SPEED Standard Offer projects. But people who install solar panels get a premium big enough to assure them a rate of 20 cents per KWh, a bit above the state’s average residential rate of 17.7 cents.

Not surprisingly, solar installations account for 88 percent of net metered projects, and are driving a growth rate in the program that the state’s Public Service Department (PSD) recently described as “exponential.”

Net metering goes back to 1998 in Vermont, though limits on the size of both individual projects and their total statewide capacity have been increased several times.

In a recent report on the program to the Legislature, the PSD noted that the statewide limit on net metering was raised from 1 percent to 2 percent of Vermont’s peak load of about 1,000 MW in 2002, and that was doubled again to 4 percent in 2011.

In terms of capacity, the PSD said, net metering has climbed past 20 MW statewide, and so is approximately halfway to its current 40 MW limit.

However because it is so heavily weighted to solar power with its low 15 percent capacity factor, net metering accounts for considerably less than 1 percent of the state’s power consumption.

Net metering is growing fast in other parts of the state. A state list of projects “deemed approved” from the first of this year through mid-March listed 136 statewide, but only one in Orleans County.

For people who have the means to do it themselves, net metering can be attractive. Mr. Spencer, the SPEED facilitator, installed one at his home for $15,000. Federal tax credits and state rebates reduced his cost to $10,500, he said, and he hopes the system will eliminate his electric bill of about $1,200 a year. He calculates a return on investment of about 12 percent, a rate, he notes that is “pretty hard to get in other places.”

For people who want to avoid the up-front cost or the complexity of installing their own system, companies like AllEarth Renewables and its competitors stand ready to install one at no cost. The homeowner gets a guarantee that his or her electric rates won’t rise, and the installer gets whatever tax credits, rapid depreciation and state rebates are available.

AllEarth has more recently teamed up with Green Lantern Capital to offer such deals to municipalities and non-profits like schools and hospitals that pay no income taxes. In these deals, the tax advantages go to Green Lantern’s investors, and the municipality is offered a modest saving on its electricity and a chance to buy the system at less than half its cost after seven years.

With such a deal on the table, said AllEarth spokesman Andrew Savage, “there is no sane reason an entity that doesn’t pay taxes would bond for the full cost of a project.”

Mr. Post, the energy policy critic, objects to the idea that the many projects are being financed by millionaires who, while their consumers harvest the power of the sun, are harvesting the substantial tax benefits attached to renewable projects, along with the high rates.

Meanwhile, he said in one e-mail, ordinary Vermonters are saddled with higher power rates.

The DPS study was undertaken to answer just that question from a legislator: “…whether and to what extent customers using net metering systems… are subsidized by other retail electric customers who do not….”

The study found that they were not. But that was only after a cash value was factored in to reflect the fact that renewable energy doesn’t generate harmful greenhouse gasses.

Without that calculation, the study showed that net metering costs exceeded its benefits by 0.6 cents a KWh for fixed solar installations, 1.5 cents per KWh for solar systems that track the sun, and 9.1 cents for a 100KW wind generator.

Rian Fried has made a close study of renewable energy for his company, Clean Yield Asset Management, which evaluates investment opportunities for its clients in terms of both financial return and social value.

The company decided some time ago not to recommend any large wind projects, but has invested in solar companies. Mr. Fried recently installed a net metered system at his home in Stannard.

But he’s not sure anyone at the state policy level has a handle on the long-term effects of our pursuit of clean energy.

“I think you have a political situation in this state now, where the Green Mountain Power people, Shumlin’s people, Paul Burns (the head of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group) and a lot of Progressives are talking about the public good and completely whitewashing the numbers part of it,” he said in an interview. “There’s going to come a time again when we’re going to talk about rates.”

At Green Mountain Power Mr. Dostis said his utility looks carefully at its mix of power sources to make sure its rates remain competitive with other New England utilities.

“We have a voice in the legislative process,” said Mr. Dostis, himself a former state representative. “In the end the ratepayers will absorb any cost. We are very mindful of that, and we make sure the Legislature is very mindful of that.”

Mr. Dostis sees big changes ahead in his industry “as more and more people put on solar projects that meet 100 percent of their power needs. Their bill is zero. Other customers are paying the cost of maintaining the overall grid. It’s an issue the Legislature will have to deal with.”

At the Legislature, Senator John Rodgers of Glover has taken the position that Vermont’s renewable electric energy goals should simply be scrapped.

“My concern is that the renewable goals are driving the Public Service Board’s decisions when they’re siting these projects. I don’t think that’s how siting should be driven.

“Ridgeline industrial wind is absolutely the worst of all the possible tools at our disposal,” the senator said. Instead he’d like to see more support for “small, local stuff” like farm methane and power dams that have fallen out of service.

Canadian hydro power is another option that should be expanded, he said. “I don’t see any problem with using very reasonably priced power produced north of the border with renewable resources.”

He challenges the idea that Vermont should not only use more renewable electric power, but also generate it. “Most of the appeal of Vermont is that we have resisted destroying our environment for the sake of commercial enterprise,” he said.

contact Chris Braithwaite at chris@bartonchronicle.com

Climate, crime rate draw buyers to the Kingdom

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Posted on April 10, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Karl Hayden and Jenny Lauer moved to Glover from Colorado last year, in part because of the availability of water in Vermont. Photo by Tena Starr

by Tena Starr

copyright the Chronicle 4-10-2013

When Karl Hayden and Jenny Lauer decided to leave Colorado, one of the things they were looking for in a new home was water. Mr. Hayden worked as supervisor at a pharmaceutical firm, and Ms. Lauer as an administrative assistant at the University of Colorado Boulder. They lived in Arvada, a city of about 100,000 outside Denver.

For both health and lifestyle reasons, Mr. Hayden and Ms. Lauer wanted to grow their own fruits and vegetables and raise some animals. That just wasn’t possible at their suburban home.

They looked first at land in Colorado, but “You can’t buy property with water in Colorado unless you’re rich,” Mr. Hayden said.

The couple did look at a 38-acre organic farm in that state. But with water rights, its asking price was $2.25-million, Ms. Lauer said.

In Colorado, where water is increasingly scarce and forest fires are just plain increasing, the right to use the water on the property you buy is not automatic. Generally, land and water rights are sold separately, Ms. Lauer said. In fact, it’s illegal to even collect water in a rain barrel. Whoever owns the water rights owns every drop that comes out of the sky, she said.

The couple searched nationwide for a new home, their priorities being the availability of water, health care, and a thriving local food movement.

They found what they were looking for at what they considered a reasonable price in Glover, where they bought about 15 acres of bare land and put up a yurt. There’s a little stream nearby, which they viewed as a terrific asset, although the real estate agent considered it to be too pathetic to be worth mentioning.

“But we were like, oh, it’s water!” Mr. Hayden said.

“After 19 years in Colorado, anything that actually flows qualifies as a stream,” Ms. Lauer said.

Jim Campbell at Jim Campbell Real Estate was the agent who sold Ms. Lauer and Mr. Hayden their land in Glover. He said he hasn’t personally experienced buyers wanting to move to Vermont because of changing climate. He wasn’t aware that was a factor in Ms. Lauer’s and Mr. Hayden’s decision.

“I didn’t realize where they were coming from.”

The Northeast Kingdom real estate market has climbed out of the toilet, and one of the factors that seems to be driving sales is weather. Real estate agents say that fear of natural disaster, as well as manmade ones, is sending people to Vermont where water is plentiful and often free, hurricanes are rare, earthquakes are harmless, and, if anything, the growing season is lengthening.

“I’ve actually sold to growers from Georgia because Georgia is too hot to grow in now,” said Cindy Sanville at Century 21 Farm and Forest in Derby.

Ms. Sanville has been a real estate agent for 13 years. She said a certain type of buyer started appearing soon after Nine Eleven — people who were looking for a place out of harm’s way. That trend has escalated in the wake of all types of disasters, including the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut and Hurricane Sandy, which hit the East Coast last fall, she said.

“It’s almost hysteria,” Ms. Sanville said. “I’ve had people who wanted to live in the side of a mountain. People are really looking for a safe place.”

She said recent interest in Vermont real estate is coming from survivalists who want to build bomb shelters and bunkers, people who want to be self-sufficient, grow their own food and live off the grid, others who are uneasy about climate change and what it might mean, and those who are simply looking for a place that feels safe to them.

Following the Sandy Hook school shootings, “we were swamped with Connecticut people,” Ms. Sanville said.

Vermont, with its nearly nonexistent gun laws, might seem like an odd choice for those concerned about violence, but it does have a low rate of violent crime.

On the other hand, Ms. Sanville said the first thing one buyer asked was where the nearest place to buy ammunition was.

Sugarbushes and agricultural land are hot sellers, she said. “There are a lot of goat farmers, and growing hops will be a big thing, I think. There are a lot of diverse growers now, and good agricultural land is being snapped up.”

“People are very well aware of climate change all over the world,” Ms. Sanville said. “People are absolutely concerned about these things.”

Mr. Hayden and Ms. Lauer said water was a huge consideration in their decision to move to Vermont. “We’ve seen more rain in the last year than in the last 25 years,” Mr. Hayden said.

The couple lives in a yurt off the grid using solar panels for electricity — for practical as well as philosophical reasons. They drilled a well, another thing that is difficult to do in Colorado, they said.

“I don’t care how big a house you have, if nothing comes out of the faucet, it’s worthless,” Ms. Lauer said.

Water is becoming a big concern, according to Wade Treadway, a Woodstock realtor. His website says, “The latest trend that I am seeing is a strong reaction to the obvious changes taking place worldwide due to climate change. I have in the last two months had three international inquires about properties that started with questions about water.”

Strong real estate market

Overall, the Northeast Kingdom real estate market is pretty strong at the moment, Ms. Sanville said. “First of all, I don’t think we had the low like everybody else had in the country. All in all, the Northeast Kingdom is still a place where people want to be.”

There are still many first-home buyers, and people looking for second homes — the traditional housing market.

“There’s been increased activity in most all sectors of the market, including upper end housing,” said Nicholas Maclure at Century 21 Farm and Forest. “The mid-range is strong compared to what it has been.”

Mid-range refers to homes in the $250,000 to $500,000 price range, he said.

Mr. Maclure said his office has seen a 35 percent increase in sales from a year ago.

“It’s definitely a bit of a mix,” he said. “There’s local activity, outside investment, a fairly strong second home market, and there are still those buyers looking in the lesser range.”

However, there is a shortage of good country homes for sale in the under $150,000 price range. Also, the inventory of nicer in-town homes is sparse, Mr. Maclure said.

It’s been a buyer’s market for quite some time, and still is, he said. But activity is visibly picking up. Bill Stenger’s development plans for the Northeast Kingdom are likely a factor, he said. “With all these things going on, it’s giving some people the idea of appreciation down the road. People are realizing this may be the time to act.”

What real estate agents agree on is that property that is well kept and reasonably priced will sell.

“For instance, if your house is worth $110,000 and you want $150,000, you’re not going to sell it,” Ms. Sanville said. “If it’s priced at $109,000, it will sell.”

Mr. Campbell said he believes there has been “a fair amount of price correction, bringing some locals back into the grand scheme of things.”

“Don’t ask for the sky,” said Mick Conley at Conley Country Real Estate. Property that’s in good condition and fairly priced is what buyers are looking for.

Mr. Conley said his office has been busy lately, an indication that the real estate market is rebounding. He said he had seven showings on Saturday and two offers on Monday.

He has heard potential buyers talk about Vermont being a safe place with no dangerous weather, but more mention a desire to be safe from crime, Mr. Conley said. Potential buyers are impressed that many people in Vermont still don’t lock their doors.

For whatever reason, the real estate market has vastly improved from three or four years ago, said Brent Shafer at Coldwell Banker All Seasons Realty.

“In the Burlington area, it’s up 30 percent plus,” he said. “Watching the multiple listing service a couple of days last week, there were as many properties that went on contract as came on new,” Mr. Shafer said. “Back four years ago you’d see ten or 15 properties come on and maybe see one or two come under contract.’

Sales in Lyndonville and Burke are strong, he said. “I’m seeing condos coming and going pretty quickly.”

In Barton 30 properties are currently on the market, Mr. Shafer said. Only one of those is under contract. The price range is from $49,000 to $1,895,000, he said. “Quite a diversity.”

Newport has always been a busy market, he said.

For a seller, the ideal property is a decent country home, priced in the $150,000 range, Mr. Maclure said. “Or a well kept in-town home that’s well priced in a decent neighborhood. Keep your home up,” he advises homeowners. “If you have a decent home at a decent price, you will likely sell it.”

More people are interested in country property than in village homes, Mr. Shafer said. Retirees tend to prefer village property, but younger people want to be in the country.

For buyers, the prospect of owning a first-time home can be tougher than it once was, although interest rates are low.

In some cases, the problem is not with the buyer; it’s with the house itself and tougher bank standards, Ms. Sanville said. The lower priced home that some qualified buyers might be able to afford may have problems the lender would want to see remedied.

“You might have some low-interest loans, but you had better have good credit and a house that qualifies,” Ms. Sanville said. A good spring, foundations…. You’ve got to make sure the roof is good, the wiring is good.”

Real estate agents are a little mixed on what effect Mr. Stenger’s development plans are having. At the moment, they don’t seem to be having much measurable impact on the real estate market aside from optimism.

Mr. Campbell said he’s surprised that property values in the Jay area have not risen. Still, if people start to move into the area the law of supply and demand will likely push prices up, he said.

Ms. Sanville said she sees a lot of real estate activity that’s connected to employees of North Country Hospital and the Border Patrol.

contact Tena Starr at tena@bartonchronicle.com

IROC’s champion hasn’t given up hope

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Posted on April 3, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

by Tena Starr

copyright the Chronicle 4-3-13

NEWPORT — Phil White, IROC’s most visible and stubborn defender, wasn’t particularly anxious to talk about the place on Monday morning. The night before he’d succumbed to what was pretty much inevitable by then.

Following IROC’s last event — the home show on Sunday — he’d dropped off the keys in a deposit box for Community National Bank, its new owner. If he was sad, he didn’t admit it. Still, it was clear enough that it was an emotional parting, although Mr. White is not yet ready to write the recreational facility’s obituary.

IROC had until April 1 to come up with over $1-million or face foreclosure. Mr. White’s last-ditch efforts to get a time extension or somehow raise the money fell short, and IROC closed for good Sunday afternoon.

Mr. White continues to hold out hope that the facility will reopen with a new owner. In the course of an interview he suggested that foreclosure might just be a necessary phase to get the facility out from under its debilitating debt.

“I don’t like to give up until there is nothing else that can be done,” he said. “Until the facility is sold as a garage, or knocked down, it’s still available to be bought. I’m hoping that one or more individuals will buy it. The bank hasn’t drained the pool yet,” he added hopefully.

Steve Marsh, president and CEO of Community National Bank, said it’s likely to be a while before the bank drains the pool. The next step for the bank is to go back to court and make matters official, he said. Then, at some point, the bank will put the facility up for sale.

IROC, which has not made mortgage payments in months, owes over $1-million, Mr. Marsh said, and the last time an appraisal was done the facility was not worth that. In this case, the bank’s loss, even if it sells the place for less than what’s owed, will be no more than 10 percent because the loan was guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, which would limit the bank’s losses on what was a risky undertaking.

“When this whole thing started it was a thin deal to start with, but we felt it was in the best interests of the community to have it,” Mr. Marsh said. “That’s why we financed it when others wouldn’t. “Our hope is that it will be sold to someone who will continue its current use.”

So far no one has showed up with a checkbook, he said. “There are no potential buyers that I’m aware of.”

Mr. White, who is a lawyer by profession, got involved with IROC back in 2006 when he was asked to take over as chairman of the board.

He said he was much impressed with the arena and thought it was a valuable community asset.

That arena was originally supposed to be an ice rink. The fact that it isn’t continues to rankle some, who had hoped, among other things, to see North Country Union High School’s hockey program move from the ice rink in Stanstead, Quebec, to Derby. These days, North Country students play at Jay Peak.

IROC never did turn into a place for people to skate, and its big central arena has been used primarily for events, such as the Northeast Kingdom History Fair and the North Country Chamber of Commerce Home Show, both held last week.

“I don’t think that what I started doing was much different from what a lot of people do,” Mr. White said about his efforts to help the struggling facility stay afloat. Lots of people donate time to causes, he said, and there are many people who have done more to save IROC from oblivion than he has.

One day, he’d scheduled an 11 a.m. appointment with the bank to turn over the keys. An hour and a half before the meeting, Carl and Susan Taylor donated $100,000, he said, and IROC stayed open.

The recreational facility was losing money every year and was about $3-million in debt when Mr. White inherited chairmanship of the board. “I feel pretty good about half of that getting taken care of,” he said about the debt.

The bank, he said, has been about as patient as it could be. “Community National Bank has been terrific to work with. They’ve given us lots of options and as much time as we could conceivably ask for. I think we tried everything, and we just couldn’t get that debt paid off.”

As chairman of the board, Mr. White began to take a closer look at the facility and its potential uses, as well as possible money makers.

“I started seeing the value of IROC as a fitness center,” he said. “We really opened it up to low-income folks and started the youth initiative so kids could come for free. That was inspiring.”

Ten years ago, people were talking about the need for kids to have a place to go, Mr. White said. “Then there it was.”

One night, at IROC, he found every basketball court filled with teenagers — 40 or 50 of them all playing basketball without benefit of adults organizing a special event.

“They’d just said let’s go hang out at IROC,” Mr. White said. “That was the vision. I felt good that more of that was happening.”

But it didn’t pay the bills.

“I think we realized early on that IROC needed to be both an indoor and an outdoor recreation facility,” Mr. White said. “And also that we needed to get out of debt.”

Towards that end, he organized the Tour de Kingdom, a one- to five-day recreational and cycling event that is just what its name suggests — a tour of the Kingdom. The first year, 50 locals participated. The second year, people from out of the area attended, as well, and said the event was even better than The Prouty, a cycling event organized by Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center that raised over $2-million in 2008.

“I figured we didn’t need to raise that kind of money, but special events could be the key to long-term success,” Mr. White said.

Those special events have grown to the point where, this year — and there will be a this year for special events — 25 days of running, biking, swimming and kayaking are planned. Special events include the Dandelion Run, the Tour de Kingdom, the Kingdom Triathlon, and the Kingdom Swim, which is now a world championship event.

The success of special events and ever increasing participation “had its own motivational force on me,” Mr. White said, explaining why he tried so valiantly to keep IROC open. “And then there’s this trial lawyer in me that doesn’t like to lose.”

Special events will continue, Mr. White said. “We’ll find a home, I’m sure. We can live off the land. We have four or five hundred people signed up for them, and I don’t think we’ll just tell them to go home. They’re of incredible value to the community and worth running with or without IROC.”

Special events raised about $200,000 a year, and donations from towns amounted to roughly $3,200 this year, Mr. White said. “And I think, over time, that would continue to grow.”

Strategy for saving IROC from foreclosure included cutting expenses as well as raising money. Solar panels decreased the propane bill by $3,000 to $3,500 a year, and payroll was basically halved to about $200,000 a year from a little more than $400,000 in 2006, Mr. White said. He said that, in 2008, about $700,000 had been pledged to the organization, but those pledges evaporated by December of that year as the economy tanked.

“I think if we had had the time and were out of debt and not facing imminent foreclosure, we estimated it could run.”

IROC benefitted from about $50,000 to $75,000 a year in donations, Mr. White said, and there were more lined up to contribute an ongoing, if not huge, base of contributions.

“So there is a model on which it could be run. It wasn’t just big donations. There were hundreds, even thousands, who donated what they could. It could well be the doors are closed on that as a recreation center for good. It could also be a phase that was necessary to deal with the debt. What we estimate is that, without the debt and property taxes, we can run it.”

Mr. White said he has no idea why IROC failed so spectacularly in its first years, or why the facility never became self-sustaining. Perhaps, it was all just based on hope to start with — hope that the community would support it, and it would somehow work out, he said.

What he saw in terms of the facility’s use, however, inspired him to devote his skill set to ramping up its activities and membership, and to try, against all odds, to keep going.

“What I saw was increasing use of IROC by all aspects of the community,” Mr. White said. “Seniors complained about kids splashing in the water fountains, and kids complained about seniors walking too slow on the walking track.”

In 2011-2012, about 3,500 adults had signed up for some kind of membership, Mr. White said. And at least an equal number of young people were using the facility for free. When all types of memberships and passes were added up, the total indicated that about 20 to 25 percent of the people in the area were using IROC, he said.

“I feel there’s an awful lot of good that’s come out of the facility,’ he said. “I’d see people losing 50 to 100 pounds, people whose lives were changed. Kids had a place to play. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t see something that says, this is why I’m doing it.”

contact Tena Starr at tena@bartonchronicle.com

Senate passes weakened wind power bill

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Posted on March 27, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Wind towers at Lowell Mountain, as seen from Irish Hill Road. Photo by Bethany M. Dunbar

copyright the Chronicle 3-27-13

by Paul Lefebvre

MONTPELIER — A legislative push to give towns and regional planning commissions more say in the siting of industrial wind towers appears to be dead, following a preliminary vote here Tuesday in the Senate.

The vote came after a marathon, contentious and at times personal debate that started at the fall of the morning gavel and lasted past the noon hour. The result is expected to hold when the Senate takes up the bill for the third and final time later this week.

Little remains of a bill that started out as a call for a three-year moratorium on wind and morphed into legislation to reform the permitting process by adding Act 250 criteria and by putting wind development on hold for roughly eight months of study.

What’s left in the measure passed by the Senate Tuesday is a $75,000 appropriation for the creation of a Joint Energy Committee that will evaluate recommendations due out next month from the Governor’s siting commission.

Presumably, the role of towns and the regional commissions in the siting process will be revisited when the committee meets.

The vote was seen as a defeat by the two senators representing Essex and Orleans counties, whose ridgelines are prized by wind developers.

“They stripped the meat out of it,” said Senator John Rodgers, a member of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources that created the bill.

“They took the soup and left the broth,” said Senator Bobby Starr, who during the debate defended the bill as a “commonsense, down-to-earth proposal.

“All it’s asking for is for people to be heard,” he said.

After the debate was over and the vote was in, the region’s senior senator put his best spin on the results by saying a half a loaf was better than none.

A straight up and down vote on the bill was avoided when Senator David Zuckerman prevailed with an amendment that stripped out its key provisions. It took the unusual route of being voted on twice. Defeated the first time when Lieutenant Governor Phil Scot broke a tie by voting against it, the amendment was rekindled when Bennington Senator Dick Sears asked if he could change his vote. His request led to a second vote by the full Senate.

During the debate, Senator Sears had spoken out against the bill and the intent to add Act 250 criteria to the siting process. That would be an intrusion into the present permitting process, he said. It would have the effect of “opening up a can of worms that doesn’t need to be open.”

And with his support the Zuckerman amendment passed by two votes, 16 to 14.

In a brief interview outside the Senate Chamber, Senator Zuckerman said he offered the amendment in the belief the bill was sending a “false hope message” to towns. He said the veto power the bill gave them and the regional commissions could be taken away after eight months had passed and the legislation had sunset.

On the floor he said the bill was duplicating the work of the Governor’s siting commission, and raised the specter of global warming.

“We have a climate crisis on our hands,” he warned.

Stripped of what many believed to be its essential components, the amended bill passed easily. If the outcome disappointed Senator Joe Benning, the legislator who a year ago spearheaded the call for a three-year moratorium, he didn’t show it during a brief interview after the vote.

He said that with a stronger vote to back it up, the bill would stand a better chance of getting a fair hearing before the House.

“It’s keeping the discussion alive and that is the most important thing of what this last month has been about,” he said.

If words could draw blood, the Senate floor might have become slippery. Senator Dick McCormack could have been speaking about the debate when he called the issues surrounding the bill “a clash of non-negotiables.”

At different points along the way, the debate pitted one core value against another: the public good versus local control; global warming versus protecting the environment; rural Vermont versus urban; and the urgency to develop renewable energy versus planning and evaluation.

Senators from the Northeast Kingdom led the way in charging that the most rural corner of the state was being picked on.

Early in the debate Senator Rodgers said Chittenden County didn’t want the Northeast Kingdom to stop the development of renewable energy. With two wind farms already in place and a landfill taking a large share of the state’s waste, he argued it was time for some other region to step up to the plate.

“A nice landfill in Burlington could conserve diesel fuel and cut down on carbon emissions,” he said at one point.

The freshman Glover senator applauded the bill for giving small towns a voice and financial aid so they might be able “to compete with the deep pockets of developers.”

Senator Starr continued along that line when he characterized big wind as a runaway development that had pushed its way through his district like a bulldozer.

His constituents were complaining, he said, that they “are not being given a chance to be heard.”

Senator Diane Snelling of Chittenden County introduced the bill as a planning mechanism. She said she “took to heart the concerns over global warming,” and defended the bill as being “very pro renewable energy.” All the bill was asking for, she said, was a better way to site renewables.

One of the uncertainties arising from the debate was how much weight neighboring towns would have in the permitting process. Senator Snelling said there was nothing in the bill that would allow a neighboring town to kill a project.

But others suspected the bill would give towns a veto power. Senator McCormack was among the senators who argued that local control should not override the public good.

“It’s a question of state sovereignty,” he said, pointing out that local control is a power granted to towns by the state.

While Senator Snelling argued that the bill was “a workable proposal to get the best siting for energy,” others argued there was no need for it.

Senator Jeanette White of Windham argued that the bill was redundant and unnecessary. She noted there were no projects waiting in the wings, and said she was uncomfortable with the bill because she believed it discriminated against wind.

Senator Benning became an advocate for changing the permitting process after he climbed Lowell Mountain and viewed how construction had transformed the mountaintop in preparation for the placement of 21 turbines. When he came off the mountain, he decided, “We had a problem that wasn’t being addressed by our government.”

As part of his presentation Tuesday, he passed out a parcel of photographs that documented the destruction on Lowell Mountain. And proceeded to argue that wind developers had gone to the Northeast Kingdom because of its rural isolation and lack of population.

He compared Newark’s town plan with a set of ordinances drawn up by the city of Burlington and pointed out their striking similarities. Each, he said, wanted to preserve their landscape, natural beauty, and views.

Burlington and the surrounding communities within a ten-mile radius account for one-third of the state’s population. But Newark, he said, had a population of 581.

Small towns like Newark, he implied, need protection because wind developers go where they won’t get a push back. Or where resistance is least and likely less affordable.

Senator Mark MacDonald of Orange County said the Kingdom was like the leopard that wanted to change its spots. He said among supporters of the bill were people from the Northeast Kingdom who had brought “cell towers to mountaintops, and Act 250 be damned.”

No great harm would come, he promised, if the bill were defeated.

Each side in the debate claimed to champion action to slow global warming. Senator Richard Westman of Lamoille called it “the most important issue facing us.”

He supported the bill because he said it was making lawmakers struggle with the consequences of what has already been done. And although he was not real happy with the bill, he called the debate surrounding it vital.

For Senator McCormack, the choice hinged on global warming. The planet was in danger, he said, and push had come to shove.

“The very idea I would vote against a bill to regulate a troubling development — something I never thought I would do,” he said.

“I’m going to vote against this bill and break my heart.”

A final vote by the Senate could come as early as Thursday morning.

contact Paul Lefebvre at paul@bartonchronicle.com

News analysis: A detailed look at the promise of new jobs

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Posted on March 20, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Bill Stenger addresses the Jay Town Meeting about changes at Jay Peak. Photo by Bethany M. Dunbar

copyright the Chronicle 3-20-13

by Tena Starr

The Northeast Kingdom has long been Vermont’s Cinderella stepchild — pretty and poor. It’s the region with the consistently highest unemployment rates, lower than average wages, arguably best scenery, and a culture all its own that it’s fiercely clung to.

For decades, it’s cried out for development, and jobs. And it seems likely it’s about to finally get them.

As everyone knows by now, Bill Stenger, Jay Peak Resort’s CEO, plans to invest millions in the region, from Jay Peak to Burke Mountain, with Newport in between. And a Walmart is supposedly coming to the area.

Mr. Stenger has said his investments will create 10,000 jobs, of which between 1,500 and 2,000 will be in Orleans County. And the Walmart that some have so yearned for would supposedly provide about 300 more in Vermont.

But what effect will all that development really have on working people in the Northeast Kingdom?

Jobs are one certain way to measure economic success, and in theory the more jobs the better. At the moment, the Northeast Kingdom economy seems to be holding its own, although it has undergone much change in recent decades, primarily in a gradual shift away from agriculture and forestry.

According to the Vermont Labor Department, the Newport area’s unemployment rate was 8.2 percent in January, down from 9.5 percent in January of 2012. However, that drop in the jobless rate was largely due to a reduction in the size of the workforce rather than the number of people without jobs.

“The unemployment rate didn’t come down because more people were working; over 2,000 jobless workers simply left the labor force,” says a report issued by the Public Assets Institute on Monday. The report is talking about the state as a whole.

“People drop out of the labor force when they get discouraged,” said Paul Cillo, president and executive director of the Public Assets Institute, which looks at financial data and jobs in Vermont with an eye toward developing policy.

“What we’re seeing is slow, steady growth in the Vermont economy,” Mr. Cillo said. “But we haven’t seen that it’s doing much for Vermont workers.”

Mr. Cillo’s organization concerns itself not only with jobs, but also with wages — another economic measure. He said that while a tight job market theoretically drives up wages, in practice there has been no evidence of that for some years.

According to the state’s latest livable wage report, which was issued in January, a living wage in Vermont is $12.48 an hour. That figure, however, is considered to be half what it would take to run a childless household. In other words, the assumption is that $12.48 per hour is a livable wage if there is another person in the home also making at least that amount.

“The Vermont Livable Wage is defined in statute as the hourly wage required for a full-time worker to pay for one-half of the basic needs budget for a two-person household with no children and employer-assisted health insurance, averaged for both urban and rural areas,” says the report, which is prepared by the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office.

“The livable wage is different from the wage for a single person because it accounts for the economies achieved by multiple-person households,” the report says. “This figure does not, however, include all potential household expenses because it is for families without children.”

The livable wage for a rural single person is $15.74, according to the report. For a single parent with one child, it’s $23.41; for a single parent with two children, it’s $28.03. For a household of two adults with two children and one wage earner, it’s $30.12; and for a home with two adult workers and two children, it’s $18.72.

The urban livable wage differs by a few cents.

The most recent figures available from the U.S. Department of Labor, from the fourth quarter of 2011, show an average weekly wage in Orleans County of $668 ($16.70 an hour for a 40-hour week) and $809 ($20.23 an hour) for Vermont as a whole.

Mr. Cillo said the Public Assets Institute has been considering what other factors would be indicators of the economy, particularly in the Northeast Kingdom.

The Northeast Kingdom economy is slightly different from that of other parts of the state, he said. In general, Vermont has transitioned from farming to more of an income-based economy. That matters, he said, because when you’re on a farm big expenses like childcare tend to not be an issue, since the family is at home.

“It’s a different way of life, and I think the Northeast Kingdom tends to have more people still living that kind of lifestyle,” Mr. Cillo said. “As soon as people leave the farm they have child care costs, clothing — those things cost money. I think that makes it hard to use statistics to understand the economy of the Northeast Kingdom. We have all these numbers, but they don’t really tell the story.”

It’s encouraging that agriculture is experiencing something of a revival in the Northeast Kingdom with young entrepreneurial farmers finding ways to prosper, Mr. Cillo said.

Steve Patterson, executive director of the Northeastern Vermont Development Association (NVDA), is also encouraged, both by successful agricultural models, the revival of Hardwick around local food and agricultural ventures, and by Mr. Stenger’s development plans for Orleans and Caledonia counties. That development will occur rapidly but not all at once, he said.

The 10,000 jobs figure that’s been tossed around is perhaps misleading, Mr. Patterson said. That does not necessarily mean there will be 10,000 new, permanent jobs, he said. Some, such as construction, will be temporary, that being the nature of construction work. Others will be created indirectly. For instance, he said he gets at least one phone call a week from someone who would like to supply Jay Peak with something or other.

“The big issue is the indirect impact this will have,” Mr. Patterson said. “It’s sort of like Hardwick, success breeds success.”

“Newport is just exploding with opportunity,” he said. “The spinoff from Burke hopefully will generate more interest in the St. J area as well.”

Mr. Patterson said that he and members of the group that is trying to evaluate and meet labor force needs are working on salary schedules for the jobs that Mr. Stenger’s development will provide.

Penne Ciaraldi, who works for Community College of Vermont and is a member of the workforce group, said that, generally, wages for those employed by the developments look to be decent, although a full profile hasn’t been worked up.

“Construction will be a big one,” she said about future demand for jobs.

By some estimates, about 5,000 construction jobs will be created.

According to the Vermont Labor Department, the average wage of a construction manager in 2011 (the latest figures available) was $39.25. A construction laborer’s average wage was $14.51; a carpenter’s, $20.08. Plumbers averaged $20.54, and electricians $19.28.

On the other end of the scale, Walmart’s wages are nothing to write home about. Walmart itself says its average national wage for a full-time employee is $12.40.

However, that does not account for its part-time employees. CNN says a typical Walmart employee is paid $22,000 a year, just below the federal poverty line for a family of four.

Glassdoor, an online site that looks at wages and working conditions, says an average Walmart sales associate earns $8.84 an hour and a cashier earns $8.45.

The hourly wage for a Vermont worker averaged out to $16.36, according to the state’s labor department. The mean was $20.71.

Not surprisingly, the highest wages are in the medical professions, with anesthesiologists having an average hourly rate of $117 and surgeons $104. The rate for physicians was $79; for psychiatrists, $65; and for general practitioners, $75.58.

The average Vermont wage for food preparation and serving related occupations was $11.99; for waiters and waitresses, $12.58; for maids and housekeeping cleaners, $10.83; amusement and recreation attendants, $9.88; cashiers, $10; retail salespersons $12.42; office and administrative support occupations $16.03; dishwashers, $9.60; hotel, motel and resort desk clerks $11.77; secretaries and administrative assistants (except legal, medical and executive) $14.44.

According to Mr. Stenger’s figures, 260 employees will be needed for the new Marina Hotel in Newport. Of those, 60 are needed for retail; 50 for administration; 75 for food and beverage service; 25 for operations; and 50 for hotel operations. Hiring would start in October of 2015.

At Burke Mountain, two hotels are scheduled to open in November of 2014. They would employ 25 people in administration and sales; 75 in food and beverage services; 100 in operations; and 25 in maintenance. Two more hotels, set to open the following year, would employ the same number of people in approximately the same professions.

Back at Jay, the Stateside Hotel is expected to employ 225 people and open in December of 2013. A new medical facility at Jay would hire four administrators, five registered nurses, and three doctors.

At AnC Bio in Newport, 250 people are expected to be hired. — 34 percent in manufacturing, 33 percent in research, and 33 percent described as “masters +.” The facility’s “clean room” is planning to hire another 250 employees, 20 percent in administration, and the remaining 80 percent in jobs requiring higher education.

Menck Windows in Newport plans to hire ten people in administration, five in management, and 125 in manufacturing.

While there is some concern that the Northeast Kingdom might end up with an economy that relies heavily on service jobs, which tend to be low paying, Mr. Cillo said that not all service jobs are dead ends.

“Some service jobs are fine,” he said. “You just don’t want to have a disproportionate number of them.”

contact Tena Starr at tena@bartonchronicle.com

Welcome to the era of Big Sugar

Featured

Posted on March 13, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Adam Parke stands at the collection point that pumps sap from steep hills to the east and west of the Hinman Road in Glover. Photos by Chris Braithwaite

by Chris Braithwaite

BARTON — When Adam Parke and Todd Scelza “sweetened the pans” and drew off their first 165 gallons of maple syrup Monday night, it was the culmination of ten months’ work and an investment of a quarter of a million dollars.

It was also a demonstration of what has happened to one of this area’s oldest and most traditional enterprises. Welcome to the era of Big Sugar.

Starting from scratch in May last year, Mr. Scelza and Mr. Parke have installed 11,700 taps over hundreds of acres of forest they’ve leased in Glover from Nick Ecker-Racz.

If all goes well, they’re looking forward to expanding to 15,000, perhaps 20,000 taps in future seasons.

That won’t make them the biggest operators in the business. Mark Colburn in West Glover has 21,000 taps this year. And when Mr. Parke and Mr. Scelza needed some very large tanks to handle their sap, they got them used from a sugarmaker in Franklin County. With about 100,000 taps, the seller found that his 4,500-gallon sap tanks were just too small.

All of the time and money the partners have put into their operation since last May is culminating this week in a productive machine with a great many moving parts.

Most of the taps yield their sap to a collection point that sits in a low, swampy area just off the old Hinman Road. The sap is drawn to two big tanks by a vacuum pump that reaches deep into the forest to the east and west through two-inch dry lines. The sap actually flows through a parallel set of wet lines, connected at strategic points to the dry line.

Mr. Ecker-Racz collects that sap in a tank on a trailer behind his tractor and hauls it south on the Hinman Road, across a ford over a small creek, and a short distance west on the Shadow Lake Road to a big insulated shipping container that houses a shiny new reverse osmosis (RO) machine. Another big tank receives the sap, along with sap pumped directly from taps in another section of the operation, on the south side of Shadow Lake Road.

A smaller tank sits beside the sap tank in the barn the partners have built, collecting a gush of concentrated sap from the RO machine.

That concentrate gets pumped up into a tank in the back of a veteran dump truck and hauled through Glover and Barton to Mr. Parke’s farm, high at the end of May Pond Road.

There it is boiled down into syrup in a six-by-16-foot evaporator fired by two oil burners.

The whole exercise is a fascinating mix of old and new. In Mr. Parke’s sugarhouse the back pan is 30 years old. He bought it from the defunct American Maple Company in Newport, and it was patched up under the supervision of Bucky Shelton at the new sugaring supply business in Orleans, Lapierre USA.

But the front pans are gleaming new stainless steel. There are three of them taking up the space of the traditional front pan, and a fourth to serve as a spare. The point, the sugarmakers explained, is that one pan can be lifted out of place and replaced while it is being cleaned. Frequent cleaning comes with the RO-enriched concentrate that arrives from Glover. It drops a lot of niter as it boils, and that can’t be allowed to coat the bottom of the pan.

“With RO sap, you’re kind of right on the edge of disaster all the time,” said Tim Perkins, who directs UVM’s Proctor Maple Research Center in Underhill.

He’s seeing a steady growth in the maple industry. Exact numbers are hard to come by, Mr. Perkins said, but his estimate is that “the maple industry has been growing quite rapidly over the last five years, on the order of 4 to 5 percent a year.”

New technology has been key to the industry’s growth, Mr. Perkins said.

“Anybody of a reasonably decent size is going to have a very efficient operation with a modern tubing system, vacuum lines, RO, and very efficient evaporators.”

A vacuum system like the one Mr. Parke and Mr. Scelza laid out with the help of a consultant from New York State can double the yield per tap.

The ratio of taps to syrup, Mr. Perkins said, “used to be a quart per tap in a good year on buckets. Now, tapping forest trees, you can get half a gallon per tap year after year, if you’re doing everything right.”

“If you don’t have vacuum,” Mr. Shelton said flatly, “it’s like having a ski area without snow making.”

To handle all that sap most large sugarmakers have turned to reverse osmosis.

David Marvin of Butternut Mountain Farm in Morrisville recalled starting out 40 years ago with 4,000 taps. “That was a pretty big deal,” he said. His operation currently has 16,000 taps.

“The real key has been reverse osmosis,” Mr. Marvin said. Without it, sugarmakers were burning between four and four and a half gallons of oil to make a gallon of syrup. With RO, Mr. Marvin said, it takes two quarts of oil to make a gallon of syrup.

Without RO, Mr. Marvin said, “we wouldn’t have this expansion in the industry. The consumer wouldn’t be able to afford the energy we’d have to use to make the product.”

Though most large-scale sugarmakers burn oil, Mr. Perkins at the research center noted that the technology of wood-fired rigs continues to advance. While wood-fired rigs have long relied on a supply of forced air at the bottom of the fire pit, the new models add a flow of air over the top of the fire to burn gasses that would otherwise go up the stack.

Bucky Shelton stands beside the Hurricane at Lapierre USA in Orleans. The rig applies new technology to the time-honored practice of burning wood. Photos by Chris Braithwaite

Mr. Shelton has one such rig on display at the Lapierre store in Orleans. It’s a three-tiered beauty in stainless steel called the Hurricane, and it carries a price tag of $36,212. Its top unit, called a piggyback, concentrates the sap on its way down to the evaporator.

For Mr. Parke and Mr. Scelza, finding a very large, untapped hardwood forest rich in maple was key to their enterprise. Mr. Ecker-Racz bought his land at the end of the Perron Hill Road in 1968 and moved onto it in 1970. Since then the trained forester has cultivated it much the way others might care for a garden.

He’s culled for firewood, harvested the softwood several times, but left the best hardwood standing for saw logs — or for sugaring.

He scorns the idea of clearcutting, or even selectively cutting everything over a certain size. Though they are rare these days, he said, “you will find a few old-time Vermonters who understand the genetics of wood. It’s just like a dairy herd. You don’t milk your culls and beef your best cows.”

Mr. Parke is clearly delighted to have found such a stand of maples. “Nick is an exceptional forester,” he said of Mr. Ecker-Racz.

Mr. Parke and Mr. Scelza demonstrated a lot of ingenuity in getting set up for sugaring. The barn on the Shadow Lake Road is a reconstruction of one Mr. Parke tore down in Orwell. Years ago Mr. Parke picked up a couple of shipping containers and buried them at his farm as root cellars. He dug them up and used one to house the RO machine, the other for the pumps and generator at the collection point in the swamp, where there is no power.

That military surplus generator proved too small for the job, so while he waits for a new one Mr. Parke is using a borrowed generator powered by his tractor. As one neighbor noted, that requires 2 a.m. runs on his ATV to keep the tractor fueled.

When Mr. Ecker-Racz first broke out the Hinman Road with his tractor at the end of February, its front end fell off as it dropped into the open ford.

But he had it fixed in time to deliver the first loads of sap. And on Tuesday morning with the RO machine sending a gush of concentrated sap into the tank, the two partners were clearly delighted to see their enterprise finally in production.

contact Chris Braithwaite at chris@bartonchronicle.com