Meeting of July 15, 2015

Posted by Fritz Horton 
 
 
Charlotte-Shelburne Rotary Club
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Trinity Episcopal Church Community Room
 
President Trafton Crandall led the pledge. Sam Feitelberg offered the invocation.
 
Visitors:  Cyrus Patten, today’s speaker – Campaign for Vermont,
 
Upcoming Programs:
 
Board meeting Thursday morning at 7:30
July 22: Club Assembly with Louisa Tripp, District 7850 Governor attending
July 29: Clark Hinsdale of Charlotte – Vermont Farm Bureau
August 5: Alan Hathaway – classification talk
August 12: Committee work
August 19: Wendy Bratt – Charlotte School Mentoring Program Coordinator
 
Correspondence:
 
President Trafton read and passed to the membership thank you letters from Lund Family Center and from Camp Agape for our donation to those organizations. He also passed out a letter from Gabrielle Booth, one of our RYLA participants.
 
Announcements:
 
Mike Clapp – Updates on Work Projects:
 
  • Camp Ta-Kum-Ta’s “Backwards Day” evening breakfast on July 29. He passed out a sign-up sheet.
  • Food Shelf:  An organization committee has been formed to continue the work of this charitable effort. CS Rotary, SBPA and other town service clubs will be allocated positions to serve on the BOD for limited terms. Roz and Mike are charged to provide the name of our representative for the first term. President Trafton will lead that discussion at the BOD meeting and advise the club of its decision.
 
Bill Root – Draft Horse Day Parking at Shelburne Farms August 1, 11am – 4pm near Welcome Center:  He passed around a sign-up sheet in search of for this brief event.
 
Barb Comeau – New Playground Structure at Shelburne Community School: Assembly by volunteers is scheduled for August 1, 8am to noon +/-. Contact Barb to be added to the list.
 
Linda Gilbert – Passed around a sign-up sheet to help Terrell & Steve with dinners again. Commitment is to assist them with dinners on Mondays & Thursdays. (Terrell advised that they eat lite dinners, and Steve cannot have cheese.) Ric signed up for this Thursday and Linda will cover next Monday’s dinner. List currently covers the weeks prior to August 31. She will update and extend the list if warranted in August. Those not present but wishing to help should contact Linda with your name & phone number.
 
Ric Flood – Bowlathon:
 
  • He said donations stand at $12K and expects more in the coming weeks as he receives contributions solicited by Tom Glaser and others for the event.
  • He handed out a summary of donations to date and stressed the importance and simplicity of the process he has instituted and urged to participate in the fundraising.
  • Specifically, he noted that the what goes down comes ‘round; i.e., if you are solicited by someone for his/her charitable organization, be sure to offer the same opportunity to contribute to him/her by sending him/her one of Ric’s requests for contributions. All you need to do is give Ric the contact info and sign & send the letter Ric will give you. Couldn’t be simpler!
 
Sergeant at Arms: Pot stands at $341. Denny Bowen accepted cash and other valuable consideration from the following:
 
HAPPY FINES: I’m happy for…
Ric Flood: Glad to see Denny as Sgt.-of-Arms and added a scoot fine. Denny was honored to take his money.
Carole Obuchowski: Happy to be there because she rises late on Wednesdays. For some reason, she and Joe stay up late Tuesdays. Denny and others advocated for volunteers to sign up to give her a wake-up call.
John Hammer: Happy to have survived 37 events at Chautauqua Institute Week. Learned how to play the ukulele with his big fingers on the small frets. When asked if he learned anything about mooring his boat, he announced that it moors and unmoors itself. Nevertheless, it is fixed now, thanks to George Darling, who took it apart and put it back together in two weeks. All it needs now is a mast, which lacks its forestay. Details, details!
Eric Hanley: Had fun at a party seeing old friends.
Sam Feitelberg: Happy Denny overlooked his hand waving with a dollar bill.
Doris Sage: Happy for a productive day yesterday. “Got a lot of stuff done!”
Linda Gilbert: After a fretful week, her daughter Noelle and sister Nicole both had successful surgeries. 
Barb Comeau: For her niece’s adoption ceremony.
Lara Keenan: Missed the meeting last week because her brother & sister-in-law were in town and had a great time.
George Schiavone: Good to see Denny in a very effective position. He then tested Denny’s prowess with math by rummaging through the fine basket claiming he needed change for his Alexander Hamilton… Denny saw through the ruse and held his own against George’s unwarranted assault on our coffers.
Dennis Delaney: For the note from Gabrielle Booth and her learning the forgotten art of taking a real pen to a real piece of paper to express her thanks to us.
John Dupee: Yesterday he put son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters on a plane. There’s peace in the valley!
Steve Dates: Daughter’s heel surgery was successful and noted yesterday was Bastille Day.  
Trafton Crandall: Thanks to Jesus, the American League won the All Star Championship. Also enjoyed FaceTime with his four grandchildren & daughter, who showed him an ultrasound of his fifth grandchild!  And, by the way, on behalf of “the chickens”, he brought two dozen extraordinarily valuable, bird-flu-free eggs with him today for distribution to anyone who wants them.  
Alan Hathaway: Had a great weekend. His brother & family from Bangkok, Thailand, were visiting.
Mike Clapp: For old friends who visited for a week or so. Good to see them and happy to see John Dupee’s happy face last Friday. Noted that Terrell plans to attend the Kamp Ta-Kum-Ta evening breakfast.
Roz Graham: Bought a day pass with her visiting friends at Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and enjoyed the tour, lunch and informative boat tour of that end of the lake.
Denny Bowen:  Announced to applause he has been on this planet 78 years now.
 
Lucky Draw: $341 in the pot. (All time record: $340). Speaker Cyrus Patten drew the card for Carol O’s draw. Rollover
 
Guest Speaker: Cyrus Patten, Campaign for Vermont
 
Lara Keenan introduced Cyrus Patten. He is a licensed social worker who has served in leadership positions at some of Vermont’s most notable nonprofit organizations, including Howard Center and Spectrum Youth & Family Services. Armed with a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s in Social Work degree from Colorado State University, he is now a doctoral candidate in Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies at UVM. His expertise lies in outcomes measurement, organizational development and complex system change. He has worked on behalf of several statewide advocacy organizations, building diverse coalitions and membership organizations. He lives with wife and two children in Williston. 
 
The Campaign for Vermont (CoVT) is a Non-partisan non-profit advocacy group to move policy forward. Founded by Bruce Lisman with co-founders Tom Pelham and Mary Alice McKenzie. Bruce spoke to the Club a few years ago. Building a grassroots movement in Vermont a mission to see a more prosperous Vermont with a stronger economy and more efficient government. Our role so far has been to be an agitator, to see opportunities to make Vermont stronger by engaging in a number of policy debates.
 
Successes so far are:
 
  • Bringing more transparency & accountability to government and our elected officials by using the term “ethics” in a fashion similar to Rotarians, who hold truth and integrity in high regard. He made the point that Vermont is one of only three states having no rule regarding ethical behavior for public officials. No prohibition against nepotism, public-to-private enterprise “revolving doors”, use of tax dollars for personal gains, appointing friends. Not much evidence that this has been a problem in Vermont, but the point is to close an open door to the small minority out there who would take advantage of the public trust.
    • Two legislative sessions ago, the House changed their rules to require new representatives to provide more information about themselves and their affiliations. Without that information, for example, we would not know now that the head of the House Education Committee is a member of NEA. Good to know where connections lie.
    • The House Speaker, President pro-tem of the Senate and Secretary of State are now onboard with this reform. Three years ago, no one wanted to address this issue.
    • Changed the dialog on the state’s annual budget to address the budget gap. CofVT’s position is that we did not cut the budget, only reduced planned increases. While the economy has grown an average of 2.9% for the last six years, General Fund spending has grown an average of 5.5%. The issue must be resolved eventually. The gap in the budget itself is not a true “gap” if one removes discretionary items from the list.
    • CoVT has taken a strong stand on educational reform based on well-researched investigation.
      • H-361, signed by the Governor for educational reform this year, favors district consolidation for small towns under the false assumption that “small” equals “inefficient” and “expensive”. Small schools make up only 5% of all educational spending in Vermont. 5% of the educational spending in the state is not driving your property taxes up.
      • Property taxes are rising as a result of demographic changes (we’re losing students and therefore losing the economy of scale needed to operate some schools and their superintendencies efficiently. Costs of operation are rising as well, 80% of which are the result of rising personnel costs. Several large districts are bloated and inefficient, others are not.
      • H-361 will lower the taxes in 13 districts. The rest will have to pay for that change. It was voted upon at the last-minute in a closed unwarned session not open to the public in a desperate move to do something about education reform.
      • The good news is that the law will be challenged as unconstitutional in that it does not allow a low-spending town to grow their spending at the same real rate as a large-spending town.
 
  • Doris asked why we cannot be pushing for term limits for our state (and federal) representatives. Cyrus answered by saying that CoVt would support that if someone would bring it up.
 
  • Speaking as a former two-term representative, Denny said CoVT appears to be over-reacting to the ethics issue. He saw many who might have had conflicts-of-interest recuse themselves many times. Vermont does not need a statute like most other states where the populations are large and more is at stake in general in any policy discussion. Cyrus agreed that Vermonters should not be lumped into a pool with the other states for obvious reasons. However, we should have enough information about our elected officials to know and understand their actions in the statehouse. At the same time the disclosures were required, the House set up an ethics committee to advise lawmaker as well as to receive and evaluate complaints. Only one case has been brought to this committee so far.
 
  • Howard agreed with Cyrus on the educational reform issue, stating that the Brigham Decision brought a level of confusion to most citizens due to its complexity. Lost is the local input to local school spending and policy issues that allowed most small schools to succeed in their missions over the years. Many from small towns have gone to elite colleges.
 
  • Howard (in his second question, which we all know would follow…) asked whether CoVT is involved in the healthcare financing debate. Cyrus stated CoVT has an initial position statement on this subject, but the nine-month-to-a year period of research on the topic is still underway.
 
  • Carol asked that if the size of the educational district is not the problem, what is the problem? Cyrus responded by saying part of the problem is that no incentive exists in the current financial model for a district to hold costs down. He is in a receiving town for Act 60’s distribution of educational funds. For every $1000 saved in his town’s budget, he sees only $120. In the same town, for every $1000 the school budget grows, it costs only $120. No built-in incentive to reduce costs there. While some are small and are inefficient, that definition by no means should be applied to all. Burlington HS’s total spending divided by the actual number of students is in the realm of $23,000 per student. Rutland City is similar. If we look at the real numbers, some towns are overspending while others are keeping their costs low, and size does not seem to be part of the equation.
 
  • Economies of scale are not built into the funding mechanism.  CoVT’s proposal is to unify just the budget management of multiple small towns. Leave the school boards and districts in place without fiddling with them. Unify the budget to allow administrative costs to be addresses directly.
  • George asked whether the high BHS cost per pupil included the equivalent students. Cyrus responded that, while we must take into account those students as well as the need for dealing with several languages, the expanded breakfast-lunch programs and counseling, we don’t address the actual cost per student. The number on the ballot, as a result of Act 46, for education spending per equalized pupil. It will not represent the total spending in each school. If you multiply the number of equalized pupils in your school by the stated cost per pupil, the result will not match your school budget.
  • Bill Root asked if the BTV school budget saw a blip upward due to the buyout for the last two superintendents. Cyrus said that budget has grown for that and from growth due to increases in the number of pupils with diverse language needs, on free lunch programs and other factors as well. CoVT has asked the Auditor of Accounts to look into the equalized pupil calculation simply because it is not publicly available. It relies on data that comes from the Agency of Human Services, which means the data is protected under the privacy regulations.     
 
John Dupee asked if CoVT has a position on the cleanup of Lake Champlain. Cyrus responded saying that they have jumped into the discussion in recognition of the fact that the Lake is a major economic driver in the state’s economy. CoVT is advocating for ways to clean up the waterways that are affordable. Adding an assessment to the property transfer tax to help pay for lake cleanup probably is not advisable because property ownership and sales are already expensive.
  • CoVT would support a more focused and effective means of addressing the agricultural sources of lake pollution. A group using GIS and USGC digital mapping data is now able to zero on those often very small portions of a farmer’s field that are actually his/her problem areas to mitigate a pollution problem in lieu of prescribing a solution to the farmer to be applied to all of his/her farmland.  These maps can look at ¼ acre at a time. This is an effective and efficient way to address the problem and not to assume that all we need is to throw money at it.
  • Doris asked if pollution from boaters is being addressed by CoVT. Cyrus thinks ANR has it on their radar, but pollution from urban and boating sources are very small. Studies show 97% of the Lake’s pollution is from agricultural sources.
 
In response to a question about CoVT’s status as a lobbyist, Cyrus stated the organization is registered as a 501.4c non-profit corporation. Donations to CoVT are not tax-deductible. He stated they work on policy issues and do not attempt to influence elections in any way.
 
Carol stated she attended a 1 ½ hour presentation in Shelburne on the Clean Water Act. Their statistics disagree with CoVT’s. However, in her private practice she has seen the State does not enforce violations of permits it issues for wastewater and runoff.
 
In closing, Cyrus invited all to visit https://www.campaignforvermont.org/ to review all the organization’s information there.
 
Before gaveling the meeting, Trafton gave Cyrus a CSR coffee mug and let him hold Entrepreneurship for the Rest of Us by Paul Brown, the book to be given to the Pearson Library in his name.
 
All departed the meeting without incident.
 
Respectively submitted,
 
Fritz Horton