SeVEDS Board Meeting Minutes for April 16, 2015 Meeting | 2:00-4:00pm

In Attendance:  Martin Langeveld, Bill Colvin, Peter Yost, Jill James, Meg Streeter, Susan McMahon, Drew Richards, Adam Grinold, Patrick Moreland, Lisa Sullivan, Bob Stevens, Dutch Walsh

Regrets:  Laura Sibilia (on the House Floor), Ann Andreasatos, Jeremy Haskins, Konstantin Von Krusenstern, Cynthia Stoddard

The Usual Business

• Welcome and Gathering

Alex Beck, new Young Professionals Coordinator was introduced to the Board and spoke about

• Approve Minutes

Page 2, additional partner to be added to the minutes from March meeting for the CEDF project.

Motion by Meg, Second by Lisa.  Approved.

• Review and Approve Financials (Jill James)

Motion by Lisa, Second by Peter  (Jodi and Jill will ensure that the financial print outs are a bit more efficiently laid out for minimal paper usage!)

• Fundraising/Grant/Budget discussions
  • EDA – Waiting and seeing, could hear in the next two weeks – we’re hopeful!
  • WCEDP update (Adam)

Susan and Adam were met in Montpelier with Pat and Dutch via phone.  They thought there would be a funded position included.  The timeline for revisions to their proposal was too quick.  The State opened this meeting saying that the funding was out and the reboot was going to be a very similar program.  There will be grants for nonprofits, defining what the project priorities are with much more specific guidelines.  The final decision on who gets funded still lays with the Governor with BDCC/SeVEDS and WRC involved as partners in the vetting process.

• CEDF (Peter)

Launched the Windham Wood Heat initiative with a press event on 4/15/15 at Academy School.  The whole school was outside with the governor for the announcement since Academy School is the first project to move forward with the replacement wood pellet fired heating system.  Peter thanked Jodi for standing in for Adam to present the BDCC/SeVEDS comments on the announcement.  $75,000 will go to the project for Academy School.  Schools have a very narrow timeline for the projects given how long summer vacations are.

Building Green, Northern Forest Center & SEON will serve as the executive team for the projects coming in.  Andy Perchlik from CEDF will come in to help with any conflicts or challenges. SEON’s capacity will be greatly increased from being a “vapor” organization into a working organization with administrative capacity.

• Towns (Adam)

There is a meeting set for Brattleboro to consider funding for SeVEDS at the $3 per citizen rate.  Adam will know more by the next board meeting.

• State Funding (Workforce Development) –

The $25,000 from the state should be coming in after a few more minor edits happen to the mid-year report.

CEDS and FY ‘15 Board Priority Area Updates

• General CEDS –
  • Planning for full CEDS meeting at May meeting
    • Invites out by April 24
• CEDS Objective 1: Act Regionally
  • Board 2015 Priority: Communications Plan
    • Seeking assistance from an intern to help with writing & comm plan
    • Applying for a USDA RBEG grant to boost communication for group; should help us with planning whether or not we get the grant
    • Communication plan in draft form; Laura, Adam and Jodi to look at in more depth before bringing to board
• CEDS Objective 2: Create an entrepreneurial environment and culture to enhance existing business and grow new business.
  • Board 2015 Priority: SoVT Business Accelerator
    • Jodi working on asset map
• CEDS Objective 3: Improve wage parity with the surrounding laborshed
  • Board 2015 Priority: Green Building
    • Tracking idea pitched at Lt. Governor session on Housing First
    • Green building team met Wednesday at BDCC to talk about projects  and direction (Jodi and Peter)

The Green Building CEDS Committee spoke about the merit of producing a product line to help address the homelessness issue with some form of high performance manufactured tiny house.  Peter mentioned that there is an opportunity for us to be the makerspace for testing/prototyping the type housing that would be the best kind of product.  The funding for these ongoing Housing First projects is a challenge with all of the continued services needed to support these communities.  Susan is bringing Rosanne Haggerty with Community Solutions to speak to innovative ideas for addressing homelessness to come to the region.

When the cluster analysis happens, will Housing First be something that fits into the priorities?  Drew sits on the Windham/Windsor Housing Trust which is exploring micro-apartments and other options.  Susan mentioned that there was a State housing needs assessment done which is very comprehensive.

 

• Health Care Cluster met with CCV to talk about training workers; excited to keep meeting with each other on a quarterly basis
• Tech Cluster folks have been meeting with workforce development and guidance counselors
• CEDS Objective 4: increase the size and quality of the workforce
  • Board 2015 Priority: Workforce Development and Internship Program
    • Jan has placed more interns in the last quarter than in all of last year
    • WHEC is really excited to keep building on this program, and to move to exploring the full potential of cross registration
    • Website has been completed w/ a intern (show and tell)
    • Workforce development updates (Dutch)

Meeting happened on Tuesday, April 14th.  Will have SEVCA come and present about the population of the workforce that we have not traditionally worked with.  The committee is currently reevaluating their goals and mission.  Looking also at where resources should be spent, on the school programming and on the relationship with employers.  They are looking at possible staff capacity on coordinating programming between all the schools and the employers.  Also pursuing creation of videos for businesses who are willing to do this to help promote the career pathways offered at their businesses.  These would be created by and for students.

• CEDS Objective 5: Retain and attract younger talent through engagement linkages, lifestyle amenities, and meaningful career opportunities
  • Board 2015 Priority: SoVT Recruiting
    • New YP Coordinator Alex Beck

• Scheduling April event at Hermit Thrush
• Working on grant with Jodi for YP
• CEDS Objective 6: Develop immediate, VY-specific workforce and site impact mitigation strategies prior to its 2014 closure.
  • Laura did a site visit in her legislative capacity

 

*CEDS Committee will be invited to come to the May Board meeting to approve the CEDS update and workplan.  

Substantive Discussions

• Branding exercise (Adam)

If you were to think of SeVEDS as a Vehicle and as an Animal, which ones would it be and why?

If you were to think of BDCC as a Vehicle and as an Animal, which ones would it be and why?

The idea is to create some clarity between the two boards about what each does and how they interact, what is different, what they collaborate on, etc.

SeVEDS Vehicle	SeVEDS Animal	BDCC Vehicle	BDCC Animal
Hybrid Bus, 1960s love bus, get everyone onboard!	?	Skidder, gathers the resources	Beaver, builds the ecosystem
Train, collaborative travel, travelling together regionally	?	Lincoln Town car, big, expensive	?
Concrete truck, always something we are adding to the mix, hasn’t quite finished, always mixing	Hummingbird, collecting nectar, flitting in and out, never seems tired or finished	Edsel, classic, out of date, antique	Elephant, bold, gray
Subaru Impreza, medium cool, not stodgy, not super cool.	Hermit Thrush, seems to be a thing? Not sure why?	Jeep	Big dog, possibly friendly, possibly territorial?
Train, WooWoo!  Everyone on board! Train tracks are what connects our region.	Spider, weaving strong networks	Jeep	Tiger, lies in wait and decisively acts.
Train, keeps chugging along	Bat, nimble, is aware of what is going on around it	Chevy, reliable,  not exciting	Tortoise, longevity, slow, not nimble
Currier Bike, do not break, practical, nimble	Koala bear, cute and fuzzy on the outside, fierce and focused on the inside.		Elephant, strong & slow
Dead car that a Morgan Horse is pulling	Morgan Horse, strong, reliable, bred in VT	Dead car that a Morgan Horse is pulling	Morgan Horse, strong, reliable, bred in VT
?	Dolphin, Problem solver, social, large group minded, inclusive	Cadillac, old, classy	Gorilla, strong, big
Post Hole Digger,  practical, everything you need for tough tasks	Wolverine, “chewed its way out of a metal cage on the way to Norway”  feisty	Hummer,  Big, not good gas mileage, noticeable entity	?
Insight,  hybrid, who knows what they are part of?  It’s not readily affiliated with a particular brand	Red Squirrel, Scrappy, busy, take on any project, brazen, feisty, nimble	Jeep, strong brand, going back forever, a little faceless, but still a Jeep	Grey Squirrel, more focused, bigger, prettier to look at, more approachable

 

• Work plan priorities for next year (Ariel)
  • Small group to help Laura

Rather than form a subcommittee, the board took on the task of reviewing and making suggestions during the final portion of the meeting.

Workforce development as a priority.  All of the sectors have the same concerns about the workforce.  Problems attracting the engineers, spouses can’t find a job, or single engineers can’t find a good social scene.  Software developers.  Immigration strategy.  How do we attract the intellectual capital that will fill the positions we need to grow our businesses, particularly in Tech Manufacturing.

The other positions hard to find are salespeople.  Skilled salespeople for larger sales force positions.

 

3:  Private fundraising campaign needs to happen.  Dutch offered to bring someone in from Keene State to assist with developing and framing. Create a private collaboration to work on this, financial institutions, companies, etc.

2.  Technical working group.  It was a good meeting, and then it got dropped.  Institute an actual working culture, but there needs to be a reason to come together.   It is also a really challenging task that should have some specific actions.  Grammatically, it doesn’t really flow or guide actions clearly.

 

Do we get derailed too much by emergent items?  Also, how realistic is this plan given how many items we were not able to even start accomplishing?  Seems we need to be more pragmatic in our workplan creation.

 

6.  Dutch would like to assist with creating the group to be the Tech. Manufacturing cluster group. Also Bob is willing to assist.

 

10.  Is completed and now we need to move on with the actions resulting from the information.

 

There should be a summary of what did get accomplished.  The Workforce items should be collapsed into fewer items.  It looks like there are really only 6-8 Activities rather than 19.

Did 12 happen?  That is a BiTown initiative.  We should keep it as something we are looking at.

Communications Plan

Southern Vermont Business Accelerator

What is left to do in 3 months?  And what gets rolled into 2016?

Susan, Dutch, Peter, Bob all want to get to the Tri County meeting.  Jodi will ensure they are on the RSVP list.

There is also a Welcome Home Laura! Dinner at the Marina on Thursday, May 14th from 5pm-7pm.  All are welcome!  Jodi will send out Google Event Invitation.

The next Board Meeting is Thursday, May 21st.