Hello everybody welcome so glad you could all come out tonight on this strangely chilly night and I'm here to welcome you and just let you know that in 10 minutes our meeting will officially start giving you a 10 minute warning you can do a lot of those 10 minutes you can finish up what you're eating you can get some more raffle tickets stuffed in there okay you can vote for council members because that ballot box is still open and that will be open through the full duration of this meeting and electronic voting will be open until 11 59 p.m. most I just want to welcome you and let you know that in 10 minutes we'll start the meeting proper thank you so much for coming up tonight Oh Hello everybody thank you again for coming to the Honda Mountain co-op 2016 annual meeting we're gonna get a underway now hoping really settled in and are ready for our meeting to start watch you know we seem to have a very good turnout tonight now it may be pretty packed in here but it turns out that we have expanded how the annual meeting can be seen orca is taping and broadcasting this meeting so you can see it in other dimensions and we'll continue to do that as time goes forward we want to let you know a couple facts there are two bathrooms on this floor more bathrooms on the floor downstairs where you entered and there's even bathrooms in the basement of Montpelier City Hall so we hope you all know where those are and I need to give you some firing emergency information if there is an emergency you may depart in a normally manner through that door back there or if the emergency is so you may also use the emergency fire exit that is behind that door she's motioning nicely she's give you give the motion yes this should only be used in an emergency it has nothing to do with a normal way to exit the building okay well now I hope you've enjoyed the meal tonight that was produced for you by our co-ops deli I hope you've enjoyed some of the local music from 19 strings I see they had to pack up so quickly but let's let you know about the members of council where we're kind of all sitting up here and I want to introduce the council members to you you can wave and salute I'm gonna go from this end if I can see down there Marcy young you can stand up and win Tyler strange and maybe I should introduce myself I'm Alex Brown the president of the council thank you now I'd like to ask we have some candidates for council you know you've been having a chance to vote and I'm gonna talk to you more about voting in a moment but would you please stand up I know Mark Simikaski is here he's one of the candidates and Karen is here one of our candidates and do I see the third candidate I do not and Ashley is also running to Ashley is running as an incumbent all right all right very good thank you now let me remind you that you may continue to cast ballots until the end of the meeting we formulate this a little differently but you may cast your ballot for council through the end of this meeting and if you didn't quite get it in in time you may also cast a ballot electronically by going online until 11 59 p.m. and at midnight something happens and that's the end of both we will be announcing the winners on our Facebook page tomorrow Friday probably in the afternoon when all the tabulations are done and verify and announcing them online and in other dimensions beyond that so thank you very much for voting participation is very important in that dimension and now okay here we go our agenda tonight is strong and simple and you'll get through it easily want to remind you that the raffles which are taking place over there you've all got a stuff packet of tickets you must be present to win I know it seems cruel but I want you to stick around and wait to see if you win the raffle it will make it worthwhile there is one other thing you could do you can win an even bigger prize than the raffle you can put an idea in our suggestion box and someone from the call up will respond to that online or in some medium it helps us to know what's important to you so that the call can reflect your so we can be your store the whole point and now I'd like to do something just to limber us up a little bit we've been eating for a while may I ask you all if you can to please stand up I have some more instructions for you but the first instruction is to stand all right good this is good for your digestion and your general sense of vigor yes yes yes yes yes yes now if you joined the hunger mountain car in the last year I'm going to ask you to sit down if you joined and have been here for at least for just one year for one year please sit down people who've only been members for one year now I'm gonna ask the people who've been members for less than three years to sit down it's a little bit of winnowing we're doing but we're trying to see something about this group all right now how about if you've been a member for less than five years then you can sit down all right some of you are anxious to sit down I'm giving you a reason all right now how about ten years if you've been a member less than ten years please sit down you know what's so great a lot of you were still now members less than 15 years let's see what that takes us down to oh some of you are still standing tall how about less than 20 years oh my gosh look at how many of you have been members for 20 years or longer thank you so much for your commitment to hunger mountain call up I appreciate I'm not gonna give any more dimensions for the length of your membership but let's applaud everybody all right now crystal you're back there you're gonna send me some information and the information is gonna tell me a little bit about how many people have registered so we can verify that we have a quorum to conduct this annual meeting crystal 247 and still counting that's a great turnout particularly on a rainy cold night thank you so much for coming all right good and that does constitute a quorum because a hundred or more will do that now I need to do one more thing which is this you when you entered you had an opportunity to see the minutes of the 2015 annual meeting we are now going to vote to approve those minutes and I'm looking for someone who was willing to stand up and give his or her name and issue a motion to approve the minutes of the 2015 annual meeting can I get a motion yes all right and state your name and spell it please for Heather because your name you're spelling right I gotta get your spelling myself HA H E D I okay do I got a second for this motion and will you give me your name Jill McKee okay MC K E O M good we got those now I need to vote we get to vote all those in favor of approving the minutes of the 2015 annual meeting please say aye anyone opposed I'm gonna call for that next anyone wants to abstain one okay very good the motion is passed thank you very much and now I'd like to introduce Matt Levin who is the chair of the Hunger Mountain Co-op Community Fund hello everyone so I have the pleasure of telling you about one of the activities that we do with co-op it's the community fund which was started in 2005 to offer financial support to organizations and businesses and initiatives that are aligned with our mission over the past few years we've developed a formal community grants program and we've awarded between 8,000 and $10,000 a year this past year we were very gratified to get 21 applications and we're happy to announce that we were able to award $9,400 in grants to nine out of seven different recipients so the fund is supported by donations from members and from the co-ops operations thank you to all of you who did make donations some of those came from patronage refund checks and this past year the council also decided to put into the fund the uncashed patronage refunds and so when you add those all up it ends up being a sum that really can make a big difference in the community and we're very glad to be able to support the projects that we know from our process really do make a difference the community fund advisory committee is made up of six people there are three member owners myself Claire Wheeler and Jake Claro two council members Scott Hess and Marcy Young and the staff person is Kari Bradley our general manager the committee makes the recommendations to the council which reviews them and makes the final approval and the criteria that we use comes from again our hope of using the limited funds that we do have to make a difference in the community so we look for projects that are aligned with the mission that antists that have a clear anticipated project impact that they're feasible that they have a connection and will have some recognition that they can give to the co-op how much money we have and how much is requested and whether or not the applicants have access to other resources so I'll read off the names and if someone's here from each of the projects we ask them to come forward and we have a certificate for them over there and we'll take a photo as well as the time for training for that so come up and go over to the side and Kari will be used to so the recipients so $2,000 to another way towards their kitchen renovation which is needed to help ease hunger in our community so another way $275 to the very senior center to support their classes which help seniors eat local foods on a budget $5,637 to Bethany church to upgrade their dishwashing equipment in their soup kitchen $200 to the callous agricultural committee for their innovative edible landscaping for public lands project $2,000 to the central Vermont Council on Aging to support their meal delivery to seniors as part of their healthy eating for health aging program dollars to the good food good medicine program to support their family wellness series that empowers families with self-reliance skills and finally $2,000 to the Vermont Food Bank to support their veggie Van Gogh program in Barry so these are great projects we're really glad to be able to support them and if you're interested in participating on the committee we're always looking for other folks to participate in our conversations you can talk to Kari about that and thanks so much for all you for supporting this great work that you can do in the community this is the report section in which you who own the co-op should find out how we did or what we did so we're going to be hearing from me and our treasurer Scott Hess and also from our general manager Kari Bradley who's here and I didn't earlier because he's busy so I want to talk to you a little bit about how the co-op did 2016 was a successful year for us and I want to thank everybody here because the reason that we succeed is that you shop you participate you believe in what the co-op is here to do the co-op's ultimate mission is expressed in our end statement it has to do with supporting healthy people building a local food system and advancing the idea of co-op commerce our store doesn't exist just to make a profit it exists for other reasons and we grew in a lot of dimensions that were well beyond what just numbers would show what just profit would show we've increased the number of member owners we've doubled this number in approximately 10 years this is an amazing sense of growth and you should all feel glad that your neighbors joining you and being members of the co-op and we've increased sales of course other things have happened we've increased donations of scholarships the very things that sponsorships very things that Matt was just talking to us about we're selling more local products from more local vendors all these forms of growth aren't just about money they're about advancing the co-op's mission now there are things that we don't ever want to change and we kept a four things and some others of the same this year and those include making sure that we're keeping profits in the community that's what a local store does that's what our co-op does that's why it's so different from other economic models you can be really proud of your involvement with co-op is advancing an important economic principle we have very very high shopper satisfaction rates I hope we're just boosting in another percent by the dinner tonight I don't know you should also know that a hundred percent of our hundred and sixty eight members staff earns the call there's the Vermont livable wage or better and we're always trying to make sure so all the told every time you shop you can realize that you're doing something for our three-point line you're advancing our social concerns our environmental concerns and our community concerns every time you shop is we are in a state of always getting better things and investigating how we can do things better so this year for example we've improved to advance our environmental interest we've decreased energy use by six percent we've done other things along this line there's some I don't know when we're gonna make some announcements but we were advancing things every every minute in this in this dimension at all times we're trying to balance the interests of customers employees vendors and our own and just a sense of our our customers that we just walk into the store so we're always looking for ways we can improve and these are some some elements that improve this year so we'll go on with that and now finally I want to talk to you about this are there ways we can improve when you bold to 99 there's always room for improvement okay so we are trying to get better every year this year we did reverse a trend and we had a slightly higher profit than we did the year prior nevertheless it is a razor thin amount there's a lot that keeps it holding just to raise every and I want to say this isn't just the tightrope this is a Cirque de Soleil act this is the best balancing job you've ever seen what we're trying to do is allocate money to employees to vendors and come up with fair prices for our shoppers that's you know fair wages fair prices to you and it's an incredible at the balancing act that Kari and Kevin and everybody working in that you can co-op management strive to do every year we wish the profit margin will rock let's clap for them yes so next year we hope to perhaps improve that little bit and one of the things we're paying attention to right now is the fact that the amount spent the amount we pay out in fact in discounts every year is rising and it's now rising faster than our sales are increasing so we have to pay attention to that and you as store owners should be aware that this is a dimension that we will be looking at and asking you to be thinking about so let's just take stock the cop is 44 years old right now every time you shop there you are in helping the co-op serve as a vital channel for local merchants who really rely on the co-op and you are helping 168 employees earn the Vermont little wage or better you're paying their salaries okay and you own a store with Democratic governments as you're proving tonight by coming to this meeting I hope you feel very proud and satisfied about what your store is accomplished but what I want to do is thank you for making those accomplishments possible so thanks a lot that was what the year looks like now we're gonna look at it with a little bit more financial dimension from Scott thank you guys welcome everybody it's great to see you I've just got a couple quick slides for you and this is giving you the kind of graphic the pie chart exactly where all the numbers come together and it looks a little different than it would if you were you know we're sure as a price chopper and the way and the way the money is spent and where it comes in so this is our net sales of just under 24 24 but just under 24 million two hundred thousand the majority of the revenue as you can see mostly it goes to the cost cost of goods to the vendors think about a third of our sales are actually local within 50 miles or so and obviously employees of wages and benefits it's been last few years been a little trying because we've had a lot of competition where there's from the South Perlton area or local local stores that have more organics than the staff and management has done a really great job of increasing sales we've had a 6.6 increase year-over-year in sales which is really been tremendous years ago we were a bit of trepidation that we weren't really growing enough but that's really come together our net income out of 24 million one hundred ninety seven thousand was a hundred three thousand thirty two dollars and that because we're a co-op we give all the money back whether it's patients refund which this year our patients you fund was a hundred sixty thousand nine hundred twenty six half of that went back to the members you hear and the one that weren't able to come to the meeting and the rest and the other half we kept to a retained earnings and the other slide I'll just go through briefly liability equity and this certain this simply means the ratio of debt equity how much we allow versus how much money that we've retained and we can say what are basically our net worth is our cash and assets and this is for basically you can see that the number has been it's been going down and that's a good thing because just prior to the nine or seven or eight most of you know that was where we had the expansion so that ratio was quite a bit higher but it's been it's been moving down at a much better rate and that's because we've been paying down debt on a very regular consistent basis and an increase in both retained earnings and because we've had so many new members that have mentioned that have come on board we've been increasing our equity because of the $15 the total hundred eighty dollars that each member has to spend so I can report to you that as your treasure that we are very healthy we're a very good financial situation as you can see the members are going down and staff and everybody's been working so hard to have extremely healthy and vibrant hopefully increasing in sales and both benefits and salary for everybody involved so thank you very much I'm gonna go next can folks here is this mic on so that Mike's not working yet I'll just use this hi everybody my name is I didn't understand the pie chart nobody explained that again it could be because I can't read it from here okay I can I can give a little bit on the pie chart this is basically a breakdown of our expenses for the year the blue roughly two-thirds is cost of good soul that's what we're paying to our vendors for the products that we sell the red which is approximately 27% of sales is goes to employee that's wages and benefits 50% scotters were referring to our patronage re-fund for the year it totaled 168 it is in that thin red wedge is a combination of patronage refund income tax and net income orange I'm sorry the very thin orangey wedge thank you that's pageant refund income tax and that income about half of that is the pageant refund refund will be distributed in checks to you individually this February the green part is is other operating expenses that's our overhead that includes utilities and having to do with the building expenses like this meeting marketing credit card fees is roughly a percent of sales so that's and then the thin blue line is appreciation any other questions okay thanks so my name is Karin Bradley the general manager of the call we haven't met my pleasure to be here tonight speak to you I think of our job on staff as two-fold we are as Alex was speaking of we are trying to advance the mission in the policies but at the same time we are trying to meet the needs of you our member owners in the product community so in other words we are trying to help build this local food system to reduce our environmental impact to help create a healthy community at the same time we have to have a store that people want to shop in we have to be an employer that is responsive to the needs of employees good customer to our vendors and basically we want to be a co-op that you as an owner are proud of okay so I'm going to talk a little bit I can talk about the mission stuff all night I'm pretty geeky about that but I'm going to focus on the other part just talk about what we know about how people tell I think people are telling us about how they experienced it so we surveyed shoppers employees and vendors this year I'm just going to do a little bit of the data from that the first is the shoppers survey we had over 1500 responses most of the responses are from members and we asked folks how likely are you to recommend the co-op to a friend or colleague and everything you're going to see is on a five point scale giving you the average a five being very satisfied or I strongly agree with that statement and you can see the number was 4.59 so most people would strongly agree with the statement we also asked how are we meeting your needs in terms of the overall store in terms of the overall products and overall customer service we got high scores across the board on that so certainly a lot of feedback in there points to places where we can improve as a business but it in a general sense people are expressing a quite a bit of satisfaction on the side. Next slide please. The employee survey we asked one question which was overall and very satisfied working at a hundred mile co-op. It's a pretty high bar we were a little nervous about what the responses we would get on that and you can see above the staff side and the manager side people generally agree with that statement. We also asked do you plan to continue your career with a co-op for at least two more years and most people agreed with that statement which is very gratifying. Again this doesn't tell the complete story there is a lot that we learn from these surveys and it really points to areas where we need to improve but this gives you an idea. And finally the vendor survey we didn't get a huge response when the 30 vendors responded to our survey these are local vendors by the way but this gives you the range the low score was about overall promotion of your business and products and 4.3 to high was around 4.8 So by and large folks are telling us feeling pretty satisfied before we open it up to comments and questions I wanted to mention three things about the coming year that's a part of our business plan. First thing is back that bag you probably noticed over the summer we converted those nickel credits that you used to receive for bringing in your own reusable shopping bag instead of you receiving the nickel now we're collecting all those nickels and donating those to a popular food pantry which is one of our guests and I go over here a little bit more about what they do. So this is a small thing but it ends up being a big thing and it's really for me illustrates the power of the co-op. Those nickels individually don't necessarily mean that much but collectively they can make a big difference and in the first four months of the program we've donated now $3,000 to one of those nickels. So thank you for joining us. Also want to announce that starting in January we're going to be launching a new call to conversation. We're talking with you about member benefits and we're going to look at how our member benefits are allocated currently, how it was aligned with the goals that we have and what changes might we want to make. This is being driven out to this moment before discounts are growing at a certain rate and before we get too far down the road we want to check in with you and see how you're feeling about that because if this trend continues we're going to have to make some adjustments. So now's a really good time to have a conversation and to do that we're going to be staging small group discussions. We're going to have at least one community forum for the interviews, surveys, different ways for people to participate. We really want to get as much feedback as we can and if you care to participate there will be more information online and in store coming in December January. And the last thing I have an exciting announcement about a new initiative that the co-op has been working over the years to reduce our energy usage. And now we're going to take our first step into solar energy generation and we are working with some common to install a very small solar carport this year. So before the end of this year it will cover basically a wooden structure with a solar panel roof. It will cover four parking spaces and a customer lot. And it will generate about 2% of our electrical units. So it's a very small step but if it works we can view it as a test. We're going to see if it works operationally, if it works for the customers and if it does then there's no reason we couldn't expand any more of this. And hey by the way the bonuses protect a car from the elements so it seems like it will be a good idea. So look for that this November, December we're going to get that installed. So we're going to open it up to questions and we're going to circulate some mics and if you have a question please raise your hand and Alex is going to moderate. Yeah first while you're thinking of recording, I see some of the audience questions. But while you're thinking of your questions we're going to be bringing people around with mics to take them. I want to remind you that one of the other way, we won't have time for every question, there is a suggestion box over there near the raffles. So when you have an idea for the co-op, write it down, there's also a suggestion box in the comments so I'll remind you this offer does not end with today's meeting. But if you don't get to come up with a chance to ask your question right now you may put it on a note and get it into our suggestion box there. And you can also do that in the co-op suggestion box. I want to let you know that co-op employees read every one of these and they respond to them as promptly and as fully as possible. So we are taking them very seriously. So first question is here. My name is Sandal Kate and this probably will be addressed when you have the community forums around discounts. But there's many different types of discounts. When I think of discounts I think you might work for a discount, you might have something on sale, and you might have, you know, clip the coupons out of the little flyer thing. So I'm just wondering if it's covering all those things because it definitely seems to be an issue financially. So I'm wondering if you could just give us a little sneak preview of what you mean by the word discount. Okay, so turn this one up. Where is our other mic? We used to have two up here. I'm really letting Kari. Yeah, thanks. So we're going to focus the conversation around member benefits and the discounts within that. But it would also include a patronage refund. But you're right, Sandal. There are other types of discounts. We generally classify them as promotional discounts. The things that, you know, more induce people to spend more. That's how the grocery game is played. But the conversation will be mainly focused on member benefits and discounts as a category of that. I don't know if that's helpful. But we will lay out all of the data, everything that we know about it, and show the trends. And we really have a very open mind. There is no preconceived notion of what has to happen because we are financially healthy. We have options. Does this one work now? This one is working now? Okay. We have no plans for a store expansion at this time. There is a co-op in Barrie called Granite City Grocery. And they are working to secure a location. And so we're supportive of that effort, provide technical advice, and we've provided a grant. And I think when the time comes, we will be happy to support them in their grand opening. Michael Billingsley. I... Test, test, test, test. I know. There we go. I got it. Last year, I raised the question about sourcing. And that had to do primarily with organic food. In the past year, probably more so. Gangster cartels are moving into the business in Mexico and Honduras particularly, where now it's pretty easy to bribe people to say that there's an organic source of a food, which in fact is an organic. So I wonder if I wanted to learn more about that or investigate the sourcing, the authentic sourcing of food, if there's a way that the co-op would entertain that and work with that question. Well, we don't have an existing program, but perhaps we could talk. It's pretty complicated. And a lot of it has to do with setting up relationships with where the banana is coming from. So there's a lot of... But there's no reason we can't do it. So maybe we should talk. Sure. Thank you, Barbara Scotch. And I think this is just a follow-up, because I remember we've been members from the very start. And at one point, we were able to get root-seller carrots from the state of Vermont for the whole winter. And I'm wondering if there's any ideas of how we could get more storage for root vegetables for the winter in the state of Vermont. So we are not shipping carrots from California, which doesn't make any sense to me. Carrots is actually one of the few shiny examples of products that we can get locally through the year. Wander's Farm up in Quebec, which we define as local because it's within 100 miles, is able to supply carrots generally through the year, not always. But I agree with you. We need more of the storage. Rachel Desilets. And I'm pleased to see that all staff are receiving at least livable wage. I'm wondering if also they receive like health care and other kinds of benefits. And if that's available to part-time people, or do you have to be a full-time? Can you talk a little bit about your plans for staffing? Yeah, benefits are very important. And our employees union has made that very clear that the benefits are in some ways just as important as the wage. So I would say that we have a strong benefit planning, includes medical insurance. The co-op continues to pay 100% of the premium for a full-time employee, 50% for a part-time employee, and 50% of a dependent care. And that covers, that's true for medical, vision, and dental. We also have a 401k plan, discount, the store, and a pretty generous paid time off policy. Okay, is this going to be working back here now? Okay, great. Sort of a visit with Jet Steel. I'm also staff just to have full disclosure. I'm curious about this livable wage number. I know that we have about 140 workers who are bargaining unit, union members, non-fills, are part-time and subs. Subs do not have access to health care, nor do they have access to regular hours. The Vermont livable wage assumes that somebody works 2,080 hours annually, which is 40 hours a week. So given that half of our workers, floor staff, are part-time and not working full-time, I don't understand how they're making the livable wage. So for this law, this is a basic needs budget and Vermont livable wage document. There are many assumptions in there, but yes, one of them is that a worker is working full-time hours. So if someone is queues not to work full-time hours, or if, you know, to be honest, in some cases can't get the number of hours that they want at their cost, because that does take time sometimes to achieve the number of hours that people desire. We have to make an assumption, it seems like a reasonable assumption that, you know, if you choose not to work or cannot work the full amount of hours, that the wage still counts. I'm not sure exactly how that goes. Hi, I'm a brand new member. I joined on Saturday. It's kind of like the bruised bananas, which is perfect. Is it somebody that you considered for children a little? That's very special. Many years, and I also apologize if this has already been discussed, but my name is Susan Danfield, and I'm from Montgomery area. Is there an employee recognition process in place at all? Because I remember the people at the co-op that just go out of their way and help me. And as I get older, I seem to need more and more help, but I just think some people really go more than the extra mile. And so that's my question. Is there an employee recognition process in place? Thank you for bringing that up, actually. I had the idea of making this announcement, but then forgot. Once a year, we select a employee for the annual customer service award, and this year the recipient was Emma Paradise. She is actually our customer service representative. This is a relatively new position, but she works at the service desk. Has been a cashier, has worked in the deli. And she was recognized by her peers as going above and beyond, and providing extra customer service. I did want to recognize Emma for that. I think what she's also suggesting is there a way for shoppers to let you at the co-op know about someone they want to give a little start to. Well, the ways that people do that are usually verbally, just letting another employee and another manager, or people along the way, can make a couple of suggestions for her as well. And those are appreciated. Suggestion box. It solves everything. Hi. Whoops. Hi. I'm Elizabeth Parker. I'm a member since, I don't know, the early 80s. One of the things that I talk about always is how we can reach out to people who are on food stamps or have a very limited budget. And the way in which we can make the co-op more accessible. And I'm very happy that steps have been taken to really advertise the... You're going to have to... That's wonderful. At the beginning of the year, I became... I just declared this followed up, but it would have been a wonderful theme and something which I think we need to start looking at in the newsletter how we can develop some, you know, $4 meals or something which really fits into. And so I started to collect some books so I'd like to reach out to the board and really talk about how we can start to make really great meals available for people. And so anyway, thank you very much. Thank you so much. Dave Feldman, I've been a member for more than 25 years. And remember before the co-op when people were just buying beans and rice and 50-pound bags and giving it up over near the VFW hall. Some people, including possible family members of my own, will dislike this suggestion or find it hideously political. But I'm wondering if I read your pie chart correctly, which was a little difficult to do, a big chunk of the money goes to promotions and discounts to members. Is that correct? No. No. Did we see that chart? Again, what is the red part? That's employee details. Which is the part that goes back to... There was a comment about... The Asian refund? I guess so, yes. That is the orange. That's not a very large percentage. No, that includes many from tax income taxes and Asian refund. The refund amount is $169,000, which is less than 1%. And does that include discounts on the food? No, just about 10%. But you made a comment something to the effect that all the discounting on the food really reduced your bottom line. I don't think we quite... That's not how you put it. It's a little more... Let me say this. The rate of the discount is increasing faster than the rate of sales revenue. That's not a perfectly good direction. But the amount of the discount is not in itself something that is piking us apart. If your question was... It wasn't a question, actually. It was a suggestion, which was just that possibly there couldn't be, we might consider, since I'm a person of modest means this wouldn't bother me at all, really expensive items could have less of a discount on them. If you bought a $40 bottle of wine, perhaps you could pay a little bit less of a discount than if you buy a $6 bottle of wine. It might be something to consider. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know if all of us have seen this. This is my first time on The Age. I wonder if this topic has come up. I thought I'd like to avoid buying a fresh fruit that I would see, for example, strawberries in January. Iceberg, you know, leaky lettuce in January. Of course, poop houses have extended the season in the mountains, so it's getting more fresh before the end of December. I have a firm-handed policy on non-guts gradually reducing the number of out-of-season foods that are brought from Mexico or California to sell here. And I know that some time ago you, I think you stopped buying frozen berries and chili, things like that, because some people objected to that. I'm going to let Kari answer this because he's in charge of buying things, but I will say too, there's the policies that the co-op uses to buy things, and then there are decisions that you make as shoppers. And so sometimes we have to decide whether we want to make decisions for you or just with you. So that does come up. People will raise objections or concerns about products that are coming from overseas, different parts of the world, out of season. I'm sure there's people in this room that would share that concern. And I think we just have to recognize that the store serves a lot of people at this point. We have 8,000 member winners and many more customers on top of that. We are a full-service grocery. Folks expect a certain level, and it's difficult to draw the line. So we do, especially in produce, emphasize local. If there's a local option, we're trying to provide it. But my instructions to staff are to provide an array of choices, because we're trying to serve the broader community and let folks make decisions as they will. Hi, my name is Daniel Dickerson. I'm wondering if you could give more detail behind the sales increase from your deer if it's a certain product category or if it's overall? Sure. I don't have a slide that I showed last year, but we have a growing rate of growth that has been declining year over year since about 2009. So that forgot our attentional staff in the council, and we worked very hard to bring that, and I thought Scott mentioned it was about 6.6%. So we're feeling a lot more comfortable about that, because the reason they felt it was important is because the expenses were all wrong. But what's interesting is the detail within that, where that goes coming from, and we're starting to see some pretty significant changes in what people are interested in. There's much more focus, for example, on compared food diseases. People are really interested in the food that's going on out of our belly. Less so with bulk. Bulk food, which is one of the cornerstones of the co-op, it's about 10% of our sales growth is in its third year of declining sales. And we have tried and innovated and tried to do different things to bring that back up, because it is such an important part of our business. But it's pretty clear at this point and it's not just us. This is the trend that's happening around the country. Bulk foods are just not as in demand, whereas foods that tend to be more convenient are. So we've also seen growth recently in produce, which is great to see. And up until this last year, beer was a top-secret. Hi, everybody. My name is Alec Hill. You might recognize me. I don't work at the co-op. People sometimes think I do. And I sometimes wish that I did, because then I would have the most fabulous co-workers. And so I generally always want to speak praise about them. Right now I wanted to bring up something that was addressed at a council meeting back in maybe June or May. And the employee satisfaction that's represented here, which looks really great, isn't a full representation. The survey hasn't had the highest submission rate. And the staff rep to the council reported a dissatisfaction or a significant, well, a discontentment among staff. And it's something that I've experienced, or not experienced, but I've been told firsthand in talking with staff about experiences that they've had with their managers. And as a shopper, I feel discouraged about hearing such things. It's not what I want at the place where I'm doing my shopping. And as a friend to the staff, I'm sad to hear of these things. But there are a couple instances of management that I hear. As soon as I start taking ownership of the co-op, I feel really upset, maybe even outraged, that my managers would treat my staff in that way. And I don't bring this up to shame the co-op or any particular manager or anything like that. But I think we've got work to do. And I'm excited about seeing that work be done and to help if I'm able to in any way that I could. Because we've got lofty ideals, and I think we can do a better job of embodying these ideals. And so, you know, I'll be at more council meetings and if you see me in the aisles, I'd be happy to talk with any of you about this or see me on my bike, you can holler. But I'm really excited about the possibility of seeing this work through. And, well, thank you. I actually was a member back when we used to do breakdowns. But I'll go back to the same. The question about sourcing raised the issue of me. You've talked about individualistic decisions, which is true. I think the co-op has an obligation to help to educate the people about some decisions we make. I was quite disappointed to see so many driscal barriers while the strike was going on. I wrote the attention for this matter. And shortly after we talked, I did see some educational issue out there. But I think it's really important that there are issues which are, let's say, controversial. It's a co-op or to educate. And I wrote some positive words, too. The education around apples is fantastic. I've learned about so many apples I know about, and we need to do more of them. That's a great observation. We definitely take that for assistance. I agree. Now, we have time for two and only two more questions. Richard, hi. We've got one here, and we've got one out here. That will be it, then we'll move on to our next question. We are applying policies. The question that everyone here has a question was the policy about GMOs. Our buying policies speak to favoring products that do not have GMOs. We do not have a strict ban on GMOs. We work very hard on the GMO labeling bill because of the education. We saw it as the right of the consumer to make an informed decision about GMOs. We were pretty active with the, just say no GMO coalition, and we're obviously pretty disappointed with the final outcome. I do think we moved the ball forward, but that has been our position. We are obviously a store that favors organics. Approximately 36% of our sales came from organic foods, so there's non-GMO there. More and more products are certified non-GMO, even if they're non-organic, so I think we have a pretty good representation of non-GMO, and customers are clearly telling us that. One last question. Hi, I'm Andrea Mills. I'm a staff member and a member. I think it's not even a question. It's more of a concern. Having seen the centralization and homogenization of the natural foods industry kind of going forward, I just am concerned that we make an effort to retain local control of our co-op and not succumb to the industry standards without a lengthy discussion and a lot of concern from the members about retaining local control. Thanks. Thank you. You're pretty welcome. Any questions? And now I'd like to introduce our next segment. We are going to start with that. I'm going to turn this over to Kai to introduce people here for our panel discussion. So here we go. Great, thanks. So this next section is a follow-up in a way to the discussion we had with the summer if anybody attended the dinner discussion we had at the senior center in town. And the topic is access to healthy foods in our community. And I'd say the co-op is all about food and we know that food insecurity is a major issue in terms of the law. So we've brought in some experts to inform us about what their organizations do and what we can do to help. So on our panel today, we're going to hear from we've got Jenna Bank from Honore for your law. We've got Chef David Eilor from Community Kitchen Academy in Capstone Community National Library. We've also got Jenna Evans from Capstone. And then we've got Jean Boudard from Justice. So I'm just going to do a few introductory comments and these next slides just to sort of set the context are courtesy of John Stales, CEO of the Food Bank and our guests in the summer. And he has some data about what's going on specifically in Central Hawaii. So the first slide is just some data. So Washington County is roughly 60,000 people. Close to 12% are living on low poverty rates. The Food Bank is serving approximately 36% of the residents of Washington County and there are 43 network partners of the Food Bank serving the works with includes food shelves, meal sites, high school programs and shelters. 7% of folks visiting these network partners are reporting that they have to choose at times to maintain the food in name for their utilities and 44% of food insecure neighbors in Washington are not eligible for federal assistance. So keep that in mind. I also found this interesting. This was a survey done back in 2013 food and vegetable consumption for adults living at a 100% to 85% of federal poverty level. What would you guess for an adult set? How many consume less than one vegetable per day? 24% and less than one fruit per day? Any guesses? 41% Today that's the question. So I'm going to turn it over to Jenna's going to go first and we're just going to spend 5 or 10 minutes getting a presentation and then we'll open it up for her. Hi, good evening everyone. I can project pretty loud, but does this work? I'm seeing a lot of naughty heads. Thank you. I work for Hunger Free Vermont. We are a statewide education and advocacy nonprofit that's dedicated to ending the injustice of hunger and malnutrition for all Vermonters. Thank you so much for having us here tonight and thank you also for the engagement in the conversation. This has been really a very interesting meeting. Thank you. So this are the most recent food security rates for the state of Vermont. What's nice is things are starting to get slightly better, which is really wonderful. We're out of the recession. Folks are starting to get back to work. That said, there are still some very worrying trends that we're aware of. For one, you can see that the rate for children is still a little bit higher, so families with younger children are being hit disproportionately in terms of food security. Another vulnerable population is seniors. They're the fastest growing demographic in the state and they're also the ones that have seen a rising rate of food insecurity among all demographics. They're the ones that went up this past year. So this is something that we're seeing as a trend and something that we're working with partners across the state to address. And getting into the reasons of why folks face food insecurity, it's a lot of it, it's very structural reasons. I think all of us can agree with the fact that lack of transportation is definitely a challenge in our rural state. Also low wages, affordable stores, I will say, Hunger Mountain Co-op is doing a great job in trying to make this more accessible and we'll get into that in a minute. But just these are broad structural changes that are really affecting a wide part of our population. So here's how hunger free Vermont sees the solution. Like I said, it's a lot of structural problems so we try to address these issues in a very structural way to make real and lasting improvements. So one of the things I highlight is children, no matter where they are during the day, should have access to healthy, nutritious food. So whether they're in childcare, they're in schools, they're after school or summer programs, or if they're at home, they should be able to provide healthy food. Part of that is also adults should have the resources necessary so that they can provide for themselves and their families. We want to make sure that part of the provision is knowing what you're doing with your food so if you need education about nutrition or how to cook, everyone should have access to that resource. And then finally, food shelves, like the Montpelier Food Shelf Just Basics, they should be relied on for emergencies. They play a really important role in food security if you're in crisis, you need food. But I think you can agree, food shelves are being asked to do more and more on sometimes less and less, and it should be part of the emergency system, not part of the day-to-day way to get your food. So in terms of more definite solutions, when I started putting this presentation together, I had no idea that member discounts were going to be such a hot topic for today's meeting, but I do want to give a shout-out for the Co-op Cares Program. There are a range of federal programs that work across the country to help ensure access to food, and this includes Three Squares Vermont, which is known as SNAP or Food Stamps, and the WIC Program, so Women, Infants, and Children. The Co-op Cares Program is really great. Not only do they, the Co-op accepts these benefits in order to pay for your food, but if you're a member owner, you also get 10% of the discount as well. So it's further increasing your access to being able to get healthy, nutritious goods for your family, so that's, I think, a really great program. The other federal program I wanted to call out was the Child and Adult Care Food Program. These are working with programs like Cathy Paquette's that were recognized earlier, helping to feed senior centers and child care centers. Two other federal programs, just looking at that and focus on local and healthy, accessible foods. The Crop Cash Program, which works with farmers markets, and then school meal programs. That's what I thought were really relevant, to at least touch on quickly. So farmers markets are obviously a wonderful way for us to get local, nutritious food. And the Crop Cash Program is really nice. It's an incentive where if you're a three squares Vermont recipient, you can go to the farmers market, get those benefits accepted there, so you can use your benefits to buy, and not only that, they'll double up to $10 every time you go to the market, so you can get even more fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs. And then most of you probably know Hunger Free Vermont also focuses on school meals program. We see school meals, especially universal school meals, where all kids, no matter what your family's income is, all kids are able to eat for free. And that partners really well with the Farm to School movement that's really strong in our state. As you're getting more kids eating these meals, and partnering it with Farm to School, it's a great way to increase access. And also just education of what do these actually look like, and it can actually be pretty good. So just different ways that you can address a wide range of population but getting these healthy foods into your diet. So I was asked to address how does Hunger Mountain Co-op be part of the solution, and the easy one is you already are. In addition to the Co-op Care's program was just really great. Hunger Mountain Co-op has been a wonderful supporter of Hunger Free Vermont, so thank you very much for all that support. In terms of, I guess, examples just from my own programs, I'm the Hunger Council organizer, so I helped to facilitate regional meetings across the state, including one for the Hunger Council of Washington County that meets down in Berry, actually in Jen's next door. And Hunger Mountain Co-op has been a faithful representative of all those meetings. Crystal Fuller, who's your member services person, is a very active participant. It does a really good job of bringing all of your concerns to the table, but then also taking what she learns to the co-op. Co-op also has been a great supporter in helping increase access to folks. In May, Hunger Free Vermont helped to coordinate a meeting with all representatives of all the 10 Hunger Councils across the state with the candidates for governor. So both Phil Scott were there and Sue Minter, and they got to hear from folks all the way across the state saying, this is what we're seeing in our communities. How are you planning on addressing it? So it was a really active meeting, and it was very well supported by Hunger Mountain Co-op, and all of that support. In terms of what folks individually can do, there are range of different things. Hunger Free Vermont does conference calls regularly. The next one is December 13th. Just scribbling my notes very quickly. And that's just a way for folks to get engaged a little bit more of, hey, what's going on in the state? How can I take part? If a number of folks have done campaigns trying to raise awareness, and people have been very creative about that. And then finally, I would invite you to come to a Hunger Council meeting. It's right down the road in Bury. Our next one is on December 15th. And then one last thing. The week of November 13th through 19th, so right before Thanksgiving is the National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. And there's part of that, the Three Squares Vermont Challenge, and I have a number of materials related to this as well. But it's a way for folks to experience what is it like to actually live on the Strict Earth Three Squares budget? How does that work for your day? So it can be a really eye-opening experience and something that I would consider. You can do it for the week, a day, or even just a meal, and just kind of see how does that work and what our neighbors are facing. So that was a very quick overview. Thank you all very much for your time. And I believe I'll pass it along to Chef David. Kevin, as the slides come up, you can just tap through them, like maybe every 30 minutes or just, there's about 20 of them. Feel free. Yeah, nice pictures, huh? I'm Chef Dave. I work at Capstone and we have a program called the Community Kitchen Academy. And the mission of this program is to help unemployed and underemployed Vermonters get a cooking skill, get a skill, a job skill. I teach them how to cook so they can then go out and get a job. And some of these folks haven't worked for years, go through the 12-week program with me, learn how to use a knife properly, industrial kitchen equipment, and how to cook for hundreds of people on a daily basis, and then get a job sometimes within two weeks. Out of the 12 students, we have about a 90, about a 90% placement ratio, which is just phenomenal. So the virtuous cycle and how the co-op is involved. I don't know that any food goes to waste from the co-op. It comes to the food shelf in Barrie, where the program is located. And it's kind of like Iron Chef every day. We have a pallet come in. I go out there. I have maybe 15 minutes to come up with maybe 7 or 8 entrees quickly, put together a menu with the students, and then teach them how to cook. Those products then get packaged and go to the food shelf. It looks a lot like you're going to the co-op to buy something, a pre-made meal, which someone had mentioned. Ready to go, just there's no price. And there's a lot of dignity for people that are coming in to get a wholesome meal, a healthy meal. It's really an amazing program. The class again averages about 12 students, and I'd say in three months we produced almost 5,000 pounds of food, of meals, prepared meals. Students also, this is important, can earn $50 a week for perfect attendance. And by the end of the program, they'll also get an additional $300 in a gift card for graduating, finding a job, and then retaining a job for three months. And that money, that $50 a week, makes a huge difference to their economic security. And it's true, they are making choices between paying their utility bill or eating. Fortunately, we eat very well in the program. We made an excellent lasagna with tofu ricotta filling, so we're always repurposing and thinking. And those folks can also have access to the food shelf as well. Some of the restaurants in the area, some of the graduates have gone to Kismet, the cellars at Jasper Hills, down home as well. There's a lot of other locations, you know, hospitals and schools in the area. And the students themselves recently out of jail, perhaps recovering from heroin addiction, mental illness, learning disabled, sometimes just divorced spouses who have had the carpet pulled out from underneath them and don't have a way to earn money and earn a living and provide food for children. It's very challenging. I am part psychologist, part chef for sure. The folks who come out of this program, it's a lot more than learning how to cook. They get a sense of belonging. Their self-esteem increases and it's really miraculous to watch. So what you can do if you own a business, if you're able to hire students, if you're in the food industry, hire our students. If you'd like to volunteer and come to the kitchen and cook with us, if you have a special skill, I'm going to leave my business card up here contacting you. We'd love to bring people into the program. If you want to donate, many please do. If you want to donate packaged food items to the food shelf or the program, and even cooking equipment that helps us as well. It's a miraculous program and I want to thank you very much. Larger agency, Capstone Community Action. We work in Orange Washington and Lemoyle Counties. Sorry. Is it on? Okay. So we're in Orange Washington and Lemoyle Counties. We employ just under 200 people across programs and we address poverty in a more broad way because people don't only have issues with access to food. They don't have housing, they don't have, they can't pay their electric bills. And so we help them with all of those things. We run a large food shelf at our very office. I serve around 800 families a month. And it's not an emergency program. People rely on it to make their budgets work because they don't have enough money for anything. So the programs that we run, we have the food program, CKI, we do a crisis fuel program. We help people apply for state benefits which is mostly supplemental fuel and three squares benefits. We help with housing. We have a child care food program that helps registered child care providers do like a school meal on a smaller scale. They get reimbursements for the meals that they serve low income families. We have a low income tax clinic that is right now recruiting for volunteers. So if anyone wants to help folks do their taxes, I have a little recruitment flyer here so you can come up and grab one. I have a health care navigator that helps folks obviously navigate the health care system and the insurance benefits program. We have a weatherization program that weatherizes homes for low income folks but there's also a for profit branch of that that can weatherize other folks' homes on a sliding fee scale. That's a great program. Community economic development program helps people start their own micro businesses. We have a supervised visitation program. We have a transportation program that helps some folks access vehicles through Gnu's garage for the most part and then CK. And we've recently started a program called JFI which works with the state on the three squares benefits for folks who are eligible for benefits but need a little help to try and maybe find work and get back into the workforce. And the co-op donates cold produce to our program every day. I probably distribute about 200 pounds that I get from the co-op every day to folks who don't have access to a lot of fresh food and fresh food is one of the things that our food shelf is really focusing on and people every day can come in and get a lot of fresh, mostly local food. Community Harvest of Central Vermont which is a gleaning program brings us a lot of fresh local food that people have access to and we try and educate folks on what to do with foods they may not be that familiar with. We have flyers of what do I do with all these apples or what do I do with whatever odd thing might come in. A lot of daikon rashes are pretty popular. Folks just love those. So I'm the director of Just Basics which runs the Montpelier Food Pantry on Feast which is the senior meals program down at the senior center and the summer program for kids. We are recovering from a flood at the food pantry so your back-to-back program has been so helpful for us right now because all that time that I should be out shaking down donors and writing grants I've been pretty much dealing with a flood cleanup so that has been enormously helpful but thank you very much for that. And then I'll sort of get back to my spiel here. I was thinking about the healthy food conversation we're having and we really, really try to not be the typical food shelf. I do most of the food purchasing and we don't buy a lot of processed food. We do as little as possible. We do mostly proteins like tuna fish and peanut butter and beans those are not as popular as one would like we try to get a lot of them out there and we also have been really, really lucky to have a lot of sources for fresh produce. Community Harvest has been absolutely phenomenal for us this summer. They did all of our gleaning because we are just so short staffed and we're all almost entirely involuntary and I don't know if Allison is here. But she took over our gleaning and it's just been really, really helpful. We actually last year distributed 7,000 pounds of fresh produce and we do have the Dicon issue. It's Kale in our case but somehow Kale really took off this year. Wow, people are actually asking for it now. Last year it was not so much. But yeah, we try not to we don't buy a lot of things with added sugar. We don't have like I know my predecessor apparently had like a Twinkie composting party when she got a bunch of foundations. So we really try to keep that at a minimum and we also have had a Vermont Fresh Grant which has helped increase our produce distribution by getting more refrigeration better freezers a lot of signage that makes things easier to find and a lot more attractive like we have these little wooden cards and baskets in it. Honestly we try to look kind of like the co-op produce like have it already and you know we actually get a comment by somebody like you know this is the first time like when we when we start setting up like that this is the first time I haven't fell poor all week.  Right now since we're sort of upstairs in the fellowship hall in the church that's our flood because we still it's been two months now it's been almost three it's been a while and we're still waiting on construction there but the church has been really helpful and we've been upstairs in the fellowship hall and we still have our little wooden bins so it's sure displaced but still keeping on. One of the things that we're supposed to talk about is how we can help and I'm ashamed to say that I would say at least half a dozen of you have emailed me to say hey I would love to volunteer for my co-op hours and I have not figured out a way to rein that all in yet but I promise I'll write back this week because we do need volunteers we really do it's just being so sure staffed it's hard to find the time to really think about how to harness that. But as you all were talking I actually had an idea that just basics one of our main mission is food justice and we get so caught up in the day-to-day like survival mode like okay we need to get the food out that we haven't really dedicated enough time I think to thinking about that so listening to y'all talk I was thinking hey maybe that's a really good way to harness the co-op volunteers if people would like to get together and come up with a little committee on promoting food justice for the food pantry and just basic that would be incredible and I'd be really really patient of so anyone who wants to email me at director at justbasicsvermont.org I think that that would be probably the best way to harness your brain power let's see do I have anything else here I think we're going next to the panel we'll take questions we can open it up if there are any questions folks have you have I'm glad and delighted to see this group of very focused people who have shared vision and who are working so hard with this co-op one of the things I didn't say before is that I'm also as a member of the Plainfield food co-op part of their strategic or was part of the strategic planning especially as I address food insecurity and Karla Moskowitz and I looked at that pretty hard talked to some people at capstone and one of the areas that we're trying to solve and I didn't hear it mentioned yet is that one of the distinct things about the rural nature of Vermont is that first of all the absence of cohesive community transportation and secondly a lot of elders who are living either alone or in isolated circumstances housing around the outskirts of all of our urban centers and we're trying to forget a way to do that by going back to the original food distribution model in 71 and 72 I was one of maybe the 30 or 40 people who out thumbed the Plainfield co-op and at that time when it was a bulk service primarily where you put together foods on the basis of each household submitting a paper slip that said what kind of food they would like we're thinking that in conjunction with the senior center which does the meals on wheels out of east one that we can potentially use that transportation service to both collect food orders and also to fulfill them back through the driver and I'd like to know if you're exploring similar kinds of models by which the co-op or your services can reach out to people who have no way to get themselves into the actual co-op building I know the senior center who we partnered with for the feast meals did have a grant last year to have a van that did do that especially during the winter months not certain of the current status on that but we did try something kind of similar just briefly that there is a similar community kitchen academy in Burlington that actually was teaching at today they received I think a $25,000 grant they have a food truck that goes into low income neighborhoods and distributes prepackaged meals free of charge as well as fresh vegetables we do not have that ability yet in our program because we don't have that money currently but that would be something that might help get further out into the community as well I also want to mention the program is Income Eligible and it's generally I think folks that if they were single and I believe earning maybe under 20,000 kind of in that range would be eligible for the program and there is no costs to them although it is a $6,000 program it is covered through generous donations and so forth so that answers that also I want to also add that if you want to reach me besides business cards you can Google Capstone Kitchen and maybe Berry Vermont and it will come up where you are directly connected to the Vermont food bank because we are always looking for applicants okay so next names of all your organizations and I'm just wondering if you don't mind one by one seeing them clearly and loudly so I can write with them thank you alright so I work with Capstone and Berry Vermont and the program is called Community Kitchen Academy and I'm Chef David I also work with Capstone Community Action oh Jen Evans Jenna Banting and I work with hunger free Vermont Jamie Bader and I'm justbasicsinc and it's justbasicsvermont.org I'm sorry community it's justbasicsinc and then we're justbasicsvermont.org we're up there working on a job I'm working with chefs and I'm a call to the amount of food that gets put out and it doesn't get eaten it can't go to food pantries and so I'm wondering how these organizations can help in terms of waste prevention or working with chefs that more of the food that doesn't get eaten I'm thinking it's kind of picking back in off of the person who said it's not just logistics it's also just the food laws and wasted so many pieces that need work I'm a call but how much is not available and I'd say that's a rising concern in the state to act 148 which is the universal recycling law that includes food waste so I think that's something that a lot is trickling down starting with the big supermarkets and then going all the way to the residential level by 2020 so it's something that a lot of folks in the state are looking at how do we reduce that food loss so there are a lot of the question of the whole system not just feeding it to the pigs and there are a lot of really great cleaning organizations so they go to the farms at least to be collecting produce and getting that to the food shelves community harvest that you mentioned earlier does a really great job in central Vermont on that in terms of working with restaurants I might pass that over to our resident chef on the panel right now actually I do have some good news all of the food that was left over from tonight which there was quite a bit it was delicious love the feta all of that is going to the food shelf for tomorrow and being packaged so none of that's going to be just great and Jen can speak to this too I think the challenge for us is fresh vegetables packaged food items things that I can cook and turn into wholesome meals the difficulty would be when a product has already been made such as a lasagna or chili and somebody brings a lot of it from a church supper to the back door because of food law we cannot accept it because we don't know if it's spoiled and we can't make populations that risk children the elderly potentially sick but I definitely hear what you're saying and why it should be nice to be able to get more food packaged or at least distributed and brought somehow to the food shelf so that I can then repurpose it and we just don't have that structure in place really we are working on it yes the co-op website might supply us with links to the panelists and their organizations that might be useful for further information are there questions? yeah this is a number I just want to thank everybody for seeing this late listening to this great panel this is such an important issue I did a program with Milan food bank in my research I found out that a quarter of seniors are living off of their selfish accumulation is living at 125% of the moderate level I just wanted to say that I love the hunger council the hunger and the freedom of mind but there are other places that we might look at that have models Santa Fe County for instance has done a plan a food plan for their whole county and for Santa Fe city and they looked at the complex web that we're talking about right now some of the things we've identified tonight are how to grow more local produce that can be stored over the winter and used for a longer period of time the potential of how we can store have storage for things like the food pantry in addition to having storage for the co-op and how we can create value added products from things such as daikon or radishes how that can become attractive for people that education component and also we've talked about the tremendous the statistic is that we raised 25% of our food so these are huge issues and I hope that people can take the time to look at plants such as Santa Fe and read just a press release about and realize the fact that it's going to take the regional planning commission it's going to take the Montelier City Council various city council really have an interest in promoting food not only as an economic plus for us here also the food justice aspect so hopefully the people from the co-op who have volunteered for Just Basics might take this up because I think that there are a number of organizations who are just waiting to collaborate to create the really big umbrella that will help to address some of the questions we have and we can learn from other places that have already gone before us I wholeheartedly agree with everything you just said and I would like to add the addition as well if we don't even need to go to California the northeast kingdom is actually redoing their regional food system plan with exactly that layout in mind so we've been helping to push that but if you wanted a more local example of folks that are trying to bring in that collaborative system we have it right here in Vermont too thank you very much to our panel I've got a piece of a couple other facts to know remind you again that for the council election it's still open until the end of this meeting and it's still open online until 11.59 p.m. and the software it knows we'll remind you that as Karim mentioned earlier we're going to be starting in the beginning of 2017 a series of co-op conversations on this issue of discussing as a relationship to food before building an access as well and so I'm encouraging all of you to participate look for information about this you can participate in a lot of ways but we really want to drive into this so we can hear from you get your ideas help and use your thoughts to help shape what we go forward to do now, with that piece of thanks I want to thank two outgoing members of council Martha Wales who could not be here tonight Tyler Strange we've both been on our council this year and we're talking about this and uh... no don't miss a ton of this over the time and I'll use that okay so a lot of people will think bear with me I'm just going to walk through this list I want to start by thanking Laura and Lost Nation Theater for hosting us tonight so we're going to work up for streaming and recording this event we've got Avalon Tent Company and the linens were provided free of charge by Foley let's have another round of applause for 19 strings please for the music Curtis Johnson is doing the photography tonight, thank you Curtis behind the scenes downstairs doing child care, we had Jenny Sheehan Rhonda Brace, Emma Marie Clawson and Theresa Nuneen I want to say thank you to all the co-op staff that helped set this up take it down again later tonight and then tomorrow setting up for the Food and Wellness Fair which if you don't know is going to be in this very room on Saturday we're going to have over 50 vendors plus wellness practitioners plus non-profits it'll be very active lots of free samples, lots of people to meet and stories to hear and share so please come, that's 10.30 to 3 on Saturday free of charge in this room I want to thank our vendor demos we had Capital Grounds, Sap Maple Beverage Farm, Good Mix Superfoods and Fun Sun Oils we've got many organizations and businesses that donated the raffles and we'll be going through those in just a moment special thank you to our community relations and member services team that includes the fabulous Crystal Fuller Stephanie Nuneen, Robin Joy Jess Knapp and Mary Trafton I think they're gone but I do want to acknowledge again the kitchen team including Chef Doug for tonight's meal and also Beck Norman and three penny tap room thank you so much for the drinks and just lastly I want to thank the council they're a great group to work for and we're very lucky to have them and now the moment you have all been waiting for should I bring this microphone to you Crystal oh I'm going to hurry too because there's good news for people coming now do I get a drum roll drum roll? we all responded so you're all awake you're all ready to hear your name the first raffle we have is the Restore and Balance Massage Raffle that was generously donated by the Subparta Healing Art Studio and Peace Yoga for Kids and Teens and the winner is if I bought your name at all I apologize it's been a long day Lisa Bradley are you here? Yay congratulations the next raffle is the Chaga Plus from another co-op community link partner that we have Marie Frohlich who donated this to us from Top Route Urbals and the winner is Bonnie Pomerance are you here? is Bonnie here? oh yeah congratulations the next is the Tarot Reading with another co-op community link partner Serena Fox from Stowell Farm and Amy Willis if you're here you win congratulations next we have a very beautiful textile necklace that was donated by CeCe LeBovitz she has beautiful jewelry she has a co-op community link you should check her out check all of our co-op community links out because they give you discounts as member owners Cynthia Webster if you're here you win are you here? going twice our number two winner is Brianna Howard are you here? congratulations okay next is our wonderful deli donated an awesome catered lunch for four if you need a fourth I'm around no work upstairs call me Steven Sobel are you here? you win the very awesome Lost Nation Theater donated an awesome prize it's four passes to attend it's a wonderful life and you get to pick which day you want to go November 30th or December 1st Brianna Howard you won again wasn't right you're a lucky person okay next we have awesome goodies from Nuttie Steffs there are three different boxes we'll just hand them out as we call your name and you'll get a nice little surprise from Nuttie Steff generously donated to us from her Jen Hutchinson I can't talk Jen Hutchinson no Erin Maro Marcus is it one five four four four okay it's you Maria Call Mia one one five three nine congratulations is this table going to be someone at this table Jill McKean congratulations Chelsea Animal Hospital another co-op community link very good raffle Paul Hess if you're still here you win awesome raffle prize shark shirts we have this cute little t-shirt with a shark on it so cute from our co-op community link and Barbara Smith 8404 member number are you here going once going twice Jeffrey Gilbert are you here congratulations I think pinks are color the fascial stretch therapy raffle another co-op community link Joanne Dwyer donated this to us Irina Carlson Irima Irima Carlson are you here yay congratulations a yoga raffle from Susan Wall Rub from Maple Corner Yoga you get to have a couple of yoga sessions with her Ashley Hill congratulations and next we have our co-op community links awesome they donated all these prizes they're really awesome just thank them give them a round of applause another co-op community link Melissa Marks she donated a massage and Amy Willis again are you here you win next is a piano or voice lesson with our awesome co-op community link partner Nora Zablo and Karen Connolly if you're here you win yay congratulations the vibrance raffle this is entering to win three individual counseling or dream work sessions or three communication sessions for couples with our awesome co-op community link this is a box of vibrance Laura Furber are you here you win a $50 gift certificate to Auntie Dee Dee's doggie day care another awesome co-op community link I won't stop saying it Georgina Haas are you still here you win okay now I guess you can give me the drum roll this is the grand prize it's the big kumuna the $200 gift card to the co-op Lynn Wilde are you here congratulations and that's the end thank you all for coming you just have to put your mouth like yeah I know hello wait wait wait wait wait please wait for me one last moment I lost my microphone but I'm doing the best I can we now need to officially adjourn the meeting and the one moment the only way we can do it is by Democratic movement I will state your name Joe McCann and I need a second Paul what's your last name please vote all those in favor of joining the meeting at alright the motion carries thank you again for coming goodnight


My name is Laura Hampton. I am here from New York City. Very happy to be back at my third North Bay Python. I work at Datadog in New York City, and I'm here today to speak to you about typing. Not this kind of typing. I'm going to talk about the types of values, not fingers on a keyboard. That would be a very cool talk, maybe propose it for next year, but today I'm going to talk about the types of values.  I'm also going to share some information about types and type theory, and then finally I'm going to discuss handling some edge cases in Python using type annotations. All of the code examples in this talk are written in Python 3.7 and mypy 0.730. So if you want to try them out, that's what you can use. And also as a warning, I have included some illustrations of snakes, so if you are not a fan of snakes, please be warned. So there is a debate in the programming community about the relative merits of static typing and dynamic typing. If there are two equally good solutions to any problem, programmers will invariably start a holy war about it. Thank you. No. Stop. You are misbehaving. Stop that. Okay. Programmers will invariably start a holy war about it. Please don't do that here. If you do, you must dress like them. So what are types? Most programming languages have a type system, and types are an abstraction for a set of possible values, such as integers and floats and strings, or they describe sets of objects with shared behavior, like lists or booleans or tuples, and all of these are Python sort of basic built-in types. These sets of values allow you to have functions that operate on these types, and allow you to do things like, for instance, concatenate strings, add numbers, or iterate through a list. You can also create your own types and define their behavior by defining classes, and all instances of a class belong to that class type. So Python is what we call strongly typed language. It doesn't allow dividing an integer by a string, for instance, because that doesn't make much sense. There are other languages that will try and change types to avoid these types of errors, but Python will just yell at you. Python's strong typing does give us some guarantees about the correctness of types in our application, but by adding type checking, we can sort of do a belt and suspenders type thing and add even more safety around that. So the purpose of type checking gives us code that's easier to reason about. So it allows you to know what parameters to pass to a function and what functions can operate on which classes. It shows clearly how classes travel through the program and acts as a form of machine check documentation. So if you use a type checker regularly, this machine check documentation will stay up to date with any code changes you may make. Type checking also allows you to refactor things more easily. It's easy to see where a given class is used in the code base, and it also allows your application to fail in more predictable ways. It's useful as a debugging tool. It allows you to know the value and type of variables, and it's important for giving you better reasoning about program behavior. I do have to warn you now it is mathematically impossible to build a type checker that will catch all type errors. However, type checkers in general tend to fail on the side of ... dare on the side of being conservative, so hopefully they'll catch everything that might pop up. In addition, type checking doesn't affect the run time in Python. Type annotations are essentially comments, and type checking is done as a separate step for your application runs. Python has a number of tools for type annotation. There's the typing module in the standard library, which provides a lot of useful things that help your type checker work. It contains objects to import for type annotations, like list and any, and I'll show you later on in the talk how that works. There's also typing extensions library, which you can download from PyPI. It contains types for users of Python 3.5 and 3.6, who may not have the latest and coolest ones. It also contains neat things like a protocol and typed dict. With these tools, you can use PyPI, to check these type annotations. These applications check type annotations and make sure they're correct. In this talk, I'm going to speak about PyPI partly because it's the one that I'm the most familiar with, also because it exists under the umbrella of the PSF. It was initially developed in 2012 as an extension of his work on allure, which is a language with optional type checking. This is what type annotations in Python look like. Once again, this is in Python 3.7. Here I have an example of an annotated function and an annotated class, and it shows which the types that the function takes in and the types that it returns. The types that the methods on the class return. Using PyPI is extremely easy. All you have to do is pip install it and then run it against your program file and aim for the success message. Python has a type function, and when given a single parameter, type can tell us what the type of a variable is. However, it has a second role, and it is also the class constructor. So passing it a bunch of, passing it three parameters turns it into the class constructor. In this case, both of these mammal classes are equivalent. In the type constructor, we have the name passed as a string, an empty tuple which says that the class doesn't inherit from anything, and when people joke that Python is dictionaries all the way down, this is part of what they're referring to. It's also possible to create new types through inheritance. So here, once again, I have the mammal class, except that it has a new method on it now to allow our mammals to breathe. And type, this is going to be our parent class for my next couple of examples. And types defined through inheritance are automatically subtypes of the parent class. Subtypes are more specific versions of their parent type, and so this is going to be my parent type. So I can take a mammal and I can make it cat. It has all the attributes of the parent class plus purring and running methods. I can also make a whale. The whale is also a subtype of the mammal class, but it has singing and swimming methods which are different from the methods on a cat. Every whale is a mammal, but not every mammal is a whale, so there are fewer whales than there are mammals. And the whale can do everything that mammal can, so it has access to all of the methods on the parent class, but mammal cannot necessarily do everything a whale can because not all mammals can swim, for instance. And now, in addition, there's what's called the Lyskov substitution principle or behavioral subtyping, which introduces principles to determine if one type is a subtype of another. So if one class is a subtype of another, the child class can replace the parent class anywhere in the application without altering the desirable properties of the application, like correctness or tasks performed. And so if I had an application called for a generic mammal, I could substitute a whale and my application would still work. Inheritance also raises issues of type safety. We can assign a variable of type whale to a variable of mammal type since a whale is a mammal, and assigning a mammal to a whale, however, is not safe since all mammals are not whales. Subtype relationships in Python are determined by the methods implemented on the object, and I'll discuss this kind of structural subtyping later. So in Python, we also have what's called duck typing, and it means that in order to be compatible, types have to pass what's called the duck test. So if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And this means that type compatibility is determined by looking at the methods on the classes that are accessed at runtime. You're not looking at what the class is inherent from or what their names are. You can also add to built-in types in Python. Built-in types can be used to define more complex ones. So for instance, here I'm creating a list that only accepts whales. If I try and add an integer to this list, my pie is going to yell at me and tell me I can't. Now I mentioned earlier structural typing, and Python uses structural typing. It looks at the shape of the type and compares the methods on it, even if these classes don't necessarily have the same parent class or the same name. So the type of the object is less important than the methods it defines. So in this case, I've defined a narwhal class. Now the narwhal class has no parents. It doesn't inherit from the mammal class, but I've implemented all the same constants and methods on it. So I could take this narwhal class and just plug it into my application wherever whale would be used and my pie would be happy. I've also defined the dunderlen method on this class. And this means that I can use the len function on it. And len doesn't care that it's not like a string or a list, it just cares looking for that specific method. Now there's also a system called nominal typing. And this nominal typing looks at whether classes share a name or a subtype of the same parent class with the same name. The compatibility and equivalence of the two types are determined by explicit declarations of the names of the types. And types are only considered type compatible if they have the same name or inherit from a parent class with the same name. It's also important to consider dynamic and static typing. Oh, behave. So I have here an example in Python and an example in Go. And Go is a statically typed language. And in Python, print doesn't care what I pass to it. I can pass it an integer, I can pass it a string, I can pass it anything with the dunder Reaper method. And it'll print it for me. In Go, I have to specifically say that this number that I want to print is a type of the float64 type. And that's because Go is a statically typed language. You can in Go, you don't necessarily have to do this, but I'm just doing this to be explicit. So in dynamically typed systems, like Python, names are untyped and values are typed. So any name can be bound to any type. Dynamic types are checked at runtime. Variables can be reassigned to values of any type over their lifetime. And fans of dynamic typing say the code is more flexible and you can run the program immediately without having to make the type checker happy. You can use simplified data structures to mock up an application. For prototyping and then expand on them later as needed. And dynamic type systems also allow types to change based on the information at runtime. In a statically typed system like Go, values and names are both typed and a name can only be bound to a value of a compatible type. Fans of static typing say the type system helps them catch type errors earlier in the development cycle and avoids having them surface in production. There's also what's called gradual typing and that's what this system is what the Python type checking aims to implement. It allows you to, it's kind of the you got chocolate in my peanut butter of static and dynamic typing. It allows you to add types when you can and allow the rest of your program to be dynamically typed. And it combines the benefits of both static and dynamic typing system. So this system allows you to add type checking gradually so you can add it just to the most critical parts of your application and then sort of expand and go from there. And I'll show you later on in the talk how the any type in my pie allows you to move between dynamic and type annotated code. So now let's put all this theory into practice with some special cases of type checking in Python. So here we have how it's possible to declare the type before the value. I promised in my talk description that I would show you how to do this. And it is perfectly legal in Python to assign the type to a value before assigning a value to it or assigning a type to a variable before assigning the value to it. So once again in Go we have, we need to declare the type of our variable and in Python before we assign the value to it. And in this case we're also assigning the type to the variable before in Python as well. It's also possible to annotate functions that return none. The type of none in Python is none type, but in the type annotations we just use none. My pie will complain if I also, if I try to assign the none return value from this function to any variable. And this can help catch some types of errors and bugs. It's also possible to use type checking to create new types similar to the way that I showed you on expanding the built-in types earlier. The type checker will treat this new type as if it were a subclass of the parent type. In this case an integer. So you can do things like add to user IDs together, but the result of that will be an integer. So if you're trying to pass in that result of that computation to a function that's expecting a user ID it will throw an error. The any type allows you to sort of move seamlessly between the statically and dynamically typed parts of your application. Any is compatible with all types and all types are compatible with it. All method calls and operations can be performed on the any type and it can be assigned to any variable. And it acts as a gateway between the dynamic and type checked parts of your application. Any functions and variables also that are not annotated default to the any type. You can also use type checking to annotate container types to only accept certain types within them. So for instance if I have, oops, there you go. So instance if I have my list of cat names, if I try and try and put an integer into it, my pie will complain. Next I have optional types. They allow you to annotate functions that return either a typed variable or none. And union types which allow variables to have different types depending on the situation. For instance you can have these dimensions which allow either allow both integers and floats, but not any other type. Finally I want to show you type checking using protocols. Protocols allow kind of like a duck typing type behavior with your type checked code. They're introduced in PEP 544 and they're one or more methods that they define one or more methods that must be present on the type. So for instance all classes implementing the DunderLend method are part of the sized protocols. You can call Lend on them and get their length. And other protocols that you can add include iterable, awaitable, container and context manager. And it's also possible to define custom protocols using the protocols from the typing extensions library. So when should we use all this? In all things we should obey the testing goat. So when should we consider using type checking? Type hints and type checking help document your code. They build and maintain a cleaner architecture in your code. They show how types are used in the code and how they change throughout your application. They're useful if multiple people all be working on the same application. For instance if you have an open source project or a project a lot of people are touching at work, it's probably a good idea to consider adding type annotations. It's also a good idea to add type hints whenever unit tests are worth writing. So if you have an application that you consider worthy of unit testing, then consider adding type annotations as well. If you have cases in your code when you're asserting is instance or type of a variable, then yes definitely add type checking there. However type checking can't do some things. It can't be the only thing that screens user input for security. Drop table students is still a valid string. It also can't predict type errors or make guesses about where they may occur. But it can predict most of them, just not all of them. They also take some developer time and effort to add. So if you have an application that you're only going to run maybe once or twice, then don't worry about it. But if you have something more permanent then they're probably worth adding. Lastly, I just want to say that type annotations in Python are not required. They are a tool that you can use. And Python will remain a dynamically typed language. So type checking is a bonus add-on, but it's not required. So thank you very much. And thank you all for coming.