Pollina’s Milk Company Tanking
March 19, 2008
It wasn’t hard to see this coming, not with the track record of Anthony Pollina being what it is: losing, losing and losing. But the Caledonia Record reported earlier this week that the milk company co-founded by Progressive Party stalwart Anthony Pollina, the Vermont Milk Company, is experiencing some serious financial setbacks. Worse, one of the five farms that supplied the non-organic milk to the company is crying foul when it comes to the payments they received from Pollina’s company.
Last week, before news of the company’s troubles became public, Pollina tendered his resignation from the company’s board in order to “focus on his run for governor.” While the Pollina campaign is seeking to distance itself from the company’s new woes, it continues to highlight the Vermont Milk Company as a major achievement in his efforts to help Vermont’s dairy farmers.
According to the first paragraph of Pollina’s biography on his campaign website, “he was approached by a group of dairy farmers interested in working together to keep farming viable. The result was the Vermont Milk Company - a farmer controlled ice cream, cheese and yogurt plant. Anthony ran the start up until 2008.”
But Karla Barrett and Mark Sutton, two Northeast Kingdom farmers who sent their milk to Pollina’s start-up, aren’t impressed with the “help” they received.
The following is an excerpt from the Caledonian record story:
“We stopped shipping milk to them December 1 because we didn’t get paid,” Karla Barrett said. “They still owe us a lot of money. We got paid the base price but not the extra money.”
She said she understood there had been some poor business management decisions, but she wants to know what is going on.
“Somehow I think they should look into Anthony Pollina. I don’t think he’d make a good governor if he can’t run a little milk company,” Barrett said. “Hopefully, investors will come through and they can clear all this up.”
Interestingly, officials at the Vermont Milk Company are claiming that its financial problems are a result of the “high milk prices” being paid to farmers of late. Pollina, therefore, was in a most awkward position in his dual role as dairy farmer advocate and dairy company executive. And, according to Barrett, the farmers came out on the losing end of that particular juggling act of Pollina’s.
News of the Hardwick-based Vermont Milk Company’s financial failures come at a sensitive time for Pollina – just as he puts his campaign for governor into high gear while using the company as an “example” of his “professional” experience.
A call to the headquarters of the Vermont Milk Company by Broadsides wasn’t returned today. The person answering the phone only said that no one was available because the company was in the middle of a board meeting. One can only imagine that they had a lot to discuss, not least of which was trying to fix this problem before it brought Pollina down with the farmers he’s always proclaimed to be helping.
The real mystery in this story is where are Vermont’s other mainstream media outlets? So far, not a peep…
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Hey Mikey
check it out…Peter Freyne is hanging it up. This could be a golden opportunity for you. I sure am gonna miss those fuckin’ stupid nicknames.
I think your contact page is f’ed up…won’t accept ver. code
No campaign news? All right, let’s do War stuff–we’re just guys:
TIBET
(sort of from the 1945 Hollywood fim classic A WALK IN THE SUN)
yeah soon we’ll be fighting
the Battle of Tibet
this war’s never going to end
Africa Sicily Italy Korea
Vietnam Grenada Lebanon
Somalia Afghanistan Iraq Iran
Tibet
why not Tibet
we’ve marched all over
this world why not
who are we fighting in Tibet?
I don’t know Krauts? Japs?
whatever
all I know is we’re never
getting out of this &)!@!*%! Army
not til we’ve fought
the Battle of Tibet
you talk too much
give me a butt
I’m out I ran out in Nam
shit you creep
when we get to Tibet
I’ll get us some butts
when we get to Tibet
we’ll have smokes and wine
and women and clean clothes
and all we can eat
and I’ll sleep for fifty years
when we get to Tibet
Tibet
Tibet…