 Thank you everybody for coming. Some people were at the last meeting, which is also awesome. Thank you for coming again. So I think that we're all here probably for the same reason, hopefully, because we love St. Turner and our store, which has been for sale for two years. So we're all wondering about what's going to happen. But I actually think it's kind of a bigger issue about communities in Vermont right now and how they support us and how we create them and sustain them. And I hear that in Vermont we're lucky enough to have really strong communities. It's not like where I grew up in Maryland, but it was very different. And I love that about Vermont. And I think that those strong communities are what help us survive in beautiful rural areas like Maple Corner through our mom leaders. I think they're really important. And I also think that at the heart of these strong communities in Vermont is mom and pop general stores. And those general stores create situations for things that I see every day as the manager of the store, a place for people to come together. And I mean, in so many different ways, but that's really what is happening. Moments of coming together, creating relationships, sustaining relationships. Which... You promise to be a mom? I'm not supposed to talk while I'm talking. I'm not a pop store. I'm not a pop store. I think you must be the mom too. I'm not a mom. I don't know what I am. Maybe I am the mom. I haven't thought about that. A few years from now. So changing that a little bit. I know everybody in here knows that these sweet little general stores that we love in Vermont are kind of dying out. Tons of them have died out around us. The East Calistores having problems, Woodbury closed, North Montpelier closed years ago. And those are all apartments now. Which would be a very different thing if this turns into apartments. It'd be a different thing for our property values, our community health, and attracting new residents. Along with just sustaining our relationships. So Chris and JB and I were sitting around one day talking about how this mom and pop general store model is not sustainable anymore. Because people have to put in, you know, 80, 90 hour weeks. It has to be their life. And nobody wants to do that anymore. And they shouldn't have to. And so we kind of came up with this idea of not requiring two people that are going to work the rest of their lives to, you know, have... Oh my gosh, that was my phone, sorry. So that we can go by beer whenever we want to or go say hi to our neighbors or whatever. So we started talking about that about a year ago. And that all kind of led to where we are now. We started meeting with other people and it kind of grew. And now we've formed a corporation and we're the founding board of the Maple Corner Community Store. And we've kind of devised a way for the community to buy the store and secure its future for everybody. And for everybody to have a say in what happens to it and how it provides for the community. So tonight you're going to hear, just from a few people it's going to actually be really short and quick. And we are going to ask you for money because it's a fundraiser and that's what we need to do. But we also, you know, at the core of this is really community and how we create that. So tonight you're going to hear from one community member, Olivia. And then there's going to be a short interactive conversation with you guys where we'd love to hear what you have to say. And then you're going to hear from a board member, another board member. The closer. And then we're going to open it up for questions. And I'm just going to ask that you can fill the questions and fill that and time and we will definitely answer all your questions. Just for the flow of the efficiency. Are we going to have an update from the financial expert? From Rob? Yeah. He certainly can. Oh yeah. From Rob's spreadsheets. It's an important part of this. It is. It's a super important part. You're locked and loaded. Yeah. So that's it. So Olivia, whenever you're ready. Yes. Somehow I've become the official old timer. I don't know. A whole lot of people die. So just taking up on what Ann Marie said about heart. So my stories are about the store really as the heart of the community. And what it meant to me as a child and more recently, what it means to me as an adult. So we were basically all latchkey children. We went to school next door. And when we were done with school, we went to our houses, somebody else's houses. They were mothers around, but not necessarily our own. But like now, we lived in each other's houses a lot. But it was always for me a mark of the day when my mother came home from work. And I lived where Rob lives now. And Ann Marie with their kids up the road. And at that time there weren't any trees between the house and the store. So it was a straight shot. It was a nice little windy path that went down to the store. And I used to wait up there for my mother to come home. Because I could see out my kitchen window. I could see her drive-up in her. She had a sit-in at one time and a lot of strange cars. But anyway, they usually made it home. And so I would see her come home and I would run down to the store and probably beg for candy or something like that. But it's a very vivid memory for me of keeping watch and thinking about what it means to the store. We live not only our private lives, but this kind of public life where our personal lives merge with the public. And the store has always been there. Just like for all of us, the store has always been there. And so I can't imagine what it would be like without the store. And there were many other things that happened in the store that were part of our public lives. Part of the school life and part of interaction as it is now. And something that's happened more recently. I was kayaking on the pond and Don says to me there's a Kurtz Pond Association gathering tonight at the Lambie Bar and why you come. We're just going to hang out. There's no meeting. So I went and it was Thursday night before open mic and we were sitting around and talking and Gus Sleelock was there and I've known Gus since he was born. And so we talked and I haven't seen him for a while. That was wonderful. And then it was almost that his birthday and Don got up and sang her a song. This very sweet song from the heart. Of course we were all in tears. So there's just more heart. And yes the store offers us a lot of conveniences milk, milk, all those things are really important. But I feel very strongly that it's the heart that really makes the difference for us as a village. And then when I was getting ready to leave Hallie came up to me and she said Gus paid for your tab. And I was like oh there's this child of mine you know. So who's now able to pay for my tab. But thinks of it you know. So there's connections between generations and also you know being party to Beth and Don's interactions. Again here's this personal life lived in a public sphere. And I think one of the most important things that we do for each other is to witness each other's lives. And here we get to do that in a very easy way. So that's my pitch for the heart. My pitch for the money is I figured out how many days I've been alive. And which is by the way 25,481. And I am in an enviable position in terms of money in that a number of people make included just gave me a year and a half ago a bunch of money for my land so that they can build their houses over there. So I have a bit of a windfall and I believe in tithing to the community that has given me so much that I'm emptying out $20,000. And so that comes to about $0.78 a day. Which is really a bargain. And what a value. And I intend to live a few more years you know bringing it down to you know maybe $0.77 a day. And that's overtime. So it helped me to think about it in that way. But why am I doing that now? Of course you know I'm in retirement I can use that money for other things. But to me it's not Maple Corner without the store. It's not Maple Corner without the community center. It's not Maple Corner without all of you. And being able to see you you know when I lived here I lived by myself much of the time and as a single person and it was important to be able to run into people without having to schedule something which was always a bit of a chore. And I feel as though it's also imperative upon us now to do this now. If we can't do this now if we can't buy the store and make it a community store then it may become apartments the way the Liberty store did or you know maybe already a Nancy Sturble along for a while and then something else happens. But in terms of the value of the building it's always going to escalate so I think one of the important things about buying it now ourselves is to put a cap on what the building costs because you know the next people are not necessarily even if they want to run the store they're not necessarily going to be able to buy it and if they buy it with a bank loan the way already a Nancy did that you know puts an extra burden and I think the smart thing that the board is doing is to buy an outright and to start a business without debt. That's incredibly important. So as I say I'm lucky to have this money now to be able to invest in the community and I really think of it as an investment in the community. Yes it's in the store, in this business but it's also in the future of the community and so I encourage all of us to dig deep in this moment because it may not come again. I moved to Maple Corner about a year ago and then also on the board and one of the things that we wanted to hear from all of you tonight was what the store means to you. We got to hear a little bit from Annemarie and from Olivia about what the store meant to them but we really wanted to take a portion of this meeting tonight to have a conversation with you all to hear how it's affected you, what it means and the day to day aspect of your life as well. How many people were here last night? Okay so I longed for you the same story. Two nights ago. Sorry, two nights ago. For the many months. Okay, yeah, other hands were rolling. Oh sorry, my name is Meg Dawkins and I've been in the community since 19, early 90s. My ex-husband, JC Myers, was up the road. So I remember him saying to me, so we lived on the end of Eagle Edge Road and Jamie and family lived over here and we came over here every day. So the Dean's house, right? Is that right? Dean's across from the store. That was just the megalopolis of the Myers conglomeration of massive children and Steve Gallagher used to throw mattresses out in the driveway so that was their trampoline. And they thought it really was a trampoline. But anyway, my point being is that we had this amazing exposure to not only the pond, we could walk to the pond, we could walk to the store, I know we could walk to Sarah and Steve's house and there's just this constant entertainment. If you're not bored in any place, you just keep going. And just yesterday, my husband, John Dawkins, we were just like, we've been house hopping and he's just like, what are we going to make for dinner? We don't have any meat. And I said, oh, we could go to the store and we could get reliable, vocal meat of our choice. And that was so great. So yeah, we might spend 50 to a dollar more. I don't even keep track. But it was just so nice to just have that we've been in transition and to just know that we could get quality food at the store. That was great. That's the story I should make. Tell them about your housing. You want me to? They should know, it's interesting. All right, so some or most of you know that across from the Curtis Pond swimming access, there's a new road that looks pretty imposing at times. Highly engineer. But it has to be because of the state and the fire department requirements. But anyway, Olivia, with much patience after five years, a dream that I had of creating a small community of a smart growth model, which is our town plan, is clustered housing, sharing infrastructure and having open spaces. So she had a field of 28.75 acres and she gave me the time and breath and space to figure out how to do that. And it's happening now. So you'll see this big road going in which ends pretty abruptly and there are six houses on three and a half acres and the rest of the land will be developed in regenerative agriculture which basically means trying to restore the soils that have been impacted by current models of agriculture which require big machinery and good manure and things. So we're just going to try to transform that over time. So if you have any questions, thank you, Reed, for that's what's happening. It's a big project. It also is impacted and is supporting the store's future because the store's septic is on our property and that happened years ago in a means to support septic. So what happens in these meanings is also related to our community and we are in full support of making the store happen and yet there's restrictions that are out of our control between other easements. So we embrace this project and hope we can do whatever we can to make it happen. Okay, so I'll talk about our experience. We moved here six years ago. We came from the Boston area outside of Boston about half an hour and I worked for a long time on climate change who started an organization down there and went from the town meeting and worked really hard on the issues of how we deal with climate change and what it came down to for me was that you have to have a community because when the shit hits the fan which it's starting to do now we're going to need each other and so our big effort was to try and get the community to come together. Reading those concrete Massachusetts it's a very wealthy town people came there because they wanted to be separate from each other they didn't really want you coming down their driveway they didn't really want to see you so it was impossible really except for a small group of people to try and get people to understand the need for community. So decided to get the hell out of there and told Bob we're moving up to Vermont I don't know what we're going to do but we're going to find some place to go and so we came up here for two months we rented a house in Templeton in January and February and then we were going to go to a couple other towns and we were interested in well we knew what we were up against so if we didn't like it in the middle of winter it was a cold winter in 2013 and at the end of it I said we decided that although we could see nice people it could be possible we've been going into Montpelier and playing field and I started working at the Clay Studio in the middle stacks there was a realtor her name was mentioned a couple times and so I called her up and said show us a couple places and you get to know us and then maybe if we decide to move here you'll have a sense of who we are and you can tell us what is available and so she showed us two houses one was in a snowstorm anyway we're up on Robinson Hill Road and we drove up there and we absolutely fell in love with the house we had no idea about Maple Corner we had no idea about the store the whammy bar, the blue barn the realtor said to us oh you'll love those people they're really brave you'll fit right in so foolishly we thought you know in a way thinking back it seems foolish we just took what we had everything we had and dumped it in this house and there we were and if the center of town had been Montpelier we would not have been anywhere near as connected when we realized about this store and we walked in that door and after the third time we walked in there people knew our names we felt like we were part of this community this whole community has embraced us in a way that I never expected and was exactly what I was looking for to help me fight climate change or deal with climate change now it's kind of a weird thing to tie it in with but I think it's a really important thing we have to understand we're going to need each other and if we don't know each other and if we don't run into each other daily and get to know the kids and the grandparents and all of that we're going to be a real disadvantage so you just might want to think about that head-to-head we've been festive and I used to chomp we haven't been here for very long but we think it's important another thing that I brought up and I'll just mention it Jamie yeah, there you are I mentioned it to Jamie last night and I was thinking about this whole thing and one of the other things I thought about was the possibility is if people would be willing to buy a share for somebody in our community who can't afford to have a share now when I went home I thought about it but maybe they can't afford it then maybe they can't also afford to buy at the store so I'm not really sure how that works but I just thought that might be another way for some people to do something for some other people in this town that don't have the advantage or the ability to support the store and then it's just another way to just kick in a little bit more that makes me think sorry I just some people in the room might not understand that if you buy a share you have a vote or a share for somebody else say we have a vote Gucci said they don't go to the store but they still might have a vote to say I can't afford to stock at the store so how do we deal with that I might just get a beer there or some one little I think we all stock at the store sometimes I came here in 2001 and similarly we were a new home buyer home we bought we had no idea what Maple Corner was and we were just trying to find school districts that our son who was going into kindergarten could get into and that would be congenial to him but then I made the mistake of walking to the store on my way to work in town and I was in a hurry I had a meeting and I wasn't out of there for 15 minutes because people were I was just trying to check my mail and people would not let me out of conversation and I did that several times made the mistake several times and was late to work each time and then I finally realized if I don't have at least 10 minutes I should not be going into the store and so I quickly realized that it was this community place and it was a place where my son getting off from school bus at 5 below 0 could wait and I remember explaining to someone who said do you take credit here at the time they didn't take credit cards and I said this is where there's real credit it's where you don't need a credit card it's just your name and so later I was elected on the board I was sort of drafted I didn't realize I was going to be elected and then after I was elected I was told that I was going to be vice president and what I came in with is I came in and I said my platform is this this community needs a tower so my platform is to convert Maple Corner Community Center into a tower and I meant it sort of as a joke and people were appalled of course but I really feel like what happened before the Wemby Bar there was a place called Camp Comfort which is where the swimming area is now and Camp Comfort actually operated as a tavern all through the prohibition and so we had a tavern here and I do think that taverns are great places for the community to meet and it really improves the environment of the community to have a tavern because then neighbors especially there's music, neighbors meet each other in a congenial environment and then it's up there a lot they tend to be a lot more congenial when we get together for town meeting because we know each other we don't want to insult each other and it's just a great meeting place so the store is a meeting place if I didn't have the store and I was making pancakes I wouldn't have a place to go by baking powder when I need it. I mean it's like without that it's just we're kind of lost as a community without having a place to conveniently go and get stuff and I think that it's totally essential but I think if you look at for instance and look at zillow.com which is where pretty much everything that's for sale in this neighborhood real estate wise is advertised and within the first few lines or line or so of any real estate that's being advertised in this neighborhood it'll mention the store and the whammy bar and real estate agents aren't stupid they're doing that because that's increasing the value of the houses in this neighborhood so for us all as property owners that might be a good thing but if you think about it the reason it's increasing it is the reason we're all talking about is that having a store makes a community it makes a convenience and it increases the value of our living here and that's why our houses are valued more because of the store and our houses would all be valued less if the store was gone so that's an equity that we would lose if we lost the store as we lose tangible value in our houses which is probably more than we're going to contribute to buying the store so it's actually in our self-interest to be contributing as homeowners it's in our interest to be contributing and not losing the store because we're nothing else for protecting the value of our property the last thing I want to say is that that the store has given the first jobs to almost everyone's kids who's grown up in this neighborhood have had their first jobs working in the store and there's a huge value to that too you know that there is no other place where you're going to really get a first job around here and there are very few employers around here anymore so it's super important and that's why Orika and I are contributing to this project I think that's an excellent point the value of the community I mean the value of the properties are kind of based on the value of the center of town it has so much value in the center of town I just want to say one thing after Hasso's story about because she didn't mention the whammy bar it's me, it's all about the whammy bar I don't know how many of you guys did you go to camp? were you at camp? I'm not a thousand years old you're going to need a lot of whammy bar you go and you find those she knows things I mean after we came here we were staying on Templeton in 2013 that was just when the whammy bar opened in October, the birthday is coming up isn't it and we saw this little ad for it because I used to play open mics in Concord but I was always so it was never good, never good because there were the kind of open mics where you'd go and nobody wanted to listen they just wanted to do their turn and there's nobody listening whammy bar people listen but that's not the start we decided, let's go do this open mic of whammy bar I think it's going to be good and we looked at the picture and I was like overhead lights and the honky tonk piano it looked really dreary in that picture we thought, well let's just go anyway so we're driving, it was really really foggy this is just Templeton just right there I couldn't see Reed for instance we got to the callus sign and we thought I don't know what we should do this and we turned around and went back home we never checked it out so if we had only just gone that extra two miles we might have thought it really was creepy it would never come back so we bought in and now I'm glad it's there again I don't know how to do it without it a lot because it's like playing to your friends and living them the more mistakes you make the better they listen the more they love you that's the way the audience is and they really listen so that's it hi I'm Robin Chase hi Robin I'll stop being so formal let's see I moved here in 1980 and I've had the great privilege to steward the piece of land I'm at the top of the hill since I was in my mid 20s I was remarking at a party the other night that I've only lived in one property in Vermont and I still live there and I think it has a lot to do with this community and nearly 80s my first marriage ended I got to know Olivia better and she called me into being the first Calisthenics player right up there there he is and I was sort of new to town so I got to play the out-of-town shyster a stickle tater Aaron Slick I was Aaron Slick I was one up by Aaron Slick you were so and so married you that was your daughter but anyway that was my daughter Howie and Kay owned a store I think at that point and it was still gas and you go in there and it was it was lovely and there was to be a quarter inch of dust in all the cans some hadn't moved very much but it was still a lovely place to be my two boys would come down and torture Howie and Kay and candy and stuff kind of reminded me of you talking about getting candy and my kids did that too and it's grown along the community supported we need to have a business here and raise my kids here people who work in my shop come down to the store every day to get lunch and snacks or beer on the way home and even now come back into town many have lived here in the community and have been amazing workers with me, Paige, Brian yeah Matthew used to live here in the east house now and others and so it's been just an incredible warm blanket community that is now not out of crotch it's healthy it just needs support to this amazing community so I haven't officially signed but I am signing for a couple of shares so I encourage everybody else to thanks for sharing all the experiences that you had at the store that's a perfect transition Chris will share a little bit more about what the model is and a bit more about the logistics and then we'd love to get some questions that you all have about how this works okay so I'm Chris I live I want to hear you all know who I am and I prepared notes here and I guess I really don't know the need I don't want to take away time I'll breeze through them but we can cut to the chase half the people in this room will already pledge the other half, give us all your money I can tell you you all know our finance role let's cut to the videos they're already there we need $450,000 we have basically $300,000 we need $150,000 more the problem is as evidence in this room there's been a problem since the very beginning we're going to run out of people so we've identified we've looked around a five mile area and we went out another 10 miles and we figured there might be 250 people we've talked to 200 of them and we've put together $300,000 that's great we've got to do the rest of it that's where it becomes really hard so we've set the shares and $5 a share we did that to get $500 that was a trick we set the shares as low as we could possibly work it out with one share you get one vote you become an owner of the share forever shares after that are equity shares so everybody gets a vote whether it's one share or thousands of shares we've run out of people we have there might be 50 people left and we have $150,000 to get so you guys can do the math what it needs to be on average people that can only buy one share please do you get one vote, you're part of it we love you, we need that for everybody that does one share we want people to do separate shares just giving the bad news but this is the reality of it and that's what we have to do let me go through these other things really quickly a lot of things we heard from people people would say come up and ask us what's the right amount to give and we can't tell you what the right amount is whatever it is for anybody else but I like Jim's comment it depends if you want to buy the store or not it depends whether you want to buy the store or not because this is a heavy lift for a little town and we might not make it and the other question we get from people is so what happens if we get almost there and we don't have the rest of the money we're $100,000 short, what happens when we fold our tent and go home there's no angels that are going to come down and take care of it for us we can't borrow money so either we're going to make it or we're not and it's going to depend on finding enough people and digging deep enough to do that I just want people to think of this maybe I'll relate the way I started thinking about it at the beginning I'm thinking well I'm going to buy a share for me and for both of my adult children and my summer outright I'll have $1,500 in my checkbook and I'll be able to do that and it will be easy but I'll do it and then I got to the point where I'm like no we're in trouble here we need to raise a lot of money and I'm struggling with how do I do more and then we're hearing from people that are saying well we want to do this but we just pay our taxes this year this time of year and so did I and it just occurred to me that if this becomes a measure of how much money in your checkbook this month we're dead but water is not going to happen so I'm just encouraging people to think of it really long term like Olivia 70 cents a day 78 so you can live for a long time so I started thinking like okay I might crawl around on the surface for 20 or 30 more years from those and what if I did a couple hundred dollars a year and then we're talking to people and they're saying well we can't do this but you know we have home equity and plan it out over a longer period of time and people have savings whatever that means and I thought you know I've got to just figure a way out here so I took a deep breath dipped into my home equity and I bought 10 shares and I can't tell anybody what else to do I mean everybody's got to do what they can do and what's right for them if one shares right that's right but I just encourage people to think of this and as long a term as possible and you can find a way to stretch it out for a long term you know a few hundred dollars a year for the rest of my life I plan to use the store for the rest of my life so my thinking came around from what's the most I can do the minimum I can do to I got to do this so don't follow me but do more than that please thank you I had more stuff but yes of all the reasons the world why this has to happen and there's a good chance we're not going to be able to make it so okay first thing you have to do is I hate when people tell you what you have to do but this is what you have to do first thing you have to do is think what you can do yourself make that pledge second thing is feel really good about that then walk over to your neighbor's house with a couple of cold beers and sit down and say hey I just did this I feel really good about it and here's why I did it and invite them to come along call your siblings call your rich uncle call your mother and your kids and everybody and have them join in too and then walk around with people with cardboard signs saying we'll work for store whatever be an evangelist go out and talk to all your neighbors and we've got to dig people out of looking under rocks trying to find more people and it's always been the problem we're going to run out of people in the end we'll run out of people please help us find that November 1st is our goal we have to go past that it's we may or may not be able to but that's what we've worked out with Arkane Nancy and we've had this for a year and a half and the reason we haven't been able to talk to people earlier is because we are selling actual shares and registered with the Securities Exchange Commission and if we talked about it before the first of August it was we'd be like inside a trading we've got a lot of trouble we're allowed to talk to people about shares until just this summer you haven't mentioned the community centered tax donations I'm going to leave all that for the question and answer the specifics of how that works we'll open up for questions and then we'll ask better at that I'll leave you for questions tell us that first there's multiple ways to give and the way this is set up is under a certain rule with the State of Vermont which this is a really a community based corporation and corporations have all kinds of rules that are federally regulated but this is under the State of Vermont community based corporation such that you have to be a Vermont resident to invest in it if you're an out of state person and I encourage everybody to think of others and I know of some that I'm going to ask for money that live out of state they can donate and they can get a tax deductible donation through the community center so the community center has agreed to take on donations and in doing so they then become an investor and an owner of the store which just furthering grants the community aspect of the store so you can either donate and have a tax deductible donation to the community center or you can be an owner and have equity in the store in how it's operated and who's operating it so there's all kinds of things to diamond in regards to the structure but that's one of the aspects of it and in terms of fundraising just to jump on what Chris was saying I think we're getting towards the end this is relatively small group compared to what we had at the time I think as we approach the end of October we're going to be contacting the 100 people that we've talked to so far and asking all of you and all of them what else can we do who else can we talk to so that's part of our job as a board is to formulate the game plan to get us to the finish line you and that pretty soon here do we just write a check out how do we do it well we have binders in the back every investor gets a binder with a business plan in it and that right there and essentially make sure you look it over and know what you're getting into and sign on to buy some shares but I think that keeping that I understand is that if you invest and it doesn't whatever if you don't reach your goal right so every check we get goes into an escrow account and it sits there and just waits around until we close and by law based on what we put into that binder we cannot close on the store until we've at least raised $375,000 which was the purchase price we agreed upon we're trying to raise $450,000 so that we can deal with the septic so we can buy inventory so we can have a little bit of operating funds going into the slow months in the winter so but if we do not get at least $375,000 we have to either give you your money back or come up with some kind of plan B in which you might agree to let us keep it we'd have to renegotiate a whole new thing we're hoping that doesn't have to happen I'm Rod Block and I'm a financial investor and we've lived here Sandy and I since 1976 I think we're on the Olivia plan for contributions and I'm wondering Chris was saying if we don't get to the $450,000 that's it, can't do it are there other alternatives that you board members are thinking I mean very few deals are done for pure equity these days are there ways that we could do I mean we should get as much equity as we can without doubt you might be able to do a bridge loan that would allow you to get the other $75,000 whatever you're lacking and then you could work on paying that off over time with grants other kinds of fundraising it would give you more time it would allow you to execute the transaction and get you know 85% of what you want instead of saying oh we can't do it, we're dead well I think if we don't get to our goal then you'll think about it and we have thought about those things and we should pick your brain about those things but you know I think there's a certain amount of urgency about trying to get to the goal because wouldn't that make life easier and we do have a significant lead investors such as yourself that have actually made their investments contingent on not having a loan because if you look at the business plan I mean the one great thing about the store is it has been making money it's not a family store like some of the others in Vermont already Nancy have been doing okay they're not getting out of it because they're losing money they are just moving on but they the economics are nonetheless challenging if we have to serve a significant debt well if you had to do it the idea would be as little as possible and as short of time as possible right it might provide a basis for really rallying around all sorts of stuff we have people that have played a pursuit of Vermont who said that they would pull it if we have a loan maybe I should talk to those people maybe that's exactly what should happen so that's something we have to do well one other aspect is that we fundraise on a certain set of criteria so I think we all feel a little funny we sort of move the goalposts as we go along that's what I want to ask so the model is pure equity that's what we presented to people yeah I think my wife asked me a similar question in the same tone twice and she's trying to know I think the answer is a really simple good question and the answer is complex because we have to go back to all this paperwork about what was our model we presented to the initial investors it might well be exactly what these guys are saying that's a really good question and we hope to not have to go there but if we do we'll have to figure out the next one it does sound better than failure well it's also the point of me not to throw play the waters along but if you get to the point and then the bridge loan does happen and then they see oh my goodness it is going forward maybe those who maybe there'd be more encouragement to invest if it's actually made the transition it is going forward I mean I'm not saying that's what we would do best get all the money we need but to see it actually transition into something bring a lot of enthusiasm and maybe more fundraising and then we'd all be owners we'd be on the hook too instead of sort of subtracting money just the board be on the hook I think though in fundraising there's another side of it too is that it's hard to fundraise once you've taken off the pressure it's sort of like the VPR fundraising we don't get it by 10 o'clock we'll be held in some ways it's better to do it now than try all out to just finish it then have an easy way out and then when this store gets bought and I believe it will this group has a big job to take over and they'll have a lot of work to do just transitioning Artie is a musician every single musician at the whammy bar loves him and Artie's leaving they're going to have to figure out how to reconnect all those connections and make the whammy bar work and make the store work and Artie and Nancy have been doing this for a long time I've run businesses before that's going to be everything it's going to take all your effort to just keep this business going and growing and implementing new ideas you're going to make mistakes there's no way not to to have to be fundraising at that time will create added risk for the transition which is risky enough I think this team knows what they're doing and will win doing it but I would rather them have undivided focus rather than having to raise another $100,000 didn't you hire Artie? didn't you hire Artie to stay on? that is something that I wanted to say we do plan to in my vision of the store anyway we have a whammy bar committee which Artie is a part of that committee is there's tons of amazing musicians in this town that are shareholders or they don't have to be shareholders but they tend to be in that whammy bar committee they're speaking with musicians they're getting new music there so there isn't one person that has to be doing all of these things there's groups that are specializing in different aspects of the store in the whammy bar that way we draw on the resources of the whole community the transition of even creating that is going to be a lot it's going to be a lot but you can do it I'm not worried about that but I would rather not have fundraising it would be great if we could just make a clean transition and allow the team to focus on creating a successful store everyone would agree with that I think we can I really do I think there are times that I didn't think we could do it so 150,000 left we do still have plans of once we've tapped out the ability for people to buy shares we're going to do fundraising projects where it's 20 bucks to get in and all that money just goes towards our endeavor we're not going to raise $100,000 that way you would say this is for a bank sale for a bank sale isn't that a lot about a calendar? I guess four of these charts speak for everybody we can get Mr. Weber right back Mr. Weber Mr. Weber Mr. Weber Mr. Weber one thing I would toss in is an abandon to tap on to what John was raising is that Nancy and Nancy both really support they really want this they came down a lot from what they wanted in their asking price because they want this community approach to work and that includes I'm not just going to hand you my email list and walk off he wants the music to succeed as well as the store and they're both totally on board for this to work so I have a question if we talk to our neighbors do you have just rather than a whole book just a sheet of paper or who do they contact? they can contact any of us on that both have an email address and we have a website the website is fairly new and JV did it and it's fantastic she did it on and we have brochures the brochures don't give a ton of information they give the idea it's kind of a little pitch they're downstairs but we know far what maybe we're a community store but people are also welcome to take binders too I mean I know it's kind of a lot of heavy information so website is really probably the best there is paper working back in order to be a share the binder is really for somebody that knows that they want to invest and be a part of this isn't the paperwork for buying a share on the website that can be printed out I don't think it's on the website it's not currently you can make a pledge I'm not sure you can put that on the website I think we'd have to run it by the contact everything that they need for contact info is on the website and I want to mention that if you're talking to people which I hope everybody will either Jamie and I or Annie I or somebody will be there to give all this information go over the booklet help people fill things out answer any questions it's closed 7 o'clock every Tuesday until we get there although I'm going in the winter something will happen what is the website maplecornercommunitystore.org it you can also you can also get to it maplecorner.com that's a lot easier maplecorner.com please encourage people to come on Tuesday nights because it's a good way to sit down in the space and imagine what it would be like without the beat in there and yeah like one on one questions and answers I just wanted to say something since I have just recently moved to Calis right before the winter time I'm just curious in terms of somebody that is not incredibly financially stable at the moment if there are like other young folks that are trying to invest in the store if there's any younger generations coming in here and trying to not change things this just happened a bunch of people moved in and took over our community store and there wasn't a lot I could do about it or my family could do so I'm just curious how that might be playing out here in Calis it seems like a much different financial situation where the town is able to buy it and I'm really interested in being a part of it if I could in any way I could so if there's anything I could do to help that may not be financial at the moment I'd be happy to help I think there's going to be a lot of opportunities to help there's advisory committee and I think there's going to be a lot of little committees that are kind of focused in different aspects of running the store and the way we run people volunteering their time and is really what we need after we kind of get to the fundraising point that we need to get to and also spreading the word shopping and giving a feedback I think one of the important things about having a store that's community owned is that we're really serving the community's needs you know so we need to hear feedback from people and what they want you know a lot of for a lot of projects where there's fundraising that you make a pledge and there's a period of time in which to make good of a pledge does a pledge have to be fully paid in the next 30 days or how does that work I wrote a check a month ago and I don't think it's been cashed and I just wonder about the time I think we gave you back your check right? Janet, you gave it back to Janet that's different Janet's going on vacation with it now it's all clear to me what holy damn with dynamics leave that aside go back to my question you you make a pledge and it has to be done by ex-date what's the ex-date? we're you'll be hearing from us very soon okay so we're gonna start trying to collect ahead of November 1st so or right towards the end of the month our strategy is really to look at okay we're at 300,000 or so now let's see how much further we can get over the next two or three weeks and then look at what the gap is at that point and at that point we'll be asking for everybody's pledge and additional help to what extent folks can give thanks pretty soon it's worth mentioning one of the things we thought about when we could borrow money without it being a real mortgage and we don't know how this would work but if we said to people okay you bought $1,000 for the shares if you could pledge a total of $5,000 over the next four years every six months is a $500 pledge and then we could borrow against that with a contract with people because a lot of people say well I can only do this now but a lot of people would think I could do this for the next five years and then if we could find 10 or 12 people to do that and borrow $50,000 I don't think it would set off the people who said they would withdraw their money if we got loan because it would be kind of a guaranteed loan in terms of people following the queue on it and everything but I think there's a possibility that might work and I was curious what you would think of that I think that it might be a pretty good idea and it might be something we could do when we go back to people and try to ask people if they could do more and yeah another one of those sort of green light ideas that you know at some point you need to think about once we get to where they are yeah I think if we're not there we're not going to throw a towel this is looking at other means and ways to get there and I think we're pretty committed already Nancy are pretty committed but that said things are going to get more complicated and if we don't do it by the end of the year our commitment in the binder and to already Nancy is to do this before the end of the year so if we don't do that you can have your money back if you want it back I want to just mention we've been working on this for a year and a half and we sort of put our money where our mouth is the Board of Directors has put up $10,000 to $15,000 from lawyers and appraisals and all that kind of stuff just out of pocket and I think just collectively with just our Board of Fundraising team we've all committed to over $50,000 so we're in this just so everybody knows that we're not just asking for people to think for a bunch of money that we're not also doing have you guys looked at grants are there any community oriented grants that see the value in having a store or is there just nothing we haven't found any the Vermont Community Fund Foundation or the corporate model that we went with because it was a for-profit model was not compatible with the funds that they had to offer and the model that they suggested for various reasons we didn't think was the right fit or early on in this whole project we've been talking for over a year that was a lot about what this was about what's the best way to do this and we found this way to do it really was the best fit for our community we studied a lot of different other stores and successful ones and ones that are still on the edge and how they went about trying to survive and everybody kind of did their own way to a certain extent and we've done it our own way and in a way that seems to really make sense for us works with this relationship we have with the community center in the community here if the store building was in the start building I think of Reservation Trust of Vermont for example could be involved and I think they are involved in the East Cal store and you do go to them yeah it was because we're not historic it's not a historic building it cut a lot of the possibility of branching out there may be some out there still we've had some folks looking in but it hasn't been made so far does the Vermont Country Store have a foundation have you talked to them they do that's a pretty good idea because they just own the store in North Calus so that's the family that started the Vermont Country Store so I mean they're not terribly involved obviously right now but it might be I think they're involved with the Memorial Hall project but they would probably just have to be if the family might buy shares if they have a strong feeling about Calus but I think it's more North Calus yeah thanks for your questions and for your ideas and for sharing a little bit more about what this means to you all if you have more questions we'll all be around afterwards and then if you fill out that pledge card you could either give it to Janie on your way out or put it on that clipboard that's on the far table that would be wonderful thanks again for being here tonight thank you thank you