Year: 2011
Here, Shop Owners Help Foster Community Spirit
Bobby Scott and Jess Imbriglio say East Longmeadow was and is the perfect location for their Brush Salon.
He joked that he loves food. “Take a look at me,” he laughed, holding his sides. He’s really not as wide as he thinks, though, and talking about the scope of his business, he said that he’s just one guy making pizza every day, seven days a week. But the busy stream of customers, in and out of his restaurant, Peppa’s Pizza, on Harkness Avenue, tells a different story.
He’s lived in a few different places since he was born in Springfield, perhaps most notably as a pizza man in New Haven, but he went to school in East Longmeadow. When a location opened up in the small plaza just off the bustling thoroughfare of Route 83, he knew it was time to come home.
East Longmeadow’s business community is among the more vibrant in the towns of the southern Pioneer Valley. On the one hand there is an industrial sector, with, among many others, Hasbro Games and Lenox, but for much of the populace in the smaller outlying towns, this is the destination for their retail needs.
The larger shopping plazas, containing chains such as Starbucks, Panera Bread, and Home Goods, are attractively maintained, and vacancies, if any at all, are neither large nor visible. This creates a bustling venue for smaller operations, and alongside the famous national names, are a few local stand-outs. With A.O. White, Rocky’s Hardware, Spoleto’s Italian restaurant, and numerous others, East Longmeadow is a busy town.
When Kate Vishnyakov was deciding where to open a clothing store for women, to be called Kate Gray, this was the strong retail environment that she had in mind.
“To say that all roads go into East Longmeadow … it’s a bit of a trite statement, but it is, if anything, an understatement,” she said.
“Just to think about that rotary,” she continued, referring to the famous, or infamous, union of seven roads, just outside her store. “All those spokes — there are times of the day that it’s incredibly busy.”
Her clothing store is a destination for shoppers from not only East Longmeadow and surrounding towns, but also for clients willing to travel an hour or more. “Customers do business with people whom they know and trust,” she said, “and we work to provide that. There’s much more to this business than just selling clothes.”
In another facet of the world of fashion and beauty, the same philosophical statement could just as easily be applied. For the co-owners of Brush Salon, Bobby Scott and Jess Imbriglio, the ability to transform lives, both for clients and charitable deeds, is very important.
Kate Vishnyakov says the line ‘all roads lead to East Longmeadow’ is, if anything, an understatement.
Their salon is just over a year old, and opened during a slow time for the beauty industry and the economy in general. But, like others in town, it’s that role in their community which makes them happy to be doing business in East Longmeadow.
As Vishnyakov added, “It’s not about being in a centralized location, but in a good location.”
I Did it My Way
Across the room from a glass display case stuffed with pizza varieties like cheeseburger, Buffalo chicken, and one with a particularly interesting combination — bacon, seasoned french fries, and cheddar — DeGuglielmo hooked his thumb at that array and said, “we try to make things a bit different here.”
He’s been making pizza since he was 11 he said, and during that spell in New Haven, a foodie mecca, he said he was given some pointers on the bench. But it was while he was running his cousin’s restaurant in Chicopee, John’s Pizza, that he realized he wanted to own his own shop.
Nine years ago, he bought the business, and in short order, he transformed the operation. “It was smaller scale, no delivery,” he said. “I brought in a fryer, really started up the ability to do more for sporting events. And it was then I brought in a lot of crazier ideas for pizza also.”
Cheese fries, barbecued chicken, shepherd’s pie, and garlic knot crust, are just a few of the “reinventions” of pizza, as he calls them, that have people lining up to order by the slice or entire pie.
He says that his current store is a little hidden, off the main road, but on a weekday during lunch, and in fact for many times throughout the week, no one has any trouble finding it. DeGuglielmo recently opened another branch, called Peppa’s Express, in close proximity to Western New England University.
Business is brisk at the home location, though, so much so that he said at some point soon, he’s going to have to expand, either in the present location or one close by. He’s pretty modest about what he does, stating matter-of-factly, “I love to make pizza, I’m here seven days a week, and my wife comes in to work, also.”
But one thing that is as important to him as his love of food is helping out in his hometown, “any way I can,” he said. “Anytime there’s something going on in the community, I like to be a part of it.”
A business can only benefit from that level of charitable commitment, Scott agreed. And in the one year that his salon has been transforming hair and makeup for its clients, it also strives to make over an entire brand.
“Yes, this about hair and aesthetics,” he continued, “but if you really need to put your donated time into a business perspective, sure, it is free advertising. We speak at colleges, and hospitals, and if we get two people that become customers from it, then that’s beneficial for everyone.”
Scott and Imbriglio make beauty look easy — he as a master stylist for hair and she as a skin therapist — but their business involves hard work and long days. When asked to recall their shared backstory, Imbriglio smiled and deferred to her co-owner’s memory. “He tells it so much better.”
“She was a model at a fashion show where I had been doing hair, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember her name,” he said. “I kept calling her ‘Blondie’ that entire night, and through some subsequent social events. But then I found out that Jess, when finally learning her real name, was more than a model; she was a professional aesthetician who also had an interest in creating her own business.
“We chatted, and realized that our visual concepts for a salon were very much on the same page, from how it should be run, to what the vibe would be like, how people should be treated,” he continued. “And here we are.”
Here is also on Harkness Avenue, and Scott explained that there never was a thought to open his first salon anywhere but East Longmeadow.
“This town is kind of like the Las Vegas strip with the amount of salons here,” he said. “Everyone tends to come to East Longmeadow to get their hair done. I boomed fast when I was younger, getting a good clientele; it was important for me to have a place convenient for them.”
That level of competition is good, Imbriglio said, because it keeps their business on its toes. “It makes you want to do that much better. One key message here above all else is to focus on our clients, making them feel welcome.”
And that simple message is one of the key components to what their far-reaching clientele says makes Brush a salon like none other. But not for long, because the pair have grand designs on taking that first location and branching out elsewhere.
“Not that we aren’t content to be here, not at all,” she explained. “But there is always the thought of what more can we do, and where can we go from here?”
Scott joked that people accuse him of too frequently looking into “the crystal ball” at what the future might hold. “Initially, I could see three or four stores. But still where everyone knows your name.”
It’s not hard to imagine that growth, either, because the pair has racked up a strong and successful business in such an unforgiving economy. “Everyone strongly advised us against opening,” Scott remembered of their debut in June 2010. “We were crazy, they’d say. Even our clients were saying that. It is naturally slower during the summer months for a salon, and then to add the recession on top of that; my philosophy was that it can’t get any worse.
Fast forward to today, and he said that the salon has grown every month, not exponentially, but steadily. The partners carry the TIGI line of products, makers of Bed Head, and that company recently told them that theirs is the number-one small business in sales for the line in Massachusetts.
Looking across to his business partner, Scott added, “They say that during a recession, everyone wants to feel better.” After an appointment with those two and their staff, everyone would look better, also.
Gray Matters
“I knew I wanted to have the business named after a person, and my last name wasn’t the best choice,” Vishnyakov told BusinessWest. “It’s neither memorable, nor easy to say!”
Growing up in Russia, she said that her dolls had the best wardrobe of any that she knew. The passion for fashion may have been lifelong, but it was honed during the final days of the clothing store Yale Genton, where she managed the women’s clothing section for six years. “Being there really allowed me to fine-tune my approach to quality clothing,” she added.
The process of creating a brand wasn’t one she took lightly, and that went all the way to what the name would be. “Gray for gray matter — the brains,” she explained. “I have always loved to work with women who are grown-up, confident, who just enjoy being the way they are. She doesn’t necessarily need to be professional, she could be a mom — but definitely sophisticated.
“One of the sales reps with whom I had worked for a long time said, ‘Oh, gray the color — not so black and white,’” she continued. “Everyone’s perception is different. But in the end, I had a box of Earl Grey tea before me, which I drink constantly. I wrote ‘Kate Gray’ down, and I said, ‘This is it.’
She did some research after that, talking to her customers from all professions and backgrounds, and asked what the name ‘Kate Gray’ conveyed to them. “They said it sounds like it had been in business for a long time, it sounded reliable,” she explained, “and that was the message I wanted to send — quality, tradition, classical, but very modern as well.”
After four years of owning her own store, Vishnyakov said that her clientele has come to appreciate her role not just as a merchant, but in matters less tangible. “This is a business of trust. I sell clothes, yes, but more than that, I sell confidence.”
Reflecting on her role in the tightly-knit community of East Longmeadow — whose connections were once again put to a test by Mother Nature, this time in the freak October snowstorm that knocked out power town-wide for almost a full week — she said that beyond even her role as a trusted salesperson, being a small-business owner means so much more than just the items on the rack.
“Yes, it can be exciting, going shopping in Boston or New York, but in the end, the money that you spend here in your home community stays here,” she said. “We merchants shop locally, we employ people from the community, and we donate to local organizations.
And those relationships are beneficial to her customers, as well, she said. “I get so much repeat business every year at the holidays because people know they can get a gift very easily here with personalized care. Sometimes we’ll even know the person well, and can prepare very special gifts, just for them.”
Holyoke Project is a Study in Perseverance
Mike Crowley, left, and Bob Schwarz in front of the Holyoke Transportation Center, a unique project that overcame innumerable hurdles.
Mike Crowley says that from a strict bottom-line perspective, the initiative that became known as the Holyoke Transportation Center never really made complete sense, and always came complete with a large amount of risk.
Indeed, when asked when and if this unique commercial real estate venture will become a financial success, Crowley laughed and then offered an expression that seemed to say, ‘who knows?’ — a reaction that essentially told the story. Well, not really.
That’s because this project was never about economics — or all about economics, said Crowley, a commercial real estate consultant, developer, and eventual partner with members of the Picknelly family and a host of public entities in this initiative that transformed the old central fire station on Maple Street in Holyoke into a transportation and education complex that those involved say should become a model for other communities.
Instead, it was about fulfilling a commitment made by Peter L. Picknelly more than a decade ago to create a groundbreaking public-private partnership that would blueprint and then build a unique facility that would become both a transportation hub and center for adult basic education programs — two passions for Picknelly, who was still conceptualizing the facility when he died in 2004.
And it was essentially the unwavering desire on the part of his son, Peter A. Picknelly, to honor this commitment that enabled the project to overcome a lengthy laundry list of challenges and the temptation on the part of any or all of the various players — the Commonwealth, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, the Federal Transportation Administration, Holyoke Community College, and other entities — to say that this project just wasn’t doable.
“Every time we were faced with a 10-foot wall with barbed wire on top, we somehow found a way get over it,” said Crowley, who has a number of successful real estate ventures, including several medical offices, on his portfolio, and has worked with the Picknelly family on several of its projects over the years.
He said the barriers in Holyoke were both bureaucratic — an inevitable scenario when one considers the alphabet soup of federal, state, and local agencies involved (from HCC to the PVTA to the FTA), as well as the leadership changes that took place within some of these agencies— and construction logistics he summed up neatly and succinctly when he joked, “they told us this building had great bones; well … they lied.”
The Holyoke Transportation project was a complicated endeavor that involved a number of federal, state, and local agencies.
Eventually, state funds were secured to cover some of the additional costs, imaginative solutions were found for each of the construction challenges, and the parties involved essentially drew their own map for navigating uncharted waters in the form of an unprecedented public-private collaboration to create the center.
“We were essentially paving new ground; this was the first joint-development agreement undertaken in the country under the new FTA rules and regulations,” said Bob Schwarz, executive vice president of Communications for Peter Pan Bus Lines, and an individual Crowley credited with keeping the project on the rails during the innumerable times it appeared to heading off the tracks. “So we had nothing to go on; no one had ever done this before; we were laying the road.”
And as result of all this imagination and determination, the participatinbg parties were able to cut the ribbon last fall on a facility that Picknelly says makes a great deal of sense for the community.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind concept that has received national attention,” he said. “The components come together naturally — adult basic education, transportation to take people to those programs, and a childcare center for those with children.
“This is a one-stop shop to improve your life,” he continued, referring specifically to the many programs taking place in the Picknelly Adult and Family Education Center, named for his father. “It’s a place where people can make connections that can change their life.”
For this issue, BusinessWest chronicles the Holyoke Transportation project, a triumph over adversity in many respects, and now a working model that other communities may be looking to emulate.
Route of the Problems
As Crowley retold the story of how the center eventually came to fruition, he said that by the time Picknelly called him in 2006 and asked him to get involved, the project had been effectively dormant for some time.
There had been a memorandum of understanding inked between the Picknelly family and the PVTA in 2003 that outlined the partnership and the main battle plan for building the center, said Crowley, and many additional partners, from HCC to Head Start, to the city of Holyoke (which provided the real estate), had come on board, and thanks to the ardent support of U.S. Rep. John Olver, the various components of the project, and needed funding sources, were coming together nicely.
“They visualized a multi-modal transportation facility that would link inter-city and intra-city bus services involving carriers like the PVTA and Peter Pan, that would provide superior transportations services for the people ot Holyoke and the surrounding communities,”Crowley explained. “But what they also recognized was an absence of critical adult basic education services in the community, and looking at the demographics, this was a glaring problem — the fact that none of these services were being provided in a cohesive fashion.”
“What Peter (Picknelly), Bob (Schwarz), and Congressman Olver realized was that many of the people who needed adult basic education needed transportation to those services,” he continued. “Further, they understood that many of them also had kids, and in most cases, couldn’t leave those children to receive these education services — so Head Start became another critical element in the equation.”
This apparently solid game plan gained the support of the FTA and the state Executive Office of Transportation), which together had committed grants covering two-thirds of the project’s cost, and HCC had agreed to become anchor tenant and provide the adult basic education services.
But due to a series of circumstances — from the death of the elder Picknelly, who was providing the private equity for the project ($1 million) to turmoil at the PVTA and a subsequent change in leadership at the agency — the ambitious plans had been effectively back-burnered, although certainly not forgotten, said Crowley.
Indeed, by 2006, the PVTA, then being led by Mary MacInnes and determined to upgrade its facilities in Holyoke, one of the larger communities served by the agency, generated some dialogue about getting the initiative back on track.
But the landscape had changed considerably since 2003, said Crowley, noting that by then, the commercial real estate market was booming and construction costs were soaring, which meant that that the agreements between the parties would have to be renegotiated.
“When I looked at the development proposal that Peter had agreed to, and looked at the agreements that Head Start and Holyoke Community College had agreed to as tenants, and looked at the agreement that the PVTA had, it was evident to me that the project was financially unfeasible, and I indicated that (to the younger) Peter,” he explained. “But Peter, who recognized and appreciated that this was one of his father’s principle goals in life — to create this adult basic education center — didn’t want to give it up.”
Fast-forwarding a little, Crowley said the various agreements with the parties involved were revisited, and those leading the initiative went to Olver in the hopes of securing additional funding from the FTA to cover those escalating costs; a revised budget from the architect had moved the pricetag from the $7.5 million in 2003 to roughly $9.3 million (for both the building and an adjoining parking garage that was never built).
However, by this time (late 2006), the country was starting to slide into recession, and the federal government was putting the brakes on a number of projects, including many that were transportation related. So the parties involved with the Holyoke project agreed to essentially move forward knowing that there was a significant funding gap, said Crowley, adding that this was only one many serious problems lying in wait for this initiative.
“There were a number of points in the JDA where I think all the stakeholders, at one point or another, and for various reasons, almost threw in the towel,” he explained. “It was a daunting, daunting process. There was a ton of agencies involved — at the federal level, the state level, the city level … it was incredibly complex.”
Miles to Go …
Meanwhile, close inspections of the old central fire station revealed that those claims of ‘great bones,’ were untrue, or at least greatly exaggerated, and this meant that the recently revised budget was certainly imperiled.
For starters, the building, vacated at the start of the decade but still used for some training programs, had been exposed to the elements for seven years before construction was due to begin. This led the developers to do their own structural and environmental analyses — earlier reports indicated that the building was ‘clean’ — that found a number of large and costly problems.
Chief among them was the asbestos-based coating on the floors on the second, third, and fourth levels, a material applied 70 years earlier. “Everyone thought it was concrete, and we planned to just skim-coat over it,” Crowley explained. “And there was no way to get it up, other than with jackhammers and hand demolition.
“We had two options — encapsulating it, or removing it,” he continued. “But knowing that we were going to have Head Start and their children, and knowing the level of traffic this building was going to get from the general public, we made the decision to remediate it in its entirety, and if we couldn’t remediate it, we were going to scrap the plan.”
A subsequent inspection revealed that the deterioration of the I-beams that were carrying the first floor was so significant that they would have to be replaced, adding another $250,000 to the project’s cost.
“So now, we’re $770,000 behind the 8-ball, and this is before we’ve gone to bid to find out what it’s going to cost us to do the building,” he went on. “So that delayed us probably four months, because we, as the private-equity investors said, ‘we’re not going forward this — this is crazy; there are just too many unknowns.’”
But eventually, the many delays in negotiating agreements, securing the needed funds, inspecting the building, and resolving construction issues, turned out to be a blessing, because the rapidly deteriorating economy served to bring down the constructions costs associated with the project — and in a dramatic fashion.
“In most cases, time is you enemy with projects like this; in this instance, it was our friend,” said Schwarz, adding quickly that even with the attractive bids that would eventually be recived, the project would likely have been scuttled if state legislators had not secured a $750,000 grant from the EOT to handle the asbestos-removal efforts and floor replacement.
Construction wound up coming in two phases — demolition, handled by Kurtz Inc., in Southampton, and then reconstruction, undertaken by Western Builders in Granby, a subsidiary of Daniel O’Connell’s Sons in Holyoke — and there were myriad challenges in both cases.
Indeed, demolition of the floors proved to be a formidable obstacle, said Crowley, noting that due the composition of the concrete under the asbestos coating (sand mixed with large stones), the demolition efforts left a scarred, pitted surface that “looked like the surface of the moon.”
Rectifying the situation would require roughly three inches of new concrete, he continued, but the structural steel wouldn’t support that much weight. So a silicon-based substance, five times more expensive than concrete, had to be used.
Eventually, officials at HCC were able to secure a $550,000 federal grant that effectively enabled the developers to absorb ballooning expenses from the construction challenges and bring the project to completion, said Crowley, who stressed repeatedly, that there many figurative 10-foot walls with barbed wire that appeared to be insurmountable barriers, but solutions were ultimately found.
As they provided BusinessWest with a tour of the center, Crowley, Schwarz, and George Kohout, who directs the System for Adult Basic Education Support (SABES) for Holyoke Community College, at the Picknelly Center, all implied on numerous occasions that the facility was certainly worth all the aggravation, and that the unique model is working as those who blueprinted it intended.
Kohout said there are a number of programs conducted on the third and fourth floors of the facility, involving a number of agencies, from HCC to the New England Farmworkers Council; from the HALO (Holyoke Adult Learning Opportunities) Center to the Community Education Project; from the Holyoke Public Schools to CareerPoint.
Together, these partners offer services that include English as a Second language classes, GED testing, MCAS preparation, career counseling, “fast-track math,” English writing and composition, and computer training.
The central location, coupled with the accompanying transportation and childcare elements, not to mention the modern facilities, have all contributed to high enrollment and attendance levels that are certainly not coincidences, Kohout continued.
“Attendance has gone off the charts,” he explained. “And part of the reason for that is that many of these programs have been offered in places like the basements of churches or in other buildings with used furniture; when people come here and see the modern facilities, the state-of-art technology, bright colors, and the clean walls, it really ramps up what we call their ‘persistence’ in classes.”
In the big-picture perspective, that’s a word that can be applied to every aspect of this project.
Passing the Test
Looking back on all that transpired since that conversation with Peter Picknelly back in 2006, Crowley shook his head and said, “had I known then, what I know now …”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but the implication was certainly clear enough, and if it wasn’t, he then made it so by adding, “was this a labor of love? Maybe, but mostly, it was a just a labor.”
And mostly because all the parties involved didn’t know then what they know now, this unique project was able to come to fruition, bringing transportation, adult basic education, childcare, and even a coffee shop, together in an historical and improbable setting.
And so, the Holyoke project has become a study in perseverance — in more ways than one.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Easthampton Savings Bank Surpasses $936M in Assets
EASTHAMPTON — At the end of the third quarter, Easthampton Savings Bank had total assets of $936 million, according to William S. Hogan, Jr., president and CEO. Assets were up more than $86 million from a year ago, an increase of 10%. Also, over the past year, total loans increased 8% or almost $49 million, an increase of almost $18 million over the last quarter. Total loans now stand at $635 million. Hogan noted that the bank’s deposit growth was more than $87 million or 13% from a year ago. Deposits were up almost $11 million for the quarter. Total deposits now stand at $755 million. “This past quarter has been another successful one,” said Hogan in a statement. “We achieve this level of success with exceptional employees and support from all of the communities we call home.” Hogan added that bank officials look forward to completing the year on an “up note” with strong performance.
Big Y Foods Opens
Store in Lee
LEE — Big Y Foods opened a 45,900-square-foot World Class Market at 10 Pleasant St. on Nov. 3, at the site of the former truck stop Diesel Dan’s. The new Big Y reflects today’s modern supermarket standards along with an in-store pharmacy, prepared meals section and eat-in cafe, according to store director Steve Gigliotti. Additionally, there is 5,000 square feet of retail space that is available for a future tenant. Cocca Development of Boardman, Ohio, served as general contractor for the expansion in conjunction with several local subcontractors for the completion of the $15 million development. Gigliotti and his team has hired approximately 150 employees to operate the store. The hours of operation will be 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Big Y’s pharmacy will accept most major insurance plans and will be managed by Darice Taxter, R.Ph., along with John Graham, R.Ph. Wellness services include flu shots, total cholesterol and blood pressure, glucose and body fat and osteo with blood pressure. Pharmacy hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sundays. As part of Big Y’s grand opening celebration, the four schools in Lee each received $500 as part of the company’s longstanding commitment to education.
MassMutual Plans $1.33B Dividend Payout for Policyholders
SPRINGFIELD — Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) recently announced it has approved payment of an estimated $1.33 billion in dividends to eligible participating policyholders in 2012, an increase of $105.5 million over the prior year, representing an 8.6% increase. The annual dividend, which MassMutual has paid to policyholders consistently since the 1860s, is one of the key benefits of purchasing a participating policy from a mutual company that is operated for the benefit of its policyholders, according to Roger Crandall, chairman, president and CEO, MassMutual. “The value of doing business with a mutual company has never been more abundantly clear, and MassMutual is proud to deliver on that enduring value by continuing our legacy of strong dividend payouts,” said Crandall in a statement. “Our increased dividend payout in 2012 demonstrates our longstanding commitment to mutuality, financial strength, and those who matter most to us, our policyholders.” The total dividends for 2012, approved by MassMutual’s Board of Directors, include a dividend interest rate of 7.0% on all eligible participating life insurance policies. This announcement comes at a time when MassMutual maintains among the highest financial strength ratings in its industry and is reporting record levels of surplus ($11.2 billion as of Sept. 30) and total adjusted capital ($13.4 billion as of Sept. 30), which are key indicators of the company’s overall financial strength, added Crandall.
Carrazza Financial Merges with St. Germain Investment Management
SPRINGFIELD — Michael R. Matty, CFA, CFP president, of St. Germain Investment Management announced the merger of his company with Frank Carrazza Financial Planning. Frank A. Carrazza Jr. assumes the position of director of Financial Planning for the firm. He will oversee the financial planning services of St. Germain while continuing his responsibilities of managing client assets and providing financial and insurance planning advice to individuals and small business owners. Carrazza brings a broad range of knowledge and experience in areas of investments, income and capital preservation. Since 1976, he has been an independent professional since leaving a senior position at IBM in Boston. As a financial advisor, he offered securities through Commonwealth Financial Network, a broker/dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. He has served as president of the Estate Planning Council of Hampden County as well as president of the Western Mass Chapter of Financial Service Professionals. Because of his expertise in financial planning, business succession planning, insurance and estate planning, Carrazza holds the following certifications: certified financial planner [CFP], chartered life underwriter [CLU], chartered financial consultant [ChFCA], accredited investment fiduciary [AIF] and registered investment advisor [RIA]. St. Germain is a privately held company specializing in investment management for individuals and institutions. Founded in 1924, St. Germain services national and international clients from two offices, one in Springfield, the other in Hartford.
UMass Amherst Police Have New Station
AMHERST — The UMass Amherst Police Department recently conducted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new building at 585 East Pleasant St. At the ceremony, speakers included Robert C. Holub, UMass Amherst chancellor, Henry Thomas III, UMass trustee from Springfield, who represented the UMass Board of Trustees and the UMass Building Authority, and Johnny C. Whitehead, UMass Amherst police chief. During the festivities, the department opened the building for tours and had specialty units, including the police horses and motorcycle officers, available. The $12.5 million facility is located at the intersection with Tillson Farm Road, across from the Amherst Fire Department’s North Fire Station. The department began full-time use of the new building in April. The building, designed by the firm Caolo & Bieniek Associates, is also the first new construction on campus to meet leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) certification standards. Whitehead noted in a statement that the new station provides the department with all of the tools that a highly professional police force needs.
Baystate’s New COO Puts the Focus on Quality and Value
Greg Harb was asked about the job description for the title on his business card — chief operating officer/executive vice president at Baystate Health, a newly created position at the region’s largest health network.
He said part of it is creating an operational road map for this system, which has a wide array of facilities stretched across three counties and more than 10,000 employees, a task he says involves everyone at Baystate Health. “But it’s more about keeping everyone on course — following that map and getting to where we want to go.”
Elaborating, he said that it’s one thing to have a plan or a multi-faceted strategy for providing quality care in an increasingly challenging environment for all providers (and Baystate has one, which he would expand on in great detail), and it’s quite another to properly execute that plan. And in many ways, his job description comes down to leading, or enabling, effective execution.
“I’m working closely with physician leaders, and also interacting frequently with front-line co-workers,” he said by way of explaining his role within the system. “We’ll have open forums on a regular basis, and I’m also working with the leaders of our different operating entities — the hospitals, the physician practices, our home health and visiting nurses associations — to make sure we’re executing those system objectives and system strategies.
“We’re constantly spending time evaluating our strategies,” he continued, making use of the collective ‘we,’ as he would repeatedly as he talked with BusinessWest, “and ensuring that we’ve got the right tactics to execute those strategies.”
And, as he said, there are many components to the system’s strategic plan. He identified five core strategic objectives, all in support of the integrated health network he says is the model of the future:
• A focus on quality of care provided;
• “Financial stewardship of this community resource”;
• Ensuring that the system is providing innovation in how it provides care;
• Commitment to academic endeavors; “we want to continue to educate health care professionals in the future”; and
• Ensuring that the system “has the most talented group of co-workers in this part of the country.”
Summing all that up, while also condensing his own job description even further, he said it comes down to that simple (yet also exceedingly complex) term ‘value’ and how to provide it in everything the system does.
For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Harb about his new assignment at Baystate Health, the many components of his job description, and that all-important focus on value.
Background Check
Harb comes to Baystate from the St. Joseph’s/Candler (SJC) Health System in Savannah, Ga., where he took the same title he has now: chief operating officer. Prior to that, he was COO and executive vice president of the Baptist Health System of East Tennessee, and held similar positions at Valley Baptist Health System in Harlington, Texas, and Memorial Hermann Healthcare System in Houston.
Like Baystate, SJC is an integrated system with a number of components, including two hospitals (St. Joseph’s and Candler, each with roughly 300 beds), a home-health component, the Lewis Cancer and Research Pavilion, and many other programs.
Harb listed a number of accomplishments from his five-year stint at SJC, including an improvement in net operating income from $336,516 in FY 2007 to $3.1 million in FY 2008 and $8.6 million in FY 2010; development and implementation of a strategy that decreaed premium pay 30% compared to the same period the prior year, resulting in a $4.4 million annual savings; decreasing labor as a percentage of net patient revenue from 44.6% in FY 2005 to 39.9% in FY 2010; work with the system’s board to establish a ‘collaborative’ with a competing health care system, with the primary objective of reducing supply cost; and co-leadership of an enterprise-wide “patient throughput initiative,” which resulted in a 0.4-day reduction in average length of stay at each hospital.
He told BusinessWest that recruiters brought him into the search for a COO at Baystate last fall, and he was attracted by the prospect of working with others there to lead the system through a challenging period of transition for all providers.
“What was most appealing about Baystate is that this is truly one of those integrated regional health networks,” he explained, “where you’ve got Health New England as the payer partner, comprehensive and regionally distributed acute-care hospitals, an integrated, multi-specialty physician practice within the system, all the outpatient services, and parts of the continuum of health with home care and hospice,” he explained. “So Baystate is very well-positioned to really lead the transformation of care, and that was very exciting to me as a professional.”
During the interview process, he said he had the opportunity to meet with Baystate leadership, including CEO Mark Tolosky, whom Harb described as “dynamic,” as well as board members, and came away impressed with the common vision and the basic approach to achieving it.
“There was singularity in terms of their focus on wanting to be that integrated regional system and trying to position Baystate to really change the way care is delivered,” he explained.
Upon arriving in March, Harb said he spent a considerable amount of time acclimating himself to the Baystate system and understanding the dynamics of the many moving parts within the delivery network.
When asked what he took away from that acclimation process and the many forums he had with administrators, physicians, and employees at every level, he said it was the sense that everyone is pulling in the same direction.
“There’s a real commitment to Baystate Health’s strategies, a commitment to the execution of those initiatives, and a real positive outlook that, if we do execute those strategies, we’ll continue to be a leader in Western Massachusetts,” he said. “There was a positive outlook that we’re well-positioned as a system, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t or aren’t significant challenges facing Baystate and everyone else in health care.”
Care Package
Which brings him back to the five core strategic objectives he mentioned earlier, and how they are all integral to that process of providing value and enabling systems to effectively serve the public when the costs of providing services (especially in the case of Medicaid and Medicare) are not fully reimbursed by payers.
Starting with that term, or philosophy, of quality, he said that it comes in three areas: clinical — the outcomes provided — as well as patient experience, which Harb described as a “core deliverable,” and access. “We want to ensure that our community has access to our physician practices, acute-care services, as well as our outpatient services.”
And a big component in the effort to deliver quality is transparency, he told BusinessWest, adding that the system posts all clinical outcomes on its Web site.
Regarding financial stewardship, Harb said a key part of this strategic initiative is removing waste from the system in order to provide care in the most cost-efficient manner. As part of that effort, the system started down what he called a “lean journey” nearly 18 months ago, and now applies lean practices in a number of departments, leading to significant gains in efficiency and plans to expand the program.
Meanwhile, the system, which has undergone a large reduction in force (185 positions were eliminated in late June), has also focused on non-labor expenses, such as costs within the supply chain, he continued, and has managed to reduce expenses by roughly $40 million to $50 million over the past several years. “We’re constantly looking at ways to remove waste without compromising quality,” he explained, adding that such efforts are helping Baystate toward its three-year goal of breaking even on Medicare services (which constitute a large percentage of total volume within the system).
Innovation in the delivery of services plays a part in both the achievement of quality and financial stewardship, he continued, citing as one example, the advent of patient-centered medical homes (the system has 16 of them), a relatively new model of the organization of primary care. It involves an individual’s primary-care physician and family and focuses on care needs, including prevention and wellness.
“These homes, which coordinate care across the entire continuum, are a real innovation and an opportunity to improve the way in which we provide care,” Harb said, adding that another key to Baystate’s success quotient is recruitment of top talent across the board.
“We need to make sure that we recruit, retain, and develop the best physicians, the best nurses … all parts of our delivery system,” he said. “We have an aging workforce, so the constant challenge of recruiting and retaining our caregivers is something we spend a lot of time on. And we understand that this is at the core of all that we provide; the people — the team — are the most important element in the process.”
And the ongoing task of proper execution of strategic initiatives is a total team effort, he went on, summing up the many financial and operational challenges facing providers by saying that they must continue to “appropriately redesign care and remove waste, but not impact quality of care.”
Elaborating on this redesign process, he said it involves reduction, or elimination, of the fragmentation process in health care today, and the creation of truly integrated systems. This is a large component of Harb’s assignment, and one of the many motivations behind the $250 million Hospital of the Future expansion now taking shape on the Baystate campus.
“One of the core parts of my responsibility is seeing that we’re truly integrating our care,” he said, “and that we’re not just approaching it from a hospital perspective, or from a physician-practice perspective, or a post-acute perspective, but making sure that we are truly coordinating that across the system.”
Bottom Line
When asked how he would evaluate his level of success in his new position, Harb said there would be a number of effective measures.
“Are we hitting our quality metrics? Are we hitting our patient-experience metrics? Are we performing well financially? Are we recruiting and retaining our talent? Are our co-worker engagement scores improving? It’s very much based on how we perform against the measured objectives of our system,” he explained.
In more simple terms, though, he’ll be successful if he can keep the system on course, able to follow that roadmap for progress in a changing health care landscape, and, in a word, execute.
The Challenge for Domenic Sarno
When Springfield officials set the wheels in motion for a charter change that would double the length of mayoral terms in office to four years, we heralded the move as a tremendous opportunity for the city.
The sea change would enable the corner office holder to act and govern without the many pressures and limitations — real and imagined — that are part and parcel to running for re-election every two years.
Now, Domenic Sarno has that opportunity. We urge him to make the most of it, and we expect that he will. Indeed, he will welcome the breathing room and operating room that a four-year term provides, and in the meantime, we expect that he’ll be spending a lot less time over the next several years talking about how resilient the city is and how it plans to bounce back from the latest natural disaster; the city is certainly due for a break.
Sarno’s four-year mission is rather simple, yet also quite complex: create real progress as this city, like many major Northeast urban centers that were once manufacturing centers, tries to reinvent itself. The main goal (again, simple to say but quite difficult to do) is make the City of Homes a place where people want to live and companies want to do business.
That’s it. There are myriad specific assignments and goals — improving schools and reducing a cripplingly high drop-out rate; making the streets safer; revitalizing neighborhoods; re-invigorating the downtown; and bringing more people out of poverty — but they are merely the means to accomplish those primary objectives.
Reversing a city’s fortunes certainly isn’t easy, but there is plenty of evidence that it can be done here. In the ’70s, Boston was one of the poorest cities in the nation, a community people were fleeing; now it’s among the wealthiest. Two decades ago, Cambridge was among the least-popular mailing addresses for businesses, and especially startups, in the state. Now, it’s one of the most popular. Only 15 years ago, Lowell was experiencing another in a seemingly endless string of declines. Now, it has become a model for urban revival that many cities are trying to emulate, following enormous success with those two basic missions listed above.
The common denominator in each case was hard work, effective planning, and realization that there are no short cuts and no silver bullets. In Springfield, this means resisting the inevitable proposals to place a casino here — perhaps even in the embattled, tornado-ravaged South End, where a casino will be billed as a savior — and going about urban revitalization the old-fashioned way.
Jobs are at the heart of this assignment, as they are in every other city in this region, and across the country for that matter, and what the city needs is a multi-faceted approach to address this concern by focusing on several fronts: from workforce training, to creating a downtown that will attract and retain young professionals; from fostering a much stronger creative economy, to transforming the city’s ethnic diversity into a real asset.
There are other pieces to this puzzle — everything from effective marketing of the city and its attributes to increasing the inventory of market-rate housing in and around downtown — and they need to be addressed simultaneously.
The good news, as we said at the top, is that the mayor now has more time and freedom from the pressures of constant re-election campaigns with which to operate. That’s not a license to take one’s foot off the gas, but it is an opportunity to govern more effectively and aggressively.
It’s now up to Sarno to seize that opportunity.
ACCGS
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• Dec. 2: East of the River 5 Town Chamber Annual Holiday Breakfast, at Twin Hills Country Club, Longmeadow. Doors Open at 7:15 a.m. Tickets: $20 for members; $30 for non-members.
• Dec. 6: Springfield Chamber of Commerce Executive Directors’ meeting, noon-1 p.m. in the EDC Conference Room, Springfield.
• Dec. 7: ACCGS Business@Breakfast, at the Delaney House in Holyoke. Doors open at 7:15 a.m. Tickets: $20 for members; $30 for non-members.
• Dec. 9: ACCGS Legislative Steering Committee, 8-9 a.m. in the TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.
• Dec. 14: ACCGS After 5, 5-7 p.m., at WWLP TV-22, Chicopee. Tickets: $10 for members; $20 for non-members.
• Dec. 15: ACCGS Executive Committee meeting, noon-1 p.m., in the TD Bank Conference Room, chamber offices.
• Dec. 21: ERC Board of Directors’ Meeting, 8-9 a.m., at The Gardens of Wilbraham, Community Room, 2 Lodge Lane, Wilbraham.
Dec. 21: ACCGS Ambassadors Meeting, 4-5 p.m., EDC Conference Room, Springfield.
AMHERST AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.amherstarea.com
(413) 253-0700
• Dec. 14: Amherst Area Chamber After 5/Holiday Party, 5-7 p.m. at the Amherst Brewing Company, 100 University Dr., Amherst, MA 01002. Admission: $5 for members; $10 non-members. For more information, visit www.amherstarea.com
CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101
• Dec. 6: Holiday Party, 4:30-6:30 p.m. Hosted by the Chicopee Chamber of Commerce. Free to members.
• Dec. 21: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Castle of Knights, Chicopee. Advance tickets: $19 for members; $26 for non-members; at the door: $21 for members; $28 for non-members.
FRANKLIN COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.franklincc.org
(413) 773-5463
• Dec. 2: Holiday Hor D’oeuvres Party, 6-9 p.m. This is a great event for adults to socialize, learn about wine, and jazz. Live music by Espresso jazz (6-9). Hosted by Chandler’s located at Yankee Candle Village, Routes 5 &10 in South Deerfield. Tickets: $40 per person.
GREATER HOLYOKE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376
• Dec. 14: Holiday Salute Breakfast, 7:30 a.m., at the Yankee Pedlar, 1866 Northampton St. Co-sponsored by Holyoke Gas & Electric and Health New England. Tickets: $20 for members; $25 for non-members.
n Dec: 21: Holyoke Chamber After Hours, 5-7 p.m. Hosted and sponsored by the Delaney House, 3 Country Club Road, Holyoke Tickets: $10 for members; $15 for non-members.
GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900
• Dec. 7: December Arrive @5, 5-7p.m. at Thornes Marketplace. Sponsored by King Auto Body, Johnson & Hill Staffing, and United Bank. Tickets: $10 for members
• Dec. 13: New-member lunch, noon-1 p.m. Hosted by the Northampton Chamber of Commerce, 99 Pleasant St., Northampton.
NORTHAMPTON AREA YOUNG PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY
www.thenayp.com
(413) 584-1900
• Dec. 8: NAYP monthly networking event, at the Hotel Northampton
36 King St., Easthampton. Featured nonrofit is the Food Bank of Western Mass.
SOUTH HADLEY/GRANBY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.shchamber.com
(413) 532-6451
• Dec. 3: South Hadley Holiday Stroll, 2:30 p.m. The event begins for youngsters at the Town Common where festive music will ring out beginning at 2:30 p.m. At 3, Santa and his elves will parade to the Common with the help of the South Hadley High Tiger Pride Marching Band. There will be an opportunity for youngsters to sit with Santa and have mom or dad take pictures. New this year, bring your own camera for pictures with Santa. Musical performances will continue until 5 p.m. when the tree lighting will take place on the Common. Festivities will be held at the Common in South Hadley.
THREE RIVERS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.threeriverschamber.org
(413) 283-6425
• Dec. 5: Monthly meeting of the Three Rivers Chamber of commerce, 7-8 p.m.Hosted by the Three Rivers Chamber of Commerce, 2376 Main St.
WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
(413) 426-3880
• Dec. 8: Food Fest West, 6-8 p.m., at Crestview Country Club, 281 Shoemaker Lane, Agawam. Tickets: $25 in advance; $30 at the door. All proceeds go to WRC’s Educational Fund, providing scholarships and business education grants to West Springfield and Agawam. For more information, contact Tamara Fricke, [email protected] or (413) 426-3880
GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
• Dec. 9: Holiday breakfast, 7:30-9 a.m. at Shaker Farms Country Club, 866 Shaker Road. Sponsors: Gold, Westfield Bank; Silver, Easthampton Savings Bank and The Carson Center for Human Services Inc. Highlights: the holiday benefactor this year is the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Westfield; attendees are asked to bring unwrapped gifts for children ages 5-15; age-appropriate games and toys are desired. Tickets: $25 for members; $30 for non-members
YPS-Young Professional Society of Greater Springfield
www.springfieldyps.com
• Dec. 15: Third Thursday, 5-7 p.m., Mckinney & Burbach Tavern, 1127 Main St., Springfield, 01105. For more information on this event, visit www.springfieldyps.com
In August, BusinessWest presented its 2011-2012 Resource Guide. What follows are needed additions and corrections to the charts that appeared in that issue:
Addition to Accounting Firms:
Pignatare & Sagan, LLC
1098 Elm St., West Springfield, MA 01089
(413) 746-9465; www.pignatareandsagan.com
Number of CPAs: 4
Number of Partners: 2
Total Staff: 18
Offices: 2
Managing Partner: Charles Sagan
Specialties: Certified public accountants; enrolled agents; tax planning and tax-return preparation; personal and business consulting; personal financial planning; retirement planning; business purchase, sale, and financing; financial-statement preparation; computerized accounting and bookkeeping; incorporating a business
Addition to Audio-Visual/Multimedia:
New York Sound and Motion
181 Doty Circle, West Springfield, MA 01089
(413) 734-3456; Fax: (413) 734-3457
www.nysmtv.com
Services: Full-service video production company; all forms of digital and audio media; specializes in high-definition production as well as post-production in two AVID suites; provides solutions to nonprofits, educational organizations, small-business owners, and others
Contact: Edward Brown III
Addition to Banquet Facilities:
Marriott Courtyard Hadley Amherst
423 Russell St., Hadley, MA 01035
(413) 362-8405; Fax: (413) 256-5422
www.marriott.com
Capacity: 200
Contact: Sean Welch
Services: Offers 2,880 square feet of meeting space; can accommodate meetings from two to 200 people; full catering capabilities on property
Change to Computer Network/IT Services:
Squad 16
16A Pasco Dr., East Windsor, CT 06088
(860) 758-7250; www.squad16.com
Additions to Financial Services/Brokerage Firms:
First Niagara Private Client Services
225 Park Avenue, 4th Floor, West Springfield, MA 01089
(413) 747-1465; www.fnfg.com
Licensed Brokers in Western Mass.: 4
Branch Manager: Michelle Hagan
Services: Full-service wealth, investment, and fiduciary services
New England Financial Group, LLC
17 North Main St., West Hartford, CT 06107
(860) 521-2250; Fax: (860) 521-2214; www.nefghartford.com
Licensed Brokers in Western Mass.: 15
Branch Manager: James Marlor Jr.
Services: Family protection; wealth accumulation and distribution strategies; business-continuation planning; tax-qualified retirement plans; employee benefit plans; executive benefit plans
Change to Financial Services/Brokerage Firms:
Charter Oak Insurance & Financial Services Co.
Licensed Brokers in Western Mass.: 80
Services: Personal and life insurance; employee benefits; investments
Change to Insurance Agencies:
Berkshire Insurance Group
66 West St., Pittsfield, MA 01201
(Local offices in Dalton, Greenfield, Great Barrington, Longmeadow, Pittsfield, Shelburne Falls, South Deerfield, Stockbridge, and Westfield)
(866) 636-0244; Fax: (413) 447-1977
www.berkshireinsurancegroup.com
Full-time Agents: 70
Full-time Employees: 80
Offices (Locally): 10
Type of Insurance: Commercial, Personal, Life, Employee Benefits
Top Local Officers: James Herrick, Vice President, Personal Lines; Steven Cronin, Vice President, Commercial Lines
Change to Largest Employers and Largest Manufacturers:
Lenox Industrial Tools
Top Local Officer: Rich Wuerthele
Addition to Largest Manufacturers:
MicroTek Inc.
36 Justin Dr., Chicopee, MA 01022
(413) 593-1025
www.microtek-cables.com
Total Employees: 120
Top Local Officer: Anne Paradis
Business: Custom cable assemblies and wire harnesses; control panels and boxes
Josiah B. Neiderbach recently joined the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in Springfield as a Land Use and Environment Planner.
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Lynn Brown
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Amy B. Royal has been named a Director of Aditus Inc., a community-based education and employment agency serving individuals with developmental disabilities. She is a Senior Partner at Royal LLP, a management-side labor- and employment-law firm.
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Nancy Milkey
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Alicia M. Szenda has been appointed Director of Sales at the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau. She previously served as Group Sales Manager. In her new position, Szenda manages convention and meetings sales for all member properties in the Pioneer Valley, and serves as the hotel liaison for the TEAM Springfield sales strategy for conventions. She will also coordinate group tour activities for the bureau.
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Elisabeth E. Johnson has been appointed by TD Bank as Vice President, Portfolio Manager in Commercial Real Estate in Springfield. She is responsible for managing a $280 million portfolio of commercial mortgages and lines of credit, as well as credit administration, risk management, and compliance of existing loans.
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Katya Cerar has been named Director of Transition Aged Youth Services at ServiceNet.
•••••
United Bank, based in West Springfield, announced the following:
Donna George-Ebbeling
• Donna Easton-Vicalvi has been promoted to Vice President, Government Banking. A former town treasurer with more than 15 years experience in municipal government and banking when she joined United Bank in 2008 as assistant vice president of government banking, Easton-Vicalvi has since built and maintained significant customer relationships with numerous municipalities in the surrounding area. She also plays an active role with various industry and community organizations.
Raymond James Restoration Has This Art Down to a Science
James Simoncini says his company specializes in matching original work with such quality that observers wouldn’t know a restoration project was undertaken.
So, when an old structure such as a museum, library, or brick apartment complex needs restoration, many people believe it will be impossible to reconstruct portions of the original façade or match it exactly without spending a lot of money, especially since colors of brick and mortar change and fade over time.
But Raymond James Restoration Inc. of Worcester and Springfield has been debunking that notion for 15 years. “Restoration work is an art, and a lot of projects can be expensive. But restoration is all we do and because of our background, experience and knowledge, our repairs match so well no one ever knows they were done,” said Raymond James Simoncini, who founded the business. He added that although perfect matches take extra time, the company’s well-honed methods allow them to complete projects at reasonable prices.
Details are important to Simoncini, and like the craftsmen of yesterday, he has dedicated his career to restoring buildings to their former grandeur so people can continue to enjoy their original beauty for generations to come.
“I want things to look right. I love old buildings and their history,” he said. “Appearance is very important to me and it doesn’t take that much more time to do something correctly, which is one of the secrets to my success.”
Simoncini grew up in the construction business and sharpened his skills under the tutelage of a dedicated mason who had taught the craft at a vocational high school and loved restoration work. Since that time, he has gone from working for others, to operating a one-man operation, to managing a business which employs eight people with services that range from masonry restoration of building facades, to historic revitalizations, to the many aspects of masonry repair, masonry cleaning and protection services, and maintenance consultation services. His roster of services also encompasses concrete precast repair and replacement and waterproofing coating and painting.
The majority of the work is done in the commercial arena. Currently, the company is engaged in the first phase of a project on one of the buildings that make up Stockbridge Court in Springfield.
“It’s made of concrete, and some of the material was falling off,” Simonici explained, adding that water had seeped in behind the façade. The job involves treating the steel frame, which has rusted, and re-coating the entire structure with waterproof paint.
However, many of his projects are far more challenging and range from sites in Worcester and the Boston area to UMass Amherst. And since some sites are large and the work must be done in stages to accommodate budgets, Simonici also does consultation work and develops plans that prioritize the importance of repairs that need to be done.
“They can range from safety issues to cosmetics,” he explained. “So, I fine tune the jobs so people know where to spend their money.”
Concrete Examples
Simoncini’s introduction to the construction business came at a young age when he began working for his father. He studied business in college, and although he continued working for his dad, he began taking on jobs of his own. In time, he was hired by a masonry-restoration company whose work included many high-end projects in Boston, on Newbury Street, Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue.
While employed there, he was mentored by Michael McCarthy, a mason and teacher who cared deeply about restoration work. “He taught me how to match bricks and mortar, which has allowed me to separate myself from my competitors,” Simoncini said. “He sculpted me into restoration.”
During that time, Simoncini gained two clients who had so much for him to do, the time he spent on their projects soon equaled the 40 hours he was putting in at with his employer.
When the firm’s business began to slow, Simoncini did some work for other companies, as he had joined the local mason’s union. But at age 24, he made the decision to go into business himself, and quickly became extremely busy due to word-of-mouth referrals, which to this day is how he gets most of his work.
“I can find any brick and make it look old, and can match any mortar in a wall,” he said, adding that his company has doubled the amount of work it has done each year for the past three years.
Simoncini has never shied away from a challenge, and has faced many during his career. A good example is the historic Edgell Memorial Library in Framingham, which was built in 1872 to commemorate the service of Civil War soldiers.
The slate roof was being replaced, and that meant the library’s two stone chimneys needed to come down and put back up exactly the way they had been built.
“Every stone had to come off and be labeled; we took photos and made a diagram, but putting something like that back together is not foolproof,” Simoncini explained. “The biggest challenge was that the mortar joints had to be exactly the same size as they had been and had to line up perfectly.”
The crews were able to accomplish the painstaking job to Simoncini’s standards, which he said are often higher than those expressed by the clients who hire him.
And that’s one of the reasons why there are many similarly challenging assignments in the company’s portfolio. Another example is the work undertaken at the Worcester Historical Museum.
Crews from Raymond James tore down its chimney, and, while rebuilding it, discovered that 100 of its 300 bricks were not salvageable. Rather than putting all of the new bricks in one section, they carefully mixed them into the design so they were not visible.
Simoncini said it would have been easier to put them all at the top or bottom of the chimney, but his focus has always been on restoration that is not visible.
It was also difficult to match the 50-year-old mortar, but the ability to do such detailed work is what sets him apart, he said, adding, “I am very, very particular in everything I do.”
Another assignment that came complete with a number of challenges was the courtyard of the Rhode Island Federal Courthouse, where some of the pillars needed brick-replacement work. Simoncini explained that water had gotten between the bricks and the steel supporting rods and had pushed the bricks out. In order to get an exact match for 300 bricks, he purchased 1,600 so he could carefully pick and choose among them. “When you order bricks, they come in cubes of 500, and the shades are different colors,” he explained.
But he wasn’t content until he had found a perfect match. “I believe that the work I do is a direct reflection of me, and I won’t use something that isn’t right,” Simoncini said.
“Some people have been told that a certain color brick doesn’t exist anymore,” he told BusinessWest. “But it’s not true. In 15 years, we have never run into a brick we couldn’t find.”
He added that he does a good deal of work for property managers. “They are always trying to save dollars, but they want things to look right, and the reason I have been successful is because that is exactly what I do.”
His company also did brick-replacement, repointing, and sealant work on the Student Union at UMass Amherst. “The sealant was challenging because we were removing mortar in between the capstones and replacing it with the sealant and it had to match the original mortar that we removed. But the project engineer for UMass told us it was the best caulking job he had seen during his career,” Simoncini recalled with pride.
A Full Slate
By utilizing its own team members, Raymond James Restoration is able to control quality as well as project timelines and budgets, since it doesn’t have to wait for subcontractors, which means there no scheduling delays.
And although Simoncini said he could choose to take on more-costly projects in large cities such as Boston, his goal has always been to use his expertise to restore old buildings at rates that people could afford — providing a perfect match even when others have said it cannot be done.
And that has helped him cement a reputation that is, well, rock solid.
Send photos with a caption and contact information to: ‘Picture This’ c/o BusinessWest Magazine, 1441 Main Street, Springfield, MA 01103 or to [email protected]
CHD Turns 40
The Center for Human Development celebrated 40 years of service to the community at its recent annual meeting, staged at the Storrowton Tavern and Carriage House. The event featured keynote speaker Bob Fazzi, managing partner of Fazzi Associates and CHD co-founder and former presudent, as well as presentation of the Rick Moriarty Volunteer of the Year Awards. The winners were Doris Chrzanowski, Nancy Evans, and Janice Morin. Clockwise, from above, three of CHD’s founders (from left), Fazzi, Bill Seretta, and Art Bertrand share a moment with CHD President/CEO Jim Goodwin; standing (left to right) are: Jeff Sattler, president, Nuvo Bank; Heidi Delisle, vice president, AW Hastings; Mat Geffin, Webber & Grinnell Insurance. Seated (left to right) are: Hannah Butler, Human Resources director at Lenox Saw; Amy Royal, principal of Royal LLP; Carol Fitzgerald, vice president of CHD; and Amy Roberts, vice president of Kollmorgen; standing (left to right) are: Terry Regina, board member, CHD; Jim Goodwin; Mike Williams, vice president with Chicopee Savings Bank CHD and board member; Bill Seretta; and Michael Weekes, president, Mass. Providers Council. Seated (left to right) are: Art Bertrand; Jay Primack, principal, Moriarty & Primack and chairman of the CHD Board of Directors; Bob Fazzi; and Diana Buckley, principal, Buckley Consulting and wife of Bob Fazzi; Seated (left to right) are: Doris Chrzanowski; her husband, Tom Chrzanowski; Nancy Bazanchuk, CHD; Michelle Theroux, vice president of CHD; and Ron Ancrum, executive director of the Community Foundation of Western Mass. Standing (left to right) are: Denise Dukette, vice president of New England Bank and CHD board member; Evan Plotkin, NAI Plotkin and CHD board member; and Karen Cabana, CHD.
Most Sports-related Neck and Back Injuries Are Preventable
Dr. Julio Martinez-Silvestrini calls them “the terrible toos.”
“People do too much, too fast, too soon,” said the sports medicine physician from Baystate Rehabilitation Care in East Longmeadow, as he talked about how and why sports-related injuries to the spine occur.
“If people followed simple rules, they could avoid most injures. But getting in shape takes time, and people are impatient. As soon as the snow melts every year, golfers go out and play 18 holes without stretching. And someone who has never run before will decide to run a marathon, put their sneakers on, and run two miles the first day,” he said, adding that such individuals usually end up getting hurt.
Dr. Charles Mick agrees. “If you want to lift weights, don’t try to lift 250 pounds the first day,” said the orthopedic surgeon from Pioneer Spine and Sports Physicians in Northampton. “Athletes want to maximize their ability, but they need to do it gradually with common-sense training.”
But many people make the wrong choices. In addition, some sports injuries cannot be avoided. As a result, physicians see adolescents and adults who have injured their neck and/or back playing sports. Their conditions range from muscle strains and sprains to ruptured discs and, in rare cases, spinal-cord damage, which can result in paralysis or even death.
The injuries occur from participation in a wide variety of activities, which include golf, running, football, baseball, BMX biking, martial arts, cheerleading, lacrosse, diving, horseback riding, car racing, surfing, and more.
“Most of the time, back injuries are not related to an acute event,” Martinez-Silvestrini said. “They result from overuse and repetitive movements using bad body mechanics.”
Anatomy Lesson
Martinez-Silvestrini says the back can be divided into three parts: the cervical or neck region, the mid-thoracic spine, and the lower or lumbar spine.
In general, muscle strains are the most common type of injury. “At some point, almost every athlete strains a muscle,” Mick said. “Sore backs are common, and aches and pains are part of getting stronger.”
However, Dr. Christopher Comey of New England Neurosurgical Associates in Springfield says it’s not unusual to see patients with injuries that range from nerve irritation to cervical spinal fractures.
“Lumbar or lower back strain usually responds to pain medication, restriction of activity, and anti-inflammatory medication. Longer-lasting injuries can involve pinched nerves, which can happen when a disc is herniated and a piece of it lodges against the nerve. The pain can start out in the back and, several days later, travel down the leg. But only 10% of patients with these conditions require surgery,” he said. “The majority respond to physical therapy, rest, and, on occasion, cortisone injections.”
The most common injury to the neck is whiplash. “It can happen in any sport where the person is moving at high velocity; if a football player is tackled in the chest, his neck continues to move forward, which stretches all of the ligaments and muscles that support the cervical spine,” Martinez-Silvestrini said. “Once you get to the point of maximum deformity, there is a recoil mechanism, and the neck goes backward.
“Sometimes, it overcorrects and bounces back and forth,” he continued. “The opposite happens when someone is tackled from the back. Their neck snaps backward, which stretches all of the front neck muscles because the head is moving at a different velocity than the trunk of the body.”
In most cases, whiplash results in nothing more than a stiff neck, which improves with rest. “The way to differentiate between a mild sprain versus a more serious one is pain that doesn’t improve with rest, or tingling or numbness,” said Martinez-Silvestrini. “In more severe cases, there may be weakness, walking difficulty, or problems with bowel or bladder control.”
A common football and wrestling injury is called a ‘stinger’ or ‘burner’ because it causes sudden pain and/or numbness and tingling that lasts for a few seconds and feels similar to hitting the ‘funny bone.’ It results from overstretching the brachial plexus network of nerve fibers that run from the neck to the arm.
Mick says stingers can be frightening, but are usually not dangerous. However, in rare instances there can be permanent nerve damage, and symptoms should not be ignored if the athlete has another episode during play.
Injuries to the thoracic vertebrae in the back are typically mild, since the rib cage provides protection and stability. However, if and when they do occur, they can result in damage to the spinal cord.
But lower back pain is the complaint that sends most people to their doctor. And although many people ignore it, Comey said chronic low back pain in young athletes should be taken seriously.
“There is a tendency to think, ‘it’s a kid, so what could possibly be wrong?’ But I have seen children who have developed stress fractures in the lower spine,” Comey told HCN. “If they’re recognized early, they can usually be treated with non-surgical means, including external bone stimulators that encourage bone growth.”
However, if a stress fracture in a young person goes untreated, they can develop slippage of the spine, or spondylolthesis, which typically occurs when the L5 bone slips out of the proper position and slides forward on the first bone in the pelvis or sacrum, which causes back and leg pain.
Braces are sometimes used to treat stress fractures in young athletes, and they may be able to return to playing sports after the fracture heals, Comey said.
But in many cases, the fracture never heals, and although the pain subsides, it can reoccur if the person returns to play. “I’ve had several UMass varsity football players who were unable to play again,” Mick said.
Prevention Matters
Correct posture, proper equipment, maintaining flexibility, and overall conditioning can go a long way toward reducing neck and back injuries, experts say.
“People need to be fit to play a sport, rather than playing sports to be fit,” Martinez-Silvestrini said. “Three major elements that are important are flexibility, strength, and good aerobic capacity.”
Mick agrees. “A sports program needs to be balanced,” he said. “Sometimes football players will only do strength training and not work on balance, which is very important. And when people think about baseball, they think about the shoulder. But if someone wants to throw a pitch at 90 mph, they need to use their leg, trunk and back muscles. So if they just exercise their shoulder and arm muscles, they may injure their back when they are throwing fastballs.”
Golf is another sport where posture is critical. “When someone wants to pick up a golf ball, they should bend down or use a golfer’s reach,” Martinez-Silvestrini said. He demonstrated the move by leaning forward while keeping his back straight and reaching out with one hand while extending the opposite leg.
Comey says golf is not bad for the spine, but people with low back problems need to warm up and do some stretching before they begin to play. He recommends people visit www.spineuniverse.com to learn helpful exercises.
Physical therapy can be useful after an injury, and sessions with an athletic trainer or coach can make a difference after initial healing takes place. “A trainer can create a program that focuses on strength, endurance, balance, and coordination,” Mick said.
However, some people are unable to return to the sport that led to their injury, especially if their lower back pain is caused by degenerative changes.
“Distance running can be very difficult on the lower back due to the constant pounding transmitted to the spine with each step,” Comey explained. “Pain can come from discs which no longer function as shock absorbers. They literally wear out, which is no different than wearing out a hip or knee.”
Worthwhile Pastime
The bottom line is that most spinal sports injuries are mild and don’t cause permanent damage. “If pain goes away within a day or two and is fairly mild, there is no need to get excited,” Mick said. “But it does need to be evaluated if it is severe, keeps coming back, or doesn’t go away.”
Comey agrees and says 90% of people develop debilitating back pain at some point in their life.
But the risk of hurting one’s back or neck is not a reason to avoid sports, Mick said. “The benefits of regular exercise and participation in sports far outweigh the risk of injury.”
MassEcon Awards
Nov. 22: Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will be the featured speaker at the eighth annual Team Massachusetts Economic Impact Awards Luncheon at the Seaport Hotel in Boston. Registration begins at 11 a.m., followed by networking at noon and a lunch with master of ceremonies Anthony Everett, co-anchor and reporter of WCVB-TV’s Chronicle. Honorees are: ‘Gold,’ A123 Systems, Central; Airxchange, Southeast; Communispace, Greater Boston; Kiva Systems, Northeast; and Smith & Wesson, West; ‘Silver,’ Acacia Communications, Central; Coca-Cola, West; Dassault Systemes, Greater Boston; Horizon Beverage, Southeast; and Jessica’s Brick Oven, Northeast; ‘Bronze,’ General Dynamics AIS, West; GT Advanced Technologies, Northeast; HubSpot, Greater Boston; Reinhart Food Service, Southeast; and Simonds International, Central. Those named Gateway City Champions are Biomedical Research Models, Worcester; and Solectria Renewables, Lawrence. Jerry Sargent, president of Citizens Bank, will receive the Chairman’s Award. For information on tickets and sponsorships, contact Sean Getchell at (781) 489-6262, ext. 13.
Forum Welcomes Chris Matthews
Dec. 1: The Springfield Public Forum series will host Hardball host Chris Matthews at 7:30 p.m. at Springfield Symphony Hall. Matthews will present “JFK and the Presidency, Past and Present.” The lecture is free to the public; no reservations are required. For more information, visit www.springfieldpublicforum.org.
Anthropologist Lecture
Feb. 22: Susan Darlington, a professor at Hampshire College, will discuss her latest book, The Ordination of a Tree: the Thai Buddhist Environmental Movement, as part of the Ovations series at Springfield Technical Community College. Darlington has studied the work of Buddhist monks in Thailand who are engaged in rural development and environmental conservation. The science-based talks, at 10:10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. in Scibelli Hall Theater, will also include insights into religion and social activism. The presentations are free and open to the public. For more information, call (413) 755-4233.
Author Lecture
March 28: Internationally acclaimed author Tom Perrotta will read from his upcoming novel, The Leftovers, at 10:10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. in Scibelli Hall Theater, as part of the Ovations series at Springfield Technical Community College. The talks are free and open to the public. Two of Perrotta’s books, Election and Little Children, have been made into movies, and five novels have been national bestsellers. For more information, call (413) 755-4233.
Slam Poet Lecture
April 13: Taylor Mali, a former high-school teacher who has emerged from the slam poetry movement as one of its leaders, will discuss his performances at 10:10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. in Scibelli Hall Theater, as part of the Ovations series at Springfield Technical Community College. The talks are free and open to the public. For more information, call (413) 755-4233.
Troy Industries Has Growth, Diversification In Its Sights
Steve Troy calls his venture, “the biggest company no one’s heard of.” And that’s largely due to his hard work to fly under the radar screen as he’s nurtured Troy Industries, a government contractor that designs, manufactures, and markets advanced small arms components and other products, into a diverse, cutting-edge company that will soon have 100 employees. But remaining anonymous is becoming increasingly difficult as this unique success story adds new and intriguing chapters.
Steve Troy already had plenty of evidence that his company was becoming a real force in the large but mostly unseen world of modern small arms design and manufacturing.
There were the soaring revenues, which had doubled nearly every year since the venture was started in 2003, as well as a rapidly expanding workforce, which stood at six only a few years ago, and is now approaching 100. And then, there was the growing collection of trade magazine covers featuring company products — publications such as Guns & Ammo, Tactical Weapons, American Rifleman, Shotgun News, and SWAT magazine.
But then came some additional proof that made him pause and reflect.
Indeed, when Troy, a Massachusetts state trooper stationed in Lee (he calls that his “night job”) was issued his MP 15 semi-automatic patrol rifle roughly a year ago, he noticed that the Smith &Wesson-made product bore several components with the Troy Industries name on them.
“I looked down, and there they were, a Troy sight and a Troy handguard,” he said, adding that he was not involved in the procurement process, and, to the best of his knowledge, the state police didn’t know he manufactured the components. “For them to endorse that product was personally rewarding, and it also drove home the importance of the high quality standards we set here; I’m using this gun.”
Personal satisfaction has come in a number of forms for Troy since he started the company not long after a deployment in Kuwait as a security forces team chief with the U.S. Air Force in 1998, during which he concluded that he could design and manufacture a gun sight better than the one on the weapon he was issued — and then set out to prove his point.
Since then, Troy Industries has seen its product catalog expand to more than 300 items — including sights, slings, upgrade kits for existing weapons (much more on that later), and a gun stock that comes complete with an embedded GPS device — and revenues skyrocket. (Troy, the sole owner of the venture, wouldn’t release specific numbers, but said sales are now in eight-digit territory and he believes they could hit nine in only a few years.)
The company is now a vendor for some of the best-known arms makers in the world, including Smith & Wesson, Sturm Ruger, Viking Tactics, LaRue Tactical, and many others, and its products are being used by U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets), SEAL teams, SWAT units, traditional law enforcement, government agencies, the Colombian National Police, and similar outfits in other countries.
Law enforcement is another market in which Troy Industries is looking for greater market share.
“We’ve taken a weapon that was 50 years old and transformed it into the front-line, tip-of-the-spear of American special operations and airborne brigades,” he said, adding that the chassis system reduces recoil, enabling users to fire more quickly and accurately, while also allowing users to add scopes and other hardware that transform the basic M14 into a sniper weapon. “These are being used all over Afghanistan and Iraq, and soldiers are doing very well with them.”
Meanwhile, the company has produced its own version of the M-4 carbine, one of the mainstays in the U.S. military today, and has submitted the entry in hopes of winning a large government contract to replace the current Colt product now in use.
At least that’s the ultimate goal.
At the very least, Troy Industries wants to use this exercise to showcase individual components of the product — everything from the sight to the magazine — with the hope and expectation that some of those parts will become specifications for the eventual weapon chosen for production.
As that project and a host of other initiatives are advanced, the main challenge for this company moving forward, said Troy, who is still a part-time CEO in this venture — he parks his state police car, No. 2061 in a designated spot behind the building — is to effectively control the growth of this rapidly expanding company and create an effective balance of on-site production and outsourced work.
“The growth has been phenomenal, but we need to carefully control growth going forward,” he explained. “The business is there for us because of the reputation we’ve built, and it’s easy to attract new business, but we want to make sure that we can deliver on what we promise.”
Taking His Shot
The Troy Industries logo says a little about the company, sort of, but a lot more about its founder.
And it’s not the design — a somewhat mean-looking Trojan horse with what appear to be heavily armed soldiers rappelling down it — that speaks volumes, as much as the time and energy Steve Troy says he put into it.
“I came up with it myself and I’m rather proud of it,” he said, adding that there was much thought and imagination that went into the concept, which is both a play on his last name and a nod to modern weaponry and technology, as well as great attention to detail.
And the same can certainly be said for every other aspect of this venture, which Troy started with a $10,000 home equity loan, some mechanical ability but no formal training in that area (he said he built that house himself), and certainly no shortage of confidence as he went about designing and manufacturing improvements over what he saw and experienced first-hand when it came to weaponry.
Retelling the story, Troy said that he was already involved in a different kind of entrepreneurial venture with a colleague from his deployment in Kuwait when he started to conceptualize what would become Troy Industries. That business was called Basher Tactical, which he started with Matthew Picardi, now a lieutenant colonel in Homeland Security. It provided training seminars for police departments and federal agencies seeking to learn how to handle so-called “active-shooter disturbances,” such as the incidents at Columbine in 1999, Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., in 1997, and Virginia Tech in 2007.
“We’d set training scenarios for between 100 and 150 students,” he explained, “where we had both a classroom session and an active portion where we actually seize control of a school; we’d teach the history of active shooters, and some theories on response, touch on motivation, and then do a training scenario in which they’d be responding, containing, and assaulting the situation.”
Eventually, Picardi would opt to continue his work in training, while Troy would launch his own venture, focused on small arms components and accessories, that started with some R&D and crude prototyping in his basement.
“While I was in Kuwait, I saw some shortfalls in the weapons they had,” said Troy, an expert marksman, “pistol master,” and trained sniper. “I decided that I could do better; I saw what was out there, and no one was really hitting it right on the head, so I developed a set of folding sights for a federal contract that I responded to and won for internally silenced rifles for tunnel fighting for homeland security.”
To date, the company has delivered more than 500,000 of these or similar sights, while also expanding the product catalog to more than 300 products. These items come with names — such as ‘battlerail,’ ‘prograde sling adapter,’ ‘low-profile gas block,’ ‘mash hook,’ ‘NAV stock’ (that’s the GPS device), and ‘Medieval flash suppressor,’ to name just a few — that mean little to those not versed in automatic or semi-automatic weapons, and some sell for just a few dollars each.
But together, this roster of products has become a very effective niche for the company, and for a number of area manufacturers as well; while Troy produces some of these components and accessories at its facilities on Capital Drive in West Springfield, a former U.S. Postal Service processing facility, many others are outsourced to a host of businesses, all within 10 miles of the Troy plant.
Most all the products now in the catalog have come to fruition though the same basic formula, if you will, that Troy employed with the folding sight that he started with: observing, listening, and learning, and then applying that data to improve upon products already on the market.
And it has obviously been a winning formula, based on Steve Troy’s ambitious sales projections, as well as the amount of expansion going on at the company’s facility. And if the growth has come quickly and steadily, it has also come quietly. Indeed, with the exception of those trade-industry magazine covers and stories — seen by a relatively small percentage of the population — Troy Industries has flown effectively under the radar, especially in this region.
“We’re probably the biggest company no one’s heard of,” said Troy, adding that BusinessWest’s look inside is the first provided to local media. Nationally? Well that’s a slightly different story; Troy has been starting to get some attention, he noted, adding that one of the Hollywood studios has expressed interest in doing a television segment on the company and recently asked for background information with which to start preliminary research.
Staying on Target
While giving a tour of his facility — which included stops at everything from the injection molding area to the procurement warehouse, complete with razor wire (security is ultra tight here) to a new employee-wellness center now taking shape in an area being built out on the second level of the 55,000-square-foot complex — Troy stopped to pick up one of the M4s that he and his engineering team designed from scratch.
Moving his hands quickly across the weapon, Troy pointed out several features that he thought made the gun stand out, from the sight to the hand rest, and reiterated his hope that at least some of these individual components will catch the attention of those who will eventually award the contract.
“We’re competing against 60 other companies, and from what we understand, we’re in the top of the competition,” he said. “What we think the Army will do is say, ‘we’d like to take the features on these various weapons and combine them’; we’re just trying to enable the government to see our accessories, which is our main line, and our enhancements, and maybe incorporate them into the rifle of the future for the military.
“Right now, basically only commando forces are using our products,” he continued. “They’re choosing them over the general-issue items, because we’re superior to everything that is issued in the Army, but we’re not mainstream, or general issue.”
While gunning hard for such broader customer bases, Steve Troy is focused on many other aspects of a rapidly evolving business plan.
Chief among is them is the expansion of his operations and manufacturing facilities, a definite work in progress being undertaken with expected further growth, diversification, and new-product development in mind. Indeed, as he showcased different areas of the business, Troy noted that many were at some level of transition to new and larger quarters.
One in particular is the engineering department; 10 people are currently crowded into cramped quarters that will soon be replaced by a much larger suite of offices on that second level.
Meanwhile, in addition to an ongoing push to increase the quantity of items in the colorful product catalog, there is also a greater stress on quality and efficiency. The company recently received ISO-9001 status — Troy proudly displayed the plaque — and is engaged in an organization-wide ‘lean’ initiative.
“Most people in our industry choose not to do this,” he said of ISO certification. “It’s not required in our industry, but as a growing company working toward being different and unique among the competition, I chose that as a way of strengthening our quality and our processes.
“With this rapid growth that we’ve had, we just haven’t had time to slow down,” he continued. “With many things, we’ve just thrown money at them; we’ve characteristically had a high scrap rate, rather than really getting into the problems that were scrapping parts.”
The stronger focus on lean will enable the company to continue its insistence on only sending out parts that meet the highest of standards — “the user is betting his life that the product will perform properly,” said Troy — while also reducing waste and therefore cost.
Part of the quality initiative is to continue to increase the amount of work done on-site, he continued. “We’re not looking to take all our production in-house, but we certainly want to have more involvement in especially our military product line,” Troy told BusinessWest. “Doing so will only help ensure quality.”
Marketing is another area in which the company is sharpening its focus. While it is still somewhat press shy (and that is changing), Troy is being aggressive with getting its name and product list known across the broad market in which it operates. Initiatives include everything from a large, high-tech trade booth display, taken to several dozen shows a year, to an interactive Web site designed, in large part, to tell the company’s story.
There is also ongoing work in research and development, much of it following intensive research, consultation with customers and potential customers, and lots of hard questions about what’s needed in the field.
“There are some incredible things that are happening around the world that we’re involved in,” he said. “We’re doing consultation for governments, as well as counter-terrorism training, consultation on product design and development for larger weapons manufacturers, and other work that I’m passionate about.”
Bullet Points
‘Passion’ was the word Troy used to also describe his work with the State Police, and explain why he is still a part-time CEO at the company he started.
“I guess it’s one of the ways I give back the community,” he said of his police work, adding quickly that he is at least thinking about retirement and devoting more time and energy to Troy Industries.
For now, though, his police uniform still hangs on a locker in his cramped office (he’s also due to get larger quarters through the renovation project), where the walls feature photos, citations, and assorted memorabilia from his days in the military.
Those experiences helped provide the spark for the largest company that most people have never heard of, but will probably know much more about soon, because it’s going great guns — and in more ways than one.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
The following bankruptcy petitions were recently filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Readers should confirm all information with the court.
Amaro Rodriguez, Carmen Judith
195 Walnut St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Andrews, Kim M.
6 White Terrace, Apt. 12
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Ansara, Peter M.
P.O. Box 605
West Springfield, MA 01090
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Bacon, Pamela R.
20 East School St., 2nd Fl.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/19/11
Bagley, Richard A.
Bagley, Marjorie P.
129 St Kolbe Dr.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Bein, Constance E.
a/k/a Jaeger, Constance E.
77B Mosely Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Bengle, Barbara A.
48 Holy Family Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Benvenuto, Patrick
Benvenuto, Pamela A.
a/k/a Holmes, Pamela A.
9 Nolan Lane
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/11
Bierowka, Stanley A.
Bierowka, Bonnie-Jean
249 Glenoak Dr.
Springfield, MA 01129-1526
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Borden, Michael H.
203 East St.
Great Barrington, MA 01230
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/11
Bourcier, Shana V.
P.O. Box 569
Hampden, MA 01036
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Brannan, Carla J.
8 School St.
Hatfield, MA 01038
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Brannan, Virginia A.
37 Barna St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Brooks, Tracey Evelyn
8 Standish Court
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Butler, James M.
70 Ruthven St.
Springfield, MA 01128
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/19/11
Camilleri, Richard Paul
20 Linden Dr.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/21/11
Caplette, Margaret E.
81 South Maple St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Carlin, Marc E.
66 Worcester St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Carroll, Day Lone-Wol
a/k/a Day Lone-Wolf Carroll
77 North Main St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Castagna, Antonio
Castagna, Krystal
a/k/a Boland, Krystal
52 Allengate Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Castine, Dan A.
Castine, Paula A.
91 Bungalow Ave.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Chamberlain, Ronnie
84 West Orange Road
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Champagne, Mark D.
Champagne, Linda M.
73 Narragansett Blvd.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/21/11
Chretien, Donald
Chretien, Gina
97 East St.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Clements, Donna M.
53 Nelson St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/11
Connaughton, Douglas L.
53 Partridge Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Cote, Kristen Elizabeth
15 Bieniek Ave.
Adams, MA 01220
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Croshier, Darrell R.
Croshier, Rose M.
47 Scammell Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/11
Damon, Mark D.
PO Box 402
South Barre, MA 01074
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Designs by Lori
Runnals, Lorrie Anne
1 Lynch Place
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/30/11
Desreuisseau, Larry G.
Desreuisseau, Tammy L.
67 Ross Ave.
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Desrosiers, John W.
Desrosiers, Debra L.
867 Lenox St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/11
DiPadua, James Francis
DiPadua, Christine
673 Old Petersham Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Dirlinger, Michael D.
Dirlinger, Summer D.
24 Mark St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Drake, Linda A.
PO Box 354
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/11
Duda, Stephanie M.
72 Green St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/24/11
Durgin, Rodney L.
63 Dorrance St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/11
Ehrlich, Stewart R.
70 Chestnut St.
Springfield, MA 01103
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/11
Fabres, Phillip D.
P.O. Box 1047
Sheffield, MA 01257
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/11
Fournier, Donat Joseph
Fournier, Tina Marea
62 Oliver St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Fournier, Richard A.
Fournier, Patricia M.
Perreault, Patricia M.
280 Pleasant St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/23/11
Glabach, Henrietta B.
a/k/a Iken, Henrietta B.
88 Main St., Apt. 4
Northfield, MA 01360
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Gochinski’s Landscaping
Dynamite Daycare
Gochinski, Steven Stanley
Gochinski, Nicole Lynn
176 Mill Village Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Gosselin, Mark A.
Gosselin, Kristi L.
a/k/a McLeod, Kristi
26 Pebble Mille Road
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Graham, Shirley Caroline
71 State St., Apt. 227
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Green, Harriet C.
387 South Athol Road
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Haley, John E.
P.O. Box 2084
Westfield, MA 01088-2084
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/24/11
Heitz, Daniel Paul
Heitz, Brenda Lee
a/k/a Poudrier, Brenda Lee
68 Oliver St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Horton, John Michael
61 Bridge Road
Florence, MA 01062
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/16/11
Huttle, Francis P.
Huttle, Penny L.
78 Davenport St.
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/30/11
Hvizd, Helen E.
87 Locks Pond Road
Shutesbury, MA 01072
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Impionbato, Samuel K.
Impionbato, Elizabeth M.
50 Sunnyslope Ave.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Keane, Darrell R.
26 E. Alvord St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Kelton, Dorothy Ann
69 Prescott Lane
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Knight, Rosemarie G.
133 Jabish St., Apt. H
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Lambert, William J.
251 Fair Oak Road
Springfield, MA 01128
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/23/11
Layne, Oliver H.
Layne, Zulma
44 Border St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/23/11
Littlepage, Thomas P.
Littlepage, Felicity S.
739 Daniel Shay’s Highway
Box B22
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Lorenzana, Michelle
23 Beacon Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Lucia, T. (Tyarni) Rose
66 Worcester St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Machado, Jose M.
Machado, Neyda L.
a/k/a Morales, Neyda L.
36 Ashland Ave.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/11
Madera, Erika
33 Agnes St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Maloney, Matthew C.
P.O. Box 123
Ashfield, MA 01330
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Margree, Lisa M.
625 Miller St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Maroney, Kevin Nelson
Maroney, Florence Loraine
10 B Lois St.
Lee, MA 01238
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/16/11
Matvejuk, Patricia
25 Woodland Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Maziarz, Lynette M.
119 Morgan St.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/28/11
McArdle, Thomas S.
41 Kellie Dr.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/11
Moczulewski, John Phillip
567 Sylvester Road
Florence, MA 01062
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Montalvo-Saez, Marilyn
a/k/a Saez, Marilyn
186 Rosewell St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Mota, Confesora
161 Wollaston St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/19/11
Norwood, Kurt A.
6 Fox Run Dr.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/21/11
Omasta, Lynn Ann
P.O.Box 196
North Hatfield, MA 01066
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/22/11
Osowski, Walter F.
Osowski, Barbara A.
168 Prospect St. Ext.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/23/11
Pomerville, Lisa A.
16 Sterling Road
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Ragno, Joseph C.
27 Sczygiel Road
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/24/11
Rai, Praveen K.
115 Farmington Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Ranzoni, Raymond J.
Ranzoni, Trina A.
5 Beecher St.
Adams, MA 01220
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/11
Rivas, Joel B.
34 Lafayette St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/11
Rivera, Hector L.
a/k/a Rivera/Fuentes, Hector Luis
63 Elliot St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/23/11
Roberts, Kathleen R.
9 Grant St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/11
Roissing, Jennifer
22 Regal St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/30/11
Russom, Lucia D.
271 West Leyden Road
Bernardston, MA 01337
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Samuels, Stephen B.
Samuels, Kathleen B.
166 Lakeway Dr.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/11
Sawyer, Steven P.
91 Lombard Road
Hubbardston, MA 01452
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/24/11
Sherard-Thompson, Councilette
301 Wilbraham Road
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/11
Shrout, Anthony Lee
11 Knight Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Shrout, Kristen Levac
11 Knight Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/26/11
Simard, Yvette M.
39 Coolidge Road
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/11
Swayger, Michael J.
18 Llewellyn Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/19/11
Tran, Linh Khanh
Nguyen, Le Thi
27 Converse St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/23/11
Wenner, Gene C.
15 Richmond Ave., 1st Fl.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/11
Wharton, Angie M.
77 Hall St., #101C
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/18/11
Wild, Clayton A.
Wild, Renee C.
234 Klaus Anderson Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/11
Williams, John David
Williams, Sabina
a/k/a Iskhakova, Sabina
6 Pleasant St.
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/30/11
Woods, Rebecca L.
244 Silver Lake St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/11
Effective Tax Planning Is a Saving Grace
April is generally regarded as ‘tax time,’ but experts say that tax planning is a year-round exercise, if people want to do it right. With that in mind, year end is a time to look at strategies that can minimize your tax burden and put an effective game plan in place.
As the end of 2011 approaches, now is a good time to start year-end tax planning to minimize your individual and business tax burden. Generally, year-end tax planning involves considering at least two years — in this instance, 2011 and 2012. With tax changes on the horizon, you should consider the likelihood of future changes. Tax planning is a dynamic process and is best accomplished with forethought and assistance from your tax adviser.
Before going into more specific, detailed planning tips, here are two basic principles that can help guide your overall thinking:
• If you expect your tax rate will be higher in 2012, you may benefit from accelerating income into 2011 and deferring deductions into 2012; and
• If you think your tax rate might be lower next year or will be unchanged, consider deferring income to 2012 and accelerating deductions into 2011.
Remember, the focus is on yours or your company’s marginal tax rate. That is the highest rate at which your last, or marginal, dollar of income will be taxed. Even though overall tax rates may rise in the future, if your income will be substantially lower in 2012 than in 2011, your marginal tax rate may decrease because of our graduated tax-bracket system.
In this article, we will focus on tax-planning opportunities that involve actions you can take during the remainder of 2011. This article does not include every tax-planning opportunity that may be available to you, and it is advised that tax projections confirm planning strategies.
First, some business tax-planning strategies.
Retirement Plans for Your Business
Retirement plans have significant tax advantages. Employer contributions are deductible from the employer’s income, employee contributions are not taxed until distributed to the employee (for plans other than Roths), and investments in the program grow tax-free or tax-deferred. Further, the tax law offers a small incentive of a $500-per-year tax credit for the first three years of a new SEP, SIMPLE, or other retirement plan to cover the initial setup expenses.
Depreciation
Certain enhancements to business-depreciation provisions are scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, although President Obama has proposed an extension through 2012.
Section 179: A $500,000 expensing election limit applies to qualifying property purchased and placed in service during 2011. As a result, many businesses will receive an immediate tax writeoff for the cost of most new and used tangible personal property. Unless Congress acts to further extend the higher limit, it will drop to about $134,000 in 2012. Companies that purchase more than $2 million of qualifying property during 2011 have their deduction amount reduced, dollar for dollar, for purchases in excess of $2 million.
Bonus depreciation: Property that does not qualify for an immediate tax write-off under the expensing election may qualify for an increased first-year depreciation deduction under bonus depreciation rules. Unlike the Section 179 deduction, there are no restrictions on the amount of qualifying property, and there is no taxable-income limit. The deduction is 100% of the cost for new property purchased and first placed in service during 2011. Unless Congress acts to extend the bonus depreciation (now proposed by the president), it will not be available for 2012.
Cost Segregation
Buildings and other real estate generally do not qualify for bonus depreciation or the expensing election. However, a cost-segregation study may be able to identify qualifying property within the overall project, which can often significantly increase your deduction.
Research and Development Tax Credit
Many business owners in nearly every industry are unaware that federal and state research and development (R&D) tax-credit programs exist that may reward their day-to-day efforts aimed at producing an improved product. Consider consulting an R&D expert. This credit applies to more than manufacturers.
Health Insurance Tax Credit
To encourage smaller businesses to offer medical insurance coverage for their employees, the law offers a tax credit to offset all or part of the cost. If your business qualifies as a small employer, meaning fewer than 25 employees and average annual wages of less than $50,000, you could be eligible for a credit of up to 35% of non-elective contributions you make on behalf of your employees for medical-insurance premiums. The credit requires minimum non-discriminating contributions and varies based on the numbers of employees and average compensation.
Credit for Hiring New Employees
Businesses that hire workers who are members of certain target groups, such as disabled veterans, food-stamp recipients, and ex-felons, can claim a credit up to 40% of the first $6,000 of wages paid to each such employee.
Losses from Pass-through Entities
If the business entity is operating as a partnership, LLC, S corporation, or trust, and the business will incur a loss in 2011, you may need to plan ahead to be sure the owners can take advantage of that loss on your personal tax return. These rules can be complicated, and you should consult with your tax adviser; there are steps you can take to deduct passive losses or increase your basis.
Paying Corporate Dividends
Profits of traditional C corporations (those that have not elected S-corporation pass-through status) are taxed twice: once when earned by the corporation, and again when distributed as a dividend to the shareholders. Many have seen the current 15% tax rate on qualified dividends as an opportunity to pay out accumulated earnings at relatively low tax rates. It is likely that the tax rate on dividends will increase in the future, so you may wish to discuss with your tax adviser the possibility of distributing profits to lock in the current 15% rate.
Compensation and Billing
Compensation earned in 2011 can sometimes be paid in early 2012, and the business may be entitled to the tax deduction in 2011. If your business operates on the cash method, you can delay (within reason) sending out bills for 2011 work until late in the year, so payment comes in 2012. Alternatively, you can offer a discount to a client who prepays if you are trying to increase 2011 income.
Next, we’ll consider some personal tax strategies.
Capital Gains and Losses
• Long-term capital gains from the sales of assets with a holding period greater than one year are taxed at 15%;
• Short-term capital gains are taxed as high as 35%;
• Sales at a loss can reduce other capital gains;
• Excess capital losses can be deducted to offset up to $3,000 of other income, with the balance carried forward. When selling to recognize a loss, be careful of the wash-sale rules; and
• Consider any capital-loss carry-forward that may be available to you in 2011.
Installment Sales
Selling an asset at a gain and collecting the proceeds in future years may allow you to defer part of the income until the years in which you receive the payments. Consider the fact that you will be financing the sale yourself and may face the risk of collection problems.
Also, consider the possibility that capital-gains tax rates could be higher in future years when you collect the payments because those gains are taxed at the rates in effect the year the gains are recognized. You may wish to elect out of the installment-sale method in the year of sale to lock in the 15% rate.
Credit-card Payments
Paying tax-deductible expenditures — including charitable contributions — with a credit card secures the deduction, even if you do not actually pay the credit card company until the following year.
Suspended Passive Activity Losses
If you own a passive activity with a suspended loss, and you do not have sufficient passive income in 2011 to allow you to deduct the suspended loss, consider disposing of the activity before Dec. 31.
Appreciated Assets Given to Charity
Consider fulfilling your charitable goals by contributing appreciated assets instead of cash. You can deduct the fair market value of long-term capital gain property, such as stock, contributed to charity, and you avoid paying taxes on the appreciation.
Tax Credits for Home Improvements
A tax credit for qualifying home improvements may be available for improvements placed in service during 2011 but not in 2012. The credit applies to energy-efficient improvements such as insulation, exterior windows, and heating and air conditioning systems. You will need to complete your purchase before Dec. 31 to qualify for the credit in 2011. The new energy-efficiency tax credit is a 10% credit, up to a lifetime maximum of $500. The prior cap had been up to $1,500, so check to see whether you have claimed this credit in prior years.
Income-tax Prepayments
If your estimated tax payments and withholding are not high enough to avoid penalties, increase payments. Even better, if you receive wages, IRA distributions, annuity payments, or other payments, have the additional taxes withheld because withholding is deemed to be ratable throughout the year.
If you have a fourth-quarter state estimated tax payment due Jan. 15, 2012, consider making the payment late in December if you need additional itemized deductions in 2011.
Alternative Minimum Tax
An increasing number of middle-income earners, especially retirees, are subject to the AMT. High itemized deductions (other than charitable contributions), high personal exemptions, and large capital gains, among other items, can trigger the AMT. Be sure to consider the effect of AMT in your year-end planning. For example, if you know you’ll be in AMT, prepaying state taxes or real-estate taxes will not give you any benefit.
Your Retirement Plans
Roth IRA Conversion: Roth IRAs have a number of advantages over traditional IRAs, including no tax when the money is withdrawn. Consider the following:
• The conversion results in taxable income;
• The benefits of tax-free withdrawals in the future may be greater than the current tax you will pay;
• There is no longer an income limitation prohibiting high earners from converting; and
• If you are expecting a business loss or have high itemized deductions in 2011 that could offset the income effect of the conversion, your tax consequences may be minimized.
Additional Taxes Coming in 2013
Some future tax changes have already been enacted but have yet to take effect:
• Effective Jan. 1, 2013, a new Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) tax applies to high-income individual taxpayers:
— The tax is 0.9% of earned income in excess of $200,000 for single filers ($250,000 for joint returns); and
— A 3.8% tax applies to investment income (including dividends, annuities, royalties and rents, etc.) for the same individuals.
Consider talking with your tax adviser about strategies for minimizing this tax.
• In 2013, the threshold for the itemized deduction for unreimbursed medical expenses is increased to 10% of adjusted gross income from the current 7.5%. You may want to plan for unreimbursed medical procedures in 2011 or 2012 to maximize your tax benefit. There is a break for older taxpayers. If an individual or spouse is age 65 or older, the threshold remains at 7.5% of adjusted gross income through 2016.
Finally, let’s discuss some estate- and gift-tax planning strategies.
Estate Planning
The estate- and gift-tax exemption amount for 2011 is $5 million — essentially $10 million for a married couple. Again, there is uncertainty in the future about where the estate-tax exemption and tax rates will end up. And with the recent changes, it is a good idea to review your plan to ensure it is up to date.
Because the estate and gift tax exemptions were recently reunified, now may be an appropriate time to make gifts to take advantage of the $5 million/$10 million lifetime exemption. Making large gifts under the exemption amount removes not only the value of these gifts from your estate, but also future appreciation of the gifted assets.
Gift Tax
The annual gift-tax exclusion for 2011 remains at $13,000 per person. If you are married, you can gift up to $26,000 per donee per year by using the gift-splitting rules, without any federal gift-tax ramifications. Gifting reduces your taxable estate and may be important in an effective estate plan.
Conclusion
When Congress dealt with the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010, the effect was to delay a ‘permanent’ decision for another two years. These provisions, originally enacted in 2001, reduced marginal tax rates for all taxpayers, provided relief from the marriage penalty, increased child tax credits, expanded education-related tax benefits, and phased out the estate tax.
The current laws, including the recently enacted estate-tax changes, are now set to expire, or sunset, on Dec. 31, 2012. If Congress does not act, most of these tax benefits will disappear, and taxes will automatically increase to pre-2001 levels on Jan. 1, 2013. Although we have covered a number of topics in this article, we undoubtedly did not address every issue relating to your specific situation. Tax projections are recommended to determine your greatest tax savings.
Kristina Drzal-Houghton, CPA, MST is the partner in charge of Taxation at Holyoke-based Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.; (413) 536-8510.
Business Owners Here Say This Town Is Ideal
Joe Hickson enjoys working in Hampden alongside his wife and children — and often his grandchildren.
Those are the sentiments of Rich Rediker, creator and owner of Rediker Software. From his large, contemporary clapboard structure he built behind Monson Savings Bank in the center of town, he joked that, to build such a building as his, “not many would make a business decision like this in Hampden.”
“When you get to a certain square footage, you need fire sprinklers,” he explained, “and as there’s no town water, we had to spend an incredible amount of money to bury a tank to keep the water pressurized. To build this building in this town was many times more expensive than anywhere else I could have gone — more than I ever could have imagined, but worth it.”
Pointing out the window to the woods in autumn colors, he added, “look out there at the view — we’re in a beautiful spot. I like it here. It’s home.”
Rediker Software is a pioneering leader in school administrative software, and when Rediker said he wouldn’t imagine putting his business in any other location, he wasn’t the only one in this semirural town of 4,000 of that mind.
Joe Hickson’s Private Garden, recognized across the continent as the resource for greenhouse and agricultural glass buildings that are, in his words, “the crème de la crème,” also makes the conscious decision to stay home, as in hometown.
“We’re not the cheapest, and, in fact, we’re the most expensive,” he said of the glass buildings his company has built to clients’ specifications as far away as Europe. “But if you want something that’s going to stand out and make you money, that’s what you get.”
Fred Shea says people who work for him tend to stay with his company for many years.
When asked why he chose Hampden as the place for his work and home life, he said it just happened that way. But, as the years passed, the town became the place he wanted to stay. “It’s not crowded, close enough to the city, suburban in some ways, rural in others,” he said. “It’s like being out in the country.” And that, combined with these companies’ reputations in the world beyond, makes doing business in Hampden continue to be the ideal place that they all choose to call home base.
Nobody Does It Better
Shea went on to say that he moved to a few different locations within town before finally settling in the workshop that now contains all operations for complete stained-glass restoration, from the smallest of windows to full cathedrals.
At the height of his business, there was another outpost in the Pittsburgh area and, adjacent to the building in Hampden, a full millworking studio. The economic downturn, however, dimmed those operations. “We were one of the three or four largest studios in the country, right around the time the economy fell,” he said.
Describing some noteworthy jobs that his firm has overseen, Shea described the restoration of a cathedral in Pennsylvania with windows all designed by Tiffany Studios, but also cited several projects in the Pioneer Valley, like all windows at St. Mary’s Parish in Longmeadow, and in Springfield, the Bethesda Evangelical Lutheran church on Island Pond Road and the brownstone Sacred Heart on Chestnut Street, to name but a few.
In the airy space behind his office, the colorful panels from a church nearby await restoration. Shea explained how the cames, the lead support systems, deteriorate over time, along with the waterproofing becoming brittle. From careful dismantling to repair to fabrication of new panels that are indistinguishable from the old, it’s all done in his shop.
Hampden will always be the home base for this operation that has a strong national presence and continues to thrive despite the hard economic reality faced by his clients. “Endowments have been destroyed by this economy,” he said. “Schools, chapels, universities — all completely dried up. You get in touch with your contact people at those places, and they tell you that we have no money to spend on this work.
“Stained-glass windows last around 100 years,” Shea continued, “and sometimes the deterioration can go from moderate to severe in the course of a decade. So people might be postponing it as long as they can; it’s not like plumbing or the roof, or if the organ doesn’t play, then you couldn’t hold services. If the window falls out, it’s still a discretionary purchase.”
He has faith, however, that the current financial climate will eventually improve. “As the economy picks up, I’m sure our business will also,” he said.
“We love what we do here,” he added, “and everyone who works here stays here for a long time — 10, 15, 20-plus years. We provide ourselves on providing the highest quality. There are others, two or three other studios in the country, who also do high-quality work, but there isn’t anyone who’s doing it better.”
Across the street, Hickson’s business has been built on that same business credo.
He and others in the office threw out some client names that would be familiar to readers of Architectural Digest. Private Garden has an exclusive contract with the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and is also responsible for the largest hydroponic tomato grower in the Northeast, with many acres under glass. He displayed some plans for another installation, called GlassPoint, which comprises 500 acres under glass with concave mirrors. “It’s like a magnifying glass,” he explained, “turning water into steam, pumping the steam into the ground, to liquefy solid oil in the Bakersfield oil fields.”
The business that became Private Garden has a backstory that exemplifies how Hickson has earned the reputation his firm has built over the past few decades. As the regional manager for a company that sold greenhouses 28 years ago, he admitted that, at that time, fresh out of a career in the National Park Service, “I knew nothing then about greenhouses.
“In the first six to eight months, we sold $1.5 million in greenhouses,” he continued, “but nothing was happening … we were getting deposits, but no work was being delivered. As it happened, the parent company went into Chapter 11 and told me that they weren’t going to perform. The customers that you sold to, they were done. That went against everything in my grain — I had made a commitment with these people.
“I left the company, and soon thereafter, they went into Chapter 7 bankruptcy,” he went on. “When everything of theirs was liquidated, I sat down with each of my customers, all throughout New England. I went to the auction and bought all of the materials I needed to fulfill all of those obligations. I was just a young kid at the time, 28 years old, with no substantial money, but we did co-checks with the owners, and after all was said and done, we were late with fulfillment, but we performed. And from there we never looked back.”
These days, Hickson’s wife, Kathy, and their children are all part of the family business, and that means his grandchildren are also part of the daily operations. That, he said, is what makes it all worthwhile. He agreed that the economy is tough out there for an industry like his — it is the construction business, and clients have just as much trouble with bank financing — but that staying close to one’s roots makes it all worthwhile at the end of the day.
“Let’s face it, it’s been a tough economy, and in my opinion, it has transformed the way people do business,” he said. “But the grandkids are here four days a week all over my office. How many owners of a business can say they love having the place a mess?”
Setting the Record Straight
Rediker said he has a long commute to work each day — if he rides his bike. “It’s only about 20 minutes, but then much longer on the way home. It’s all uphill.”
That last statement wouldn’t be used to describe his business career or the success enjoyed by his software systems, used in all but one of the 50 states and in 115 countries. And in true entrepreneurial fashion, it all began because he saw a need and invented the means to address it.
“I kid my customers that I was a chemistry teacher back when they were adding carbon to the periodic table of elements,” he said of his backstory. “Sometimes people respond by asking, ‘in the 1980s, you mean?’”
As a teacher in high school, he wrote a program to take attendance. “To make a long story short,” he explained, “it just expanded. I was the class advisor and responsible for kids’ tardy letters. I was keeping track of it with pencil on a daily list every day. I figured out how to do it a lot more efficiently, quickly, and I figured there had to be a market for this.”
There was, and continues to be. He was on his way the next morning to a month of meetings from Bangkok to Portugal, and he said that the company was branching out from primary- and secondary-school administrative software to admissions programs for schools, replacing the pen-and-paper method of the application process.
Of his modern, yet traditional headquarters in town, he told of the many features designed into the building, all specific to the needs of Hampden: a $50,000 natural-gas generator, the aforementioned water system, and the ‘cloud’ of servers on the premises for his worldwide clients.
“I could have built an ugly building here, but together with the bank out closer to the street, we made it look the same,” he explained. “We didn’t have to, but we wanted it to be an attractive corner in town. When you live here, you don’t want to save a few hundred thousand dollars and put up an ugly building.”
Meanwhile, just as important to his hometown is the ability to create much-needed jobs at a time when they are the foundation of every financial-recovery plan. “These are my friends and neighbors here, and if there’s one single thing that this country needs right now, it’s jobs,” he said.
Rediker Software continues to be a business with a strong market share, and is the largest employer in town. The man himself just smiled and said he’s happy to be able to continue to run his business.
“Many businesses like this end up selling out to a larger company,” he said, “and once they do, they’re owned by some giant investment bank; then you have to grow by so many percent every year. To me, if I don’t grow, so what? And yet, we’ve still been profitable for 31 years.”
The Challenge for Friendly’s is to Reinvigorate the Brand
Harsha Agadi, Friendly’s chairman and CEO, has presided over several brand-reclamation projects over a 25-year career in the restaurant industry, most notably the recovery at Church’s Chicken, and he’s confident he can steer the Wilbraham-based chain to a similar comeback. He said the recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is a regrettable but necessary part of that process, which includes a multifaceted plan to reinvigorate the brand by giving it a new look, feel, and attitude.
Were it not for the Boston Red Sox, Friendly Ice Cream Corp. would easily be the most criticized, scrutinized, analyzed, and perhaps overanalyzed institution in New England this fall.
Since the Wilbraham-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 5, there has been seemingly endless speculation about went wrong for this company (as with the local 9), and a few Canadian forests felled to provide the newsprint for the voluminous speculation about what could — and should — come next (again, just like with the team that plays on Yawkey Way).
Roughly a week after the filing, for example, the Boston Globe carried a piece with commentary from five restaurant-industry executives about what they believe the company might do to improve its chances for success post-bankruptcy. Ideas ranged from hiring a ‘cleanliness concierge’ as part of a focus on being family-friendly, to shelving the restaurants and putting Friendly’s ice cream counters in Panera Bread outlets, to moving the kitchen back to the front of the store as part of a ‘return to short-order cooking’ approach.
Chief Executive Harsha Agadi says he’s read much of the commentary, criticism, and thoughts on the future. And he agrees with some of it. He openly acknowledged that Friendly’s must improve its food, its service, and its looks, and there are plans in place to do all of that and more.
What he doesn’t agree with are any and all suggestions that, moving forward, Friendly’s will only be talked about glowingly in the past tense. He admitted to BusinessWest that, once a restaurant chain develops a reputation for being tired, slow, inattentive to changes in the marketplace, and inconsistent — and Friendly’s has earned all those adjectives, by most accounts — it is certainly difficult to change the course of public opinion.
Harsha Agadi says the process of changing a restaurant chain’s reputation is not a simple thing, “but at the same time, it’s not terribly difficult, either.”
“When I got involved with Church’s in 2004, it had declining sales, hadn’t franchised anything in three years, and was closing more stores than it was opening,” he recalled. “From 2004 to 2009, we grew stores and sales every year, and we expanded into many different countries.”
Friendly’s can make a similar comeback, he said in a wide-ranging interview a few weeks after the bankruptcy filing, noting that the Chapter 11 procedure was a necessary step in that direction.
It will give the still-profitable company relief from a massive debt burden, and especially from leases signed during boom years for the commercial real-estate market that have severely hindered the company as it has sought to make investments in its operation.
The company won’t be starting over, Agardi stressed repeatedly, using the term ‘business as usual’ early and often, but rather building on its core strengths — especially an ice-cream business that has grown exponentially over the past several years (more on that later) — and, in many ways, updating and reinvigorating the Friendly’s brand.
For this issue, BusinessWest looks at how Agadi plans to go about that assignment and how, by next spring, if not much earlier, people will be talking about his company using much more positive tones.
Any Given Sundae
The Friendly’s on Route 20 in West Springfield was one of the casualties as the chain sought relief in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the closure of several dozen locations.
In recent years, he went on, Chapter 11 has become an effective and increasingly popular relief mechanism for companies burdened with heavy debt, large court settlements, severe cash-flow issues, and combinations of the above.
And this has been especially true in the restaurant industry, he continued, due in large part to the high volumes of risk involved with establishments of any and all sizes.
“As a business lawyer, I’ve always thought that an investment in a restaurant or a chain was the riskiest investment you could make,” he explained. “For starters, tastes change; what’s hot today may not be hot tomorrow. There’s also high overhead — generally you have to lease the space, and there are often multiple employees — and a huge element of theft, of both money and product. And there’s also the spoilage factor; if you’re a seller of clothing, that product may eventually go out of style, but it doesn’t go bad and have to be thrown out if you don’t sell in three days.
“You have all of these problems conspiring against you as you’re trying to keep 12 balls in the air,” he continued, adding that these factors coupled with intense competition are responsible for the high mortality rate across the sector.
All that said, the Friendly’s filing, while certainly not surprising to most industry watchers, was met with large degrees of sadness and disappointment, Katz continued, noting that many in this region especially were dismayed that years of ownership changes, a revolving door at the top leadership rung, and apparent missteps or lack of proper response to changes within the restaurant industry would lead to this.
And like many in this area who can talk nostalgically about the Awful Awful (a Friendly’s milk shake so named because it was ‘awful big and awful good’) Katz had his own thoughts and theories on what happened to the company.
He mentioned everything from his belief that the Friendly’s name doesn’t resonate as well in other regions of the state or country as it does in Western Mass. — where it was founded by Curtis and Prestley Blake, and where that surname appears on many college buildings and other facilities — to a general deterioration in quality and consistency.
Perhaps the biggest factor, he believes, has been the larger, more convoluted menus in the restaurants and other indications that Friendly’s was (and is) trying to be too many things to too many people in an age of heightened specialization.
“It had morphed itself into a business that no longer knew what it was,” said Katz, echoing the sentiments of some of the analysts in the Boston Globe and other publications. “Friendly’s management may disagree, but I’ve talked to former employers and former managers, and my own personal opinion is that for a number of years you could go to Friendly’s and get a burger, a hot dog, and good fries; there were friendly people, good prices, and always great ice cream. You had a good time with your family, and it was a reasonable place to go. It’s all different now.”
Friendly Pursuasion
Agadi hears such comments, and while he agrees that some changes must be made, he bristles at the notion that Friendly’s has somehow lost its way.
“If we were drifting, how is that I’m still serving 1 million customers a week, 52 million people a year?” he asked rhetorically, adding that he believes that many elements of the company’s model still work. However, there is that proverbial but, or several of them, as the case may be.
“We need to improve our service dramatically, there’s no question in my mind,” he said. “Our number-one issue is speed, and we’re addressing that speed of service every day.”
Looking back, Agadi said it was series of factors that brought Friendly’s to this point, everything from the soaring cost of butter — a huge factor for a company that makes 16 million gallons of ice cream a year — to those aforementioned albatross-like leases, to an economy that has many still cutting back on non-essentials, which includes ice-cream cones and Jim Dandys.
“There’s been a massive — and that word is massive — escalation in commodities costs over the past two years,” he explained. “And that’s driven by butter pricing; it’s gone up 57% in the past two years, while milk has gone up 22%. And if my commodity costs go up 57%, I can’t go and charge my customer almost half more overnight and expect him to pay it.
“That cost essentially evaporated a lot of profitability, which caused many of these issues,” he continued. “The company is still profitable, contrary to what everyone in the media is saying, but these commodity prices are having a huge impact on us. The other thing is the economy itself; the unemployment rate is 9% or 10%, and it’s even greater than that because it doesn’t take into account the number of people who are working part-time that used to work full-time, or the people who have had their hours cut back, and all that affects restaurants.”
On the real-estate front, Agadi went on, the company has been able to get relief from some leases sold when market conditions where much different — generally from landlords concluding that a tenant paying less rent is better than no tenant at all — but not in enough instances to make a real difference.
“When you’re locked into stores that don’t make money and have these high rents,” he said, “all you’re doing is bleeding.”
Considering all these factors, he said the company had little recourse but to take relief in the form of Chapter 11, and to take other steps as well, including the closing of 63 stores, a few of them in Western Mass. What the filing does, in essence, is provide the company with time and breathing room, and the ability to renegotiate more of those leases, he went on, adding that the company intends to take full advantage of this opportunity and eventually emerge a stronger, more vibrant chain.
And most initiatives have been in place for some time, he said, noting everything from an aggressive marketing campaign for the company’s so-called ‘High 5’ menu (items cost $5) to a move back to fresh, not frozen hamburgers (“I wish we had 10 years ago”), to plans for remodeling and updating the chain’s restaurants.
Meanwhile, the price of butter has actually started to come down.
“Many good things are starting to happen,” Agadi said, adding that the code word being used internally is ‘the American,’ the name given to some new-look, new-attitude stores that will start taking shape over the next several months.
“We’re making changes to the product,” he said, referring specifically to food, but also a broad spectrum of measurables. “And those changes, in many respects, are going back to who we are and how we did things; we’re going back to our classical roots.”
Just Desserts
And with that, he returned to the subject of Friendly’s prospects for altering public opinion about its products and services, and the skepticism voiced by many analysts about whether it can actually do that.
“It’s not a simple thing to change your reputation,” Agadi told BusinessWest, “but at the same time, it’s not terribly difficult, either. You need a plan, you need capital, which we have access to through our partner, Sun Capital, and you need to test a few stores and then start replicating the entire chain with the new look — very aggressively and rapidly.”
And by that, he meant both the menu, featuring the High 5 component, and the facilities themselves, a few of which will soon sport a new, contemporary look that will be “brighter and fresher,” and immediately send a message that this is not the same restaurant it was even a few months ago.
“When you walk in, there has to be a marked change,” he explained, “so people will say, ‘wow, that’s a different-looking Friendly’s.’”
The new look has to be backed up by better service and food, he went on, adding that there is already some hard data confirming improvement in at least that first department.
“Our speed of service and friendliness have improved dramatically over the past six months,” he said. “We track this religiously, every day, every store — my head of operations gets a report, we all look at the results and see how our stores are doing in service, hospitality, friendliness, accuracy of order, and more.
“And this is measured not by us, but by outside customers who go to the Applebees, the Dennys, the Ruby Tuesdays, and other chains,” he continued. “We’re starting to see a measurable change in our service level.”
By next spring, the new-look Friendly’s will make its debut in the Greater Springfield area, he said, adding that a few area locations will be made over, and the movement will then spread to other regions. Beyond the look, there will be new, slimmer menus with more healthy choices, changes in staff uniforms, and remodeled fountain areas that will pay homage to the chain’s ice-cream lineage.
“We want to bring back heritage items,” he said, “in a contemporary atmosphere.”
At the same time, the company will continue to build on what Agadi calls its “other business” — ice-cream items sold in the restaurants and now more than 7,000 supermarkets (up from 4,000 just a few years ago), including the recently added Wal-Mart. The surge has brought Friendly’s to 95% capacity at its Wilbram manufacturing facility and a search for alternatives to make ice cream — a good problem to have, actually.
“We’ve been around for 76 years and just set a record — 165,000 cases of 48-ounce cartons,” he said. “That’s an example of what I mean by business as usual.”
As for the far-more-problematic and image-impaired restaurant side of the business, Agadi is confident that he can continue a quarter-century-long track record of success with brand building and, in many cases, revitalization.
“I’ve had 100% success with moving the brand in the right direction, and I believe that, in this case, we can, and will, do the same,” he said, adding that, three years out, he expects to be selling ice cream in 10,000 supermarkets and have the restaurant chain back up to 500 stores, with maybe half of those redone into the ‘American’ model, and movement into markets in Canada and Mexico.
Those are ambitious goals, but he’s done it with Church’s Chicken and other chains he’s been involved with.
Stepping to the Plate
Red Sox fans will have to wait until at least next February, and probably next April or even midsummer, to gauge how the team is faring with its bounce-back initiative.
Agadi says the transformation and rebranding of his company is already well underway, and by about the time the Grapefruit League swings into high gear, people in this area will be able to see and experience a change for the better.
Chapter 11 bankruptcy is a regrettable part of the process, he told BusinessWest, but it’s also a big factor in this company’s efforts to enable people to stop using the past tense when they refer to the Friendly’s brand in a positive light.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C. of Springfield and Northampton announced that eight of the firm’s attorneys have been selected as 2011 Massachusetts Super Lawyers. In choosing Super Lawyers, ballots are sent by Law & Politics to more than 31,000 Massachusetts attorneys who have been in practice for five or more years. These attorneys then nominate their peers based on professional achievement and a high level of peer recognition. Independent research is then conducted on each of the nominees, followed by a blue-ribbon panel-review process, and the top 5% in each state are named Super Lawyers. The objective of the Super Lawyers selection process is to create a credible, comprehensive, and diverse listing of outstanding attorneys that can be used as a resource to assist attorneys and sophisticated consumers in the search for legal counsel. The following Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C. attorneys have been named 2011 Super Lawyers:
Stephen A. Shatz
• Steven J. Schwartz, family-business planning, mergers and acquisitions, corporate law, and estate planning;
Gary S. Fentin
Timothy P. Mulhern
Steven Weiss
Michele J. Feinstein
Carol Cioe Klyman
Ann I. Weber
L. Alexandra Hogan
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David W. Eidle has joined Berkshire Bank as Senior Vice President of Corporate Initiatives. He will lead the project-management office and provide leadership, design, direction, and strategic oversight for all corporate-wide initiatives, including mergers-and-acquisition integration, primary systems conversions, major business initiatives, and program implementation.
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Stephen H. Bryant, President of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts in Springfield, has been appointed to the Board of Directors for the New England Council, a nonpartisan alliance of businesses and academic and health institutions.
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Claire Kenna
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Seth N. Stratton has joined Fitzgerald Attorneys at Law in East Longmeadow. Stratton is a litigator with experience at Boston and Hartford firms.
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Structural Engineer Matthew Dodge has joined Tighe & Bond of Westfield, specializing in the assessment and mitigation of vibrations on building structures to ensure occupant comfort and satisfactory operation of sensitive equipment. He also specializes in designing massive jointless concrete structures that resist cracking from temperature fluctuations and long-term shrinkage.
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Keith A. Minoff
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Arley Ewald has been promoted to Financial Reporting Officer for Chicopee Savings Bank and Chicopee Bancorp Inc.
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Matthew C. Wisdom has been named Manager of TD Bank at 460 Newton St., South Hadley. An assistant vice president, he is responsible for new-business development, consumer and business lending, managing personnel, and overseeing the day-to-day operations at the branch bank.
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Attorney Aaron W. Wilson has been reappointed by Gov. Deval L. Patrick to the Holyoke Housing Authority. He will serve a five-term term through May 2016. He is the current Vice Chair, and served as Chair of the board the last three years.
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Top Women of Law, the fourth annual event sponsored by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, recently celebrated legal educators, trailblazers, and role models who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in social justice, advocacy, and business.
Ellen W. Freyman
Bob Annon says Webster makes an effort to become partners with their customers, offering financial counsel and services for all stages of life.
Webster Looks to Expand Its Footprint, Deepen Relationships
When Webster Bank opened branches in West Springfield and Westfield five years ago, it made a bold move into a region which many consider overbanked.
But this longtime major player on the Connecticut scene — it celebrated its 75th birthday last year and boasts 176 locations, most in the Nutmeg State — felt it could keep pace in the Western Mass. region. And, indeed, it has since expanded to locations in Springfield, Longmeadow, and East Longmeadow, with further growth expected down the line.
“When we decided to go in there, we felt that our approach to banking would serve us well competing in a highly competitive environment,” said Bob Annon, Webster’s regional president for Northern Conn. and Greater Springfield.
“We still find it competitive, but we’re pleased with the progress we’ve made,” he told BusinessWest. “We have, as clients, one of the largest and oldest manufacturers in the market, and also some fairly new companies, so we’re pleased with the penetration we’ve made. A lot of credit goes to our people in our branches who deal with people in our communities on a daily basis; they represent us extremely well.”
Annon knows a relatively new player on the region’s banking landscape, even one with the cachet of Webster — an $18 billion commercial bank with extensive retail and wealth-management services — needs to make a positive splash in any way it can.
“We offer a full range of services for individuals, families, and businesses,” he said. “We think that, at our size, we have the capacity to deliver the types of services — and quality of services — that national and even multinational banks offer, but still retain a strong commitment to valuing each customer, from individuals to larger businesses. We think we’re good at that, at staying close to them and treating them well in good times and in bad.”
And there’s been plenty of the latter during the past few years of economic hardship — which, to Annon, presents not just challenges for customers, but opportunities for the bank to help them overcome hardships.
For example, Webster earned national publicity earlier this fall in a Wall Street Journal article headlined “For Lender, Foreclosure Is a Dirty Word.” The article details the bank’s mortgage-modification efforts, citing examples like a couple, struggling with reduced employment hours, who were able to shrink their monthly payments by 17%, lower their interest rate, and shorten their term.
In fact, despite rampant consumer complaints about loan workouts and foreclosures nationally, Webster has been the subject of just 16 such complaints since 2006, which the Connecticut Department of Banking calls “a very small number.”
“We recognized that’s the best way we can serve our customers,” Annon said, “and that it’s in the best interest of the bank to work with customers and keep them in their homes, rather than having more adversarial relationships with them.
“And we’re not just working with residential mortgage modification; it’s what we’ve done with our business customers for awhile,” he continued. “There have been some big bumps in the road during this Great Recession, and we’ve had to amend or modify some relationships and agreements.
“It’s part of the culture of the company when someone does business with us,” he went on — a culture that is gradually drawing new adherents in a region that offers plenty of competition as well as opportunity.
Five Alive
Annon said Webster likely won’t stop at five branches in Greater Springfield.
“I think we’re where we want to be for the time being,” he said, “but we’re always looking. We know five branches isn’t the market density we’d like to have, so we’re always looking for opportunities to find new locations and opportunities to expand in a desirable market like Greater Springfield. It’s been five years now, and so far we’re pleased.”
Founded in 1935 in Waterbury, Conn. as First Federal Savings Bank, Webster Bank has been on an aggressive expansion path in recent years, opening almost 40 branches in four states — it also has a presence in Rhode Island and New York — since 2002 alone.
At a time when many large, national banks are trying to recoup lost profits through more aggressive fee policies (see story, page 39), Webster’s revenue model has long been based on the concept of a lifetime customer, from the initial, basic checking account to a suite of wealth-management services fully customized according to assets and need.
“Our chairman has gone on record saying we have no interest in charging for debit cards,” Annon said. “Having said that, when someone does business with us, it’s important to do as much business as we can with those customers on a personal and business basis. We’re not only selling credit products, but state-of-the-art cash-management products and investment products as well. Rather than have someone just have a checking account with us, we want to deepen that relationship with them, so that they’re a Webster customer for a long time.”
Through those services, and others, such as online bill pay, “we can really establish many different venues for customers,” he said. “Our commitment has always been to be, not a transactional company, but a relationship-oriented company; customers can look to us for advice, and we can counsel them as well as provide them with banking services.”
To that end, Webster boasts certain specialties in its lending and cash-management programs, including health care, not-for-profits, professional firms (such as lawyers and CPAs), and condo and homeowners’ associations.
“For example, in health care, we have people with intimate knowledge of third-party payers — Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance companies — who are critical if the goal is to become involved with hospitals, nursing homes, and people who rely on those third-party payers,” Annon said.
That expertise was recognized by the Massachusetts e-Health Institute, which named Webster its preferred provider of financing for electronic health records. “This is the program to get medical and health care providers using electronic health records,” he said — a major issue facing health providers over the next several years. “We have programs that can provide 100% financing for that hardware and software.”
Webster also has an asset-based lending specialty, as well as a program that specializes in equipment financing. “Our people really come to understand equipment values and, in many cases, are able to lend 100% of the purchase price of equipment,” he explained. “It’s delivered by people who have been in the market for a long time and who have done this a lot.”
Other specialties are in Small Business Administration loans — Webster is the number-one SBA lender in Connecticut — and check fraud and electronic fraud, “which is becoming more and more pervasive,” Annon explained. “We’ve been conducting seminars on what companies can do to protect themselves from this fraud.”
It’s another way to provide value to a community, he said, and to market the bank to people who might eventually be Webster customers.
Community Focus
It’s all part of an overall strategy to make Webster part of the community fabric. That includes philanthropic efforts, such as the bank’s support of organizations like the Food Bank of Western Mass., Open Pantry, the Urban League, and the capital campaign at Baystate Medical Center. “We’re determined to give back to the community wherever we can,” Annon said.
And, by all accounts, the communities of the Pioneer Valley are starting to see some economic growth, albeit slowly, and that improvement is starting to register in increased business lending at Webster.
“I think it’s starting to loosen up,” he told BusinessWest. “The results we’re seeing, with some third-quarter financial statements starting to dribble in, are generally fairly good, and the market might be starting to turn in confidence, which is where we really need to change. Banks are ready and willing to lend money, but there’s been reluctance by companies to borrow.”
As that confidence begins to take hold, he said, Webster will be ready to become not just a lender to growing businesses, but a partner.
“We are committed to to our customers’ success,” he said. “If they come to Webster, they’re going to find a bank that can fulfill all their banking and investment needs. They’re going to find a banker who is going to be candid and forthright from the first meeting on, and a banker who will deliver what they say they can deliver.”
Perhaps more importantly, during an era of such turmoil in financial services, Annon added, “they can expect a bank that’s going to stay around — that wants to stay part of their banking picture for a long time.”
For life, actually.
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
Jobs: The Next Global Conflict
“As of 2008, the war for good jobs has trumped all other leadership activities, because it’s been the cause and effect of everything else that countries have experienced. This will become even more real in the future as global competition intensifies. If countries fail at creating jobs, their societies will fall apart. Countries, and, more specifically, cities, will experience suffering, instability, chaos, and eventually revolution. This is the new world that leaders will confront.”
This is a passage from a recently released book called The Coming Jobs War, written by Jim Clifton, chairman of Gallup. In it, he contends that the next great global conflict won’t be about ideology or religion or territory; it will be all about jobs, or, rather, what he calls “good” jobs.
He defines these as jobs with a paycheck from an employer and steady work that averages 30 or more hours per week. He contends that there are about 1.2 billion of these good jobs in the world right now, and Gallup polls show that roughly 3 billion of the 5 billion adults in the world work or want to work and need a good job.
That’s a roughly 1.8 billion shortfall. The cities, regions, and countries that fare well in closing this gap will prosper. As for those who don’t … what did Clifton say again? “Instability, chaos, and eventually revolution.”
Those are strong words, but they are pretty hard to argue with. About the only fault we find with Clifton’s argument is his persistent use of the future tense with regard to this global jobs conflict. It isn’t coming — it’s already here, and elected officials, economic-development leaders, and this region’s business community should definitely take heed.
For evidence of the severity of the situation, they need only review the latest data from the Census Bureau about the increasing number of people falling into poverty. There are now 46.2 million poor Americans, or 15.1%, the highest rate in nearly two decades. Of those, 2.6 million fell into poverty last year.
Some did so because they didn’t have a job, but for many, the cause was lack of one of those good jobs, which this region and this country as a whole are simply not creating in the numbers that they have in the past. The reasons are many, from the lingering recession and advancing automation to the migration of manufacturing to other regions and other continents, but the bottom line is that this country is failing on what is now the most important battleground of all.
How do we create good jobs? If the answer to that question came easily, 1.8 billion wouldn’t be looking for them today. The answer is complex, and it involves many components, starting with a greater focus on math and science, similar to what happened more than a half-century ago, a spark that did a lot more than put a man on the moon in 1969; it also helped inspire most of the advances in computer and information technology over the past 40 years.
What is also needed is continued emphasis on entrepreneurship, which is needed to take new ideas and transform them into producers of not only jobs, but those good jobs. And our region must be able to compete for the entrepreneurs and the companies and jobs they will create. This means a large, qualified workforce, costs that are at least in line with other regions, and an environment where ‘pro-business’ is more than a catchphrase — it’s a way of life.
In his book, Clifton compares the jobs conflict to World War II. The latter, he writes, was fought for freedom and for leadership of the free world. “It was for all the marbles … and a loss would have changed everything.”
The jobs war is also for all the marbles, and a loss will change everything.
And, as we said, that war isn’t coming; it’s already here.
Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• Nov. 9: ACCGS After 5, 5 to 7 p.m., Fran Johnson’s, 1050 Riverdale St., West Springfield. Network, build relationships, and forge strategic partnerships. The After 5 offers business professionals from diverse industries an opportunity to exchange business leads while socializing in a casual atmosphere. To register for the event, contact Cecile Larose at
[email protected]
• Nov. 9: PWC November Meeting, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield. Speaker: Jamie Williamson, MCAD Commissioner, presenting “Up the Ladder, The Public Sector.” To register, contact Lynn Johnson at (413) 755-1310 or [email protected]
Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce
www.amherstarea.com
(413) 253-0700
• Nov. 16: After 5, 5 to 7 p.m., Chandler’s Restaurant at Yankee Candle Village, South Deerfield. Cost: $5 for members, $10 for non-members. Register online at www.amherstarea.com
Chicopee Chamber of Commerce
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101
• Nov. 16: November Salute Breakfast, 7:15 to 9 a.m., Summit View Banquet & Meeting House. Cost: $19 for members, $26 for non-members. Register online at www.chicopeechamber.org
Greater Westfield Chamber of Commerce
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
• Nov. 7: Coffee Hour with Mayor Daniel Knapik, 8 to 9 a.m., Tiger’s Pride, Westfield Vocational & Technical High School, 33 Smith Ave., Westfield.
• Nov. 17: Greater Westfield Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner, 6 p.m. cocktail hour followed by dinner and award presentations from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., School Street Bistro, 10 School St., Westfield. Awards include: Large Business of the Year, Westfield State University; Small Business of the Year, Pioneer Valley Railroad; Businesswoman of the Year, Cathy Gendreau, owner of Peppermill Catering, LLC; Businessman of the Year, Bruce Turcotte, CFO of Columbia Manufacturing, Inc.; Don Blair Community Service Award, John Whalley III. Cost: $45 for members, $50 for non-members. VENTS
Forum Welcomes
Robin Wright
Nov. 9: The Springfield Public Forum series will host foreign affairs analyst Robin Wright at 7:30 p.m. at Springfield Symphony Hall. Wright will present “Rage and Rebellion in the Middle East.” The lecture is free to the public with no reservations required. For more information, visit www.springfieldpublicforum.org.
Serious Fun Event
Nov. 10: MassINC and CommonWealth magazine will host a seriously funny look back at the year in politics and media with pols, pundits, and the press. All proceeds will support MassINC’s CommonWealth Campaign for Civic Journalism as well as a scholarship program for those entering the field. The event is planned at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, with cocktails at 6 p.m. and dinner and the program starting at 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.seriousfun2011.org or contact Lauren Louison at (617) 224-1613 or [email protected].
Author Lecture
Nov. 11: Christina Asquith, author and journalist, will account her years in hiding in Iraq that resulted in her book, Sisters in War, as part of the Ovations special events series at Springfield Technical Community College. Her presentations are at 10:10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. in Scibelli Hall Theater. For more information or to bring a group, contact Phil O’Donoghue at (413) 755-4233 or [email protected].
Willie Ross School Partners with Baystate
Nov. 15: The Willie Ross School for the Deaf is partnering with Baystate Health Continuing Education in sponsoring a conference titled “Educating Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children: From Research to Practice.” The conference is geared toward physicians, nurses, audiologists, speech/language therapists, and educators of the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Families of deaf or hard-of-hearing children are also encouraged to attend. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m., and the program concludes at 3 p.m. Tuition through Nov. 1 is $50 online and $60 by mail (after Nov. 1, the cost is $60 online and $70 by mail), which includes continental breakfast and lunch. Tuition is waived for parents of deaf or hard-of-hearing children, who can register on the Willie Ross Web site. The seminar will offer perspectives on the development and education of deaf and hard-of-hearing children and provide information and guidance in educational placement decisions, amplification choices and early intervention. For more information on the event, visit www.baystatehealth.org/learn.
Forum Welcomes
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Nov. 15: The Springfield Public Forum series will host Pulitzer Prize winner Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee at 7:30 p.m. at Springfield Symphony Hall. Mukherjee will present “Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies.” The lecture is free to the public, and no reservations are required. For more information on the event, visit www.springfieldpublicforum.org.
HAPHousing Symposium
Nov. 16: “Envisioning a Resurgent Springfield Metro” will be the theme of HAPHousing’s annual symposium at the MassMutual Center in Springfield. A keynote address is planned by Winston-Salem, N.C. Mayor Allen Joines. The event begins with an afternoon symposium and panel at 3 p.m. about the importance of community-wide collaboration in envisioning a revitalized and resurgent Springfield and metro area. HAP Executive Director Peter Gagliardi will moderate a panel that will include information from other resurgent cities, with participation by Joines; Gerald Hayes, co-chairman of Rebuilding Springfield, the entity coordinating tornado recovery in the city; as well as other panelists. Joines will address attendees during dinner, which begins at 6 p.m. In addition, awards will be presented to community leaders, including Ronald and Brenna Sadowsky, for their community involvement and leadership in collecting and distributing household resources for homeless families and those displaced by the tornado. Ron Ancrum, president of the Community Foundation, will also be recognized for spearheading the City-to-City initiative in Springfield that linked city metro leaders with those in Winston-Salem. For more information, call HAP at (413) 233-1500.
All-Schubert Program
Nov. 20: Members of the Chamber Music Society will perform “Piano Quintet in A Major,” known as the ‘Trout Quintet,’ at 3 p.m. at Wistariahurst Museum, 238 Cabot St., Holyoke. The score captures the air of the Austrian mountains, the rushing streams, the slippery grace of fish eluding the fisherman’s net, and the wit of friends in a tavern after a day’s hike. The all-Schubert program is in the style of the lively musical gatherings of the composer and his friends in 1820s Vienna. The musicians will perform in period costume. The program includes songs, a duet, and a rarely heard vocal quartet performed by Junko Watanabe, soprano; Eileen Ruby, mezzo-soprano; Peter Shea, tenor; and David Perkins, baritone. For more information and reservations, call (413) 322-5660 or visit www.chambermusicwistariahurst.com.
MassEcon Awards
Nov. 22: Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will be the featured speaker at the eighth annual Team Massachusetts Economic Impact Awards Luncheon at the Seaport Hotel in Boston. Registration begins at 11 a.m., followed by networking at noon and a lunch with master of ceremonies Anthony Everett, co-anchor and reporter of WCVB-TV’s Chronicle. Honorees are: ‘Gold,’ A123 Systems, Central; Airxchange, Southeast; Communispace, Greater Boston; Kiva Systems, Northeast; Smith & Wesson, West; ‘Silver,’ Acacia Communications, Central; Coca-Cola, West; Dassault Systems, Greater Boston; Horizon Beverage, Southeast; Jessica’s Brick Oven, Northeast; ‘Bronze,’ General Dynamics AIS, West; GT Advanced Technologies, Northeast; HubSpot, Greater Boston; Reinhart Food Service, Southeast; and Simonds International, Central. ‘Gateway City Champions’ are Biomedical Research Models, Worcester; and Solectria Renewables, Lawrence. Jerry Sargent, president of Citizens Bank, will receive the Chairman’s Award. For information on tickets and sponsorships, contact Sean Getchell, (781) 489-6262, ext. 13.
Forum Welcomes
Chris Matthews
Dec. 1: The Springfield Public Forum series will host Hardball host Chris Matthews at 7:30 p.m. at Springfield Symphony Hall. Matthews will present “JFK and the Presidency, Past and Present.” The lecture is free to the public; no reservations are required. For more information on the event, visit www.springfieldpublicforum.org.
Understand the Many Ways It Can Impact Your Bottom Line
Bruce Fogel
This isn’t just about everybody being required to carry health insurance. It is much more. The government is using this legislation as a revenue builder, and you will be paying the bill. So what will your cost be?
Individual Mandate
The new federal law requires that non-exempt individuals must maintain qualifying health-insurance coverage for themselves and their dependents or face a tax penalty after 2013. Similar to Massachusetts law, those without qualifying health coverage will be required to pay a tax penalty. The federal penalty will be the greater of: (a) $695 per year, up to a maximum of three times that amount, or $2,085, per family, or (b) 2.5% of household income over the threshold amount of income required for income-tax-return filing.
The penalty will be phased in according to the following schedule: $95 in 2014, $325 in 2015, and $695 in 2016 for the flat fee; or 1.0% of taxable income in 2014, 2.0% of taxable income in 2015, and 2.5% of taxable income in 2016. Beginning after 2016, the penalty will be increased annually by a cost-of-living adjustment.
Exemptions will be available for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to, financial hardship, those without coverage for less than three months, illegal aliens, prisoners, those for whom the lowest cost plan option exceeds 8% of household income, and those with incomes below the tax-filing threshold (in 2011 the threshold for taxpayers under age 65 is $9,500 for singles and $19,000 for couples).
Premium Assistance Tax Credits for Purchasing Health Insurance
A refundable tax credit is available to certain individuals who are not eligible for Medicaid, employer-subsidized health insurance, or other acceptable health coverage, and who get health insurance by enrolling in a qualified health plan through a state-run insurance exchange for tax years after 2013. While the credit generally will be payable directly to the insurer, individuals can elect to purchase health insurance out of pocket and then claim the credit on their Form 1040.
Based on the information provided to the exchange, the individual receives a premium-assistance credit based on income, and IRS pays the premium-assistance credit amount directly to the insurance plan in which the individual is enrolled. The individual then pays to the plan in which he or she is enrolled the dollar difference between the premium-assistance credit amount and the total premium charged for the plan. For employed individuals who purchase health insurance through an exchange, the premium payments are made through payroll deductions.
The premium-assistance credit will be available for individuals and families with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty level ($43,320 for an individual or $88,200 for a family of four, using 2009 poverty level figures) who are not eligible for Medicaid, employer-sponsored insurance, or other acceptable coverage.
Higher Medicare Taxes on
High-income Taxpayers
High-income taxpayers will be subject to a tax increase on wages and a new levy on investments as well.
Higher Medicare Payroll Tax on Wages
Under current law, wages are subject to a 2.9% Medicare payroll tax with employees and employers paying 1.45% each. Self-employed people pay both halves of the tax, but are allowed to deduct half of this amount for income-tax purposes. While the payroll tax for Social Security applies to earnings up to an annual ceiling ($106,800 for 2011 and increasing to $110,100 for 2012), the Medicare tax is levied on all earnings without limit.
Under the provisions of the new law, which goes into effect in 2013, most taxpayers will continue to pay the 1.45% Medicare hospital-insurance tax, but single people earning more than $200,000, and married couples earning more than $250,000, will be required to pay an additional 0.9% (2.35% in total) on the excess over those base amounts. Self-employed individuals will pay 3.8% on earnings over the threshold.
Medicare Payroll Tax Extended to Investments
As part of the revenue-generation aspect of the new laws, beginning in 2013, a Medicare tax will, for the first time, be applied to net investment income. A new 3.8% tax will be imposed on such income of single taxpayers with adjusted gross income above $200,000, and joint filers over $250,000. Net investment income includes interest, dividends, royalties, rents, gross income from a trade or business involving passive activities, and net gain from disposition of property (other than most property held in a trade or business) reduced by properly allocable deductions to such income.
The new tax is intended to apply only to income in excess of the $200,000/$250,000 thresholds. For example, if a couple earns $200,000 in wages and $100,000 in capital gains, $50,000 will be subject to the new tax ($300,000 minus $250,000).
Additionally, while not directly applicable to individuals, this new tax is also applicable to estates and trusts. In such situations, the tax is 3.8% of the lesser of (a) undistributed net investment income, or (b) the excess of AGI over the dollar amount at which the highest estate- and income-tax bracket begins.
Threshold for Medical-expenses Deduction Raised
Under current law, taxpayers can include in their itemized deductions unreimbursed medical expenses for regular income-tax purposes (not AMT) only to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5% of the taxpayer’s AGI.
As noted, the new law raises the threshold for itemized medical expense deductions from 7.5% of AGI to 10%, effective for tax years beginning after Dec. 31, 2012. However, it should be noted that the threshold for individuals age 65 and older (and their spouses) will remain unchanged at 7.5% through 2016.
Reimbursement Limited for Some OTC Medications
Qualified medical expenses, which are expenses that can be reimbursed tax-free through a health reimbursement account (HRA), health flexible savings account (FSA), health savings account (HAS), or Archer Medical Savings Account (MSA), no longer include over-the-counter medicines (except for insulin, which continues to qualify), unless prescribed by a doctor, effective for tax years beginning after Dec. 31, 2010.
Increased Penalties on Non-qualified Distributions
from HSAs and Archer MSAs
The penalty tax on distributions from a health savings account or an Archer MSA that are not used for qualified medical expenses has been increased to 20% (from 10% for HSAs and from 15% for Archer MSAs) of the disbursed amount, effective for distributions made after Dec. 31, 2010.
FSAs Limited to $2,500
An FSA is one of a number of tax-advantaged financial accounts that can be set up through a cafeteria plan of an employer. It allows an employee to set aside a portion of his or her earnings to pay for qualified expenses as established in the cafeteria plan, most commonly for medical expenses, but often for dependent care or other expenses. Under current law, there is no limit on the amount of contributions to an FSA. Under the new law, however, allowable contributions to health FSAs will be capped at $2,500 per year, effective for tax years beginning after Dec. 31, 2012. The dollar amount will be indexed for inflation after 2013.
Dependent Coverage in Employer Health Plans
Effective as of March 30, 2010, the new law extended the general exclusion for reimbursements for medical-care expenses under an employer-provided accident or health plan to any child of an employee who has not attained age 27 (whether they qualify as a dependent or not) as of the end of the tax year.
This change is also intended to apply to the exclusion for employer-provided coverage under an accident or health plan for injuries or sickness for such a child. A parallel change is made for voluntary employee benefit associations (VEBAs) and 401(h) accounts. Also, self-employed individuals are permitted to take a deduction for the health insurance costs of any child of the taxpayer who has not attained age 27 as of the end of the tax year.
Excise Tax on Tanning Services
The new law imposes a 10% excise tax on indoor tanning services. The tax, which will be paid by the individual on whom the tanning services are performed, but collected and remitted by the person receiving payment for the tanning services, will take effect July 1, 2010.
Liberalized Adoption-credit and Adoption-assistance Rules
For tax years beginning after Dec. 31, 2009, the adoption tax credit is increased by $1,000, made refundable, and extended through 2011. The employer-provided adoption-assistance exclusion is also increased by $1,000.
Bottom Line
These are some of the highlights of the 55-page health care legislation that was signed into law by President Obama on March 30, 2010. It affects every American citizen to varying financial degrees and phases, in different aspects, at various timeframes. If you have questions about how it will affect your family, it would be wise to consult with your tax advisor.
Bruce M. Fogel, Esq. is a partner with Bacon Wilson, P.C. in Northampton. He is a member of the firm’s estate-planning, elder, real-estate, and business departments. He has extensive experience in matters relating to income, gift, and estate taxes, and he focuses on the tax implications of all legal transactions. He also co-hosts the “Taxes and Assets” radio show on WHMP-AM; (413) 584-1287;
[email protected]
Or, a Primer on How to Make Friends with Your Auditor
Donna Roundy, CPA
While preparing for an audit can seem arduous, there are many benefits of having an audit. An auditor can help you analyze and better understand your company’s financials and show you where improvements within your company can be made. An audit assesses any risks to your company, as well as the efficiency and quality of your company’s processes. One of the most important benefits of an audit could be the realization of fraud and illegal activities taking place within your company.
Recognizing and optimizing the benefits of an audit can help your company become more efficient and more profitable. This article will describe the steps involved in preparing for an audit, and how to optimize the value of an audit for your company.
Many organizations must prepare for a year-end audit at the end of each fiscal year. Whether your business is public, private, or nonprofit, you may be required to have an audit performed on your company. This requirement can be government-required (such as for nonprofit organizations). It can also come from a variety of other groups, such as investors, financial institutions, or a board of directors.
‘Audit’ is not a word many business owners want to hear, but with preparation and focus, an audit can go smoothly and prove to be a valuable exercise.
The best time to start preparing for the audit is right after the auditors leave at the beginning of the year. A significant focus of an audit is on internal controls and the organization’s policies and procedures. Sometimes your auditor may, either verbally or in writing, make suggestions to better segregate duties or create a step of review. Discuss with your fiscal director how best to implement those suggestions.
Due to these changes and possibly due to changing staff levels, the flow of information in your company may change subtly in ways that will require your policies and procedures manual to be updated. Providing your auditor with updated procedures is important because he or she needs to assess risk and ascertain that things are actually happening as intended.
Soon after Jan. 1, begin to close your books for the current fiscal year. Transactions should be posted to the year in which it occurred, including receivables and sales, inventory purchases, cost of goods sold, and operating costs. You also must reconcile all sub-ledgers to make sure they are accurate with your trial balance. Performing reconciliations for all balance-sheet accounts to accurately prepared schedules and third-party statements (bank statements, loan and vendor statements) is a large part of preparing your books for year end.
If you are finding that significant adjustments are necessary at this time, look back to the monthly closing process and see where procedures need to change. A monthly close is a mini-year end, and reconciliations should be performed in a timely manner. If this isn’t happening, the reports being used are inaccurate, and decisions are being made based on wrong information.
Normally your auditors will provide you with a list of the items they need for the audit. Gathering together the entirety of this list and having it in one place for the auditors the first day they walk in has a few benefits. Saving your auditor time from having to ask for things they’ve already asked for makes him or her more efficient, which can mean a lower fee. The auditor will need your time and attention during the audit, so it’s less stressful for you if you don’t also have on your agenda to pull together items they need throughout the day. More preparation can make the audit process easier for you and your company.
Auditors will be looking for a variety of information before they begin the audit. This information will include company bylaws, corporate charters, state registrations, formal policies, a procedure manual, and loan and lease agreements. Annually you must provide to your auditors any new loan or lease agreements and minutes from shareholders or board of directors meetings through the date of your audit. Any information explaining events during the fiscal year that could potentially have an impact on the financial statements must also be provided to your auditor.
Inform your employees when the audit will begin and how long the audit will last. Indentify which employees will be working with the auditors side-by-side on a day-to-day basis. You must make sure that these employees have an open schedule during the audit period. There also must be a workspace prepared for the auditors based on their needs.
Your responsibilities during the audit process are just as important as the steps taken leading up to the audit. Be prepared to explain your procedures for any of the following processes: payroll, cash receipts, accounts receivables/sales, computer systems and software, and how you identify and implement controls to minimize fraud risks. Set aside time during the audit to ask questions of the auditor or to answer any questions the auditor may have.
An audit of cash can provide a business with validity and accuracy of the cash flow within the company, as well as provide a better understanding of where errors may occur and tests to make sure they are not occurring.
Accounts receivables is frequently the largest asset a company can have. An auditor looks at all levels of accounts receivable to help you better understand the risks that could occur and the red flags to look for to prevent these risks.
Inventory audits are designed to keep track of a company’s products and merchandise. This procedure often leads to the influencing of future policies and decision-making within companies.
For your income and expenses, the auditor will typically prepare an expectation of what your income and expense balances should be. This will be based on your organization and your discussions with the auditor. Be prepared to explain fluctuations for accounts that may fall outside of these expectations. Audits performed on income and expenses are some of the most necessary of all.
Income or revenue is required to be recorded for tax purposes. If not properly kept track of, your tax return could be misleading causing larger problems in the long run. An audit of expenses ensures that internal controls are being followed, the reasonableness of your expense costs, and timeliness of the invoice to ensure reliability of the expense. Expense audits also ensure that vendors are real businesses and exist, as well as the accuracy of all contracts, invoices, and signatures.
An audit should be a positive and productive experience. When your staff and the auditors work together, you will save money, the audit will be completed efficiently, and the transaction or requirement that created the need for the audit can be fulfilled. You and your staff will also be in a greater position to understand the financial, data-system, and workflow-process needs of your firm, which will enable you to better plan for future challenges and capitalize on future opportunities.
Donna Roundy is a senior audit manager with the Holyoke-based certified public accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.; (413) 536-8510.
Leadership Pioneer Valley Gets Down to Business
Kimberly Williams hopes to gain deep insight into the issues and challenges confronting area communities through Leadership Pioneer Valley.
But she fessed up to help drive home one of many points about why she’s one of the 44 individuals in the inaugural class of a program called Leadership Pioneer Valley (LPV), and why she’s excited about its potential to become a real learning opportunity.
Williams, a consultant in the Office of Diversity at Baystate Health, grew up in Springfield, left the area upon graduation from high school, settled in Washington, D.C., and returned to this area nine years ago. She says Springfield has changed considerably since her childhood in the ’70s, and admitted that, while she and her two children have taken a number of day trips across Western Mass., she doesn’t know much at all about many of the cities and towns in which her co-workers at Baystate live.
LPV, which staged a weekend-long retreat at Genesis in late October to kick off its program, will help enlighten her by taking her into many of those communities, including the Amherst-Northampton area, Franklin County, Holyoke, and Chicopee, where she anticipates getting much more than an understanding of Western Mass. geography.
“I have what I’d call a surface understanding of many of the communities, and this region as a whole,” she said, adding that she wants to greatly expand that base of knowledge while also honing leadership skills.
Tony Maroulis, executive director of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce and another member of the inaugural class of leaders, agreed. He told BusinessWest that he has a particular fascination with cities, and expects that his nine-month tour of duty with LPV will provide a greater understanding of the issues facing Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, and other area urban centers.
But well beyond that, he anticipates that the interaction with his 43 classmates and the projects they become involved in through LPV will help advance the cause of regional thinking and doing in Western Mass., and the removal of boundary lines real and imagined.
“I’m lucky enough to sit on the board of the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, so I get a little more of a valley-wide perspective, but I still get wind up getting in my own silo sometimes because there’s so much to do in Amherst,” he told BusinessWest. “Sometimes, I don’t have a valley-wide view, and I entered this program thinking, ‘what are the connections that we can make and the synergies we can create? And through those connections and synergies, what can we solve?’
“This is a very diverse place that covers a big geographic area,” Maroulis continued, referring to the Pioneer Valley. “And its geography is both an asset and a curse in a way; we have a river that cuts us right down the middle, and we’ve got mountain ranges that go ways they don’t anywhere else.
The 44 members of the inaugural class of Leadership Pioneer Valley.
Achieving progress toward such ambitious goals are among the many motivations for LPV, said its program director, Laura Wondolowski. She noted that the initiative was sparked by an action item in an overhaul of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission’s Plan for Progress, one calling for a vehicle to “recruit and train a new generation of regional leaders.”
For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Wandolowski and some of the members of the class of 2012 to get perspective on the work ahead of them, and their expectations for this ambitious endeavor.
Heading in the Right Direction
Wondolowski said this first class of leaders represents diversity in a number of forms.
Introduced at a reception on Oct. 18 at the MassMutual Conference Center in Chicopee, the class includes individuals from across Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties, represents several major employers and most industry groups — from health care to financial services to technology, as well as the broad nonprofit realm — and is culturally diverse as well. And while most class members are in their late 30s and 40s, some are much younger, and others can remember growing up in the ’60s.
Such a mix will provide the group with a number of different perspectives, which is important as it goes about the task of not only building leadership skills, but also broadening its participants’ base of knowledge concerning the region and its population, said Wondolowski.
“We wanted to make sure we had a good mix of individuals,” she said, adding that aggressive recruiting efforts helped create the high level of diversity and representation within industry sectors and geographic regions. More than 50 applications were received.
Participants will take part in a nine-month program of experiential learning that will take place at organizations and locations across the region, she explained, adding that there will be sessions devoted to team-building exercises and development of leadership skills, as well as field visits to many area communities.
“The field-based and challenge-based curriculum is specifically designed to help class members refine their leadership skills, gain connections, and develop a greater commitment to community stewardship and cultural competency,” said Wondolowski. “The program also features small-group projects, where class members will take action to address a regional need identified in the Pioneer Planning Commission’s Plan for Progress.”
Williams, 43, said she entered the program with a number of goals and expectations, but especially a desire to gain a better understanding of the region as a whole and many of its individual communities, knowledge and insight she believes will help her in her professional capacity at Baystate.
And she’s excited about LPV’s model, which involves learning while doing.
“That’s a critical component of adult education,” she said. “Adults learn by doing something as opposed to reading about it or getting instruction. This program is going to give all of us the chance to hone or develop new leadership skills, while also applying those skills within the community; it’s a learning opportunity on many levels.”
Maroulis, meanwhile, is looking forward to learning about other communities and the challenges they face, and also making real progress with perhaps removing that ‘tofu curtain’ from the local lexicon.
“We’re still trying to figure out how to work regionally in Hampshire County,” he said, adding that there remains a great divide between Amherst and Northampton symbolized by the Coolidge Bridge. “I think we’re doing it better and better, but we’re not there, not completely, and there’s much work to do across the entire valley.”
“To get more of a handle on that, and meet some people from the lower valley and to start working with those same people and getting them to think about those issues, will be a challenge and also a lot of fun,” he continued. “And fun is a big part of it for me.”
The Road Ahead
Maroulis doesn’t recall exactly how, but he remembers some discussion from the opening retreat focusing on the town of Gill. To which more than a few of the individuals present said, ‘where’s Gill?’
“No one from Hampden County had a clue, but the three people from Franklin County set everyone straight,” he recalled, noting that he already knew, and now others are aware that the community is just northeast of Greenfield, not far from the Vermont line.
By the time this inaugural class has graduated next spring, members will have benefited from much more than geography lessons, Maroulis went on, adding that, while learning new leadership skills, participants will also gain a better understanding of the many issues facing the area, and perhaps make progress on the task of thinking and acting like a region.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Are Background Checks Discriminatory?
In two hearings held earlier this year, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) heard testimony about whether or not background checks cause a disparate impact on minorities.
Advocates for ex-offenders and various watchdog groups from around the country argue that it must, because African-Americans and Latinos have higher arrest and conviction rates than whites. Although the EEOC claimed its hearings to be fair and unbiased, many critics have argued that the panelists invited to speak were strongly biased in favor of limiting background checks.
The commissioner heard testimony from defense attorneys, various academics, and two employers who had positive experiences hiring ex-offenders.
In a letter to the EEOC sent from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), Commissioners Peter Kirsanow, Gail Heriot, and Todd Gaziano asserted that the hearings were not balanced and that the omission of important data was a mistake.
The commissioners said the EEOC should have heard important research from economists Harry Holzer and Stephen Rafael, as well as public-policy professor Michael Stoll. Their research, published in the Journal of Law and Economics, showed that employers with access to background checks were actually about 10% more likely to hire minorities than those without access to that information.
The commissioners wrote that the studies from Holzer, Rafael, and Stoll “suggest that, in the absence of criminal-background checks, some employers discriminate statistically against black men and/or those with weak employment records.”
The USCCR commissioners have asked the EEOC to convene another hearing specifically to look at this additional information and to consider the negative impact that limiting background checks would have on minorities.
What should employers do? The discussion in Washington and around the country will continue, hopefully in a fair and balanced way that all sides can agree with. When it concludes, it is possible that the EEOC may revise its existing guidance or simply leave it alone. That doesn’t mean that employers should just wait it out. With increased attention on this matter and a surge in lawsuits claiming discrimination, now is the time for employers to look carefully at their policies and procedures regarding background checks.
Employers should always ensure that hiring decisions are made consistently. When negative information returned on a background check is considered, employers should be careful to weigh the job-relatedness of the crime and the amount of time passed since the completion of the sentence.
Some employers also look to consider additional factors such as any positive work experience since the sentence, references, or civic activity.
The Employers Association of the NorthEast (EANE) will be hosting a Webinar about this topic on Nov. 30 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Employers interested in attending can register by visiting www2.gotomeeting.com/register/531504930.
John McTighe is vice president of Strategic Information Resources, a background-screening company based in Springfield; (800) 813-4381; [email protected]
Springfield’s Rebuilding Effort Comes at Intriguing Time for Urban Centers
Dave Dixon says there is a surge in interest in urban living, which presents huge opportunities for cities like Springfield.
Dave Dixon was understandably wary about incorporating the phrase ‘silver lining’ into any statements he made concerning the June 1 tornado and its aftermath.
But he nonetheless put it to use as he talked about the efforts to rebuild Springfield and, more specifically, the work to revitalize the downtown and South End sections of the city. And that silver lining is all about timing and emerging trends in urban centers, he explained.
“If this tornado had struck 10 years earlier, let’s say, I think this would be a much grimmer task, because we’d be rebuilding in the face of continuing disinvestment in the city,” said Dixon.
He’s the principal in charge of planning and urban design at Goody Clancy, the Boston-based architecture, planning, and preservation firm now co-leading the efforts to blueprint a rebuilding plan for Springfield with New Orleans-based Concordia (see related story, page 62).
Elaborating, Dixon said that, over the past several years, there has been a discernable upswing in the popularity of urban living. Spawned by a number of factors, including a desire among aging Baby Boomers to live in places where they can walk rather than drive to most required destinations, the trend has helped transform a number of urban centers, many with the same social and economic challenges as Springfield’s central business district and South End.
“Ten years ago, the world didn’t look like this,” said Dixon, who has seen or helped orchestrate revivals in cities ranging from Baltimore to New Orleans to Wichita, Kan. “This disaster in Springfield, like the one in New Orleans, happened at a time when cities are changing and have opportunities that they haven’t had for 40 or 50 years.
“What has gone on, particularly over the past decade, has been a profound transition in demographics, in the way real-estate markets work, in the values that the folks who bring investment with them because they attract employers, have all undergone,” he continued, adding that there are more single individuals or couples (as opposed to families) than was the case a decade ago, and income levels for such people are higher. “There are simply more people that could decide they want to live in an urban environment. They may have wanted to in the past, but it didn’t work for them. And now they’re looking to make it work.”
Indeed, the real silver lining for Springfield, said Dixon, is an apparent, and growing, pent-up demand for downtown mailing addresses. To illustrate, he took out a piece of paper and sketched a simple chart showing the rising popularity of urban living.
The line moves upward at a steady clip, he explained while drawing, but the recession of the past several years has restricted the angle of ascent because, among other factors, homeowners looking to relocate to urban centers are still having trouble selling their homes, and market-rate housing builders are still being challenged in their efforts to finance such endeavors.
Like a dam holding back water, these factors are effectively bottling up demand, he continued, adding that, when conditions improve and that figurative dam breaks, cities properly positioned to capitalize on the trend could benefit significantly.
And in many ways, the tornado has helped put Springfield in such a position, he went on, acknowledging that the city still faces a number of challenges in this regard — including crime, the perception of same, and a concentration of subsidized-housing projects in both the downtown and South End — and that progress certainly won’t occur overnight.
But the city has many of the key ingredients to join the list of other success stories, he said, listing a decent “walkability index” — more on that later — a solid existing inventory of buildings that can be converted into market-rate housing, and, thanks to the tornado, some vacant acreage on which to build such housing, as well as businesses to sustain an urban population.
Dixon acknowledged that many are skeptical that such urban living could help transform Springfield’s downtown area, but he’s seen enough evidence of the trend in other parts of the country to believe it could certainly happen here.
Walking the Walk
As he talked with BusinessWest, Ron Mallis, a senior planner with Goody Clancy, was using his iPhone to see how well several downtown Springfield addresses fared on a Web site called walkscore.com. The site essentially assesses a location based on one’s ability to walk to amenities ranging from coffee shops to entertainment venues to banks, and gives it a score from 1 to 100, with the latter being the best.
The DevelopSpringfield office at 1182 Main St. earned an 89, while the Red Rose restaurant just a few blocks south notched an 82. Those statistics are not to be discounted, said Mallis, because many constituencies, from young artists to aging Boomers to business owners, are looking at such numbers with greater interest.
“People are more health-conscious than they were years ago,” he explained. “People have woken up to the fact that walking and health have a direct correlation, and that certainly plays a part in the decisions people are making about where they want to live.
Dixon agreed. “If you look at surveys about how much people want to drive, it used to be that, the younger you were, the more you liked getting in the car and driving; now it’s the reverse, and some of it is health-driven; it’s viewed as unhealthy to be in a car a lot.”
But there’s more to this trend than exercise, he continued, adding that many individuals within different age groups, when queried about what they want from a residential address, put that intangible ‘community’ high on their list. “And people think of urban areas as offering much more opportunity for community — to run into each other and meet each other.
“When you look at the top-10 criteria that people listed for where they wanted to live, from the ’60s up until probably 2003, or at least through the ’90s, it was golf courses, near golf courses, on a golf course, and as far away from work as possible,” he went on. “None of those are on the list in 2011. Surveys now show it’s proximity to Main Street, diversity, the ability to walk to work … and even telecommuters are much more interested in living in denser, walkable areas, perhaps because they spend the day by themselves.”
Dixon and Mallis have seen such trends emerge as they’ve helped Goody Clancy compile an extensive portfolio of work in older urban areas. The firm has taken part in a number of downtown projects, from guiding 12 million square feet of mixed-use development around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to revitalization plans for communities as such as Baltimore, Akron, Ohio, Jamestown, N.Y., and, locally, Greenfield.
To illustrate his point on urban living and add a measure of credibility to the argument, Dixon pointed to Wichita, a city of about 900,000 and a downtown still fighting its way back from decades of disinvestment and an out-migration of people and businesses.
“Even the lawyers moved out of the downtown, which is unusual,” he said. “Compared to many parts of downtown Wichita, Springfield’s South End would look cool — it would look like an arts district. But downtown is beginning to take off; there are several hundred units of new, cool lofts — they’re rentals right now because the condo market isn’t there yet; one was rented out before it was finished, and another, more expensive building is almost rented out.
“Meanwhile, there’s another, more conventional project with larger, more expensive units that’s just sitting there because that’s not what the market’s going to come back to,” he went on. “The market’s about cool, urban, walkable living spaces. It’s more about living near a cool bakery than it is about giving a view.”
In Springfield, the firm has been assigned the task of coordinating efforts to develop strategic initiatives focused on the downtown and South End, one of three areas, or districts, of concentration involving neighborhoods impacted by the tornado. Since being hired in September, the firm’s representatives have undertaken a general inventory of this sector’s assets and liabilities, said Dixon, adding that there are more of the former than many people might think, and some could help the city take advantage of the pendulum moving back toward urban living.
And in many ways, the city is already making some strides, said Mallis, noting efforts to attract artists to the Morgan Square apartment complex (see BusinessWest, Aug. 29), and other initiatives to create more market-rate housing at several downtown-area properties.
As for the South End, Dixon said it has the potential to be “a hip place,” given its diversity, solid walk scores, proximity to many restaurants and cultural attractions, and decent inventory of properties that could, with some imagination, entrepreneurial flair, and requisite demand, be retrofitted into housing units.
As he walked with BusinessWest down Main Street, Dixon pointed out several such buildings near an already-thriving market-rate complex, the Willows, created from the former Milton Bradley manufacturing complex off Union Street. He gestured to everything from office and retail properties with large vacancy rates to abandoned or underutilized manufacturing and warehouse structures.
“You can just look at those properties and see that, if the market is there a half-block away,” he said, “it can be at those sites as well.”
There are also several currently vacant parcels, including the former Gemini site and some others created by the tornado, which provide opportunities for developers with vision.
Beyond vacant lots, though, the tornado has provided a spark for the city, said Dixon, when pressed about why market-rate housing and related developments haven’t happened sooner.
“As horrible and painful as the tornado has been for many people,” he said, “it has sort of galvanized the moment; it has the community focused, the city focused, everybody focused on how to rebuild better.”
Building Momentum
This combination of focus and determination has arrived at the intersection of rising interest in urban living and pent-up demand. It’s an intriguing situation that could make Springfield’s downtown the right place at the right time.
“Put all these things together, and Springfield, like many cities, has opportunities that it hasn’t had for a very long time,” said Dixon. “They don’t happen automatically, though. Cities have all these problems — fragmented land ownership, zoning, tax structures — which are not necessarily geared to the kind of development you want, and crime and the perception of crime.
“But there are lot of cities that have been very patient over the past 10 years, looking at what’s happening, removing the obstacles, investing in downtowns, and getting tremendous payoffs. Springfield has that opportunity; something like the tornado is a kind of wakeup call that it’s not just time to change, but to take stock. And when you take stock, you can take advantage of these opportunities.”
In other words, this could a silver lining that makes Springfield a shining example of how urban centers can be revitalized.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Involvement, Strong Leadership Called Keys to Rebuilding Effort
Bobbie Hill says plans and process are important, but involvement and leadership are the keys to revitalizing a city.
And she said there will be all three when it comes to the task of rebuilding Springfield in the wake of the June 1 tornado. However, none will be the real key to a successful effort.
Instead, the most vital component — and she says she’s learned this from considerable experience — is getting the residents of the community in question to take a real ownership stake in the recovery initiatives.
“It’s the relationship-building, the community-capacity-building, the taking-ownership piece,” said Hill, a consultant with the New Orleans-based planning and architecture firm Concordia, which is heading the team of companies coordinating Springfield’s rebuilding-plan process. “Those are the keys; it’s ownership, and holding yourself, your neighbors, elected officials, and developers accountable to doing it and doing it right.
“That engagement component, that people component, is as important if not more important than individual concepts,” she continued. “This can’t just be about development projects; that’s not what transforms a community.”
What does, she stressed again, is a willingness on the part of residents to get involved and stay involved, and not give in to the theory, or temptation, that government will take care of things. And it comes through leadership, she went on, noting that, in most every community where the 11-person firm has lent its disaster-response, planning, and design expertise, leaders from the community have emerged.
The process of getting the community involved in the rebuilding effort began earlier this month with neighborhood meetings in the three identified sectors involving areas of the city damaged by the tornado. Sector 1 is the metro center (downtown) and the South End, while Sector 2 is composed of Six Corners, Upper Hill, Old Hill, and Forest Park, and Sector 3 includes Sixteen Acres and East Forest Park.
Those neighborhood meetings were followed up with a city-wide gathering a few days later, and two more sessions of neighborhood meetings and another city-wide session are scheduled for November and December, said Hill, adding that the four firms collaborating on the endeavor will present an implementation and financing plan to a community congress on Jan. 5.
That’s the process, in simple terms, she said, adding that it’s too early to discuss specific potential redevelopment projects, although plenty of suggestions — from a supermarket to market-rate housing projects to reforestation proposals — have come forth at the neighborhood sessions.
In subsequent neighborhood meetings, the suggestions will be discussed at greater length, and eventually priorities will be established, and consultants will “put numbers” to potential recommendations in an effort to determine which ones make sense and which ones don’t.
More importantly, though, the initial sessions have yielded evidence of the requisite level of involvement, leadership, and community spirit that will be necessary for a successful recovery effort.
“I was really encouraged by what I saw and heard the other night,” she referring to the neighborhood meeting in Sector 2. “There was definitely a strong sense of community, people really caring for other and celebrating diversity — that really came across.”
There are four firms involved in the process of coordinating the neighborhood meetings and compiling the report to be completed Jan. 5. They are:
• Corcordia, which, among other projects in its portfolio, led coordination for the Unified New Orleans Plan after Hurricane Katrina that included selection and management of 12 national, regional, and local planning firms that created plans for 14 planning districts and an overall city-wide recovery plan;
• Goody Clancy, a Boston-based urban planning and design firm that has coordinated revitalization efforts in a number of major cities (see related story, page 60);
• Berkebile Nelson Immenschuh McDowell Inc. (BNIM), considered the most experienced firm in the country when it comes to helping tornado-impacted communities engage in a transformative recovery planning process; and
• The Project for Public Spaces (PPS), a nonprofit planning, design, and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public places that build stronger communities.
For more information on the process or to submit ideas online, visit www.rebuildspringfield.com. The schedule for future neighborhood and citywide meetings is as follows:
• Six Corners, Upper Hill, Old Hill, and Forest Park: Nov. 15, 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the J.C. Williams Center, Florence Street;
• Sixteen Acres, East Forest Park: Nov. 16, 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Holy Cross gymnasium, Plumtree Road;
• Metro Center, South End: Nov. 17, 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Gentile Apartments Community Room, Williams Street;
• Metro Center, South End: Dec. 6, 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Gentile Apartments Community Room, Williams Street;
• Sixteen Acres, East Forest Park: Dec. 7, 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Holy Cross gymnasium, Plumtree Road;
• Six Corners, Upper Hill, Old Hill, and Forest Park: Dec. 8, 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the J.C. Williams Center, Florence Street;
• City-wide: Dec. 10, 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the MassMutual Center; and
• Community Congress: Jan. 5, 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the MassMutual Center.
— George O’Brien
Apple Looms Large, but Competition Abounds in Tech Marketplace
iPad 2
“Though the iPad 2 is an improvement on the original iPad in numerous ways, it’s still an evolutionary product, not a revolutionary one,” MacWorld reports. “If you’re happy with your current iPad, there’s no reason to dump it just because there’s a shinier, newer one.”
Yet, the magazine notes, some of the product’s deficiencies have been remedied, while the design is even smaller and thinner than before.
The iPad 2 uses a new, Apple-designed processor called the A5, a dual-core version of the 1 GHz chip that powers the iPhone 4 and last year’s iPad. The new model also boasts 512 MB of RAM and processing speed significantly faster than before. Notably, it also adds front- and rear-facing cameras.
“The first iPad was a bolt from the blue, a device that defined an entire category, and a tough act to follow,” MacWorld concludes. “The iPad 2 follows it with aplomb.”
The product isn’t without challengers, however. The Motorola Xoom, according to Popular Mechanics, “hits one cutting-edge mark after another,” featuring an Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, plenty of power with a dual-core 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and both front- and rear-facing cameras for videoconferencing as well as shooting photos. The high-resolution, 10.1-inch screen impresses, too.
“For now, the Xoom is a step ahead of the competition when it comes to connectivity,” the magazine notes, after launching on Verizon’s 3G network in the spring and moving to 4G with subsequent shippings. And HDMI compatibility means that the Xoom ($499 and up) can share its video with a home-entertainment center.
Amazon — which updated its e-reader offerings in 2011 with the Kindle Touch 3G ($149) or without 3G ($99), as well as a non-Touch Kindle ($79) — made its biggest splash in the tablet market, by launching the Kindle Fire, a 7-inch tablet with a very attractive $199 price tag.
Kindle Fire
“But this tablet isn’t supposed to be about tech specs,” according to PC World. “It’s meant to be a dead-simple slate for consuming Amazon content. At the top, the interface has a search bar that can search locally, in the cloud, and on the Web. Below that is a strip of content categories, followed by a stylized list of recent content. On the bottom of the screen, users can pin their favorite apps, books, and other media.”
Time will tell how much an Amazon-centric tablet at a comparatively low price will cut into the market for iPads and their ilk; the Fire ships Nov. 15, but Amazon has been taking pre-orders for months.
Smartphones and Laptops
Apple has upgraded its smartphone line with the iPhone 4S, which Engadget calls “a new spin on an old phone that will shock none, but give it half a chance, and it will still impress.”
The 4S ($199 and up) runs on the same new dual-core processor powering the iPad 2, and while RAM remains the same at 512 MB, its maximum storage has doubled to 64 GB (in the $399 model). Its most notable feature might be Siri, a ‘digital helper’ with advanced voice recognition that some users have found uncanny.
“Siri can do a huge number of things, from sending texts and e-mails to finding restaurants and getting directions from one place to another — things that, it must be said, could largely be done before by voice on other devices and platforms,” Engadget notes. “It’s really the enhanced ability to understand casually spoken English mixed in with the notion of context that sets this apart.”
Motorola Atrix 4G
“But the phone is a game-changer because of its laptop and HD multimedia docking systems,” it goes on. “As soon as you plug the phone into either dock, a full-fledged Firefox browser launches, your Android apps scale up in size, and you leave thumb typing behind.” In addition, the multimedia dock has three USB ports and an HDMI port, so it can power plenty of entertainment equipment.
For consumers in the market for an attractive, lightweight notebook computer, PC World calls the Asus U36S “pretty darn close to perfect.” Aside from speakers that leave something to be desired, the magazine says this super-thin ultraportable has all the features the average user could want — and more.
The review model ($870) features an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM (which can be upgraded to 8GB), a discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 520M graphics card, and a 640 GB hard drive. It also features built-in wi-fi and Bluetooth, and runs a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.
It’s also a slim machine, at 3.7 pounds and 0.75 inches thick, except for a battery compartment that bumps out to 1.1 inches. That battery tests at between eight and 10 hours of use.
MacBook Air
With 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of SSD storage, CNET notes, the 13-inch Air is a better bet for trouble-free mainstream computing than the 11-inch version, which offers only 2 GB of RAM and a 64 GB SSD. Its performance approaches that of the more expensive 13-inch MacBook Pro, and its battery life is excellent.
Cameras and Other Fun Stuff
Nikon D7000
“The usual caveats apply: it’s not the right camera for everyone, and it’s not best at everything,” the site notes. “But its combination of design, feature set, performance, and photo quality for the price is hard to beat (and will be especially so once the street price starts to drop).”
For those more interested in video, PC World praises the Epson Megaplex MG-50 ($699) and MG-850H ($799) portable projectors.
Epson Megaplex MG-50
Speaking of the iPod, Apple’s latest iPod Touch, now on its fifth generation, comes with a variety of features. “It records HD video, chats over video or iMessages, checks your e-mail, keeps your appointments, connects to the cloud, rents movies, plays music, takes pictures, and plays more games than any of its competitors,” CNET reports. It’s priced from $199 (8 GB) to $399 (64 GB).
Music, movies, photos, games. Increasingly, today’s mobile high-tech products do all of these and more. For a society of voracious media consumers, it’s an exciting time, and 2012 only promises more evolution, and perhaps a revolution or two as well.
Just like Steve Jobs would have wanted.
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
Scenes from a lively Western Mass Business Expo
Click here to download PDF:WMBExpoPhotoPagesBW1011b
Region’s Business Successes Will Be Feted on Oct. 28
Formerly called the Fabulous 50, the Super 60 — a celebration of successful and growing businesses — has become an annual tradition in Western Mass. This year’s Super 60 lunch, slated for Oct. 28 at Chez Josef, will honor individual companies, but also recognize the diversity and vibrancy of the entire local business community — a worthwhile message as the economy continues its slow recovery.
Jeffrey Ciuffreda says the annual Super 60 luncheon is more than a recognition of individual achievement in business, although it is definitely that, too.
It’s also a celebration of Western Mass. as a whole.
“I believe this program is a great showcase of our region and truly shows the diversity of our employment base, our businesses, which is our strength,” said Ciuffreda, president of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, which sponsors the event. “The list of winners includes human-services providers, manufacturers, institutions of higher education, technology, environmental firms, insurers, and more.”
And that’s a positive message at a time when the economy continues to slog toward some semblance of forward momentum. The Super 60, Ciuffreda said, is an opportunity to honor some of the success stories being written across Western Mass. during these uncertain times.
For 23 years now, the luncheon at Chez Josef in Agawam has toasted the chamber’s top 30 companies in the total revenue and revenue growth categories (there are actually 53 businesses being honored this year, as seven overlap both lists). This year’s event is scheduled for Oct. 29, and will feature as a keynote speaker Paul Kozub, president of V-One Vodka.
“The two categories allow one to see businesses in a couple of important ways,” Ciuffreda said. “Revenue speaks for itself oftentimes in the size of a company or in its longevity. The Revenue growth category oftentimes includes newer companies who have solidified their base and are beginning to show real growth, or companies that have been around for some time and continue to do the right things and therefore grow in our area.
“The program has always been well-received and attended by more than 500 people,” he added. “Oftentimes the winners use this award in their marketing and advertising, and the public realizes the significance of it.
The companies being honored represent virtually every sector of the economy, from financial services to education; from human services to manufacturing; from health care to retail.
The top finisher in the total revenue category is Savage Sports Corp. in Westfield, followed by Springfield College (which made the top three last year as well) and Hannoush Jewelers. NUVO Bank & Trust, chartered four years ago, is the top company in the revenue growth category for 2011, followed by Convergent Solutions in Wilbraham (last year’s top growth company) and Samuel’s in Springfield. Those six companies alone demonstrate the diversity of the Super 60.
Average revenue for the top 30 companies in total revenue exceeded $28 million in 2010. In the growth category, the average growth for the top 30 companies was 23%, and half of them recorded revenue growth in excess of 30%.
The luncheon will run from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The keynote speaker, Kozub, is a classic example of the entrepreneurial spirit running through the Pioneer Valley. His father ran a successful family business, and his grandfather produced and distributed his own vodka during the 1930s. Inspired by those stories, Kozub started making vodka at home, visiting Poland several times to perfect the recipe.
Six years ago, V-One Vodka made its debut in 10 liquor stores and five restaurants. In the first year, Kozub spent all of his time visiting restaurants and liquor stores with samples of his product. Today, V-One is widely distributed and considered one of the top vodkas in the world.
Ciuffreda called Kozub “a businessperson who fits the mold of an entrepreneur and started his own company within the last 10 years and has met with great success, not just regionally but nationally and internationally. It is safe to assume that many of the award winners started as Paul did: with an idea, with a product, and with great determination.”
For more information on the Super 60 luncheon or to order seats ($50 for chamber members or $70 for non-members), call (413) 787-1555. n
TOTAL REVENUE
American International College
1000 State St., Springfield, MA 01109
(800) 242-3142
www.aic.edu
Vincent Maniaci, President
Launched in 1885, AIC is a private, co-educational, four-year institution in the geographic center of Springfield. Liberal arts serves as the core in all its academic offerings, and the college is organized into schools of Arts, Education, and Sciences; Business Administration; Health Sciences; and Continuing and Extended Studies.
Associated Electro-Mechanics Inc.
185 Rowland St., Springfield, MA 01107
(413) 781-4276
www.aemservices.com
Elayne Lebeau, CEO
Associated Electro-Mechanics Inc. is the largest independent industrial service center in the Northeast, providing industry with services that cover electrical, mechanical, machining, welding, and field services. Its multi-faceted field service crews and a staff of electrical and mechanical engineers complement the departmentalized staff operations.
City Tire Co. Inc.
25 Avocado St., Springfield, MA 01101
(413) 737-1419
www.city-tire.com
Peter Greenberg, President
With 11 locations in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire, City Tire offers quality tires from a number of top brands, while its service department specializes in alignments, oil changes, brakes, suspension, and more.
Delaney Restaurant Inc. / The Log Cabin
500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke, MA 01040
(413) 535-5077
www.logcabin-delaney.com
Peter Rosskothen, President
The Delaney House restaurant offers 13 private-themed rooms for any special occasion, with seating for up to 260. It offers two dining options — fine dining and the more casual Mick. The Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House offers quality banquet facilities for weddings, showers, anniversaries, engagement parties, bar/bat mitzvahs, business meetings, holiday parties, and more.
The Dennis Group, LLC
1537 Main St., Springfield, MA 01103
(413) 746-0054
www.dennisgrp.com
Tom Dennis, CEO
The Dennis Group offers complete planning, design, architectural, engineering, and construction-management services. The firm is comprised of experienced engineering and design professionals dedicated to excellence in the implementation of food-manufacturing processes and facilities.
Disability Management Services Inc.
1350 Main St., Springfield, MA 01103
(413) 523-1126
www.disabilitymanagementservices.com
Robert Bonsall Jr., President
Founded in 1995, DMS is an independent, full-service third-party administrator and consulting firm, specializing in the management of individual and group disability products. DMS is headquartered in Springfield, with an additional office located in Syracuse, N.Y., and employs more than 200 professional associates.
Environmental Compliance Services Inc.
588 Silver St., Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 789-3530
www.ecsconsult.com
Mark Hellstein, CEO
For more than 25 years, ECS has specialized in environmental site assessments; testing for asbestos, lead, indoor air quality, and mold; drilling and subsurface investigations; and emergency response management.
Hannoush Jewelers Inc.
1655 Boston Road, Unit B7, Springfield, MA 01129
(888) 325-3935
www.hannoush.com
Norman Hannoush, CEO
Since it opened its first store in 1980, Hannoush Jewelers has grown its network to more than 50 company-owned and franchised locations throughout the U.S. The chain operates under a philosophy of family ownership and personal attention to detail, and boasts more than 400 professionally trained employees.
Insurance Center Of New England
1070 Suffield St., Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 781-2410
www.icnegroup.com
Dean Florian, President
In operation since 1866, Insurance Center of New England Group (ICNE Group) is a locally owned, independent insurance agency, providing full-service insurance solutions for individuals and businesses. It operates six locations throughout Massachusetts.
Jet Industries Inc.
307 Silver St., Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 781-2010
Michael Turrini, President
Jet Industries manufactures aircraft engines, parts, and equipment, as well as turbines and turbine generator sets and parts, aircraft power systems, flight instrumentation, and aircraft landing and braking systems.
The Gaudreau Group
1984 Boston Road, Wilbraham, MA 01095
(800) 750-3534
www.gaudreaugroup.com
Jules Gaudreau Jr., President
The Gaudreau Group is an insurance and financial-services agency serving neighboring families and businesses since 1921. It offers a consultative approach to assessing needs and risks and then offering a custom solution.
Joseph Freedman Co. Inc.
115 Stevens St., Springfield, MA 01104
(888) 677-7818
www.josephfreedmanco.com
John Freedman, president
Founded in 1891, the company provides industrial scrap-metal recycling, specializing in aluminum, copper, nickel alloys, and aircraft scrap, and has two facilities in Springfield — a 120,000-square-foot indoor ferrous facility, and a 60,000-square-foot chopping operation.
Kittredge Equipment Co.
100 Bowles Road, Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 304-4100
www.kittredgeequipment.com
Wendy Webber, CEO
Serving a variety of establishments and institutions for more than 80 years, Kittredge is a one-stop, full-service equipment and supplies dealership for the food service industry, with three showroom locations — in Agawam, Natick, and Williston, Vt.
Marcotte Ford Sales
1025 Main St., Holyoke, MA 01040
(800) 923-9810
www.marcotteford.com
Bryan Marcotte, President
The dealership sells new Ford vehicles as well as pre-owned cars, trucks, and SUVs, and features a full service department. Marcotte has achieved the President’s Award, one of the most prestigious honors given to dealerships by Ford Motor Co., on multiple occasions over the past decade.
Maybury Material Handling
90 Denslow Road, East Longmeadow, MA 01028
(413) 525-4216
www.maybury.com
John Maybury, President
Since 1976, Maybury Material Handling has been designing, supplying, and servicing all types of material-handling equipment throughout New England. Maybury provides customers in a wide range of industries with solutions to move, lift, and store their parts and products.
Mental Health Association Inc.
995 Worthington St., Springfield, MA 01109
(413) 734-5376
www.mhainc.org
Linda Williams, Executive Director
The Mental Health Assoc. Inc. provides residential and support services to enhance the quality of life for individuals challenged with mental impairments. Affordable quality housing, advocacy, and public education are part of the agency’s dedication to empowering individuals to develop their fullest potential.
Rocky’s Hardware Inc.
40 Island Pond Road, Springfield, MA 01118
(413) 781-1650
www.rockys.com
Rocco Falcone II, President
With locations throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, the family-run business founded in 1926 is a fully stocked, convenient source for not only typical hardware-store items but also a line of goods for the home, yard, and garden.
Sarat Ford Sales Inc.
245 Springfield St., Agawam, MA 01001
(888) 254-2911
saratford.dealerconnection.com
John Sarat Jr., CEO
Founded in 1929, Sarat has grown to become the largest Ford dealership in Western Mass. The third-generation business sells a wide variety of new and used vehicles and boasts a 24-bay service center with a $1 million parts inventory, and has received Ford’s Distinguished Achievement Award for excellent customer service multiple times.
Savage Sports Corp.
100 Springdale Road, Westfield, MA 01085
(413) 568-7001
www.savagearms.com
Albert Kasper, President
Founded in 1995, Savage Sports Corp. designs and manufactures center-fire rifles, rim-fire rifles, shotguns, and muzzleloaders for the hunting and shooting sports industries. It also offers firearms, ranges, bullet traps, and accessories.
Specialty Bolt & Screw Inc.
235 Bowles Road, Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 789-6700
www.specialtybolt.com
Alan Crosby, CEO
Founded in 1977, Specialty Bolt & Screw Inc. is a distributor of innovative fastener solutions. The company has engineering resources on staff to help determine the optimum fastener for each application, and utilizes state-of-the-art technology along with more than 30 years of experience to help clients achieve their objectives.
Spectrum Analytical Inc.
11 Almgren Dr., Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 789-9018
Dr. Hanibal Tayeh, CEO
For more than a decade, Spectrum Analytical Inc. has provided quantitative analysis of soil, water, and, more recently, air samples, as well as petroleum products. Consulting firms, industries, municipalities, universities, and the public sector are among the constituencies that make up the client list.
Springfield College
263 Alden St., Springfield, MA 01109
(413) 748-3000
www.springfieldcollege.edu
Dr. Richard Flynn, CEO
Founded in 1885, Springfield College is a private, independent, coeducational, four-year college offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs with its Humanics philosophy — educating students in spirit, mind, and body for leadership in service to others.
Tighe & Bond Inc.
53 Southampton Road, Westfield, MA 01085
(413) 562-1600
www.tighebond.com
David Pinsky, President
Celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2011, Tighe & Bond specializes in environmental engineering, focusing on water, wastewater, solid-waste, and hazardous-waste issues, and provides innovative engineering services to public and private clients around the country and overseas.
Titan USA Enterprises Inc.
140 Baldwin St., West Springfield, MA 01089
(888) 482-6872
www.titanman.com
Ralph Colby, CEO
For almost four decades, Titan USA Enterprises has served industrial distributors as a manufacturer of premium-quality, solid-carbide, high-speed steel, and cobalt cutting tools.
United Personnel Services Inc.
1331 Main St., Springfield, MA 01103
(413) 736-0800
www.unitedpersonnel.com
Mary Ellen Scott, President
United provides a full range of staffing services, including temporary staffing and full-time placement, on-site project management, and strategic recruitment in the Springfield, Hartford, and Northampton areas, specializing in administrative, professional, medical, and light-industrial staff.
Universal Plastics Corp.
75 Whiting Farms Road, Holyoke, MA 01040
(800) 553-0120
www.universalplastics.com
Joseph Peters, CEO
Since 1965, Universal Plastics has been a leading force in the custom thermoforming industry. It specializes in precision custom thermoforming, a plastic-manufacturing process that converts a sheet of plastic into a highly detailed finished product with less tooling investment than other plastic molding processes.
Valley Communications Systems Inc.
201 First Ave., Chicopee, MA 01020
(413) 592-4136
www.valleycommunications.com
Edward Tremble, President
Valley is a diversified communications company serving New England with broadband TV distribution systems, satellite-dish installations, data and voice cabling, computer interactive whiteboards, data/video projection equipment and systems, videoconference room design, telephone systems, sound systems, security systems, and AV equipment.
W.F. Young Inc.
302 Benton Dr., East Longmeadow, MA 01028
(800) 628-9653
www.absorbine.com
Tyler Young, CEO
This family-run business prides itself on offering a variety of high-quality products that can effectively improve the well-being of both people and horses with its Absorbine brands.
Whalley Computer Associates Inc.
One Whalley Way, Southwick, MA 01077
(413) 569-4200
www.wca.com
John Whalley, President
WCA is a locally owned family business that has evolved from a hardware resale and service group in the 1970s and 1980s into a company that now focuses on lowering the total cost of ownership of technology and productivity enhancement for its customers. Whalley carries name-brand computers as well as low-cost performance compatibles.
YMCA of Greater Springfield Inc.
275 Chestnut St., Springfield, MA 01104
(413) 739-6951
www.springfieldy.org
Kirk Smith, CEO
The YMCA focuses on youth development, with child-care, educational, and enrichment programs; on healthy living, with programs in exercise, fitness, and nutrition; and on social responsibility, with scholarships and social-services programs. Also includes the Scantic Valley Y Family Center in Wilbraham.
REVENUE GROWTH
ABIDE INC.
P.O. Box 886, East Longmeadow, MA 01028
(800) 696-2243
www.abideinc.com
Frank Tilli, CEO
With more than 14 years of experience, Abide is an environmental contracting and restoration firm using the latest equipment and technology. It provides abatement services to remove environmental hazards, as well as general contracting services to rebuild and restore facilities following remediation.
Acme Metals & Recycling Inc.
64 Napier St., Springfield, MA 01104
(413) 737-3112
www.acmerecycling.com
George Sachs, President
For more than 70 years, Acme Metals & Recycling has been a leader in state-of-the-art recycling services, offering consultations, on-site evaluations, plant dismantling, demolition services, and more. It also provides steel mills, paper mills, foundries, and overseas markets with valuable materials recycled from its facilities.
American International College
1000 State St., Springfield, MA 01109
(800) 242-3142
www.aic.edu
Vincent Maniaci, President
Launched in 1885, AIC is a private, coeducational, four-year institution in the geographic center of Springfield. Liberal arts serves as the core in all its academic offerings, and the college is organized into schools of Arts, Education, and Sciences; Business Administration; Health Sciences; and Continuing and Extended Studies.
Benchmark Carbide
572 St. James Ave., Springfield MA 01109
(413) 732-7470
www.benchmarkcarbide.com
Paul St. Louis, President
A manufacturer of carbide end mills and reamers, Benchmark (a division of Custom Carbide Corp.) sells its products to distributors throughout the continental U.S. and Canada. Its extensive line of products includes its best-selling aluminum series and its patented variable-helix end mills.
Braman Chemical Enterprises Inc.
147 Almgren Dr., Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 732-9009
www.braman.biz
Gerald Lazarus, President
Braman has been serving New England since 1890, using state-of-the-art pest elimination procedures for commercial and residential customers. The company has offices in Agawam, Worcester, and Lee, as well as Hartford and New Haven, Conn.
Complete Healthcare Solutions Inc.
1497 North Main St., Palmer, MA 01069
(800) 250-8687
www.completehealthcaresolutions.com
Michael Penna, CEO
Founded in 1994, CHS provides affordable software solutions for small to mid-sized health care practices. The company helps customers with electronic medical records, practice-management software, medical billing, document management, data security, and a host of other services.
Consolidated Health Plans Inc.
2077 Roosevelt Ave., Springfield, MA 01104
(413) 733-4540
www.consolidatedhealthplan.com
Kevin Saremi, President
Established in 1993, Consolidated Health Plans is a leader in providing third-party claims administration of medical, dental, disability, flex, accident, and life insurance programs for employees and college students throughout the country.
Convergent Solutions Inc.
9501 Post Office Park, Wilbraham, MA 01095
(413) 509-1000
www.convergentsolutions.com
Arlene Kelly, CEO
A health care billing solutions provider founded in 2006, Convergent Solutions provides hardware and software products that help eliminate human error in medical billing processes, thus helping bring down the cost of health care.
Dietz & Co. Architects Inc.
17 Hampden St., Springfield, MA 01103
(413) 733-6798
www.dietzarch.com
Kerry Dietz, CEO
Dietz & Co. provides a full range of architectural services in the public and private sectors, including work in housing, education, heath care, commercial facilities, historic preservation, and sustainable projects. The firm seeks to bring the benefits of integrated design into all its projects, from individual buildings to entire neighborhoods.
Duval Precision Grinding Inc.
940 Sheridan St., Chicopee, MA 01022
(413) 593-3060
Ronald Duval, CEO
Since its inception in 1988, Duval Precision Grinding has specialized in precision grinding, metal coating, and engraving.
EOS/Proshred
75 Post Office Park, Suite 7401, Wilbraham, MA 01095
(413) 596-5479
www.proshred.com
Joseph Kelly, CEO
Proshred is a paper-shredding company providing secure on-site document shredding and recycling services for safeguarding private information, maintaining legislative compliance, and protecting public image.
The Futures Health Group, LLC
136 Williams St., Springfield, MA 01105
(800) 218-9280
Peter Bittel, CEO
The Futures Health Group provides special education and clinical services and management to 25,000 students and individuals. Bittel has more than 35 years of clinical and executive leadership experience in the areas of special education, rehabilitation, and developmental disabilities.
Gandara Center
147 Norman St., West Springfield, MA 01089
(413) 736-8329
www.gandaracenter.org
Dr. Henery East-Trou, CEO
Focusing on the Latino/Hispanic community, Gandara Center provides substance-abuse recovery, mental-health, and housing services for men, women, children, adolescents, and families throughout the Pioneer Valley.
Kittredge Equipment Co.
100 Bowles Road, Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 304-4100
www.kittredgeequipment.com
Wendy Webber, CEO
Serving a variety of establishments and institutions for more than 80 years, Kittredge is a one-stop, full-service equipment and supplies dealership for the food service industry, with three showroom locations — in Agawam, Natick, and Williston, Vt.
Litron Inc.
207 Bowles Road, Agawam, MA 01001
(413) 789-0700
www.litron.com
Mark Plasso, President
Litron was founded in 1997 as a laser welding and laser systems company, but has grown to incorporate four distinct, yet interrelated, divisions: open-air laser welding, laser systems, microwave electronic packaging, and glovebox hermetic sealing. The company services the aerospace, medical, and industrial markets.
Marcotte Ford Sales
1025 Main St., Holyoke, MA 01040
(800) 923-9810
www.marcotteford.com
Bryan Marcotte, President
The dealership sells new Ford vehicles as well as pre-owned cars, trucks, and SUVs, and features a full service department. Marcotte has achieved the President’s Award, one of the most prestigious honors given to dealerships by Ford Motor Co., on multiple occasions over the past decade.
The Markens Group
1350 Main St., Suite 1508, Springfield, MA 01103
(413) 686-9199
www.markens.com
Ben Markens, President
Markens has guided hundreds of businesses toward excellence since 1988. It provides services in strategic management, profit planning, sales and marketing, mergers and acquisitions, and more.
Moriarty & Primack, P.C.
One Monarch Place, Springfield, MA 01144
(413) 739-1800
www.mass-cpa.com
Jay Primack, CEO
While audit and tax services continue to be a dominant aspect of the accounting firmís business, practice professionals also provide a wide range of services in the areas of tax-planning and tax-compliance services.
NetLogix Inc.
181 Notre Dame St., Westfield, MA 01085
(413) 586-2777
www.netlgx.com
Marco Liquori, President
NetLogix offers a wide range of IT services, including equipment sales; managed network services and remote monitoring; network design, installation, and management; network security and firewalls; disaster-recovery and business-continuity services; VoIP; wi-fi; and more.
NUVO Bank & Trust Co.
1500 Main St., Springfield, MA 01115
(413) 787-2700
www.nuvobank.com
M. Dale Janes, CEO
Chartered in 2007, NUVO is an independent, locally owned bank that provides loans, deposits, and cash-management services for both personal-banking and business-banking needs.
O’ConnelL CARE AT HOME & HEALTHCARE STAFFING
14 Bobala Road, Suite 1B, Holyoke, MA 01040
(413) 533-1030
www.opns.com
Francis O’Connell, President
For more than two decades, O’Connell Care at Home and Healthcare Staffing has grown to deliver the a wide range of home health care and staffing services across the Pioneer Valley. Services range from nursing care and geriatric health care management to advocacy and transportation.
PC Enterprises / Entre Computer
138 Memorial Ave., West Springfield, MA 01089
(413) 736-2112
www.pc-enterprises.com
Norman Fiedler, CEO
PC Enterprises (d/b/a Entre Computer) assists organizations with procuring, installing, troubleshooting, servicing, and maximizing the value of technology. In business since 1983, it and continues to evolve and grow as a lead provider for many businesses, health care providers, retailers, and state, local, and education entities.
Pioneer Spine & Sports Physicians
271 Park St., West Springfield, MA 01089
(413) 785-1153
www.spinesports.com
Dr. Scott Cooper, CEO
The practice specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of neurologic and musculoskeletal disorders. While best-known for expertise in sports medicine and spine care, it treats a wide variety of conditions. In addition to routine non-operative care, the practice also provides the latest in minimally invasive and reconstructive surgery of the spine.
Robert F. Scott Co., Inc.
467 Longmeadow St., Longmeadow, MA 01106
(413) 567-7089
Leonard Rising III, President
Robert F. Scott Co. Inc. (known as Longmeadow Garage) is a locally owned and operated full-service gasoline and automotive service station. Its staff includes ASE-certified technicians well-versed in all makes and models.
Samuel’s
1000 West Columbus Ave., Springfield, MA 01105
(413) 732-7267
www.samuelstavern.com
Edward Grimaldi, CEO
Located at the Basketball Hall of Fame, Samuels is a sports bar that takes as its motto “It’s better to eat in a bar than to drink in a restaurant,” and backs it up with a menu strong on new American cuisine, seafood, tapas, and an extensive selection of wine and other drinks.
Sarat Ford Sales Inc.
245 Springfield St., Agawam, MA 01001
(888) 254-2911
saratford.dealerconnection.com
John Sarat Jr., CEO
Founded in 1929, Sarat has grown to become the largest Ford dealership in Western Mass. The third-generation business sells a wide variety of new and used vehicles and boasts a 24-bay service center with a $1 million parts inventory, and has received Ford’s Distinguished Achievement Award for excellent customer service multiple times.
Springfield College
263 Alden St., Springfield, MA 01109
(413) 748-3000
www.springfieldcollege.edu
Dr. Richard Flynn, CEO
Founded in 1885, Springfield College is a private, independent, coeducational, four-year college offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs with its Humanics philosophy — educating students in spirit, mind, and body for leadership in service to others.
United Personnel Services Inc.
1331 Main St., Springfield, MA 01103
(413) 736-0800
www.unitedpersonnel.com
Mary Ellen Scott, President
United provides a full range of staffing services, including temporary staffing and full-time placement, on-site project management, and strategic recruitment in the Springfield, Hartford, and Northampton areas, specializing in administrative, professional, medical, and light-industrial staff.
Valley Communications Systems Inc.
201 First Ave., Chicopee, MA 01020
(413) 592-4136
www.valleycommunications.com
Edward Tremble, President
Valley is a diversified communications company serving New England with broadband TV distribution systems, satellite-dish installations, data and voice cabling, computer interactive whiteboards, data/video projection equipment and systems, videoconference room design, telephone systems, sound systems, security systems, and AV equipment.
YWCA Of Western Massachusetts
One Clough St., Springfield, MA 01118
(413) 733-7100
www.springfieldy.org
Mary Johnson, Executive Director
The YWCA is a worldwide organization seeking to bring women of diverse backgrounds together to work toward a common vision of peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all people. The YWCA of Western Massachusetts is a private, not-for-profit charitable corporation and a certified woman-owned business.
New UMass President Says That’s a Big Part of His Job Description
UMass President Robert Caret at the site of the high-performance computing center in Holyoke.
Robert Caret said he was repeating a joke, and while his comments drew many laughs, overall, he finds little humor in what he was saying.
He was talking with business leaders in Greater Springfield about the medical school in Worcester, how it carries the name UMass in front of those two words, and wondering, sort of, why that’s the case.
“The medical school’s budget is almost $1 billion, and only 4% is state-supported,” Caret, the recently installed president of the five-campus University of Massachusetts, told his audience over breakfast at the Springfield Sheraton. “I joked to the governor’s team that I could get more than 4% if I sold the name to Gillette or EMC or Peter Pan. Why do we have Massachusetts on the label if Massachusetts isn’t paying for it?”
Obtaining better support from the Commonwealth is just one of the many goals and aspirations Caret brings with him to his office in Boston as he takes the helm at a public institution ranked as the 19th-best university in the world in the Times of London 2011 World Reputation Rankings, but one that has historically received much less respect (in the form of funding) from the state in which it plays such a key role in economic development and job creation — $5 billion annually, by his estimates.
Overall, only 23% of the roughly $2.6 billion for the system comes from the state, he went on, adding that options for the rest are few, with tuition being the primary source. And as tuition rises, which it has steadily over the past few decades, public schools must devote more resources to student aid, said Caret, while also contributing more to new capital projects and relying more on endowments to meet the bottom line.
“We’re becoming a private institution,” he explained, adding a pause for effect. “That’s the model of a private university — high tuition, high aid, build your own buildings, raise your own money, 70% of your revenue comes from tuition. That’s a private university, and that’s where we’re all going.
“And the problem if we all go private is we’ll all provide high quality,” he continued, “but a lot of people aren’t going to get in, because you can’t run a 70,000-student enterprise using that model. You can run Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Amherst using that model, but not a school this large.”
Efforts to change that equation and improve such numbers are part of a complex job description that Caret attempted to simplify down to a few overriding tasks, with “telling and selling” being perhaps the most important. “That’s a big part of what I do,” he explained. “It’s all about getting out and telling the story.”
He would add another action verb to that list — listening, which he says is an important attribute and a big part of the process of making the university more of the force that economic-development officials statewide, and especially in the regions near the five campuses, want and need it to be.
Caret did copious amounts of telling, selling, and listening on a recent four-day, 400-mile bus tour of the state that took him from Adams to Buzzards Bay. Called “On the Road Together,” so-named to drive home the point that the state and university must travel together if they intend to get where they both want to go, the bus tour made stops locally in Pittsfield, downtown Springfield, the Smith & Wesson facility on Roosevelt Avenue, the high-performance computing center and intermodal transportation center, both in Holyoke, and the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) on the Amherst campus.
BusinessWest rode on the bus for several legs of the junket, seizing an opportunity to talk with Caret about this latest stop on a 30-year career in higher education (all of it spent in the public arena), his vision for the university, and the strategic plan he’s creating to better tell the university’s story and drive home his points about the ominous trends unfolding.
“We need society to understand that they’re closing the doors to education,” he said. “If government doesn’t step up, we’ll continue to build quality, but as we build quality, we’ll become more privatized, and as we become more privatized, access becomes the thing that suffers, and we just don’t want that to happen.”
Back to His Routes
Caret calls it the “Rodney Dangerfield effect.”
That’s the phrase he summoned to describe the situations he’s found himself in at the three stops on his résumé, including the latest.
Elaborating, he said that, at Towson University in Maryland, which he served in many capacities and lastly as president for eight years, the school operated in the very large shadow of Johns Hopkins University, just 20 miles away. And at San Jose State University in California, which he served as president from 1995 to 2003, Stanford was just down the road.
In Massachusetts, Harvard is the iconic private institution, but there are more than a dozen other major private colleges vying for students, media coverage, research money, and the attention of the public.
At Towson and San Jose, Caret said he learned early on that the best strategy wasn’t to try to compete with those institutions, but to complement them. And he intends to take the same approach in the Bay State.
“We want to be in a state of complementation; society needs public, private, two-year, four-year, state universities, community colleges, and universities to handle all its economic and social needs,” he explained. “What we all need to do is decide what piece we do, and how we can do it with high quality.
“And if you look at schools like Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, only about 20% or less of their graduates stay in the state in which those schools reside, because they’re playing largely to an international audience; they take people from all over the world, and they go back all over the world,” he continued. “The University of Massachusetts takes 80% of its students from the state of Massachusetts and 80% of them stay here; we graduate 13,000 or 14,000 new citizens a year who go into the workforce and pay taxes. And all those campuses I’ve been involved with … you may get more startups out of Hopkins, MIT, and Stanford, but 20 years from now, UMass graduates are going to be running those companies because we’re going to permeate the ranks of those companies.”
Beyond these complementation efforts, Claret presided over periods of significant growth at both of his previous stops, career-wise, and gained national acclaim for eliminating race-based graduation disparity at Towson.
Indeed, under his leadership, the six-year graduation rate for all Towson students rose from 60% in 2003 to 75% in 2010. What’s more, the six-year graduation rate for African-American students rose from 48% in 2003 to 76% in 2010.
Caret wasn’t necessarily looking for a new job — although he’s always been receptive to new challenges — when UMass commenced its search for a successor to Jack Wilson last fall. He said he was lured by the opportunity to lead a system, and especially one with a strong research component, something he hadn’t experienced previously. Meanwhile, Boston was also an attraction; he did his undergraduate work there and grew up in New England.
Road Map for Progress
Starting back in the interviewing process, Caret said he’s been doing a lot of “reading, Googling, and learning” about the university, its five campuses — Amherst, Worcester, Boston, Lowell, and Dartmouth — and specific initiatives at those campuses and the communities that surround them. That process has only accelerated since he was hired in July.
“I was given three briefing books on an iPad that were probably a total of 450 pages of briefings on every piece of the UMass system — from campuses to budgets to the high-performance computing center, the stem-cell bank, everything we were doing,” he said. After he was hired, he complemented this reading and learning with roundtable meetings on the various campuses with faculty senates, unions, vice chancellors, deans, student groups, and other constituencies.
The bus trip, which included 24 stops, was, in many ways, a continuation of those research efforts, while also serving as a vehicle — literally and figuratively — for doing more of that telling and selling.
At Smith & Wesson, for example, he learned not only about that company’s expansion initiative and the adding of more than 200 jobs, but also about the many challenges facing area manufacturers — recruitment of talent topping the list — and the university’s efforts to address them while also spurring innovation.
In Holyoke, he spent time with city leaders at the high-performance computing center — a prime example of the university partnering with both private colleges (MIT and Boston University) and the business community — and also learned of that community’s efforts to create an Innovation District and use public transportation to help achieve growth.
Other stops on the tour included the Emerging Energy Technology & Innovation Center at UMass Lowell, a biomanufacturing facility in Fall River, Venture Development Center at UMass Boston, and the medical school itself.
What has he learned?
“There are a lot of similarities in what people are looking for from UMass,” he explained, referring to just the first few legs of his trip in Western Mass. “In North Adams, Pittsfield, Lee, and Springfield, they want more help with economic development, especially with technology transfer; if they have startup companies, they want a workforce to continue to feed those ventures, especially in the new technologies areas like biotech, life sciences, IT, and clean energy. But the further you are away from the main campuses, the harder it is to maintain those relationships.
“The other piece we see is the educational piece itself, which also feeds into workforce,” he continued. “But it also feeds into advanced manufacturing. And the third one is basic quality of life; Springfield, for example, would like to have much more of a cultural linkage with Amherst, and have more of the kinds of things that happen on the campus — like plays and other kinds of performances — in Springfield.”
Moving in the Right Direction
At most of the stops on the tour there was at least one meeting with the local business community, which Caret described as one of the constituencies with which the university must build relationships — and draw support.
Indeed, as he wrapped up his remarks at the Springfield Sheraton, Caret asked those assembled for advocacy in several different forms.
“We’d like some financial advocacy,” he said, meaning monetary support. “But we also need political advocacy, which can be almost as important as financial advocacy. And we’d also like a little emotional advocacy; every once in while, give us a pat on the back or a hug — we’d like to feel good every day about what we’re doing.”
When asked to elaborate on what he wants to accomplish at UMass, Caret listed several of the things he’s achieved at Towson and San Jose State, everything from higher graduation rates to stronger partnerships with business, other colleges (public and private), and the state itself. He also listed stronger linkages between the individual campuses, the regions surrounding them, and individual cities.
Which brought the conversation to the link between the flagship campus in Amherst and Springfield, and efforts in recent years to bolster that relationship and leverage the university’s many assets in a city trying to revitalize and reinvent itself.
“I will be a strong advocate for all of our campuses being aggressive with their local regions — but then you have to define ‘region,’ which becomes more complex,” he explained. “But I do think Amherst and Springfield are a logical pairing.
“If you look at studies from the Brookings Institute and other groups, you’ll find that, in most instances, for a vibrant city, you need a university at the core of its economic focus,” he continued. “And we want to play that role.”
And when asked how he would measure his success rate with his many goals, he again referenced his previous stops and said, “when I’m done here, I want to be able to say the same things I’ve said at the other two campuses.”
Elaborating, he said that, at both Towson and San Jose State, he presided over a number of capital projects that changed the faces of both schools. “I’ve probably done $2 billion worth of infrastructure at the two schools, and more than $1 billion at the last one (Towson), and they hadn’t had a new building in 30 years; it was a transformational change.”
But he is more proud of his success with improving the image of both schools, both in their respective regions and globally.
“At both schools, I raised the image of the campus, I raised the sense of pride among the people working there and graduating from there, and got the world excited about those campuses again; these were schools that were among the best of their breed, but they just weren’t getting the recognition they deserved.
“The biggest thing I’ve done is to revitalize a school, make people feel good about it, and energize the campus,” he continued. “And I’d like to say that about UMass, because if I can do that, then all those other things will happen; the rankings will improve, the funding will improve, the political advocacy will improve, and all the rest will happen.”
Next Stop?
There is no simple strategy for energizing a campus, he told BusinessWest as the bus was pulling into downtown Holyoke for its next stop. But a big part of that equation is that ‘telling-and-selling’ component of his job description.
But it’s also the next step in that process — delivering.
“After the telling and selling, you come back and you produce something and you get people excited,” he said. “You do put your money where your mouth is.”
That’s something both the university and state need to do, adding that sometime soon he’d like to be able to stop making jokes — if that’s what they are — about selling the name on the medical school in Worcester.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
There Are Many Such Matters Involved with ‘the Long Goodbye’
Todd C. Ratner
Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, is a physical and terminal illness that causes difficulties with memory, thinking, and behavior. It is not a normal part of aging.
According to the Alzheimer’s Assoc., there are 10 common warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease:
• Memory changes that disrupt daily life;
• Challenges in planning or solving problems;
• Difficulty completing familiar tasks;
• Confusion with time or place;
• Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships;
• New problems with words in speaking or writing;
• Misplacing things and losing the ability to retrace steps;
• Decreased or poor judgment;
• Withdrawal from work or social activities; and
• Changes in mood and personality.
Alzheimer’s gets worse over time; however, one advantage of a timely diagnosis is that the person living with the disease can often participate in their own estate planning. This allows them to decide who will make medical and financial decisions on their behalf in the later stages of the disease, provided, of course, that they still have the legal capacity — the level of judgment and decision-making ability — needed to sign legal estate-planning documents.
As such, it is imperative that someone diagnosed with Alzheimer’s begin making legal and financial plans as soon as possible, to the extent that they can. If there are any questions as to whether or not your loved one has the necessary legal capacity, a medical provider should be consulted.
The following should be considered immediately in the event that your loved one does not have a current or updated plan in place.
Estate Planning
Estate planning, in its most basic essence, is a process for nominating a trusted person to make medical and financial decisions and planning for the disposition of your assets upon death. Regardless of the size of your estate, there are several essential considerations.
Everyone needs a will, the most basic estate-planning document. It provides for the orderly distribution of your estate upon your death. In Massachusetts, the state has already drafted a will for you, designating that your assets pass in proportions of 50% to your spouse and 50% to your children, so if you want any customization, you’d better have an attorney draft a personalized version for you.
Another essential estate-planning tool is a health care proxy. This document allows a designated person, called a health care agent, to make health-related decisions for you if you become incapacitated and cannot make them yourself. This becomes especially prevalent when Alzheimer’s disease progresses, as your loved one will understand your wishes regarding care and end-of-life decisions.
Another critical estate planning tool is a durable power of attorney. This document gives a person called the attorney-in-fact the ability to handle your financial affairs during your lifetime when you are incapacitated. This will prevent your loved ones from having to go to court and obtain the legal right to pay your bills and handle your finances on your behalf when your disease progresses.
Estate planning is a broad term that can encompass many things, and there are more estate-planning choices available today than ever before. You may also consider various trusts to provide for the continued financial support of your family members after you lose the ability to care for them yourself.
Long-term Care Financing
While most families prefer to keep their loved one at home as long as possible, it is common for an individual with Alzheimer’s to have to go to a nursing home when family members can no longer provide the necessary round-the-clock care. Due to the characteristics of the disease, Alzheimer’s residents typically reside in nursing homes longer than other residents. Since the average cost of a nursing-home placement in Massachusetts is approximately $10,000 per month, long-term care financing is a critical component of the planning process for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease. As such, effective planning for long-term care financing is a must to preserve your family’s assets against being drained by a nursing home.
The available options to pay for nursing-home care include private payment, long-term care insurance, and Medicaid. Private payment can quickly evaporate a lifetime of savings and significantly limit the amount passed to designated heirs, so it is generally preferred to find an alternative form of payment.
Long-term care insurance is a wonderful way to pay for a nursing home stay, but one must be insurable in order to be eligible to purchase such insurance, which precludes most people living with Alzheimer’s. It may also be expensive, thereby making it an unaffordable option.
Many people think that they can simply give away their money to family and friends freely. They often don’t understand that complicated Medicaid laws include a specific look-back period on all assets, and such transfers will delay Medicaid eligibility, requiring you or your loved one to find alternative financial resources until the waiting period is satisfied. Without proper planning, this delay could financially devastate your family, but Medicaid planning or asset preservation can be accomplished by properly transferring assets in accordance with Medicaid laws, and an estate or elder-law attorney can guide you through that process. It may be your best way to prepare for an anticipated nursing-home stay.
Even if a loved one is afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease and does not have an updated plan, it may not be too late. However, it is important to see a qualified estate-planning and elder-law attorney as soon as possible to ensure that the ever-changing and intricate laws and requirements regarding estate planning and long-term care planning are followed. Such an advisor is the best resource for determining how to effectively draft an effective estate plan that can help preserve your family’s resources.
You can be a voice and an advocate for the 5.4 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease. The local office of the Massachusetts/New Hampshire Chapter will be hosting events throughout the month of November to celebrate and promote awareness of the disease. Log onto alz.org/manh to find out more.
Todd C. Ratner is an estate-planning, elder-law, business, and real-estate attorney with the regional law firm Bacon Wilson, P.C. He serves as the co-chair for the Alzheimer’s Assoc. Tri-County (Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin) Partnership and is a member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and the Estate Planning Council of Hampden County. He is also a recipient of Boston Magazine’s Super Lawyers Rising Stars distinction from 2007 to 2010; (413) 781-0560; baconwilson.com
Seven Steps to Using LinkedIn to Promote Yourself Effectively
Christine Pilch
Statistics published by Quantcast Corp. in October show that nearly 17 million U.S. LinkedIn users visit the site at least once weekly, 70% of them are age 35 or older, 75% of them have undergraduate or graduate degrees, and 68% have incomes exceeding $60,000. This proves that LinkedIn users are generally affluent and well-educated.
So what are all these people doing on LinkedIn? Another study by Lab42 in August said that top-level executives use it primarily for industry networking and promoting their own businesses, while mid-level executives use it for keeping in touch and industry networking. Entry-level people use it primarily for job search and co-worker networking.
Unfortunately, some people join LinkedIn simply because they were invited by a colleague and felt obligated to do so. They entered the minimally required information, and bam, their profile was created. From that point on, their account remains neglected, and they demonstrate that they’re not serious about this social network and perhaps convey the message that they’re a luddite who isn’t up to speed on contemporary networking techniques.
How can you use LinkedIn to your best advantage?
Determine Your Goals
Perhaps your goal is to find a new job. You may feel stagnant, undervalued, or bored in your current situation. If you want to find a new job, LinkedIn can be your golden ticket. Recruiters and human resources personnel have become adept at utilizing LinkedIn to search for and find qualified candidates, and they are reaching out directly to people who indicate that they are open to job inquiries. Two key components to successfully leveraging LinkedIn to land a new job are having a complete and impressive profile and making sure that your profile is open to accepting messages from everyone, not just your connections.
Perhaps you want to promote your services or company. LinkedIn is the professional standard for online networking these days, so it is the perfect venue to promote yourself. But a word of caution: beware promoting your company at the exclusion of yourself within your profile. Your profile is the place to show what you personally bring to the table. Even if you’re a consultant and you are the company, make sure that viewers know what you can do for them with action words that speak in terms of ‘you’ instead of ‘I.’ The tenants of basic marketing messaging apply here, so if you don’t understand how to craft a proper marketing message, find someone who is good at it to help you.
Perhaps you are unemployed. LinkedIn is a no-brainer if you’re in this situation. It’s usually the first place most recruiters and hiring managers go to check someone out, so it is imperative to have a 100% complete profile. Take the time to create a summary that sells you on your merits, draft descriptive narratives for all your past experience, and list your complete educational history, so people from your past can find you. Remember that, when people search, their results come from their expanded LinkedIn network only, not all of LinkedIn, so it is also especially important for you to expand your network, because everyone is a potential job-referral source for you.
Enhance Your Profile
LinkedIn is not the place to be humble. Provide concrete proof of the value you can bring to a new organization by listing past key accomplishments. For example, don’t just say that you can save an organization money; demonstrate it by listing specific actions you took, the positive results they generated, and the timeframe in which all this occurred.
Use a current photo that shows you dressed the way that people see you in your employment environment. Bankers and accountants should be in suit and tie if that’s how people see them. A chef should be in her coat. If in doubt, dress for the position you aspire to rather than the position you currently have. Remember that this is a professional network, so unless you’re a baseball player, don’t display a photo of you in a cap.
Use the line under your name to highlight the benefit you can bring to an organization. Surely, “experienced leader with 15 years developing top-notch sales teams and growing businesses an average of 30% per year” will gain more attention than “sales manager.” Use this prime real estate to tell a prospective employer or client what you can do for them rather than simply listing a boring job title.
Your status is another easy way to remind people about your core competencies and remain top of mind. Whatever you put in that box lands in your connections’ newsfeed and in their e-mail digest, so make sure that it demonstrates your professional capabilities. “Cleaning my desk” is an irrelevant and improper message here, while “drafting an updated will for a newly divorced mother” lets people know specifically what you do.
Use Add-ons
LinkedIn has sections that you can add to highlight awards, additional languages, patents, projects, certifications, and test scores, in addition to other things. There is now a section where you can list your charitable and volunteer experience. You can add videos, presentations, reading lists, and articles. You also have the ability to customize your LinkedIn profile by rearranging the sections so that your most important credentials appear at the top. This can be helpful, for example, for a recent grad with little work experience to highlight relevant courses.
Get Recommendations
Few professionals are hired these days without a reference check, so consider the upfront benefit to a prospective employer when your peers or employers sing your praises on LinkedIn. You can talk until you’re blue in the face about how wonderful you are, but when someone else says it, there is extra credibility. Recommendations are also a point of distinction, as many LinkedIn users don’t bother to solicit them.
Engage
LinkedIn is, after all, a social network, and being social means engaging with others, not just lurking or broadcasting. LinkedIn provides plenty of opportunities to communicate with other members, so read your news feed, and comment on and like connections’ statuses. Reach out with a congratulatory note when someone gets promoted or changes jobs. Join and participate in Groups. This means reading the discussion items, posting relevant topics, and participating, not just collecting logos to decorate your profile.
You should also check out the Answers component. You can find it under ‘More’ in the site’s primary navigation. Once there, you can ask and answer questions posed by your network. This is a great way to demonstrate expertise and solicit advice, and it helps to raise awareness of you within the LinkedIn community.
Fact Check and Update
Spelling errors and improper punctuation and grammar on LinkedIn make you look bad, so carefully proofread everything before posting it, and correct any errors promptly. If writing isn’t your strong suit, make sure you have an editor review your profile for problems. LinkedIn allows you about 15 minutes to change your discussion entries, too, so use this time wisely. Also, be sure that all referenced dates, accomplishments, and facts are accurate. Toot your own horn, but don’t lie.
Keep your profile updated, and remain an active participant within the network. The value of LinkedIn lies in its innate ability to connect people, so if you don’t participate, you’re not adding value to your network. In addition, keep your profile updated. Review it regularly, compare it against competitors or people who have the job you want, and continue to refine it.
LinkedIn Don’ts
Along with all the good suggestions above, it is also easy to damage your reputation on LinkedIn. Here are a few things to avoid:
Don’t spam your network. Unsolicited communication is considered spam by most recipients. Don’t be the guy who interrupts his network with unwanted promotional messages. Everybody is on LinkedIn to sell something, but overt sales are generally not welcome. It’s better to demonstrate your expertise and generate desire for your skills via engagement.
Don’t use a logo or graphic for your photo. This is prohibited in LinkedIn’s terms of service. LinkedIn wants real faces of actual people connected to its membership.
Don’t argue, abuse, attack, or use foul language anywhere on LinkedIn. Such activity is not tolerated, and you can be reported and kicked out of the network. Can you afford to be ostracized from the largest and most influential professional network online today?
LinkedIn is too powerful for professionals at any level to ignore these days. There is a general expectation that you are there, and if someone is looking to fact-check or gauge your credibility and ability to perform in a particular capacity, you’d better have a strong presence there, or LinkedIn makes it really easy for them to find your competitors and move on down the line.
Christine Pilch is a partner with Grow My Company and a social-media marketing strategist. She trains businesses to utilize LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogging, and other social-media tools to grow, and she collaborates with professional-service firms to get results through innovative positioning and branding strategies; (413) 537.2474; linkedin.com/in/christinepilch; growmyco.com
A chart of the region’s behavioral health centers
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Westfield Scores Big with Planned Corporate Expansion at Barnes Airport
From left, Mike Burns, Richard Sullivan, former Westfield mayor and current state secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, and Gov. Deval Patrick.
With a couple of gleaming white jets as a backdrop, the event in Hangar 2 had all of the customary dignitaries in attendance, from Gov. Deval Patrick, who remembered fondly his use of a G5 while working in the private sector, to U.S. Sens. Scott Brown and John Kerry. And there was good reason to celebrate: the planned new facility will be a $20 million, state-of-the-art service hangar, adding 100 new jobs to the company’s operations in Westfield, a nearly 80% increase in its current workforce.
Talking to BusinessWest after the event, Knapik said that Gulfstream had been looking at their other existing locations throughout the U.S. as possible sites, and he said that he was at times fearful of losing out to Appleton, Wis., the location of another Gulfstream service center.
“If you look at that location on Google Earth,” he said of the company’s facility at Outagamie County Regional Airport, “you just see how much geographic space there is there.”
But, as every one of the speakers at the ceremony mentioned, it was the existing local workforce that was the ultimate factor in Gulfstream’s decision to choose Westfield.
Also joining the mayor and governor to address the attendees were Mark Burns, president of Gulfstream Product Support; Fran Ahern, general manager of the Westfield facility; state Sen. Michael Knapik, and State Reps. John Olver and Don Humason, the latter of whom is also the chair of the Mass. Legislative Aviation Caucus.
Ahern credited his staff for their commitment to a job well done, with customer service as an equal priority. And the executives at Gulfstream had also taken notice.
“This is one of the strongest facilities that we have,” Burns said that day. “It is because of our employees. Our employee team is customer-committed to continuous improvement, and that has been a key factor in our decision to expand here.
“Throughout our product-support network, our team has continued to build and grow,” he continued. “And our customers tell us repeatedly that this team of people, and our others that service and support them every day, is the number-one product-support organization in all of business aviation.”
It isn’t often that the strength of a company’s workforce can tilt the scales in such a way, but with such sentiments as those from Gulfstream’s brass, and the tireless efforts of Westfield’s politicians, the future at Barnes just got an all clear for takeoff.
Up, Up, and Away
As a company, Gulfstream itself is ready for liftoff. The Savannah, Ga. headquarters is currently undergoing a seven-year expansion plan, estimated at $500 million, with a proposed 1,000 new jobs, increasing its size by 15%.
What started out in the late 1950s as Grumman Aircraft Engineering — with a new name inspired by the current that flows along the coast of Florida, a favored spot of then-company executives — Gulfstream jets are considered the last word in aviation. As of last year, Gulfstreams are in operation with one-quarter of all Fortune 500 companies.
Constantly updating the technical prowess of its aircraft means that Gulfstream is moving at nearly sonic speed. Actually, its two newest models, the G280 and the G650, are capable of Mach .85 and Mach .925, respectively. The company has more than 2,200 jets in service presently, Burns said, adding that that there are already 200 orders for the G650, the company’s largest, fastest, and most expensive craft.
The need for the expansion in Westfield is a direct result of this stratospheric success and the need for service for those latest models. “And simply put,” Burns said to the crowd, “we need more space. We need more hangars to work on these airplanes. And we need more technicians — highly skilled employees to help us keep these airplanes flying each and every day.”
In a printed memo from the company, Burns explained how the expansion is in direct response to the company’s high-flying success. “In the second quarter,” he wrote, “we had the largest number of orders for new aircraft since the economic downturn began. At the same time, flying hours have increased, resulting in record-setting service demand. This expansion is part of our long-range plan to ensure our service network remains well-positioned to serve our customers and our growing installed fleet.”
Groundbreaking for the new, 100,000-square-foot facility, to be built adjacent to the existing 85,000-square-foot Gulfstream branch in Westfield, is slated for next April. Burns said that the hope is for the hangar to be fully operational by early 2013, and the company is already in the process of hiring for those new jobs.
“The new 100 jobs that we’ll be adding are high-quality, high-paying jobs,” he said. “These are the kinds of jobs that lift up communities. These are the types of jobs that add to the economic base of a community — not just here in Westfield, but the surrounding communities.”
Net Jets
This latest good fortune at Barnes improves upon an already-solid operation. The Mass. Statewide Airport Economic Impact Study states that the airport generates $69 million of total economic output for the region.
In addition to everyone who was given credit for their efforts, and rousing rounds of applause on the day of the ceremony, Westfield city officials have been tireless in their quest to bring this expansion to the Whip City. After securing a $1.4 million Economic Development Incentive Program tax credit from Beacon Hill, Westfield passed a $4.2 million tax-incentive financing plan for Gulfstream with the goal of bringing this project to fruition. While the company will save money throughout that 15-year time period, the city can still expect to receive $4 million in new property taxes.
Additionally, Patrick announced a $3 million grant from the state DOT’s aeronautics division to the city of Westfield to, in his words, “support Gulfstream’s growth through improvements in the roadways along the airport perimeter and a new parking apron.”
And while the event in Hangar 2 had all the trappings of the standard ribbon-cutting ceremony, the VIPs and politicians were outnumbered by the men and women wearing Gulfstream uniforms. As all the men on the panel said, the city worked hard to get the new facility, as did the State House. But one of the biggest reasons for the expansion in Westfield was due to the track record that this workforce can boast.
Ahern summed up his comments at the podium by mentioning the 13 years that Gulfstream has been at Barnes, and the excellent working relationship with the city and airport managerial staff. “Our values, our internal culture of continuous improvement, our employees’ continued desire to exceed our customers’ expectations,” he added, “have all allowed us to be here today.”
In response to the jet-set brass seated next to him, Knapik finished his remarks by noting, “mostly, what I want to say to the men and women who perform the work up here is thank you. One of the consistent messages that I’d always heard from Fran and the folks at Gulfstream is how well you do your job. It is because of you that we are here today.”
