Home 2011
DBA Certificates Departments

The following Business Certificates and Trade Names were issued or renewed during the month of December 2011.

AMHERST

1Tek
310 Market Hill Road
Gregg Hutchins

Acupuncture Works
479 West St.
Linda Robinson-Hidas

Amherst Corner
18 North Plesant St.
Mohamed Nagooradumai

Integrated Strategies Group
88 Grantwood Dr.
Zvi Rozen

Moving Mentor Inc.
123 Maplewood Circle
Barbara Perman

Spyntegrity
35 South Pleasant St.
Lindsay Abbate

Stone House Farm
649 East Pleasant St.
Candace Tolley

The Flexible Farmer
55 High St.
Lydia Irons

HADLEY

63 East Realty, LLC
63 East St.
Babak Gojgini

Applebee’s
100 Westgate Center
Apple New England

Creamy Delights
71 Lawrence Plain
Patricia McCarthy

Gamestop
367 Russell St.
Gametop Inc.

Harvest Market
78 Comins Road
Peggy Thibbitts

Kentucky Fried Chicken
3 South Maple St.
Michael Houston

Longview Farm
14 Barstow Lane
Steven Barstow

M. Jolly Trucking
45 Knightly Road
Matt Jolly

Old Navy
339 Russell St.
Old Navy LLC

Twin Oaks Farm
116 Stockbridge St.
Linda Kingsley

HOLYOKE

Gary’s Specialgiftmerchandise.com
631 South Summer St.
Garrison Pollard Sr.

Las Chicken Market
341 Appleton St.
Lidia C. Rodriguez

M & E Barbershop
120 Suffolk St.
Militza Santos

Pett Operations Inc.
50 Holyoke St.
Robert Pett

Sports Zone
50 Holyoke St.
James M. Dent

NORTHAMPTON

Cellu-Spray Insulation
55 Maple St.
Jonathan Tayer

Clarity Bodywork
16 Center St.
Sarah Hagedorn

Clinic Alternative Medicine
98 Main St.
Jennifer Nery

Comfort Heating & Cooling
7 Hinckles St.
Dale R. Simmons

Health FX
41 Locust St.
Timothy Molitoris

Island Homes USA
19 Tyler Circle
Alan M. Miller

Mad Capture Media
151 Media St.
Max Benjamin

Misty River Ballooning
82 Bliss St.
Donald LaFountain

My Garage
109 Bridge St.
Diane Todrin

Qi Internetics
241 King St.
John Zebrum

River of Grace Yoga
176 Crescent St.
Carole Bull

Vessel Coffee
28 Green St.
Rabeeh Saleh

Village Computers
18 Michelman Ave.
Aaron Clark

SPRINGFIELD

Julio C. Beltran Cleaning
87 Belle St.
Julio C. Beltran

LA Fitness
1150 West Columbus Ave.
LA Fitness

M. Clark Photography
75 Prouty St.
Maria F. Clark

Michelle’s Hair Salon
50 Hartley St.
Michelle R. Green

Palazzo Café
1350 Main St.
Luisa Cardaropoli

Primos Pizza
824 Worthington St.
Marie Melikian

School of the Noble
24 Schuyler St.
Ahmad A. Sharif

Smith & Wesson
2100 Roosevelt Ave.
Jeffrey D. Buchanan

Sunny Nails
801 Belmont Ave.
Van P. Nguyen

The Chicharron Restaurant
494 Central St.
Rafael Marte

Tools Home Improvement
42 Manhattan St.
Hector Quiles

Up’n Coming Artist
19 Layzon Brothers Road
Devin R. O’Connor

Vinh Chau Restaurant
409 Dickinson St.
Phuong Nguyen

WESTFIELD

Cassin Academy of Irish Dance
17 Castle Hill Road
Maura Cassin

Prolamina Corporation
132 North Elm St.
Joseph Kwederis

Utility Service New England
4 Coleman Ave.
David Miller

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Century Auto Service
1615 Riverdale St.
Peter R. Platanitis Jr.

Karen Provost Massage Therapy
698 Westfield St.
Karen F. Provost

Pavel Water Filtration
70 Windsor St.
Henry H. Pavel

Titan U.S.A.
140 Baldwin St.
Ralph S. Colby

Departments Picture This

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]

Old Masters to Monet

Monet 1
Monet 2
Monet 3
Monet 4More than 150 guests attended the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts’ preview reception for the exhibition “Old Masters to Monet: Three Centuries of French Painting” from the Wadsworth Atheneum. Guests included exhibition sponsors and major donors to the Springfield Museums. The exhibition of 50 masterpieces will be on view through April 29. “Old Masters to Monet” was organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. Presentation of the exhibition in Springfield is funded in part by the Michele and Donald D’Amour Fund, established in 2008 to bring world-class art exhibitions to the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts. From top: from left, Patricia Hambley, Mark Hambley, and Joanna Rosenthal: from left, Joanna Rosenthal, David Starr; Holly Smith-Bové, president of the Springfield Museums; and Peggy Starr; from left, Lyman Wood; Merrie Wood; Heather Haskell, director of the Springfield Art Museums; Julia Courtney, curator of art, Springfield Museums; Michele D’Amour; Dr. Eric Zafran, curator of European art at the Wadsworth Atheneum; and Donald D’Amour; Dr. Paul Friedmann looks over some of the paintings.

















Food Fest West

The West of the River Chamber of Commerce (WRC) staged its Fifth Annual Food Fest West on Dec. 8 at Crestview Country Club in Agawam. Sponsored by Western Massachusetts Electric Co., First Niagara Bank, and OMG Inc., the event featured the foods of area restaurants including Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Casa di Lisa, Chez Josef, Crestview Country Club, Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative, Magic Spoon, Mama Iguana’s, Nina’s Cookies, Nora’s, O’Connor’s Pub & Grille, Partners Restaurant, Tekoa Country Club, and Tokyo Asian Cuisine. Restaurants competed to win awards and prizes for best food and best presentation during the course of the evening. A chef auction was also be held, where attendees could bid on meals provided by their favorite chefs.  Proceeds raised by Food Fest West will go toward the Partnership for Education and the WRC Educational Fund, which provides grants to businesses for on-the-job training and continuing educational needs. Top, the team from the Magic Spoon. Bottom, some of the desserts that tempted attendees.






Award-winning Efforts


At Freedom Credit Union’s recent annual dinner, Ana Frasco, mortgage processor, top, received the President’s Award from Barry Crosby, Freedom president and CEO. The award recognizes her commitment to professional excellence. She was nominated by a colleague who recognized her exemplary attitude in her service to members and fellow employees, and her contributions to the success of the credit union. In addition, Julia Beaudoin, bottom, Freedom’s director of Human Resources, received a special Tribute Award from Crosby for her leadership actions taken during the tornado on June 1, 2011, ensuring the safety of employees and members at the Freedom branch on Main Street in Springfield.

Opinion
Investment Key to a Resurgent Springfield

While visiting Grand Rapids, Mich. recently, several members of a delegation from Greater Springfield (see related story page 20) — participants in a program called City2City — engaged in a little game of ‘what if …’
“Suppose a group from Grand Rapids were to come to the City of Homes,” those initiating the exercise began. “Where would we take them, and what could we show them that would make them say, ‘wow!’”
There was some disagreement, but the general consensus was that such a delegation should certainly visit the Technology Park at Springfield Technical Community College and its Scibelli Enterprise Center, both unique facilities. Baystate’s Hospital of the Future (a $250 million initiative) would certainly be on a tour agenda, as well as the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute, which the health system has developed in conjunction with UMass Amherst. The Quandrangle might warrant a visit (especially its new history museum, a tribute to Springfield’s industrial past). The Basketball Hall of Fame might make the itinerary, and perhaps the convention center, although every major city seems to have one of those.
So those playing this game concluded that, while Springfield has some things going on, there probably isn’t enough to fill a two-day visit with interesting stops, and thus certainly not enough to qualify Springfield for the same title Grand Rapids has earned: ‘resurgent city.’
It’s easy to see why Springfield is on the wrong end of the City2City tours: while those communities have successfully reinvented themselves and diversified their economies from strong manufacturing bases (or are well down that road), Springfield is still in the early stages of that process.
But there is something else missing as well. It was a word heard repeatedly in both Winston-Salem and Greensboro, N.C., visited by a City2City delegation a year ago, and again in Grand Rapids: investment. Individuals and corporations are investing in those three communities. Some are investing in Springfield (MassMutual, Baystate Health, and Big Y, for example, can’t be expected to do more), but simply not enough.
Instead, many businesses and individuals are dis-investing, by moving out of the city and especially its downtown, or by standing on the sidelines and hoping that someone else will take the lead in revitalizing Springfield. Such actions are still signs of the troubling times for the region’s largest city and unofficial capital.
The Grand Rapids city manager told the Springfield delegation that many of the professionals and businesses that had moved out of the Furniture City in the ’70s and ’80s have moved back in. The reason? Because they not only want to be there, but feel they need to be there. How many business owners can say the same about Springfield?
Not enough, certainly, and the reason is obvious: the city hasn’t given them enough cause to feel that way. Despite the many stops of interest listed above, Springfield is still lacking momentum, lacking what those in Grand Rapids called “game-changers,” and lacking investment.
The June 1 tornadoes and the vacant lots they’ve created in the South End and elsewhere provide opportunities for some investment, and the possibility for some true game-changers. In the meantime, there were plenty of vacant and underutilized properties before the twister struck, and a general lack of vibrancy on most days.
But Springfield is a classic chicken-and-egg case. Specifically, why would people invest in a city that lacks momentum and vibrancy? But how does a city gain vibrancy unless people are willing to invest?
Somehow, both things have to start happening at once. Most say this will occur when there’s a spark, something like the huge hotel renovation project in Grand Rapids or that city’s new downtown arena. Sparks are good, but what’s better is a general understanding that investments in Springfield are investments in this region — and investments in a better future for everyone.

Building Permits Departments
The following building permits were issued during the month of December 2011.

AGAWAM

A.D.E. Enterprises, LLC
916 Suffield St.
$160,000 — Interior renovations

Dollar Tree
830 Suffield Road
$6,200 — New sprinkler system

First Baptist Church
760 Main St.
$42,000 — New roof

AMHERST

Orchard Run Associates
1150 West St.
$346,000 — Install driven post-racking system to support 46 KW grid-tied solar array

PVP Holdings
36 Boltwood Walk
$2,500 — Interior renovation

Pioneer Valley Living Care Center
1 Spencer Dr.
$16,000 — Third-floor renovations

HADLEY

Aegis Real Estate, LLC
241 Russell St.
$293,000 — Rear addition to building

Dunkin Donuts
41 South Maple St.
$59,000 — Remodel interior

GGP Quality Enterprises, LLC
P.O. Box 1146
$2,500 — Interior renovations

HOLYOKE

Matthew Mainville
475 Maple St.
$151,000 — Renovate three apartments for ADA compliance

SBA Sites Inc.
29 Mt. Tom Ski Road
$646,000 — Install access road, tower, and foundations

SBA Sites Inc.
29 Mt. Tom Ski Road
$69,000 — Modify existing tower

NORTHAMPTON

6 Crafts Avenue, LLC
376 Pleasant St.
$37,000 — Exterior renovations

Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Inc.
30 Locust St.
$56,000 — Renovate meeting room for new chapel

Kelly Kristan
263 Main St.
$617,000 — Renovate second and third floor

New Frills Inc.
15 King St.
$11,600 — Replace rubber roof

Northampton Terminal Associate
1 Old South St.
$11,000 — Construct walls to create new offices

Ten Main Street Florence, LLC
10 Main St.
$85,000 — Renovation to medical office space

WAM, LLC
115 Industrial Dr.
$26,000 — New roof

Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield
101 King St.
$74,000 — Repair and replace roof

Seven Bravo Two, LLC
152 Cross Path Road
$130,000 — Construct rooftop solar panel on storage building

SOUTH HADLEY

First Congregational Church
1 Church St.
$6,850 — Build storage rooms

SPRINGFIELD

APG Properties
130 Eastern Ave.
$78,000 — Re-roof

E. Brook, LP
309 Fernbank Road
$24,000 — New roof

Springfield Housing Authority
347-367 Central St.
$550,000 — Re-roof

WESTFIELD

City of Westfield
28 West Silver St.
$1,976,000 — Alterations

David Schenna
845 Airport Industrial Park
$58,000 — New metal building

Engineer Realty Corporation
53 Southampton Road
$50,000 — Alterations

First Congregational Church
18 Broad St.
$112,000 — Alterations

Koziar Capital, LLC
66 Union St.
$115,000 — Alterations

Lower Mill Inc.
77 Mill St.
$564,000 — Alterations

Shell Oil Company
259 North Elm St.
$80,000 — Alterations

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Creanza Realty
945 Main St.
$295,000 — New roof

E & K Realty Trust
60 Gary Dr.
$120,000 — Renovate 3,750 of office space

VFW
764 Riverdale St.
$14,000 — New roof

Victoria Temple Church of God
521 Union St.
$69,000 — Exterior renovation

Modern Office Sections
Managing Different Generations Takes Insight, Sensitivity

Meredith Wise

Meredith Wise says understanding how employees from different generations are motivated and communicate is one key to managing a diverse workforce.


Staff meeting or e-mail?
It’s a simple question, but when posed to employees from different generations, it can turn into a thorny issue in the modern office.
Meredith Wise, president of the Employers Assoc. of the NorthEast, recalled talking to an older manager, from the Baby Boom generation, who was confounded by the casual way Gen-Xers preferred to have dialogue.
“He said, ‘I really don’t feel like I’m doing an effective job of managing, and I’m not giving them the respect they need, if I just send an e-mail or text. I want to sit down and talk with them, but that’s not what that person wants,’” she explained. “It’s hard when you have these differences.”
The opposite is also true, Wise added. “When a younger manager comes in and tries to manage Baby Boomers, they want that face time, they want to sit down and talk, but the Gen-Xer just wants to shoot off messages — ‘you’re doing a great job, Joe, thanks,’ or ‘Joe, I need you to correct this report’ — and the Baby Boomers think that’s not appropriate. It really works both ways.”
Differences in the work styles and priorities of each generation pose a number of challenges for managers. For instance, Generation X workers have come through the ranks with a desire for independence and flexibility not nearly as prevalent among their forebears.
But not every office is equipped to handle flex time, said Joe Ascioti, president of Reliable Temps; a good example is the many manufacturing companies he counts among his clientele.
“It has to work for both the employer and the employee,” he said. “There has to be flexibility from both sides. There seems to be a little, ‘why can’t you do that?’ from employees, when, in some cases, you can’t be flexible.”
In this issue, BusinessWest discusses the characteristics (and, in some cases, stereotypes) that define the four generations now in the workplace, and why their differences can be frustrating to align under one roof.

Connect Four
Though every generation is comprised of individuals with very specific traits, certain characteristics have come to define each group in the workplace. According to the American Management Assoc., they include the following.
The Silent Generation (born between 1925 and 1946), also known as the Traditionalists, has produced perhaps the most loyal and highly dedicated workers, as well as the most risk-averse. Their values were shaped by the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar boom years. They are committed to teamwork and collaboration, and value interpersonal communications skills.
Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) are the first generation to actively declare a higher priority for work over personal life. They generally distrust authority and large systems. Their values were shaped primarily by a rise in civil rights activism, Vietnam, and inflation. They are more optimistic and open to change than the prior generation, but they also have a reputation for pursuing personal gratification first.
Members of Generation X (1965 to 1980), often considered the ‘slacker’ generation, tend to question authority figures and are responsible for creating the work/life balance concept, valuing personal time away from work more highly than climbing the career ladder. They possesses strong technical skills and are more independent than prior generations. They also tend to be very adaptive to job instability in the shrinking job market.
Millennials, or Generation Y (born after 1980), comprise the first global-centric generation, having come of age during the rapid growth of the Internet and an increase in global terrorism. They are among the most resilient in navigating change while deepening their appreciation for diversity and inclusion. They’re the most educated generation of workers today, as well as the most team-centric, having been raised by parents who carefully programmed much of their lives with sports, music, and recreational activities. They’ve inherited their Boomer parents’ desire to work hard and set goals, but can also appear more demanding — some would say entitled — than previous generations.
Work styles can vary wildly between these groups, particularly when it comes to collaboration, Wise explained. “Millennials in particular work very well in team settings; they’re very good at attacking problems on a team basis. When a group of them need to work together on something, they do a great job of assigning roles as a team and turning out a great project.”
She added, however, that these personal differences shouldn’t obscure some basic managerial keys that apply to all employees.
“There are some things that cut across all generations — the basics of managing and motivating people, things like showing respect for them, listening to their suggestions and thoughts, and making them feel valued by the organization,” Wise said.
But even those basics can be tweaked depending on one’s office culture. Take, for example, the issue of motivation.
The Silents have always desired personal acknowledgment and compensation for a job well done, and value tangible symbols of loyalty, commitment, and service, Wise explained. Many have spent their entire careers with one company.
Boomers, on the other hand, are more likely to crave public acknowledgement and career advancement for their accomplishments. They also want to feel like they’re making a difference in their workplace or industry. Gen X, however, represents a shift in priorities from the previous two generations.
“The Gen-Xers are kind of caught in the middle, and really, one of the key motivators for them is that they want more free time,” Wise said. “Instead of climbing up the ladder for more money, they want more flexibility in their work schedule.” They also value autonomy at work, and will trade compensation for independence, schedule flexibility, and time off.
Millennials, like their Boomer parents, also crave public recognition of their achievements, but they’re far more likely to accept that praise as a group, she explained.
“The Baby Boomer wants to be singled out — ‘Joe, you did a wonderful job. Thank you; here’s your reward’ — while Gen-Xers and especially Gen-Ys are more likely to be on teams and are perfectly happy hearing, ‘you guys did great,’” Wise said.

Building an Image
Millennials, however, still battle the perception that they’re entitled to achieve their goals — which bumps up against the reality that many are leaving college unable to procure jobs in their chosen fields (see story, page 26), leading to widespread disillusionment.
“It’s a mentality of, ‘you’ll pay me, then I’ll do this,’” Ascioti said. “Wait a minute here — that’s not the way it works. I offer you a salary, you accept it, and you come in and show me what you can do.”
Setting out unrealistic demands makes it difficult to match career seekers with available jobs, he said.
“I’ve heard this from employers we service and some friends who own businesses — everyone they run into says, ‘you guys must have tons of people’” applying for jobs, Ascioti said.
“Now, we do have a good supply of applicants. But a person comes in, fills out an application, we interview them, go through the whole thing with them — what shift, what area — then we call them at home and say, ‘Jimmy, we have this job at XYZ client; it’s second shift, and it pays X an hour. The company is looking to hire you on a permanent basis; once your contract with us is up, they are looking to hire you.’ And there’s a pause on the phone, and the person says, ‘no, I’ll stay on unemployment.’
“It’s starting to affect our business,” he continued. “People sense that there’s this unending expansion of unemployment. It’s a very interesting phenomenon, and I hear it from a lot of people. You say to them, ‘this may not be perfect right now,’ but they’re waiting for that perfect job.”
In the workplace, however — particularly in a job they find fulfilling — Millennials have also built a reputation for working hard, multitasking effortlessly, and keeping their options open. They crave opportunities to broaden their skills, which managers can use to their mutual advantage, Wise said.
“With Millennials, it’s ‘let’s give you opportunities to train in this area, to send you to this program to enhance your skills and capabilities.’ They’re looking for new opportunities to grow and develop,” she explained.
And, of course, sometimes they don’t have the time or patience to talk about their progress outside of a quick e-mail.
“Baby Boomers want you to sit down and listen to them, to let them expound and give you their thoughts,” Wise said. “They want to have face-to-face conversations, but Gen-Xers and Millennials want to do something quickly. When they want face time, they want it very focused, very quick, and they would just as often have you do it electronically.”
That sometimes makes Baby Boomers, especially those not as savvy with the high-tech world, uncomfortable. “To manage that way can feel very weird and just not as effective for them,” she said.
Which is why that simple question — staff meeting or e-mail? — is actually not that simple at all.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Briefcase Departments

Big Y Acquires Louis & Clark Locations
SPRINGFIELD — Louis & Clark Drug Stores have signed an agreement to sell the assets of two of their pharmacy locations to Big Y Foods Inc. The Louis & Clark Drug Stores at 471 Breckwood Blvd. in Springfield and 459 Main St. in Wilbraham will be operated as Big Y’s Louis & Clark Pharmacies. Louis & Clark will continue to operate their remaining locations. “As a family-owned and -operated company, we are excited to be working with another family-owned and -operated company to continue to serve the needs of our local community. Through our partnership with Big Y, we are able to maintain our local roots,” said Skip Matthews, president of Louis & Clark. Through our partnership with Big Y, we are able to focus our business efforts on the growing fields of home medical equipment and specialty pharmaceutical services, while Big Y focuses on its strength in retail pharmacy.” In addition, Big Y Pharmacies and Louis & Clark will work together to develop Louis & Clark’s ongoing home medical equipment division by offering referrals and consultations to Big Y customers through Louis & Clark’s Medical Supplies and Equipment located at 309 East St. at the corner of Page Boulevard in Springfield, and the satellite Louis & Clark location at 238 Northampton St. in Easthampton. Through the years, Louis & Clark has been one of the region’s premier independent pharmacy and health care solutions providers. This new relationship with Big Y will ensure that continuity of services for these two stores. Louis & Clark Drug Stores were founded in 1965 by Louis Demosthenous and Clark Matthews. The first store, based in Chicopee, was named Airline Drug, but customers and friends commented so frequently on the opportune names of the partners, Louis & Clark, that they soon named the company after the two explorers, Lewis and Clark, who traveled across America in 1804. All current Louis & Clark employees at both locations will have an opportunity to interview for employment with Big Y.

MassCBI Updates Name
BOSTON — The Massachusetts Chamber of Business and Industry recently announced its new identity, the Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce Inc. “At the Massachusetts Chamber, we strive to represent all business interests in and around the Commonwealth,” said Debra Boronski, president and founder of the organization. “While we serve business and industry, the purpose of a statewide chamber of commerce is to increase wealth and prosperity by facilitating the growth of existing businesses and fostering new ones. Simply put, the Massachusetts chamber’s focus is the Commonwealth’s economic well-being.” The organization provides legislative advocacy, marketing, networking, educational, and informational programs for businesses in the state. The chamber also provides managerial services for local chambers of commerce and professional organizations such as the West of the River Chamber of Commerce and the Realtors Commercial Alliance of Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.masscbi.com.

Construction Industry a Lagging Indicator
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The nation’s construction industry lost jobs for a second straight month, shedding 12,000 jobs in November, according to the Dec. 2 jobs report by the Department of Labor. During the past 12 months, the construction industry has added 18,000 jobs, an 0.3% increase. The construction unemployment rate slipped from 13.7% in October to 13.1% in November, and is down from 18.8% in November 2010. Non-residential building construction employment decreased by 1,200 jobs for the month, but has added 9,900 jobs, or 1.5%, from the same time last year. Residential construction building employment decreased by 3,000 jobs for the month and has lost 400 jobs, or 0.1%, compared to the same time last year. In related news, for the week ending Dec. 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 381,000, a decrease of 23,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 404,000. The four-week moving average was 393,250, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 396,250. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.8% for the week ending Nov. 26, a decrease of 0.2% from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Nov. 26 was 3,583,000, a decrease of 174,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 3,757,000.

Report: Corporations Paying Few State Taxes
BOSTON — A comprehensive new study, from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG), profiles the 265 consistently profitable Fortune 500 corporations, finding that 68 companies paid no state corporate income tax in at least one of the last three years, and 20 of these corporations averaged a tax rate of zero or less during the 2008-10 period. “Individual taxpayers and Main Street businesses end up having to pick up the tab when these corporations avoid paying their taxes,” said Deirdre Cummings, legislative director for MASSPIRG. The report, “Corporate Tax Dodging in Fifty States, 2008-2010,” was produced by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and recently released in conjunction with MASSPIRG. It examines Fortune 500 companies that filed SEC filings with required information on total state taxes paid that year. Only companies that reported profits in all three years were included in the study. It includes EMC, Raytheon, and Staples, which are headquartered in Massachusetts. “Our report shows these 265 corporations raked in a combined $1.33 trillion in profits in the last three years, and far too many have managed to shelter half or more of their profits from state taxes,” said Matthew Gardner, executive director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, and the report’s co-author. “They’re so busy avoiding taxes, it’s no wonder they’re not creating any new jobs.” EMC is one company covered in the report. It reported annual profits each year from 2008 to 2010, netting over $2.3 billion during the period, and paid 0.3% in state taxes across the nation. Raytheon is another example, with annual profits netting over $8 billion but paying just 2.3% in state taxes across the country. The report finds that 68 of the 265 companies managed to pay no state income tax at all in at least one year from 2008 through 2010, despite telling their shareholders they made almost $117 billion in pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years. Some companies, such as DuPont, Goodrich, International Paper, and Intel, paid no net state income tax over the full three-year period. MASSPIRG’s own study last year on the use of offshore tax havens found that household tax filers in Massachusetts pay on average $608 in additional federal taxes to make up for revenue lost due to use of offshore tax havens. “We need to level the playing field,” said Cummings. “Companies should thrive based on how productive and innovative they are, not based on their aggressive tax lobbyists and lawyers and their ability to devise elaborate tax-avoidance schemes.”

Chamber Corners Departments

ACCGS
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555

Jan. 4: Business@Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m. at the Sheraton Springfield. The monthly breakfast pays tribute to individuals, businesses, and organizations for major contributions to civic and economic growth and for actions that reflect honor on the region. The chamber breakfast gives your company exposure to business owners, upper management, and salespeople. Each month, September through June, the event is hosted at a different location throughout the ACCGS community. To reserve tickets, contact Cecile Larose at (413) 787-1555 or [email protected]

Jan. 4: After 5, 5-7 p.m. Network, build relationships, and forge strategic partnerships. The ACCGS After 5, held the second Wednesday of certain months September through June, offers business professionals from diverse industries an opportunity to exchange business leads while socializing in a casual atmosphere. For more information, contact Cecile Larose at (413) 787-1555 or [email protected]

Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce
www.amherstarea.com
(413) 253-0700

Jan. 11: Amherst Area Chamber Breakfast & Annual Meeting, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Courtyard by Marriott. Tickets: $12 for members, $15 for non-members.

Jan. 25: Amherst Area Chamber After 5, 5-7 p.m. Cost: $5 for members; $10 for non-members. The new chamber Web site will debut.

Franklin County Chamber of Commerce
www.franklincc.org
(413) 773-5463

Jan. 17: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m. at the Farm Table at Kringle Candle, Bernardston. Tickets: $5 for members, $8 for non-members.

Jan. 27: Breakfast Series, 7:30-9 a.m. at the Greenfield Corporate Center. Program TBA. Co-sponsored by F/H Career Center. Tickets: $12 for members, $15 for non-members.

Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414

Jan. 26: Chamber Annual Meeting & Awards Dinner, 5 p.m. at Southampton Country Club. Annual awards presentation for business, business person, and nonprofit members of the year. Also, a review of a successful, 2011, and a celebration of member milestones. Cost: $30 per person, inclusive. For more information, visit [email protected]

Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376

Jan. 11: 2011 Winners Circle, 5-7 p.m., at the Yankee Pedlar, 1866 Northampton St., Holyoke. Sponsored by Dowd Insurance Agency; Holyoke Community College; Holyoke Medical Center; PeoplesBank; Resnic, Beauregard, Waite & Driscoll; and Universal Plastics. Cost: $25. Call the chamber at (413) 534-3376.

Jan. 18: Chamber After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Mrs. Mitchell’s Kitchen, 514 Westfield Road, Holyoke. Sponsored by Holyoke Credit Union. Cost: $10 for members, $15 cash for non-members.

Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900

Jan. 4: January Arrive@5, 5-7 p.m., at Verizon Wireless/Wireless Zone, 162 North King St., Northampton. Sponsored by Normandeau Communications Inc. Cost: $10 for members. Arrive@5 is a casual mix and mingle with your colleagues and friends.

Northampton Area Young Professional Society
www.thenayp.com
(413) 584-1900

Jan. 12: NAYP Monthly Networking Event, 5-7 p.m., at the World War II Club, 50 Conz St., Northampton. Cost: free for members, $5 for guests.

Professional Women’s Chamber
www.professionalwomenschamber.com
(413) 755-1310

Jan. 18: Professional Women’s Chamber Business Expo, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., at Max’s Tavern at the Basketball Hall of Fame. Accepting reservations for the 14th Annual Tabletop Expo. Last year’s successful expo was a sellout. Sign up today to showcase your company’s products and services or to attend the event. Display price includes a draped table and lunch for one. General admission tickets include specialty sandwiches, fruit, chips, and dessert.  For more information, contact Lynn Johnson at (413) 787-1555 or [email protected]

Greater Westfield Chamber of Commerce
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618

Jan. 9: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Dunkin’ Donuts, 625 East Main St., Westfield. Cost: free.

Jan. 18: WestNet networking event, 5-7 p.m., at Tucker’s Restaurant, 625 College Highway, Southwick. Opportunity to meet other local businesses and chamber members. Cash bar and free hors’doeuvres. Tickets: $10 for chamber members, $15 for non-members. Your first WestNet is always free.

Features
Always Remember the Rules of Deductibility

Charlotte Cathro

Charlotte Cathro

The holidays are upon us, and many practices or individual physicians feel it is important to show appreciation to their customers, employees, and business contacts. Gifts can be a great way to stay top of the mind through what can be a slow season. If it wasn’t difficult enough to find that perfect business gift to send the right message, businesses also want to be sure that the gifts will be tax-deductible.
There are several factors to consider in determining whether the IRS will allow the deduction.
For any business expense to be deemed tax-deductible, it must be ordinary and necessary in relation to the business and reasonable in amount. Ordinary is defined as customary or usual. It is not required to be a usual occurrence for the taxpayer, just within the trade or industry. A necessary expense is one that is appropriate and helpful, but need not be essential to the business. The IRS uses this language in order to disallow reporting personal expenses or excessive expenditures for the purpose of decreasing taxable income.
Business gift deductions are limited in dollar amount by the IRS, and that limit is a mere $25 per recipient. Incidental costs that do not add value to the item, such as shipping, are not included. So that taxpayers do not try to circumvent the threshold, gifts cannot be split between spouses, who are treated as one entity for this purpose even if they have separate business reasons for giving the gifts. In addition, gifts to separate members of a family will be aggregated for the limitation, unless there is an independent business connection with each of them. A gift given to a corporation is not limited in dollar amount as long as the gift was not intended to be used by a particular person or limited class of people. If you were wondering why your office is full of gift baskets around the holidays, this is why.
The line can be blurry as to what should be classified as a gift versus a promotional expense versus an entertainment expense. Promotional items include those that cost less than $4 each, have the name of the business clearly on them, and are identical to others generally distributed by the business. This classification would include the pens, calendars, and bobbleheads bearing the name of pharmaceutical companies which we all have in our desk drawers. Entertainment expenses are considered by the IRS to have both a business and personal benefit, and thus they are limited to 50% deductible. Entertainment items might include tickets to a sporting event or concert. If the event is attended by both the gift giver and recipient, then the event must be classified as entertainment. If the event is not attended by a member of the business giving the tickets, then the choice is open to classify the tickets as either a gift, limited to the $25, or entertainment, limited to the 50%.
Businesses should be especially careful with gifts made to employees. Where the cash or non-cash gift is payment for services, the value will be considered wages and will be taxable to the employee. The IRS will assume all gifts are for services unless established otherwise. Sales incentives should be included in the employee’s gross wages and are subject to withholdings. Non-cash items are added to income at their fair market value. There are special exceptions made for safety or length-of-service awards, but these must meet certain other restrictions. Nominal items such as gift certificates for specific items or Thanksgiving turkeys given to employees are excluded. However, a $25 grocery-store gift card would not meet this exception.
It should also be noted that the IRS maintains recordkeeping requirements to substantiate the deductibility of business gifts. The cost, description, date, and business purpose of the gift, as well as the name and other information about the recipient that would establish their relationship to the taxpayer, must be included in the record of the expense. In the case where the gift was given to a business, the names of the indirect recipients do not need to be recorded, just a general note about the class of recipients such as ‘the employees of ABC corporation.’
Why does the IRS care how generous you are? While the reasonableness of the dollar limitation in the current market is debatable (the amount has remained unchanged since 1963), the purpose is clear. Like most IRS restrictions, the regulations come on the heels of misconduct. Upon audit, business owners have attempted to mask illegal payments such as kickbacks and bribes by classifying them as gifts. Personal presents for a taxpayer’s spouse and children have been passed through corporations. Expensive cars and other non-cash payments for services have been excluded from income. Consequently, business gifts are classified with entertainment expenses as items the IRS deems particularly susceptible to abuse.
When picking out your business gifts this holiday season, remember these rules of deductibility — and, of course, it’s the thought that counts.

Charlotte Cathro is a tax manager with the Holyoke-based certified public accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.

Departments People on the Move

The Board of Directors of Hampden Bancorp Inc., the holding company for Hampden Bank, has unanimously elected Glenn S. Welch President and Chief Operating Officer of the company and the bank effective Jan. 1, 2012. In addition, effective Jan. 1, 2012, Welch has been appointed as a director of the company and the bank. As president, Welch will succeed Thomas R. Burton, who, after serving 17 years as President and CEO, will remain on as the Vice Chairman and CEO of the company and the bank. “After conducting an extensive search that identified several superbly qualified candidates, we have decided that Glenn S. Welch is our choice to lead Hampden,” said Stuart F. Young Jr., Chairman of the Board. “It was extremely important that we find a new president who could build on the strong foundation already in place at Hampden — for which we are grateful for the leadership our current president, Tom Burton, has provided over the years.” In announcing Welch’s appointment, Burton commented, “as a purpose-driven organization, it is vital that we select a leader who not only understands the inner workings of the bank and the industry, but one who has a constant focus on our customers, our shareholders, and on the communities we serve. Glenn was the single candidate who demonstrated he could deliver on all counts. I am delighted with this decision.” Welch has been employed by Hampden since April 1998, serving most recently as executive vice president and division executive of Business Banking. He previously served as vice president of Commercial Loans from April 1998 to June 2002. Prior to joining Hampden, Welch served as vice president, Middle Market Group, at Fleet Bank. Welch is a graduate of Western New England University and earned his MBA from the University of Massachusetts. He currently serves as chairman of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield (ACCGS), chair of the board of the Scibelli Enterprise Center and Western New England University Business Advisory Board, Treasurer of the Exchange Club of Springfield, member of DevelopSpringfield, and participant in the City2City project.

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Stephen A. Roulier

Stephen A. Roulier

Stephen A. Roulier has joined Springfield College as Director of the Marketing and Communications Department. He is responsible for strategic marketing, public relations, and brand management.
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Michelle R. Crosby has been appointed Branch Manager at PeoplesBank for its East Main Street office in Westfield.
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Rebecca Caplice

Rebecca Caplice

Rebecca Caplice, President and Chief Executive Officer of Greenfield Savings Bank, has been elected to the Board of Trustees of American International College in Springfield.
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Michael P. Buckmaster

Michael P. Buckmaster

Michael P. Buckmaster has been named Vice President, Commercial Lending at NUVO Bank & Trust Co. in Springfield.
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Freedom Credit Union of Springfield announced the following:
Amy E. Fyden

Amy E. Fyden

• Amy E. Fyden has been appointed Branch Officer of the Easthampton branch; and
Beverly Walz

Beverly Walz

• Beverly Walz has been appointed Branch Officer of the 16 Acres branch in Springfield. As branch officers, both Fyden and Walz oversee the financial and lending operations of their branch, develop new business opportunities with individuals and businesses, and promote financial literacy at area schools.
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Laurie Norton Moffatt, Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, has been nominated into the National Arts Strategies’ highly competitive chief executive program. She is one of 100 executive leaders in the cultural sector chosen to participate in the program. During the next two years, she will engage in discussions with colleagues from the U.S. and abroad about issues including budgeting, financial stability, marketing and development, as well as abstract problems including the role of the arts in modern life and maintaining relevance in a diverse, rapidly changing world.
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Attorney Diana Sorrentini-Velez recently engaged in a discussion with area high-school student peer mediators to enhance their understanding and knowledge surrounding effective mediation and conflict resolution. She is an attorney at Cooley, Shrair in Springfield, and concentrates her practice on mediation, divorce, family law, and special-education law. She also serves as a family-law mediator, having completed the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education-sponsored Family Law Meditation training program.
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Thomas L. Plasse has been named Director of Finance of the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield.
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Nadia M. Baral has joined Westfield Bank as Vice President and Compliance Officer. A certified regulatory compliance manager, Baral is responsible for the bank’s overall regulatory compliance.
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Mary MacIlvain has joined Dietz & Co. Architects as Marketing Coordinator.
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Glenmeadow in Longmeadow recently announced new board officers and members. They are:
• Eric Fuller, Chairman;
• Suzanne Smith, Vice Chair;
• Paul Nicholson, Treasurer;
• Mary Downey Costello, Clerk;
• Mark Cress, new member of the board; and
• Christopher Gill, new member of the board. In addition,
• Lawrence Bernstein has been elected a Corporator;
• Suzanne Boniface has been elected a Corporator;
• Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz has been elected a Corporator; and
• David Carlson has been elected a Corporator.
Existing members of the board include William Burrows, George Keady, Peter Landon, Ellen McKenna, Mary Meehan, Ann Marie Rome, Joel Weiss, Rachel St. Onge-Boisseau, and Sr. Betsy Sullivan.
•••••
The Johnson Memorial Medical Center (JMMC) board of directors announced recently that David R. Morgan will lead JMMC as President and Chief Executive Officer, dropping the “interim” from his title. Morgan began his tenure at JMMC in 2008 as a consultant and in 2009 was named interim chief operating officer of the organization. During just those two years Morgan restructured the financial and revenue cycle operations of JMMC, and created and implemented an operations improvement program. Morgan continued to serve as JMMC’s chief operating officer until May of this year when he was named interim president and chief executive officer.

Modern Office Sections
Social Media Poses Opportunities and Traps for Employers

Mark Adams

Mark Adams says some companies are starting to realize that barring all social-media use can be counterproductive.

Business owners and managers are increasingly realizing that social media is here to stay, but it’s not easy to craft workplace policies for social networking that are effective and enforceable. The challenges arise in three sticky areas: personal online activity during work time, companies controlling their own Internet presence, and employees badmouthing their employer through social-media channels after work hours. The answers don’t come easy in any of these cases, but popular opinion — and legal precedent — are beginning to crystallize.

By JOSEPH BEDNAR

As director of HR Services for the Employers Assoc. of the NorthEast, Mark Adams deals with some 800 area companies. And one aspect of the modern workplace has been particularly confounding for them.
“In some of the discussions I’ve had with companies, when social media comes up, there are some very strong viewpoints on it,” said Adams. “Some say they don’t want it in the workplace at all, that they abhor it in the workplace. They figure it’s a drain on productivity and can create a disturbance.”
But companies that see social media as more of a nuisance than a tool are missing an opportunity, said Christine Pilch Mancini, social media strategist, speaker, and trainer with Grow My Company.
“We’re in a world of emerging technology, and social media is a tool to get work done these days,” she said. “It allows quicker collaboration with other people to solve problems, and it allows people to share ideas.”
But it also poses a conundrum for employers who don’t want their workers distracted by online chatter during work hours — and who, in many cases, have instituted policies curbing its use, or blocked sites like Facebook and Twitter outright.
In the age of Web-enabled smartphones, Pilch said, that’s simply misguided. “Quite frankly, companies that are trying to block social media are sticking their heads in the sand, because every employee is holding the Internet in their pocket.”
So what’s an employer to do?
“Some companies use social media as a positive tool, or they acknowledge its existence and are providing some meaningful use of it,” Adams said. “For example, employees can use it on their own time — break times, what have you. In that respect, it’s akin to what some companies do with e-mail; they’re not going to bar all personal e-mail.”
Pilch Mancini and Adams are hardly alone in their assessment of the social-media paradigm at work; in fact, others go so far as to argue that tweets and status updates actually contribute to a healthy work environment, although most U.S. employers have yet to see it that way.
Socialcast, a microblogging platform, surveyed 1,400 chief information officers at U.S. companies and found that only 10% of those employers allow unlimited social networking on work time. Another 19% allow access for business purposes only, while 54% do not allow employees to use social networks for any reason while at work.
However, according to a University of Melbourne study, employees who engage in ‘workplace Internet leisure browsing’ — such as watching videos and keeping up to date with friends — while at work are 9% more productive than those who don’t.
The reasons touch on the benefits of a satisfied and de-stressed workforce, but Pilch said there are morale issues involved as well. “If you’re blocking social media, you’re telling employees you’re not treating them like adults and respecting them enough to know how to delegate their time and still get their work done.
“This is how people communicate,” she continued. “Employers allow personal phone calls at work. Every child has to be able to talk to their parents; people need to be able to talk to their family members. Husbands and wives communicate on the phone every day.”
Social media, she said, “is another means of communication, and if you slam that shut, employees will default to the other Internet in their pocket. Would you rather someone checked their computer screen once in a while for instant messages, or checked their Facebook or Twitter account, or had their nose in their cellphone all day? Because that’s what you’re going to have” by barring social media at work completely.

Honing the Message
That’s not the only new ground employers are navigating when it comes to social media. Completely different issues swirl about how a company presents itself on social-media platforms, and who controls the message.
“As far as corporate use of it, for marketing purposes, where we see companies getting into problems is consistency of substance and who is going to post things up on a company’s Facebook profile,” Adams said.
“Is it going to be centralized or decentralized? And if it’s going to be decentralized, does the content still have to be vetted, or left up to the individuals? Are there standards on how to craft those messages? There are a lot of companies that craft policies that don’t get into all those details,” he explained, while other businesses might have little if any consistency about how those policies are enforced.
Joshua-Michéle Ross, vice president of consulting firm O’Reilly Radar, writes in Forbes magazine that social media is an opportunity for savvy businesses, but employees shouldn’t be sent in without training.
“Begin from a position of trust,” he writes. “While there are possible negatives involved in having employees on the social Web, most employees have common sense. Begin with a set of possibilities first (increasing awareness, improving customer service, gaining customer insight, and so on), then draw up a list of worst-case scenarios (badmouthing the company, inappropriate language, leaking intellectual property, to name a few).”
Among the guidelines Ross suggests are: listen before jumping into a conversation; be upfront about your relationship to the company; show your personality (“you weren’t hired to be an automaton”); respond to ideas, not people; know your facts and cite sources; own up to mistakes; and never say anything online you wouldn’t say to someone’s face or in the presence of others.
In general, Ross concludes, companies should “encourage employees to use social tools to engage and interact with one another and with customers. In all likelihood they are already using the social Web. The difference is that currently they are using these tools without any guidance.”

Letter of the Law
Often, however, it’s employers who need guidance on social-media use, particularly when the law becomes involved.
“The National Labor Relations Board has said that, when employees converse among one another in a social-media context, that can be protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act,” Adams said. “We’ve seen a number of cases where companies have taken adverse action on people for discussions in a social-media context; that can be unlawful.”
Indeed, the NLRB has dealt with a number of cases over the past year alone in which employees were fired for badmouthing their employers through social-media channels away from work — and has come down fairly consistently in favor of the employee.

Meghan Sullivan

Meghan Sullivan says employers need to tread carefully when crafting a social-media policy and enforce it consistently.

“An employee’s speech is usually protected as long as it’s not publicly disgracing the employer,” said Meghan Sullivan, an attorney with Sullivan, Hayes & Quinn in Springfield. But even that description can be stretched, she said, noting that a recent case involved a worker using some fairly salty language to insult his boss — but, because it was posted in the context of some specific workplace complaints (how the company applies certain tax withholdings), the NLRB determined it to be protected speech.
“Employers definitely need to be careful,” Sullivan said. “The board has been looking very closely at employers’ policies and insisting that they be designed in such a way that they don’t restrict employees from talking with each other about the workplace, or determining whether the policy may be so overly broad that somebody thinks they’re not supposed to talk about the workplace.”
In one example, a hospital established a social-media policy forbidding employees from posting “anything confidential.” The hospital intended only to protect confidential patient data under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, but employees were confused by the language and thought they couldn’t discuss anything work-related online. “You’ve got to be more specific than that,” Sullivan said.
When a complaint arises from an employee alleging unfair treatment in a social-media situation, she continued, “the first thing the board’s going to look at is your policy, and whether it infringes on employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act to engage in protected speech.”
And if workers are allowed to badmouth their bosses online, it’s even more difficult to regulate employees simply naming or neutrally discussing their employer — although some businesses have tried.
“Some companies I’ve worked with have tried to regulate mentioning the company employees work for on their own personal pages,” Adams said, “but more and more, they’re realizing that they’re hard-pressed to enforce those standards aggressively.
“It’s an area where technology is ahead of what the law cases are,” he added. “Technology is evolving at such an extraordinary pace that we always have to catch up to it.”

Bottom Line
It seems as if social media is here for the long haul, said those we spoke with, and employers are better off understanding its dynamics and channeling their employees’ energies than cutting off something that is becoming as ubiquitous as e-mail.
“If your employees are using Facebook at work, they are also likely checking work e-mail after dinner or at odd hours of the day. Don’t ask them to give up the former if you expect them to continue the latter,” Ross writes. “If you have good performance measurements, playing the ‘lost productivity’ card is a canard.”
Pilch Mancini agrees. “If you really are concerned about social media sapping the productivity of your employees,” she said, “maybe you need to take a good, hard look at who you have working for you. There are plenty of other temptations to take you away from your work, and good employees know how to delegate their time.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Health Care Sections
Hospice Care Comforts, Supports Memory-care Patients

Lisa Adams (left) and Eileen Drumm

Lisa Adams (left) and Eileen Drumm show off some off the sensory ‘tools’ Beacon uses to stimulate memory in people with advanced stages of dementia.


Maureen Groden wants to dispel one of the stigmas of hospice care — the belief that it’s only for people in their last weeks of life.
“That’s a myth,” said Groden, hospice and palliative care manager for the VNA Hospice of Cooley Dickinson Inc. Take, for example, the benefits of hospice care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
That devastating condition robs people of their memory and ability to function while they are still alive. More than 5 million people have the disease, and the incidence of other types of dementia is on the rise. However, while many patients with a terminal diagnosis for dementia qualify for hospice care, few families seek this help.
“People lack information about what makes someone eligible,” Groden said. “There are also misconceptions about we do, which includes helping families make difficult decisions. There are many services available that people don’t know about, and families dealing with dementia need a tremendous amount of support and information.
“It’s important for them to get an early referral before the situation becomes acute,” she continued. “But people don’t know when to have this conversation, even though we do informational visits.”
Eileen Drumm, hospice service representative for Beacon Hospice Inc., echoed that assertion.
“When people hear the word ‘hospice,’ they think the person is giving up,” she said. “The biggest myth is that hospice only provides care when a person has hours or days left to live. The reason the myth exists is because so many people wait until close to the end to utilize the benefit. The word ‘terminal’ makes people freak out, but the person may have six, 12, or 18 months left to live.”
Reports from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization show the median length of hospice service was 21 days in 2009. However, people who receive it earlier live an average of a month longer than similar patients, and the care helps significantly with symptoms.
Hospice also offers help 24 hours a day, which is important. “People can call us at 3 a.m. if their loved one is in pain or having a hard time breathing, and our nurse will go out and visit them. We also give families a comfort kit which contains medication to control nausea or agitation,” said Joanne Schlunk, director of Mercy Hospice.
Hospice care is provided by a team that typically includes a physician/medical director, nurses, nurse’s aides, personal-care attendants, social workers, chaplains, and volunteers. In addition, the government mandates that hospice programs offer up to 13 months of bereavement support. The care is holistic and focuses on the person’s life and interests before the dementia set in, as well as their current condition.
Since dementia is a disease that progresses slowly, families become accustomed to making difficult decisions and don’t usually seek help until the situation escalates to crisis proportions. This, however, doesn’t have to be the case.

Difficult Decisions
Schlunk said patients with dementia range from those for whom it is a primary diagnosis to people whose memory loss is caused by a stroke, Parkinson’s disease, or other health issues.
Groden agreed, adding that it’s unusual for a person in their 70s or 80s to have only one disease, because health problems such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and emphysema are common. But in order for an individual to qualify for hospice with a diagnosis of dementia, he or she must require significant help with daily activities, be disoriented, exhibit significant memory loss, and have approximately six months to live, assuming that the disease follows its natural course.
“People have to be pretty compromised,” she said, adding that the ability to perform daily activities does not pertain to other terminal diagnoses. “But there is a lot we can do to help. The services we provide are individualized. Everyone is unique, and although people may have the same diagnosis, there is no formula. But we can educate family members about what is normal.”
In addition, hospice providers can help families decide if they want their loved one to continue to have bloodwork or other tests for conditions that can’t be cured. That’s important because the tests can be uncomfortable, and frequent hospital visits affect the quality of life the person has left.
“You have to consider the toll it will take on the person,” Groden said. “If the person has advanced dementia and is in an ambulance, they will have no idea of where they are going. It’s not about denying people care; it’s looking at what is important to their quality of life.”
Many families don’t know they have the right to make such choices and aren’t familiar with other measures that could bring their loved one comfort. “Aggressive care doesn’t always translate into length and quality of life,” she explained. “Dignity is very, very important, and is a huge part of providing humane care. You have to really believe that each individual is a unique and important person regardless of the behavior he or she is exhibiting.”
The approach used to treat advanced dementia today is to allow people to exist in the time frame they believe they are living in, without trying to bring them back to reality. “Our goal is to make sure they are safe and their dignity is upheld. We also focus on who the individual is,” Groden said, adding that knowing a person’s interests can be helpful. “We have a volunteer who is bringing her singing group to sing with a patient in a nursing home who used to love to sing herself,” she said. “And another patient loved animals, so a volunteer brings her dog to visit.”
Advanced dementia can cause agitation and behaviorial changes. But it’s a mistake to simply attribute yelling to the disease, because the behavior may be caused by pain. A pain assessment is critical for patients, Groden said, explaining that conditions such as advanced arthritis or spinal stenosis can be helped with a good mattress and medication, while squirming in a chair may be related to bed sores or a skin condition. “Don’t assume the person is yelling just because they have dementia. You can almost always make things better.”

Necessary Measures
Decisions in the end stage of life can include whether to have a feeding tube inserted into the stomach, which carries risks and benefits and can prolong or shorten life. This measure becomes necessary because dementia can cause the muscles of the throat to stop working properly. And although food keeps people alive, eating and/or a feeding tube can result in aspiration pneumonia, which occurs if food ends up in the lungs instead of the stomach. “It’s a hard decision,” Schlunk said.
Groden agrees and says food is equated with nurturing, so when someone can’t eat, it weighs heavily on people’s hearts, which is another reason why it is important to help the patient stay independent as long as possible.
“Decisions have to be made again and again, and it’s really hard for families because there are so many periods during the course of the disease when they have to do research, especially if the person is confined to bed, is weak, and has lost a lot of function,” Schlunk said.  “Caregiving can lead to exhaustion, so we help families at different stages of the decline.”
In many cases, family meetings are needed. “You need facts to make good decisions, and also need to know what the expectations are for your loved one,” Schlunk said.  “And everyone needs a chance to be heard. Although everyone in the family may love the person, a caregiver who lives with the patient may have a more difficult time letting go.”
Resentment and other related emotions can arise when siblings who live far away express strong opinions to caregivers, who often feel abandoned and are left to deal with the agitation and loss of recognition that often occurs as dementia advances. “But people [with dementia] still have moments of lucidity and may say something that has such profound meaning that their loved one knows the connection is still there,” she added.
Hospice volunteers can provide a supportive presence. They often read to the person, play music, or simply sit and talk or hold the patient’s hand. “We all have an inner need for connection, and having the sense that someone is nearby helps people feel less lonely. They are still having inner experiences, and when you don’t understand what is happening in your environment, it can be very scary,” Schlunk said.
Drumm agrees. “Family members have expectations, and when they are not met, they become discouraged. But the purpose of a visit should be to have their loved one feel connected instead of being isolated in a room. The person takes in their environment even though they may not recognize people, so one of our goals in hospice is to educate families and help them find new ways of connecting.”
They also try to keep the environment soothing. “It’s important to prevent the patient from becoming overstimulated. Even the sound of the shower can be frightening because, when a person loses their memory, they don’t have the context to understand noises,” Groden said.
Bereavement support can be valuable, and Schlunk said primary caregivers may suffer the loss of the person they loved as well as the loss of their role. “They may begin to second-guess decisions they made. Sometimes there is a lot of regret.”

Inside the Mind
Beacon is affiliated with Amedisys, which is the largest home health care company in the country, and its goal is to provide a continuum of care with seamless change as the end of life approaches.
Director of Operations Lisa Adams said typical changes caused by advanced dementia include the loss of speech and the ability to walk, weight loss despite average nutrition, and pneumonia and infections, which set in as the body loses its ability to function normally.
“A person may take an hour and a half to eat one meal,” she said, adding that a hospice provider will have the patience to sit with the person and give them that time, rather than assuming they aren’t hungry.
Beacon created a program called Deep Harbors for Dementia, which contains a number of measures designed to provide comfort. “We work to create a connection between the patient, their loved ones, and staff members who work with them to preserve the patient’s dignity,” Drumm said. “Family members often pull away from visiting the person, as they don’t like to watch them get worse, which upsets patients even if they can’t express it.”
She added that touch is very important, and although family members may wonder why they should visit if their loved one doesn’t know who they are, “on some level, they do know you. If you take their hand, they will know you care about them,” she said, explaining that small things such as massaging a patient’s hand can bring them comfort. “The problem is that families look to the person to be who they were. But the disease is not their fault, and they are still human and very much alive.”
Beacon’s work with the Berklee School of Music revealed that tunes people with dementia enjoyed in their teens and 20s can elicit a positive response as the disease progresses, so its  program includes creating a compact disc of music for every patient. “One lady we cared for would sing along to every word from ‘Love Me Tender’ by Elvis,” Drumm said. “It was incredible to see, and helped her family realize that her spirit was still there and there was still memory in her body.”
They also create a Chart of Life after interviewing family members. “One day a woman looked at it, pointed to her bridal picture, then touched her wedding ring,” Adams said, adding that it meant the world to her family.
Their ‘tool kit’ also includes a teddy bear, and although it’s important to avoid treating patients with dementia like children, having something soft to touch can be comforting.
“We honor people, validate them, and meet them where they are. Our goal is to help families enter their loved one’s world, since the person can no longer enter theirs,” Drumm said. “It’s all about love.”
They also give patients a cloth activity pad. One side is soft and fuzzy, while the reverse side contains large buttons, pockets, zippers, and a compartment to hold photos. “It’s good for people who worked with their hands, as it keeps them busy,” she said.

Early Intervention
Drumm said it’s never too early to call and inquire about hospice care, as providers can refer families to other services they may need.
“Hospice care is for the whole family,” she said. “The end stage of the disease can cause conflict, which amplifies the family dynamic as emotions run so high.
“Our philosophy,” she added, “is that we want people to have a peaceful death. We don’t want anyone taking worry and anxiety from this life to the next, so anything we can do to help ease the heart, mind, and spirit of the dying person is important.”

Company Notebook Departments

Big Y Sponsors
Sack Hunger Program
SPRINGFIELD — In a chain-wide effort to help the hungry within their local communities, all Big Ys are participating in Sack Hunger, which utilizes large, green, reusable grocery bags filled with staple, non-perishable food items selected by the food banks. The sacks include corn flakes, instant rice, elbow macaroni, kidney beans, peanut butter, cut green beans, sweet peas, whole kernel corn, chunk light tuna, and quick oats. Customers purchase a pre-assembled bag of groceries for $10, and then Big Y distributes the bags to that region’s local food bank. In turn, the food banks distribute the filled sacks to area soup kitchens, food pantries, senior food programs, day care centers, as well as many of their other member agencies. All the donated sacks will be distributed within the supermarket’s marketing area so every donation stays within the local community. Big Y’s Sack Hunger campaign began in November and runs through December.

UMass, State Open
Marine Research Station
AMHERST — UMass Amherst and the Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries recently celebrated the opening of a shared marine-science research center following a $400,000 renovation. The station investment, located on an Atlantic Ocean cove in Gloucester, seeks to promote sustainable fisheries and economic development. The research station assesses the behavior of fish and the size and health of fisheries, which are vital to the state’s economy. In 2010, the commercial Massachusetts fishing industry landed 282 million pounds of seafood valued at $470 million.

AIC Breaks Ground for Eastern Gateway Project
SPRINGFIELD — The first phase of the city’s Eastern Gateway project was launched recently with a groundbreaking ceremony in front of 1168 State St. The Eastern Gateway represents a joint venture between American International College (AIC) and DevelopSpringfield, the city’s nonprofit, 501(c)(3) economic-development corporation. The project seeks to create a mixed-use development that will include appropriate institutional, retail, and commercial uses; offer a pedestrian environment at the entrance of AIC’s athletic field complex, and serve both the college and the neighborhood. Also, by revitalizing the underdeveloped section between Austin Street and Roosevelt Avenue, the project aligns with the city’s efforts to continue strengthening the State Street corridor. The redevelopment program resulted from a study commissioned in 2008 by the State Street Alliance, an affiliation of more than 60 businesses, educational institutions, neighborhood councils, faith-based organizations, and nonprofits. The study identified near-term development opportunities for revitalizing the 3.2-mile-long corridor, and recommended several projects, including a supermarket to serve the Mason Square community and market-rate residential housing at 195 State St. — a project that is underway. Eastern Gateway is a multi-phase effort; phase 1 includes acquisition, remediation, and greening of the area, and phase 2 includes refinement of a site development plan, construction, and work to transform a marginal pedestrian environment into a vibrant, contemporary urban district.

Law Firm Earns
Top Ranking
SPRINGFIELD — Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C. has recently been named in the 2011-12 edition of U.S. News – Best Lawyers as one of the “Best Law Firms” in America. The firm received Metropolitan First Tier Ranking for Banking and Finance Law, Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights/Insolvency and Reorganization Law, Corporate Law, Elder Law, Real Estate Law, and Tax Law. “While we very much value our clients, and our commitment to them is paramount, it is a thrill to have been recognized as one of the best law firms in America by our peers,” noted Gary Fentin, partner. “We have a very dedicated and talented team, and it is because of their hard work that we have been given, and accepted, this tribute.” Currently, the firm has 13 attorneys. Best Lawyers compiles lists of outstanding attorneys by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers, according to Fentin.

Comcast Launches Xfinity Phone Service in Granby
GRANBY — Comcast recently announced that residents and businesses in town now have access to innovative and reliable voice service, according to Mary McLaughlin, senior vice president of Comcast’s Western New England region. Comcast’s Xfinity Voice and Business Class Voice services for homes and businesses, respectively, are now available and can be combined for ‘triple-play’ packages that include cable television, Internet services, and phone services. McLaughlin noted that residents and businesses can switch to Comcast without changing their current phone numbers. “We’re excited to provide Granby with access to our full product suite and to also provide a new choice in quality phone service,” she added.

Bank Celebrates Customer Appreciation Week
PITTSFIELD — Berkshire Bank celebrated its partnership with Legacy Banks during Customer Appreciation Week on Dec. 12-16. The weeklong celebration included a variety of special events and promotions, including an Android smartphone giveaway program. Additionally, members of the community were asked to vote for their favorite nonprofit organization to win a $1,000 grant from the Berkshire Bank Foundation –Legacy Region. A total of $11,000 will be provided to 11 community organizations as part of the initiative.

Big Y Again Will Sponsor Spalding Hoophall Classic
SPRINGFIELD — The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame recently announced that Big Y World Class Markets will continue its partnership as the presenting sponsor of the 2012 Spalding Hoophall Classic. The high-school basketball tournament is in its 11th year and has expanded to five days with 46 teams at Springfield College’s Blake Arena on Jan. 12-16. Seven of the nation’s top nine teams from the ESPN FAB 50 rankings will be participating. “We are extremely grateful for Big Y’s commitment to the Hall of Fame and the Spalding Hoophall Classic,” said John L. Doleva, president and CEO of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. “Big Y has been a major participant in the Springfield community, and their support will continue to make an impact on hundreds of aspiring basketball players from New England and around the country.” Tickets are on sale at the Basketball Hall of Fame for $15 for adults and $10 for youths/students (18 and under). All patrons who present a Big Y World Class Market Savings Card will receive a $1 discount on each ticket purchased. For more information on the event, visit www.thehoophallclassic.com.

Northeast Realty Chooses Egan, Flanagan and Cohen
SPRINGFIELD — Northeast Realty Associates LLC, owner of a 152-acre parcel of land in Palmer where Mohegan Sun is proposing to develop a destination resort casino, has retained the law firm Egan, Flanagan and Cohen, P.C. The firm will offer a range of services for Northeast Realty, with attorney Stephen E. Spelman serving as lead counsel relating to the Palmer project. Spelman previously served as an assistant district attorney at the Hampden County District Attorney’s office, and has also worked for Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York City.

Bankruptcies Departments

The following bankruptcy petitions were recently filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Readers should confirm all information with the court.

Abdou, David G.
Abdou, Andrea G.
322 Lyon St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Acevedo, Santos
59 St. Lawrence Ave.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/01/11

Agure, Donna
34 Craig Dr., Apt. E 5
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Arpin, Cindy
6 Farragut St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

B&B Landscaping and Excavating
Piccolo, Robert J.
260 East Center St.
Lee, MA 01238
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/02/11

Bak, Bruno M.
Bak, Patricia A.
95 Forest St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/04/11

BDF Property Improvements
Forgue, Jason R.
Forgue, Katharine M.
23 Bromley Road
Chester, MA 01011
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/02/11

Beamon, Tracy
37 Border St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/11/11

Benedetti, Sherri
Benedetti, Michael
180 Green River Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/05/11

Bessette, Kristen M.
a/k/a Jaskulski, Kristen M.
53 James St.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Brown, Diana L.
49 Old Farm Road
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/07/11

Butler, William D.
Butler, Deborah A.
95 Westwood Dr.
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Camp, Patrick W.
23 Windsor St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/07/11

Carter, Glenn T.
Carter, Constance A.
363 Bullard Road
Oakham, MA 01068
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Champaca Journeys
Leupold, John Eric
35 New South St., #201
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/09/11

Colon, Carole A.
a/k/a Hall, Carole A.
5 Bellwood Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Cook, Thomas B.
18-20 O’Connor Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/15/11

Corbett, Elizabeth M.
189 Springfield Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Cosme, Marianne Nina
15 William St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/14/11

Cote, Gail P.
310 Stafford St., #151
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Crow, Karen A.
a/k/a Moorehouse, Karen
3 Jeane Dr.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/09/11

Cruz, Edith
100 Division St., Apt. 802
Springfield, MA 01107
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/15/11

Cruzado-Vila, Concepcion
938 St. James Ave.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Delgado, Mark A.
494 School St. #303.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Dessources, Marie Kettelyne
616 Armory St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/08/11

DH Enterprises
Hescock, Danny L.
11 Oak St.
Gill, MA 01354
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Diaz, Luis A.
15 Morris St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Donnachie, Stephen M.
Donnachie, Diane
44 River Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/02/11

Dyl, Stanley A.
350 Meadow St #69
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/14/11

Elser, David M.
35 Glenwood Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/09/11

Etheridge, David R.
59 Sylvester St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Fernandes, Roberto
21 Jackson St., #2
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Fontaine, Paul L.
873 Springfield St., Apt.#7
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Fontanez, Gilrolanel
500 Hancock St., Apt G
Springfield, MA 01105
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Fortier, David L.
90 Main St., Apt. C
Northfield, MA 01360
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Gaspari, Alexander
Gaspari, Fay A.
66 Kon Tiki Circle
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/03/11

Gonzalez, Katrina Maria
331 Cold Spring Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/05/11

Goodwin, Roy J.
75 Birch St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/14/11

Griswold, Corinna M.
P.O. Box 514
Haydenville, MA 01039
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Griswold, Jr., Ronald J.
Griswold, Emmanouilla
106 Fenton Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/15/11

Harper, Phillip V.
Harper, Jane V.
15 Webbs Ct.
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/11/11

Harris, Diane Mary
PO Box 557
Pittsfield, MA 01202
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/09/11

Hart, Laurie A.
19 Greenwood Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/15/11

Hilson, Arthur L.
Hilson, Cynthia L.
a/k/a Noyes, Cynthia
a/k/a Gonzalez, Cynthia L.
275 Gresham St.
Springfield, MA 01119-1469
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/09/11

Hopkins, Marla Jean
30 High St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Hoynoski, Tina E.
62 Union St., Apt. 1
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Hurst, Jeffrey R.
180 Cherokee Dr.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Jopson, Mildred P.
41 Chestnut St., Apt. 514
Holyoke, MA 01040-4631
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Jurkowski, Kilean P.
Jurkowski, Nicole L.M.
60 Pleasant St., Apt. A
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Kabaniec, Cynthia A.
P.O.Box 1008
Ashfield, MA 01330
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/05/11

Kirkpatrick, Mark D.
40 Spruce St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Krause-Cote, Marie
22 Canal St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/07/11

Laporte, Marta B.
34 Schley St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Lauziere, Elizabeth E.
767 Beacon Circle
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Lefebvre, Brian K.
Lefebvre, Cathleen
a/k/a Normand, Cathleen
a/k/a Rios, Cathleen
90 Riverboat Village Road
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Lichtenberger, Lisa M.
1794 White Pond Road
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/14/11

Lizotte, Scott A.
166 West Main St., Apt. 3
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Lombard, John F.
166 West Main St., Apt. 3
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Lusty, William Joseph
430 Old Warren Road
Palmer, MA 01069
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/01/11

Martinez, Ramiro
300 Walnut St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/07/11

Martinson, Todd J.
22A Main St.
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/15/11

Matos, Samuel
587 South Bridge St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/14/11

McCutcheon, Eric J.
555 Russell Road, Apt. J61
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/31/11

McHugh, Paul E.
519 East River St., Lot 29
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Mejias, Rolando
Mejias, Flor M.
59 David St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/15/11

Michaels, Katie F.
a/k/a Colby, Katie F.
113 Brewster St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/01/11

Napravnick, Gina
18 Kent Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Nardin, Rosalie M.
P.O. Box 419
Stockbridge, MA 01262
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Narvaez, Carmen M.
a/k/a Carmen, Narvaez
a/k/a Melendez, Carmen
43 Portland St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/09/11

Nelson, Dianna L.
109 Marten St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Nelson, Michael A.
76 Hazen St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Noga, Peter E.
Noga, Erica L.
18 Laurel Road
Huntington, MA 01050
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/09/11

O’Soro, Michael David
O’Soro, Noreen Bellmore
75 Strong Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/03/11

Paro, Tina M.
103 Doverbrook Road
Chicopee, MA 01022
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/07/11

Patenaude, Charles Raymond
Haire, Teresa Catherine
60 Purinton Road
Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Peich, Milan P.
116 North Ridge Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Pichierri, Randall Vincent
10 Chamberlain Hill Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/09/11

Pioneer Tax & Business Service
Bistro 186
Hampshire Financial & Business
Lowney, Robert B.
P.O. Box 265
Hatfield, MA 01038
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/03/11

Rivadeneira, Carlos
15 Kelleher Dr.
South Deerfield, MA 01373
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Smith, Craig A.
64 Whitney St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Smith, Melissa A.
15 James St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Snow, Jonathan K.
25 Norman Circle
Turners Falls, MA 01376
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Spooner, William A.
118 Eagleville Road
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/02/11

Stec, Elizabeth M.
52 Casino Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Surprenant, Louise A.
42 Roberta Circle
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/15/11

Theodorakis, Nickolas H.
71 Larchley Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Torres, Magda
66 Pine St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/08/11

Vega, Jose L.
P.O. Box 955
Rutland, MA 01543
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Vittorino, JoAnn
190 Rolling Green Dr.
Amherst, MA 01002
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Wegrzyn, Paul A.
Wegrzyn, Cassandra A.
PO Box 383
Chicopee, MA 01021
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/14/11

Widelo, John W.
157 West Main St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Williams, Daniel Christopher
21 Riverside Dr.
Florence, MA 01062
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/02/11

Wilson, James E.
Wilson, Annmarie R.
54 Chester St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/10/11

Yerrick, Kevin M.
49 Velma Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Agenda Departments

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.

Difference Makers
March 22: BusinessWest will stage its fourth annual Difference Makers celebration at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House in Holyoke. The program recognizes area individuals and organizations that are truly making a difference in this region. Nominations are currently accepted for the prestigious honor, and will be taken until Dec. 30. (See form, page 19). The winners will be announced in February. The awards ceremony will feature entertainment, butlered hors d’oeuvres, and introductions of the winners. For more information or to order tickets, call (413) 781-8600, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.businesswest.com.

Bankruptcies Departments
The following bankruptcy petitions were recently filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Readers should confirm all information with the court.

Acosta-Pacheco, Miguel
39 Ledyard St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Adamczyk, Michael T.
177 Farnsworth St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/28/11

Ahern, Jeffrey
Ahern, Brenda M.
39 Jessie Lane
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Anuraj, Migdalia
337 Main St.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/17/11

Avila, Sonia I.
251 Beech St. #1
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Bacigalupo, Nancy A.
310 High Knob Road
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Baez, Ramon M.
40 Suffolk St., Apt. 2F
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/28/11

Barker, Scott T.
335 Barker Road
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Beany, Robert J.
27 Orile Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Beesen, Jens C.
Beesen, Marsha J.
177 Captain Beers Plain
Northfield, MA 01360
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Bello, David
51 Portulaca Dr.
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/25/11

Benedict, Harold C.
531 South St.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Bertram, Laura J.
295 Britton St., Apt.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Bode, Stephen R.
Bode, Christina A.
221 Lancaster Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/17/11

Brooke, Kevin A.
2 Barker St.
Palmer, MA 01080
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/18/11

Bruscoe, Jeffrey J.
108 West St.
West Hatfield, MA 01088
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/25/11

Burke, William D.
Burke, Rhianna M.
99 Cambridge Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Burris, Michael
1037 Shaker Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/26/11

Canevari, Elizabeth J.
17 Ridgeview Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/17/11

Canine Design
Levchenko, Svetlana D.
83 Doverbrook Road
Chicopee, MA 01022
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Clark, Joan R.
147 Rosemary Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/25/11

Clark, Todd Andrew
81 Conz St., Apt 311
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Cole, Nancy J.
95 Lasalle St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Coleman, Elizabeth Anne
a/k/a Mooney, Elizabeth Anne
2075 Old Keene Road
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/29/11

Cook, Tobye Jill
101 Lake St.
Florence, MA 01062
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/28/11

Curtis, Sean D.
6 Gardens Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/28/11

David, Rebecca Lynn
7 Jon Dr.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Davis, Debra Asbury
158 Riviera Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Davis, Jones Kirk
158 Riviera Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Dawicki, John F.
Dawicki, Jannine M.
65 Fiske Mill Road
Shelburne, MA 01370
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Dieni, Daniel
13 Joanne Circle
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Drummond, Edward N.
229 Mohawk Trail
Florida, MA 01247
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/17/11

Ellard, Dawn M
a/k/a Plourde, Dawm M.
113 James St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Fleming, Jean Strain
42 Vadnais St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Foy, Kris James
Foy, Dorothy L.
1076 Berkshire Ave.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Gauthier, Johanna E.
114 Dubois St.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/24/11

George, Louis M.
George, Christy
1242 Dunham Town Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Giraldi, Denise
83 Crescent Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/26/11

Gohr, Donna M.
40 Long Plain Road
South Deerfield, MA 01373
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/24/11

Grayson, Kathryn Claire
33 Kellogg Ave. #37
Amherst, MA 01002
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/26/11

Gulluni, Anthony
20 Rockland St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/28/11

Gurney, Christine L.
8 Brimfield Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/28/11

Hamel, Debra Lenee
a/k/a Hamel-Kearney, Debra Lenee
P.O. Box 148
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Hartnet, Thomas D.
76 Lewis Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Hopkins, Joyce L.
12 Princeton Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Joseph, Tricia Ann
11 Yale St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/24/11

Keeler, Thomas J.
Keeler, Mary F.
82 Meadowbrook Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/25/11

Keough, Norma E.
46 H Prospect St.
Hatfield, MA 01038
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Kielbania, Jonathan Paul
Kielbania, Virginia Louise
a/k/a Barry, Virginia
a/k/a Miller, Virginia
a/k/a Richards, Virginia
81 Jacob St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

King, Stephen W.
95 Butternut Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/26/11

Kozlowski, Marie J.
24 Farquhar Road
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Lavigne, Alfred H.
Lavigne, Lola D.
P.O. Box 333
Lee, MA 01238
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/24/11

LeClair, Rebecca J.
a/k/a Benoit, Rebecca J.
130 Main St., 2nd Floor
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

LeClair, Robert J.
64 Timothy Circle
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/26/11

Lukin, Mikhail P.
Lukin, Marya
26 Alfred St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Marcoux, Brian L.
115 Foch Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/23/11

Marion, Fred Robert
463 Beech St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/31/11

Marsh, Richard T.
Marsh, Patricia R.
15 Autumn Lane
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Mascroft, Paula J.
a/k/a Dodge, Paula J.
216 Wheelwright Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Matias, Ramona
349 Chestnut St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/18/11

Miller, Brandon J.
476 Berkshire Ave.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/24/11

Mulvaney, Sonya
P.O. Box 516
Chicopee, MA 01021
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/28/11

Nissopoulos, Cleopatra A.
110 Somers Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/19/11

O’Day-Prizio, Melissa
254 Little Alum Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Orenstein, Matthew J.
61 Groveland St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Pacunas, Kristopher J.
121 Aldrich St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/26/11

Pedigo, Donna Ruth
15 High St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/17/11

Pellegri, Robert C.
56 North Main St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/18/11

Perusse, John E.
Perusse, Lucille B.
245 Johnson Road
Becket, MA 01223
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Polchlopek, Jennifer L.
72 Kendall St.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Potvin, Paul E.
44 Kelley Road
Chicopee, MA 01022
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/17/11

Reagan, James M.
Reagan, Joanne L.
1 Klondike Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/23/11

Reed, Jeffrey
Reed, Shelley
6 Terry Lane
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Rivera, Arida
15 Valley Heights St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/24/11

Rodriguez, Lou W.
47 Grant St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/17/11

Rogalski, Jane T.
a/k/a Rogalski Hill, Jane T.
79 Alfred St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Rooney, Mary H.
5 Pine St. Apt. 3
Northfield, MA 01360
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/26/11

Sanderson, Brenda Lee
47 Thayer Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Schryver, Harry J.
Schryver, Carole A.
46 Echo Lane
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Sebastino, Gene P.
100 Bucklin Road
Adams, MA 01220
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Sherblom, Carol Jane
a/k/a Bullard, Carol J.
a/k/a Richardson, Carol J.
46 Seminole Ave.
Hubbardston, MA 01452
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/29/11

Silver Photography
Silver, David E.
Silver, Susan P.
21 Lower Beverly Hills
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/28/11

Skorupski, Scott M.
a/k/a Parchinskaya-Skorupski, Natasha
69 Lathrop St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/28/11

St. Louis, Daniel L.
138 West Silver St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/18/11

Steele, Dennis Robert
Steele, Susan Jean
162 North Hoosac Road
Williamstown, MA 01267
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/25/11

Swan, Linda J.
65 Wheeler St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/29/11

Taquino, Tammy J.
268 Palmer Road
Trailer 55
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Torres, Alexis J.
155 West St, Apt 2
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Turan, Faith
40 Editha Ave.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/21/11

Vega, Jorge L.
217 Merrimack Ave.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/20/11

Wachta, Stanley J.
46C Valley View
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/17/11

Welch, Kevin
3 Vista Cir.
Rutland, MA 01543
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Wheeler, Deborah A.
103 Parkedge Dr.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Williams, Roy Blane
184 Birch Bluffs Dr
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/19/11

Wilson, Duane E.
281 Chauncey St. Lot #566
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/27/11

Wright, Michael R.
444 Cooper St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/18/11

Departments People on the Move

Meghan Lynch

Meghan Lynch

Meghan Lynch has been appointed President and CEO of Six-Point Creative Works in Springfield. In her new role, Lynch is responsible for business and client development, while continuing to manage day-to-day agency operations for the advertising and brand-development agency.
•••••
Kimberly A. Camp has joined Capuano Care as Marketing Liaison. She will direct the agency’s communication with the medical community.
•••••
Melissa Nelson has been named Project Manager for Medvest LLC, the local franchise holder for Doctors Express Urgent Care Centers in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. In her role, she is responsible for supporting the development and management of Doctors Express Urgent Care Centers.
•••••
James D. Chadwell

James D. Chadwell

Crear & Chadwell, P.C. announced that shareholder James D. Chadwell, Esq. has been selected as a 2011 Massachusetts Super Lawyer. He is the only Western Mass. defense attorney to have been chosen as a Super Lawyer based on his professional achievements in workers’ compensation, as well as a high level of peer recognition. Chadwell focuses 100% of his practice on representing insurers, self-insurers, and employers in their workers’ compensation requests. 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. In the Massachusetts Super Lawyers selection process, ballots are sent by Law & Politics to over 31,000 Massachusetts attorneys, each of whom must have been in practice for five years or more. Independent research is then conducted on each of the nominees, followed by a panel-review process. Only the top 5% of attorneys in each state are identified by Super Lawyers. Chadwell is well-known throughout Massachusetts as an expert workers’ compensation attorney, and was selected by Super Lawyers in 2005 as a Rising Star. He is a member of both the Hampden County and Massachusetts bar associations. Chadwell has been a member of, or very active in, local community and charitable organizations, including the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, the Springfield Technical Community College Board of Trustees, the Western Mass. March of Dimes Golf Tournament, and the Alzheimer’s Assoc.
•••••
Amy B. Royal, Esq. has been elected Vice Chairperson of the Board of Directors for the United Way of Hampshire County. She is Senior Partner at Royal LLP, a management-side labor and employment law firm in Northampton.
•••••
Gwen Orzel has joined King & Cushman Inc. of Northampton as a Personal Lines Insurance Representative. She is a licensed broker with a certified insurance service representative designation.
•••••
Attorney Gregory S. Bombard has joined the law firm of Bulkley, Richardson and Gelinas as an Associate in its litigation and alternative dispute resolution department. His practice focuses on representing financial institutions in mortgage-related litigation and on general commercial and business litigation. The firm has offices in Springfield, Boston, and Amherst.
•••••
Environmental Compliance Services of Agawam announced the following:
• Mark C. Hellstein has been named President and CEO. Hellstein, the company’s founder, also serves as the chairman of the Board of Directors;
• Kevin C. Sheehan has been designated Corporate Operating Officer. He has been with the firm since 1989 and is a member of the board of directors. He also oversees the health and safety operations;
• Michael L. Fiorini has been named Senior Vice President, Business Development. He has been with the firm since 1989 and will continue to serve as treasurer and a member of the board of directors;
• Daniel W. Felten has been appointed Senior Vice President, Technology. Felten has been with the firm since 1999 and is a member of the board of directors. He is also responsible for the information-technology operations;
• Jon P. Berntsen has been designated Senior Vice President and Regional Manager. He has been with the firm since 2000 and will be responsible for the management of the company’s offices in Tampa and Jacksonville, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Columbus, Ohio. He is also a member of the board of directors;
• Douglas M. McVey will continue to serve as Chief Financial Officer and Trustee but will now oversee the firm’s human resources department in addition to accounting. He joined the firm in 1999 and is a member of the board of directors; and
• William J. Alpine Jr. will continue to serve as Director of Cost Recovery and Internal Counsel but will now oversee real estate and facilities for the firm. He joined the company in 2005 and also serves as a member of the board of directors.
•••••
Linda S. Syniec, CPA of Holyoke, has joined the accounting firm of Sullivan, Poulin & Payne, P.C. of West Springfield (sppcpa.com). She has more than 25 years of public accounting experience. Her expertise is in providing tax services to clients in most every industry group including closely held private companies and high net worth individuals. Syniec graduated from Western New England University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants.
•••••
Frederick L. Sullivan, founding Partner at Sullivan, Hayes & Quinn, has been named to the 2011 Irish Legal 100. The Irish Legal 100 is a network of distinguished and accomplished men and women of Irish descent in the legal profession.
•••••
Thompson & Thompson, of Springfield, has announced the following:
• Robert F. Hennessy has joined the firm as an Associate Attorney.
• Amos Nissenbaum has been promoted to Senior Paralegal.
•••••
Andrea Stalf has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.
•••••
Claire Kenna has joined Park Square Realty in its Westfield office as a Sales Associate.

Departments Picture This

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]

Resurgent Springfield

HAP1HAP2“Envisioning a Resurgent Springfield Metro” was the theme of HAPHousing’s annual symposium at the MassMutual Center on Nov. 16. The keynote address was delivered by Allen Joines, mayor of Winston-Salem, N.C., one of the cities visited by a delegation of Springfield-area business and civic leaders last fall as part of the City2City program. Top: from left, panelists Peter Gagliardi, HAPHousing executive director; Orson Watson, Community Revitalization Program advisor to the Garfield Foundation; Joines; David Dixon, principal at Goody Clancy; Gerald Hayes, vice president of Administration and Finance at Westfield State University; and Jeffrey Fuhrer, executive vice president and senior advisor at Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Bottom: from left, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno; Heriberto Flores, chairman of the New England Farm Workers’ Council; and Joines.




ACCGS Government Reception

ACCGS1ACCGS2The Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield staged its annual Government Reception at the Carriage House at Storrowton Tavern on Nov. 16. More than 200 state and local leaders networked with area business leaders. Top: Carl Breyer (left) of Park Place Real Estate Development with West Springfield Mayor Edward Gibson. Bottom: from left, state Rep. Don Humason, R-Westfield; state Rep. Michael Knapik, R-Westfield; and state Rep. Michael Finn, D-West Springfield.




Bright Nights Ball

BriteNites1BriteNites2BriteNites3BriteNites4The Spirit of Springfield staged its annual Bright Nights Ball on Nov. 19 at the Sheraton Springfield. The event, which drew more than 500 business and civic leaders, featured dinner, dancing, a live auction and silent auction, and a salute to the Mass. Army National Guard. Top: from left, Donna Ross, senior vice president of Strategy and Business Development for Baystate Health; Frank Robinson, executive director of Partners for a Healthier Community, Baystate Health; and Dora Robinson, president and CEO of United Way of Pioneer Valley. 2nd from top: from left, Stephen Bryant, president of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts; Mary Ellen Scott, owner of United Personnel; and Peter Straley, president and CEO of Health New England. 2nd from bottom: from left, state Sen. James Welch; Judy Matt, president of the Spirit of Springfield; Maj. Gen. Joseph Carter, adjutant general of the Mass. Army National Guard. Bottom: from left, Maura McCaffrey, vice president of Marketing and Business Development for Health New England; Ross; Straley; and Amy Trombley, vice president and chief talent officer for Health New England.







Festival of Trees

FestTrees1FestTrees2FestTrees4Scenes from the Springfield Boys & Girls Club’s 11th Annual Festival of Trees at Tower Square in Springfield. Every tree donated helps the Springfield Boys & Girls Club provide programs and services to more than 1,500 inner-city youth who need it most.

DBA Certificates Departments
The following Business Certificates and Trade Names were issued or renewed during the month of November 2011.

AMHERST

Amherst Chinese Medicine
409 Main St.
Xiaqiang Zhao

Amherst-Ideal Weight Loss
379 College St.
Jeanette Wilburn

Brigade
6 University Dr.
Kirsten Modestow

Ghoghoo Ghora
22 Southpoint Dr.
Shireen Chaudhy

Good & Healthy Inc.
1 Boltwood Walk
Robert Lowry

Thrada Design Studio
17 Walnut St.
Brian Devore

Valley Frameworks
534 Main St.
Archival Matters Inc.

HADLEY

Affordable Autos of Hadley
11 Railroad St.
Norman Wilber

Carey Farm
26 East St.
Cam Carey

Chinese Kung Fu Wushu Academy
206 River Dr.
Binh Q. Nguyen

Hadley Picture Framing
44 River Dr.
Thomas Vachula

Ken’s Catering
136 Russell St.
Ken Berestka

Payless Shoe
367 Russell St.
Cheryl Falk

River Drive Auto Body
81 River Dr.
Stephen Szymkowicz

Southern New England Spice
35 Lawrence Place
Diane Kirby

TJ’s Taylor Rental
301 Russell St.
James Falcone

HOLYOKE

All in One
92 Suffolk St.
Luis A. Arena

El Rincon Boricua Restaurant
216 Lyman St.
Virgen Lopez

K & C Cellphone Outfitters
166 High St.
Christopher Nieves

Schermerhorn’s Seafood
224 Westfield Road
Michael J. Fitzgerald

Southwest Crafts
50 Holyoke St.
Luis A. Chaguipuz

Wow Family Entertainment Center
50 Holyoke St.
Michael Fabrizi

NORTHAMPTON

Audobon Partners
118 River Road
Robin Fields

Burrows & Weiss
78 Main St.
Mikal Weiss

Chaput Marketing
152 Crescent St.
Christopher Chaput

Collaborative Restoration
239 State St.
Kevin Hayes

Gusakor Woodworks
23 Myrtle St.
William A. Wallace

Healthy Home Care
71 Gleason Road
Sarah Zabriskie

Industry Mint
97 State St.
Daniel Kates

Simona’s
74 South Main St.
Simona Pozzetto

Sullivan Companion Care
83 Maynard Road
Roberta Sullivan

The Botaniste
33 Summer St.
Corina Miller

SPRINGFIELD

Abdul Baki Exporting
8 Cherrelyn St.
Rayan C. Abdul

Alert Ambulance Service
1131 Boston Road
David George

Ambis
142 Dickinson St.
Tazeen Rafiq

Avtel Solutions
553 White St.
Moses L. Diaz

Barifamily Inc.
383 Belmont Ave.
Wahab Abari

Baystate Employee Assistance
50 Maple St.
Mark R. Tolosky

Bling Bling Style
625 Boston Road
Mian Ashiq

Calendar Holdings, LLC
1655 Boston Road
Felix A. Cordero

Chuk’s Bait-n-tackle
436 Boston Road
Carlos M. Ayala

Cost Cutters
370 Cooley St.
Regis Corporation

DJ Nails Supply
200 Dickinson St.
Tuan Dam

El Bohio Restaurant
809 Liberty St.
Luis R. Cotto

Gentle Family Dentistry
1206 Boston Road
David W. Chou

Grace Jewelry
1210 Main St.
Hwa Y. Kim

Honor Capital
1 Monarch Place
Founders Finance, LLC

WESTFIELD

Lifetime Tilers Inc.
565 North Road
Patrick Smith

ZING
104 Mainline Dr.
James Fogarty

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Infinity Auto Rental Inc.
52 Baldwin St.
Joseph Gallo

Olympia Ice Center
125 Capital Dr.
Massachusetts Skate I Corporation

Petsey Schreiber Transport
80 Brush Hill Ave.
Philomena Schreiber

Stone Installation Solutions
1029 Elm St.
Russell C. Kern

Chamber Corners Departments

ACCGS
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• Dec. 6: Springfield Chamber of Commerce Executive Directors’ meeting, noon-1 p.m. i• the  EDC Conference Room, Springfield.
• Dec. 7: ACCGS Business@Breakfast, at the Delaney House i• Holyoke. Doors ope• at 7:15 a.m. Tickets: $20 for members; $30 for non-members.
• Dec. 9: ACCGS Legislative Steering Committee, 8-9 a.m. i• 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., i• 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.

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 Northampto• St. Co-sponsored by Holyoke Gas & Electric and Health New England. Tickets: $20 for members; $25 for non-members.
• 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 NORTHAMPTO• 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, Johnso• & Hill Staffing, and United Bank. Tickets: $10 for members
• Dec. 13: New-member lunch, noon-1 p.m. Hosted by the Northampto• Chamber of Commerce, 99 Pleasant St., Northampton.

NORTHAMPTO• 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 Wester• Mass.

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 i• advance; $30 at the door. All proceeds go to WRC’s Educational Fund, providing scholarships and business educatio• 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, Easthampto• Savings Bank and The Carso• Center for Huma• Services Inc. Highlights: the holiday benefactor this year is the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Westfield; attendees are asked to bring unwrapped gifts for childre• 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 Mai• St., Springfield, 01105.  For more informatio• o• this event, visit www.springfieldyps.com

Opinion
Making the Case for Community Colleges

Looking at it one way — maybe the way most community-college presidents choose to view things — it certainly was a tough stretch from a public-relations standpoint.
Indeed, the headlines following the release of two reports — from the Boston Foundation and the Commonwealth Corp. — were certainly not flattering. “Massachusetts Community Colleges Slammed Twice in One Week,” “Report: Massachusetts Community Colleges Fail in Preparing Students for Careers,” “Report Says Community Colleges Falling Short with Health Majors,” and “Mass. Community Colleges Slammed in 2nd Report This Week” were among the offerings (see story, page 18).
Like we said, not a good week PR-wise, at least on the surface. But we think there’s much more to these accounts — one of which says that many health care graduates are not fully ready for the careers they’ve chosen, while the other suggests that community colleges need to do more to close what the authors call a growing jobs-skills mismatch.
While most community-college presidents, including several in this market, got their backs up when the reports were released and spent most of their time defending their institutions and assailing the accounts (and some of that was and is warranted), we prefer to look at the week that was in late November in a very different way.
And that is from the perspective of opportunity, which we believe is buried in these reports somewhere amid several headline-grabbing suggestions — such as merging a few of the Boston-area community colleges, narrowing the mission of all 15 instituitions to workforce-related initiatives, and a centralization effort that would do away with the local boards of trustees.
That opportunity comes in the form of exposure, or recognition, regarding the vital role community colleges are playing and will continue to play in both economic development and workforce development across the state — and also the possibility that this recognition will eventually lead to greater support as the schools go about their work.
The Boston Foundation report notes that “Massachusetts is at a crossroads in its capacity to compete — and the ability of its residents to fully participate in the current economy and the rewards that employment brings,” and that community colleges will play a critical role in reversing many disturbing trends regarding the state’s skilled workforce. It suggests that several steps can be taken to make the schools more effective in that role. All this is much too difficult to cram into a short headline, and thus we are left with “Report Slams Community Colleges,” which isn’t entirely accurate but does catch the reader’s eye.
Over the past several years, community colleges have been involved in almost every major workforce-related initiative in this region, from the Healthcare Workforce Partnership of Western Mass. to the new Training and Workforce Options program involving Holyoke Community College and Springfield Technical College, to initiatives involving the area’s precision-machining sector and efforts to draw more people into that profession. And they have done their work extremely well, and under great duress in the form of reduced state funding in the wake of the recession.
None of this seems to have caught the attention of the Boston Foundation report’s authors, which is frustrating, but not the main point of this discussion. That point is that individuals and groups like the foundation and Commonwealth Corp. are finally waking up to the vital role being played by community colleges in this state, and that even more can and should be expected from them moving forward.
We can’t blame the community college presidents in this market for being defensive and critical of many of the recommendations in these reports. But most of those steps, especially the centralization of governance and a narrowing of the community-college mission, are not likely to happen any time soon, if at all.
But what might happen because of all this attention — and needs to happen — is for state leaders to adequately support these institutions, and in the many forms that the word ‘support’ connotes.

Business Management Sections
There Are Many Applicable Lessons from Steve Jobs’ Succession Plan

By CHARLOTTE CATHRO

Charlotte Cathro

Charlotte Cathro

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs passed away in October and left behind him an incredible legacy. He conceived and cultivated a successful and admired company, but a long history of health issues had investors concerned about where the business would be without him.
The company had been tight-lipped about their succession plan, leading to some speculation. The world was shown what Jobs intended for the company when he resigned in August and the plan was officially set in motion.
While a company as successful as Apple needs a plan on the largest of scales, there are some cues that can be taken to benefit all companies in planning for their future.
Jobs founded Apple with his high-school friend, Stephen Wozniak, in 1976, and the two transformed the personal-computer industry. After a disagreement with company executives, Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985, but returned to take the helm in 1997 as part of a new management team. Upon returning to Apple, Jobs continually expanded the company with new innovations. What was a computer manufacturer became a conglomerate of music, software, and personal electronics. Jobs created a following for his sleek and modern design aesthetic. Keen marketing campaigns surrounded each new product in buzz. His charismatic presentations of new products were touted for their brilliance, and his own image became inseparable from Apple’s. It is this intertwining that makes Jobs an incredibly tough act to follow.
To ensure that Steve Jobs’ vision lived on, the company created Apple University. The university is a training program for Apple executives with high-level courses designed to instill Apple’s most important principles: accountability, perfectionism, simplicity, and secrecy. The project ensures that everyone is on the same page, and allows management to trust that the organization is acting with a collective brain.
Jobs took the project so seriously that he recruited the former dean of Yale University, Joel Podolny, to run it. While not all businesses have the resources to set up such a program, business owners can and should train employees to make smarter decisions independently. An education and training program fosters loyalty and a culture of self-improvement. It doesn’t just prepare them for when you are no longer running the business; building trust will allow you to transition responsibility over time.
When it came time to name a new CEO, Apple was ready. Jobs stepped down in August, and Tim Cook was appointed in his place. Jobs trusted Cook to take the helm for several reasons. First, Cook had a strong relationship with Jobs and considered him a mentor. He has respect for the vision and history of the company, and is not looking to completely revamp it now that he is in charge. He reportedly sent a memo to employees since he took over noting that Apple would not change.
Cook has a strong drive for success, which has gotten him this far in his career. As COO, Cook managed Apple’s enormous supply chain and enabled the company to post impressive profits. His experience will allow him to maintain Apple’s standing as a fierce market competitor. Most importantly, Cook loves Apple and its products.
Cook’s appointment in August was not his first time running the show. He had filled in on several occasions during Jobs’ previous medical leaves and had been in charge of the day-to-day operations of the business as of January. While it may have been Jobs’ continuous illness that required Cook to act as a standin, it served the succession plan well. Investors, analysts, and the public started to know his name, and employees of the company got a taste of what working under Cook would be like.
Field-testing executives allows them to get some comfort in the role, and gives opportunity for feedback. Businesses can begin by including protégés in meetings with major customers and suppliers and allowing them to create a rapport. Acclimating customers to future leaders can also result in fewer losses upon transition.
A succession plan doesn’t need to be a one-for-one replacement in leadership. Jobs had developed a team of advisors with specialties in different areas. This group includes Jony Ive, vice president of design; Scott Forstall, in charge of operating system software; Bob Mansfield, hardware engineering; and Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing head. It is unknown whether roles within the organization will shift with Jobs gone, but this ‘two heads are better than one’ approach ensures that Cook will have a sounding board for ideas.
To follow the lead of Apple, companies developing succession plans should evaluate what skills are needed for future leadership and fill the gaps, spreading the abilities to supporting roles. Smaller organizations without the resources for multiple executives with different skill sets can retain consultants or send existing staff to targeted training.
Apple has reinvented itself several times over the years, and Jobs prided himself in knowing what the public wanted, even when they didn’t. A future for the company, then, needs to include continuous innovation. The vision for the future should not just be that of survival, but of growth.
In planning beyond Steve Jobs, Apple educated its employees, created a strong corporate culture, established a support team of differing skills, and test-drove their executives. To ensure that a company lives past its president, a succession plan needs to be more than just a decision. The plan needs to be in motion as an ongoing initiative.

Charlotte Cathro is a tax manager with the Holyoke-based CPA firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.; (413) 536-8510; [email protected]

Education Sections
Link to Libraries Expands Its Mission — and Its Reach

Susan Jaye-Kaplan, left, and Janet Crimmins

Susan Jaye-Kaplan, left, and Janet Crimmins say the LTL mission has evolved and now involves much more than filling the shelves of area libraries.

It all started in early 2008 with a few dozen books collected and then donated to the library at the White Street School in Springfield. Since then, the work — and the mission — of Link to Libraries has expanded and evolved. Instead of simply filling shelves with books — although that’s still a big part of the equation — the organization is developing new and imaginative ways to not only put books directly in the hands of young children, but also involve business and civic leaders in the critical assignment of promoting childhood literacy.

By GEORGE O’BRIEN

Janet Crimmins says she’s read hundreds of letters from young students who have become involved in the Link to Libraries program.
Most of these missives come after a read-aloud program coinciding with a large donation of books to the school’s library from of the organization, which Crimmins and co-founder Susan Jaye-Kaplan started three years ago. Most of these handwritten notes come complete with some curious grammar and spelling, but they all get right to the point:
“Thank you for donating books to our library. We are going to have more fun and we are going to be smarter,” wrote Jerrick Wilson. “I can’t wieght [sic] to read it. I like the book you read to us. It was funny. The bookbag are [sic] cool.”
And there was this from a girl named Samantha: “Thank you Links to Librarie [sic]. I am so thankful because I got to learn new vocabulary to become smarter, so I can have a good job like you. Now I am going to read more books so thank you so much.”
As much as she likes reading such messages, and she really does, Crimmins says she covets her collection of photos featuring children and their books even more. “They’re more expressive than the letters,” she noted, adding that the smiles and the excitement they convey help those who volunteer time, energy, and imagination to this effort know that they are making an impact when statistical, measurable evidence to that effect is elusive and probably years if not decades away.
But those involved with LTL are driven by the belief that absolutely nothing bad can happen when you put books in the hands of young people who might otherwise not have that experience — and that plenty of good can result.
And their work is capturing the imagination of not only young people, their teachers, and principals, but also the business community, which is contributing in a number of different ways. Start with the space at Rediker Software’s headquarters in Hampden that’s been donated by the company as combination warehouse, staging area for donations and bookbag-packing efforts, and photo gallery (those aforementioned pictures of children with books now crowd the walls).
But there are many other efforts — ranging from financial gifts to donations of books and bookbags, to the recruitment of volunteer ‘celebrity’ readers, which include PeoplesBank President Doug Bowen; Steve Bradley, vice president of Government and Community Relations at Baystate Health; and Peter Rosskothen, co-owner of the Log Cabin and Delaney House — that speak to how far this organization and its work have come.
There is actually a waiting list for read-aloud assignments, said Jaye-Kaplan, noting that many individuals have expressed an interest in taking part in the program. There is another waiting list, however, one featuring several dozen schools seeking donations for their libraries, a situation that speaks to the toll the recent downturn has taken on education programs and facilities.
For this issue, BusinessWest relates the story of Link to Libraries, and how its founders are finding that the assignment they’ve taken on continues to grow in scope, importance, and overall satisfaction for those involved.

Must Reading
Margaret Thompson was asked for a snapshot of the student body at the Kensington Avenue School in Springfield. It’s not a particularly pretty picture.
Indeed, 96% of the youngsters, clustered into several streets near the ‘X’ in the city’s Forest Park neighborhood, live in poverty. Thompson, the school’s principal, says she has no hard figure on how many of her students live in single-parent homes, but offered “most all of them.” Some live with grandparents or other relatives, while others are in foster homes, and still others are in shelters, she told BusinessWest.
And then there’s the transience factor; between December and March of last year, 50 of the roughly 340 students in the school left as their parents or guardians moved out of the area, and another 30 came in, a revolving door that provides a stern test for educators.
“The neighborhood itself is not a safe place,” Thompson went on. “But the school is; it’s like a beacon in this neighborhood.”
It’s not written in the organization’s mission statement, but Link to Libraries was essentially created because there are, unfortunately, many schools like Kensington Avenue in the Pioneer Valley, and especially in urban areas like Springfield and Holyoke — places where the gift of a book is “like a treasure,” said Thompson, and donations of a few hundred books to that school’s library — extensively damaged in a flood two years — have an impact well beyond the dollar value of the volumes in question.
It was with facilities like Kensington Avenue School in mind that Kaplan and Crimmins launched Link to Libraries in early 2008. They started on Crimmins’ dining room table, where 65 books, gathered from various sources, were packed up and delivered to the library at the White Street School in Springfield, also in the Forest Park area.
The exercise served as an inspiring beginning, enough to validate what the co-founders were trying to do and ignite a passion to soon recalibrate goals and expectations.
“Everyone — the students, teacher, and principal — were so excited about what we left that we both said, ‘this is something we can do,’” Jaye-Kaplan recalled. “We spent the whole day afterward networking and talking about what we could do and what we should be doing.”
Such humble beginnings are certainly not forgotten amid the thousands of books that arrive at the warehouse monthly, but there have been profound changes and countless signs of exponential growth since a group of 10 volunteers got LTL off the ground.
Indeed, for an organization dedicated to the printed word, some impressive numbers are being used to tell the story.
For example, more than 35,000 books have been distributed to date, and the number for 2011 is approaching 25,000. Also, some 35 area schools and nonprofit organizations — most in Holyoke and Springfield, but several from other surrounding communities — have been involved in book donations, and nearly 10,000 students have received a book.
Meanwhile, another statistic was added this past September: 3,000. That’s the number of young people who received ‘Welcome to Kindergarten’ literacy kits for the start of the new school year. Each child receives two books, a bookbag, and several items for parents and guardians designed to stress the importance of reading and offer tips on encouraging children to do so.
The kit includes a bookmark supplied by the Reading Success by 4th Grade initiative created by the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation, as well as a pamphlet from the Harvard Graduate School of Education called Encouraging Your Child to Read.
The program is not exactly unique, said Kaplan, noting that many school departments in Massachusetts and other states have such initiatives. What is unique is that this is funded entirely by LTL, while the others are mostly supported by public dollars.
The kindergarten program, the contents of the literacy kits, as well as a new ‘Read Together’ initiative involving young, disadvantaged children are just a few examples of how the LTL mission has evolved from merely filling library shelves — which remains a big part of the equation — to putting books directly in the hands of children and offering encouragement to read.

Chapters and Verse
While Jaye-Kaplan and Crimmins both do a little of everything — and that includes lugging boxes of books up the three floors to the warehouse (“it’s good exercise; it keeps us in shape,” said the former) — they have developed their own assignment niches, and become quite proficient at each.
Crimmins is unofficially in charge of reading and reviewing children’s books and making recommendations for titles to be purchased and read, while one of Jaye-Kaplan’s primary assignments is writing grant applications.
“I’m the reader, she’s the writer,” said Crimmins. “I’m happiest when I have my nose in a book; I’ve probably read more than half the books we order — and that’s about 400-500 different titles at a time. Each one is chosen for a different reason; they’re all different topics, and they cover a broad age range.”
Jaye-Kaplan, who was a long-time grant judge for Billie Jean King’s Women’s Sports Foundation, believes she’s a better judge than grant writer, but has still enjoyed enormous success in winning funds for Link to Libraries. She says the organization’s mission and partnerships within the community help win the favor of the judges weighing her applications, and that she usually vies for smaller amounts — and for a reason.
“We know other organizations are in need of money, and if we get overzealous, then some others will lose out,” she explained. “So I’m willing to write more grant applications for smaller amounts and spread the wealth.”
And both founders have it within their job descriptions to recruit volunteers to help at the warehouse, readers for classroom duties, and businesses to provide both monetary and in-kind donations. And they don’t seem to be having problems on any of those fronts, especially when it comes to securing help from the business community.
Indeed, while wary of listing participating businesses out of fear that she might forget someone, Jaye-Kaplan eventually acquiesced, and noted that contributions in several shapes and sizes have come from businesses large and small.
She said companies as diverse as Excel Dryer, Big Y, Health New England, Kelly Fradet, Reddiker Software, and Johnson & Hill Staffing have provided financial support and/or help stamping books, loading bookbags, and helping to stock the shelves in the warehouse.
Meanwhile, the read-aloud initiative continues to grow, said Jaye-Kaplan, and is now an important component in the broader effort to promote literacy, not simply supply books to libraries.
She said there are a number of benefits for program participants, meaning both the adults and the children. The former gain an eye-opening look at the challenges faced by educators in schools and districts serving disadvantaged young people, as well as the satisfaction of being part of the solution to the problem. The latter, meanwhile, get to hear a story, while also gaining time with some positive role models (especially adult male professionals, who are missing from the lives of many of the students) and an understanding that community leaders think enough of this organization and its mission to take time out to volunteer.
Both the level of support from the business community and the growing ranks of celebrity readers help Crimmins, Jaye-Kaplan, and others involved with Link to Libraries answer that difficult but necessary question: is this initiative making a real difference in the community?
“I just look at the faces in the photos of the children,” said Crimmins. “They say a lot; they and the letters we get tell us that we’re making a positive influence in these kids’ lives.”
Said Jaye-Kaplan: “we have children tell us over and over again that they’ve never had a book in their home. Some of them are so overwhelmed that they don’t want to bring the book home for fear that it will be lost. We have principals and superintendents of schools who don’t just want us to deliver the books; they want to come here and see what we have, make suggestions, and thank us. They’re committed to helping us succeed.”

Far from the End
Given how far LTL has come in 3 ½ short years, Jaye-Kaplan and Crimmins say it’s difficult to project what those often-quoted numbers will be a few years out.
They both think it’s fair to say that the organization will continue to expand and hone its mission and find new and imaginative ways to put books in the hands of children, while continuing to preach the importance of childhood literacy.
Meanwhile, more read-alouds are scheduled to get more area business and civic leaders involved in the initiative and bring the message home in ways beyond the gleaming new volumes on the library shelves.
After all, there are thousands of children, like young Jerrick Wilson, who can’t wieght for their next book.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Building Permits Departments
The following building permits were issued during the month of November 2011.

AGAWAM

Crown Castle
628 Meadow St.
$15,000 — Telecommunications maintenance

Six Flags New England
1623 Main St.
$1,500,000 — Form and pour concrete footing for Giant Inverted Boomerang Rollercoaster

WWLP TV
591 North West St.
$15,000 — Telecommunications maintenance

AMHERST

First Congregational Church
165 Main St.
$2,000 — Repair two front entry columns

Sean M. Clarke
531 Main St.
$6,000 — Roof repair

UMass
388 North Pleasant St.
$38,000 — New roof at Hiller House

HADLEY

E & A/I & G
1221 Main St.
$291,000 — Interior renovations

Hadley Housing Authority
Golden Court
$17,500 — New roof

Yoon Chun Suk
229 Russell St.
$4,700 — New roof

HOLYOKE

Fontaine Properties
20 Easthampton Road
$40,000 — Re-install roof

Holyoke Water Power Company
200 Northampton St.
$15,000 — Remove and replace six antennas

Pulaski Heights Inc.
76 Maple St.
$15,000 — Remove and replace six antennas

NORTHAMPTON

Atwood Drive, LLC
Atwood Dr.
$100,000 — Construct 13,000-square-foot foundation for medical/office building

Cooper’s Dairyland
55 State St.
$8,900 — Emergency structural repairs

Covest Northampton, LLC
327 King St.
$250,000 — Exterior renovations

Covest Northampton, LLC
327 King St.
$183,000 — Construct 1,750-square-foot addition

Daniel Polachek
335 South St.
$4,700 — Strip and shingle portions of roof

Joe Curran
72 Masonic St.
$5,000 — Add roof over entry deck

Julia Freedgood
15 Merrick St.
$17,000 — Strip and shingle roof

Searle Realty Trust
85 Easthampton Road
$120,000 — Construct new storage building

SOUTH HADLEY

Loomis Village
246 North Main St.
$19,000 — Build porch enclosure

SPRINGFIELD

CSM North
195 State St.
$750,000 — Interior renovations

East Springfield Family Restaurant
1003 St. James Ave.
$15,000 — Interior renovations

Springfield Rescue Mission
146 Taylor St.
$31,000 — New roof

WESTFIELD

Dennis Botticello
11 Summit Lock Road
$38,000 — Addition

F.L. Roberts & Company Inc.
90 South Maple St.
$575,000 — Construct new Jiffylube

National Industrial Portfolio
1111 Southampton Road
$25,000 — Addition

North Hartland Dry Kilns Inc.
Sgt. TM Dion Way
$140,000 — Construct new commercial building

Ronald Cecchini
591 North Road
$12,000,000 — Construct new building

Zak Francis
501 Southampton Road
$596,000 — New floor covering building

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Bob Simpson
76 Westfield St.
$12,000 — Renovate 1,250 square feet of commercial structure

Cellular Sales of MA
6513 Kingston Pike
$100.000 — Commercial fit-out

Konover Corporation
380 Union St.
$12,500 — Pour concrete piers and lally columns

Mittineague Children’s Center
1840 Westfield St.
$1,000 — Erect two partition demising walls

Opinion
Gas Tax Isn’t a Simple Cure for Transit Ills

The trial balloons keep coming for some sort of transportation revenue. There was Lt. Gov. Murray’s August trial balloon for a gas-tax increase. Then public discussions about needing four times more funding to maintain the Big Dig tunnels, and Gov. Patrick’s trip to attend President Obama’s press conference on federal transportation legislation. Make no mistake about it, there will be a push to raise transportation revenues, most likely through the gas tax, in the coming year.
But the administration faces a real uphill battle to get it passed.
Over the past two years, the Commonwealth massively restructured the state’s transportation agencies. A new entity, MassDOT, now oversees most major pieces of transportation infrastructure, including those formerly held by the now-dissolved Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. The 2009 law included additional reforms that held the promise of increased efficiency and lower costs.
The outcome of the reforms? We don’t know.
MassDOT was to report consistently on key performance measures. But they have not provided enough in terms of data content or informing the public. The department has done a far better job of communicating tactical successes — innovative projects and reform-related events. But these press events don’t say anything about progress on many key measures — measures that matter to the public.
Without this strategic communication, MassDOT will rightly struggle to make the public case that it is managing our assets and our money more wisely than in the past. For a public with Big Dig cost overruns and MBTA service failures lodged firmly in our collective psyche, changing a negative perception of transportation spending and management is a herculean task, made more challenging without a consistent method of communicating performance and accountability. And reports over the summer that senior engineers at MassDOT purposely avoided tracking maintenance issues do not help.
Any tax-increase proposal must be akin to a social contract — you taxpayers pay this, and we, the government, will give you value in return. Without refocusing the transportation agency on consumer-centered metrics, why would the public think that an increase in the gas tax will lead to service improvements?
A two-way request for more tax dollars paired with specific performance benchmarks — e.g. reduced congestion, increased on-time performance, and fewer structurally deficient bridges — might get us to that elusive destination called compromise, while a one-way offer to siphon more tax revenue into a black hole will land squarely in the breakdown lane.
A two-way contract with the public would change MassDOT’s focus from a strong emphasis on expansion to addressing long-term neglect of maintenance. Expansion projects that do not significantly address ‘customer-service’ issues and, in fact, further burden the MBTA with a crippling debt load, such as the multi-billion-dollar South Coast Rail project, would no longer be a priority.
Instead, the agency would focus on meeting the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual unfunded maintenance needs outlined in the state’s transportation capital plan. Subway riders and highway commuters know well what the neglect of maintenance means — delay, congestion, and aggravation.
The days of expanding the system without the finances to pay for or even operate it are gone. As Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff stated in Boston last year, “if you can’t afford to operate the system you have, why does it make sense for us to partner in your expansion?’’
If an increase in the gas tax means funding expansions that leave us in precisely the same situation 10 years from now, but with a larger portfolio of assets, you can forget about it. If it prioritizes maintenance and improves our current system’s operations, sustainability, and efficiency, then the politics might work.
That’s a tall order for the governor. Reshaping perceptions and the politics of transportation means lessening the emphasis on politically expedient (but financially disastrous) expansions. It means communicating to the public consumer-based goals and drilling them into agencies used to very different marching orders.
There’s no doubt that our transportation system is underfunded. But asking for more money to make the problem bigger is not the answer.

Steve Poftak is director of research at the Pioneer Institute.

Court Dockets Departments
The following is a compilation of recent lawsuits involving area businesses and organizations. These are strictly allegations that have yet to be proven in a court of law. Readers are advised to contact the parties listed, or the court, for more information concerning the individual claims.

HAMPDEN SUPERIOR COURT
Atlas Property Management Inc. v. Global Strategic Investment Corp.
Allegation: Non-payment of fees for services provided: $114,450.42
Filed: 9/20/11

Francisco Ramirez Jr. v. Matuszko Trucking Inc.
Allegation: Unlawful misclassification as independent contractor and unjust enrichment: $100,000
Filed: 9/15/11

Holyoke Economic Development Corp. v. Specialty Loose Leaf Inc.
Allegation: Default of commercial note: $145,134.17
Filed: 9/16/11

Lawrence and Debra Baker v. Vertex Air Quality Services
Allegation: Property damages following mold exposure to entire home: $1,028,000
Filed: 9/21/11

Peoples United Bank v. Harleysville Worcester Insurance Co.
Allegation: Breach of insurance contract and negligence: $500,000
Filed: 10/25/11

TD Bank, N.A. v. Parthenon Inc. and Pananas Grill and Bar Inc.
Allegation: Breach of personal guaranty agreements relating to note and mortgage: $832,161.07
Filed: 9/21/11

Tyler Fisher v. Pursuit Marketing Inc. and Nick’s Sport Shop Inc.
Allegation: Product liability involving a paintball gun causing personal injury: $31,103.50
Filed: 9/21/11

HAMPSHIRE SUPERIOR COURT
Carol Guenther v. Spoleto Inc. d/b/a Pizzeria Paradiso
Allegation: Chop Chop salad contained whole pits, and plaintiff sustained dental injury after biting into one: $12,258
Filed: 10/24/11

Marilyn Burns, administratrix of the estate of Henry Burns Jr. v. Daniel Paknia, D.P.M. and Decaro Total Foot Care Center
Allegation: Failure to properly treat medical condition causing death: $25,000+
Filed: 9/30/11

HOLYOKE DISTRICT COURT
Sarah Supernaw v. Travelers of MA
Allegation: Claim for unpaid benefits: $1,352
Filed: 9/26/11

NORTHAMPTON DISTRICT COURT
Caravan Canopy International Inc. v. Valley Marketing Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $14,426.84
Filed: 9/11/11

Mario International Corp. v. Precision Metal Goods
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $12,699.60
Filed: 9/28/11

Paciorek Electric Inc. v. LIT
Allegation: Non-payment of services and materials provided: $16,138.61
Filed: 10/6/11

SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT
Hale Trailer Brake and Wheel Inc. v. Moosehead Harvesting Inc.
Allegation: Breach of lease agreement and unjust enrichment: $12,260.25
Filed: 10/25/11

MGA Cast Stone Inc. v. JRE Masonry and Restoration Inc. and Titeflex Corp.
Allegation: Breach of contract and enforcement of mechanics lien: $10,837.50
Filed: 10/25/11

WESTFIELD DISTRICT COURT
Ford Motor Credit Co., LLC v. EG Partners, LLC
Allegation: Default on retail installment sale agreement: $2,943.79
Filed: 11/2/11

Law Sections
Curran & Berger Works to Ease the Path to Immigration

From left: Daniel Berger, Joseph Curran, and Megan Kludt

From left: Daniel Berger, Joseph Curran, and Megan Kludt

The immigration lawyers at Northampton-based Curran & Berger paint a picture of immigration far different from commonly held stereotypes about foreigners scaling walls and taking advantage of the system. They say they work with people unjustly separated from their families over technicalities, and of extremely talented professionals with much to offer this country. These lawyers must overcome a maze of statutory barriers and systemic suspicion that makes their jobs more challenging — but the inevitable success stories even more gratifying.

Joseph Curran likes to talk about a “culture of no.”
Well, ‘likes’ may be inaccurate. He would much rather talk about a culture of ‘yes,’ but Curran — a partner with Curran & Berger in Northampton — is just being realistic about some of the challenges of being an immigration lawyer.
“The culture of no is firmly entrenched. We’ve made very little headway,” he said, referring to changes in immigration policy at the federal level that came about after 9/11. Prosecutors tasked with enforcing those laws “are supposed to use prosecutorial discretion; they’re supposed to be focusing on drug dealers, criminals, terrorists — the bad guys.
“No one ever gets punished for overzealously prosecuting even small things,” he added, “but they could face discipline if anyone thinks they’re being too slack and easy on these people.”
One such ‘small thing’ involved a Portuguese man who had lived in America since 1980 and had grown children and grandchildren living here. He ran into some trouble recently in his home country — it involved surgery — and apparently spent too much time there. “When he returned, the Immigration Service wanted to send him back; they said he had abandoned his green card,” said attorney Megan Kludt, who joined the firm last year.
She went to the prosecutor, who worked for the Department of Homeland Security, Curran recalled, “and said, ‘there are only so many hours in the day; do you really want to waste a whole half-day on an 80-year-old man who has never done anything wrong, when there are so many other cases to work on?’ Even the judge was irritated.”
While immigration is the firm’s specialty, Curran said, there are many subspecialties within that field.
“We are a full-service firm,” Curran said, noting that he, partner Daniel Berger, and Kludt — along with a diverse staff of paralegals and researchers — work with a wide variety of clients, from businesses and colleges looking to bring foreign workers on board to families trying to stay together in the U.S. when one member is faced with deportation.
“I deal personally with a lot of foreign national doctors coming to the U.S.,” he noted. “They make a deal with the Immigration Service and the Department of Labor to work in medically underserved areas in exchange for a green card — and there are a lot of medically underserved areas in Western Mass., including Springfield, Holyoke, Greenfield, and outlying towns. They can’t find physicians, especially primary-care physicians.”
In fact, Kludt said, despite rampant unemployment in the U.S., many businesses and health care organizations are in desperate need of skilled workers that they cannot find, and talented foreign-born workers can fill that gap. The Department of Labor must perform a balancing act in these situations, she added, because it wants to make sure businesses have the staff they need, yet it also needs to protect the interests of U.S. citizens who might lose out on jobs.
Still, “people are not scaling the fence coming in from Mexico; that’s a common misinterpetation of the immigration situation,” she told BusinessWest. “The border is actually fairly quiet, but we’re seeing some highly eduated people struggling to get in, people who could benefit the U.S. One researcher from Iran won’t travel [outside the U.S.] because it’s always a hassle, and he’s never sure he’ll get back in.”

People Who Need People
Early in his law career, Curran explained, he was drawn to a field that gave him more personal satisfaction than, say, divorce law or tort law.
“I chose early on to do just immigration,” he said, noting that his passion was likely sparked at a young age, by a family heavily involved in international matters. “We always had foreign students in our house — maybe a dozen different students over the years. There would be someone from Botswana or Korea or Brazil, talking to me about what life was like in other parts of the world. I didn’t really think about it until later on, but it was something ingrained in me. Then after law school, I met a couple of immigration lawyers and got into this field.”
The firm’s newest lawyer said she was drawn into the immigration niche by the opportunity to make a positive difference in people’s lives.
“I thought I was heading into a career in international relations,” said Kludt, who holds degrees in that field. “My plan was always to do international work, but after graduating from law school, I realized I could do much more here in the U.S. In another country, you make a small difference as part of an international organization, but here, you can make a difference with every single family; every time you win a case, you can look at that person and see them smiling. It’s gratifying.”
She said the job is endlessly varied, and she essentially travels the globe from her office; in a single week before speaking with BusinessWest, she had worked with clients from Denmark, the United Kingdom, China, Brazil, Mexico, and other nations.
But the field can be heartwrenching as well as gratifying. One client had a green card pending when he took an unauthorized trip to Brazil to be with his dying mother, which jeopardized his immigration status. Curran & Berger has been fighting to allow him to stay in the U.S., with no positive resolution yet. “He might give up and go home,” Kludt said. “Sometimes it comes down to that.”
Both Curran and Kludt say they enjoy working through the highly complex statutes surrounding immigration law, but it’s a challenge as well.
“The statute part is very complex, like a Sudoku puzzle,” Kludt said. “Immigration law is one series of immigration reform piled onto another.”
Differences in state laws can pose difficulties as well. Typically, a “crime of moral terpitude” will jeopardize someone’s immigration status, she explained, yet definitions of those crimes can vary from state to state, often with severe consequences.
For example, one state might define assault as any innocuous scuffle, while another might reserve the charge for more serious matters. Yet, because a simple admission of guilt carries the same weight as a conviction in immigration law, someone who admits to a very minor assault charge, resulting in no real punishment, may do permanent damage to his chances of staying in the U.S., so it’s often better to go to court. Kludt said she is often consulted by criminal lawyers to help them avoid such pitfalls.

Dream On
The firm has also been supportive of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act first introduced in the U.S. Congress a decade ago and reintroduced earlier this year. The legislation addresses the plight of young immigrants who have been raised in the U.S. without proper documentation, and would offer a path to legal status to those who have graduated from high school, have stayed out of trouble, and plan to attend college or serve in the U.S. military for at least two years.
“We’re doing a lot of work with students all over the country, and we’ve been hoping for passage of the DREAM Act for the sake of people who came in very young, grew up here, and are highly educated with no place to go,” Kludt said. “We’re working with as many students as possible; a lot of them never talked with immigration lawyers and have no idea what their options are. We’re seeing what we can do for them.”
The problem with current hurdles to immigration, she said, is that too many bright, foreign-born people — some with hard-to-come by skills that could benefit medicine, science, the arts, and other fields — are studying here and then taking that valuable knowledge back to their home countries.
In fact, Curran & Berger specializes in serving “aliens of extraordinary ability,” Kludt said, a legal term for foreign-born individuals who are at the top of their field and are able to self-petition the government for citizenship without being sponsored by a university or other organization.
“Typically, what these people do is extremely complicated, like a seismologist discovering new things about earthquakes,” she said. “We spend a lot of time learning about these things ourselves so we can explain it to the government; we put together packets sometimes two inches thick to try to convince the government that this person is unique, and we don’t want to lose them.”
Of course, many cases are more emotional, such as people who have found their way into the U.S. through educational or humanitarian means and who petition the government for asylum because they have been battered, tortured, or harassed in their home country. Sometimes it takes a long time, with many meetings, for such people to fully explain their story to the point where it will be convincing to a judge.
It’s the successes, Kludt said, that stand out most and continue to energize and motivate the whole team — like in the case of the old man making his way back from Portugal.
“We had the whole family in the back of the courtroom, crying,” she said. “It was a really celebratory event.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Study on Community Colleges Prompts Questions, Criticism

Bill Messner

Bill Messner


Bob Pura says he found at least a few things to like about the recent Boston Foundation report titled “The Case for Community Colleges: Aligning Higher Education and Workforce Needs in Massachusetts” — especially the main subject of the account.
“I’m glad they focused on community colleges — we need and deserve that kind of attention,” said Pura, the long-time president of Greenfield Community College, noting that this segment of the Commonwealth’s higher-education portfolio is often overlooked due to the prevalence of top-shelf private colleges. He also liked the fact that the report, released late last month, said the 15 institutions are woefully underfunded and that the state needs to step up its commitment to the schools.
Bob Pura

Bob Pura

But beyond that, Pura had some major reservations about the document and its primary message — summed up by a recent local headline: “Report Slams Community Colleges” — that these institutions were essentially failing in one of their primary missions, to train individuals to succeed in today’s technology-driven job market.
Actually, this was the conclusion of two reports released within the same week. In the other, the Commonwealth Corp., in a report titled “Critical Collaboration,” found that the state’s community colleges are not properly aligning their training programs with the specific needs of the health-care industry. According to the report, the schools are not creating important standards that ensure sufficient academic performance from students.
This double whammy had many community-college presidents on the defensive, but those we spoke with mixed praise for the reports — especially the Boston Foundation document — with criticism that it was recommending that things be fixed that aren’t necessarily broken.
Pura said the report seemed far too Boston-focused to be considered complete and fully accurate — one of its main recommendations is the merger of Roxbury and Bunker Hill community colleges — and surmised that those doing the research might not have ventured west of Worcester or even Route 128 as they went about their work. If they were more thorough, he argued, they would have found plenty of evidence that community colleges are successfully training and retraining thousands of individuals.
Bill Messner, president of Holyoke Community College, agreed, and took exception to some of the report’s primary recommendations, including a centralization effort that would do away with local boards of trustees at the community colleges, and a call for a more singular focus on workforce training, presumably, he believes, at the expense of one of his school’s historical strengths — transfer programs to four-year schools.
Meanwhile, Messner, Pura, and others said a move back to a centralized board for all 15 institutions would rob those schools of individuality and probably stifle ongoing efforts at various schools to address many of the concerns listed in the report.
“How’s that going to enhance workforce efforts? I don’t know,” asked Messner in reference to the centralization proposal before answering his own question.
Ira Rubenzahl

Ira Rubenzahl

Meanwhile, Ira Rubenzahl, president of Springfield Technical Community College, said that, while many of the report’s conclusions can be debated, its basic argument — that community colleges have a huge role in both workforce development and economic development, and need more financial support to carry out that role — cannot be.
And this is what he hopes everyone — including the community-college presidents that have assailed the report — can take away from this exercise moving forward.
“The reason for looking at community colleges now is economic,” said Rubenzahl, referring to both the timing of the report and its main thrust. “We’re still in the throes of the Great Recession, and certainly employment has not responded. And if we’re going to have a vibrant economy in Massachusetts, the report argues, and I agree, that community colleges have to play an important role — a bigger role — for that to happen.”

Schools of Thought
The crux of the Boston Foundation’s report — and the reason for its focus on the role and performance of community colleges — can be found in its executive summary:
“Massachusetts has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation and has added more jobs throughout the recession than most states. However, this transition has not benefited everyone,” it reads. “Rather, as blue-collar jobs continue their long decline, it is leaving far too many workers on the sidelines. There are great rewards for those with the requisite levels of education and skills — and far fewer options for everyone  else, as the economy becomes more and more highly specialized.
“While traditional jobs are disappearing, the gap between the needs of the knowledge economy and the educational attainment of the state’s residents is growing every year,” the report continues. “The recession has been especially tough on on those with less than a high-school diploma, leading to unemployment rates that are four times greater than those of college graduates. Already there are regions of Massachusetts where low rates of educational attainment have exasperated high unemployment levels and stalled economic recovery.”
“The economic imperative for aligning the workforce needs of Massachusetts with the needs of students attending community colleges is powerful and growing,” the authors go on. “Massachusetts is at a crossroads in its capacity to compete — and the ability of its residents to fully participate in the current economy and the rewards that employment brings. For the Commonwealth to flourish going forward, a high priority must be placed on training the workforce that is needed by the industries that are driving the Massachusetts economy. That responsibility falls squarely on the Commonwealth’s public higher-education system, most predominately the 15 community colleges.”
To enable these institutions to effectively carry out that assignment, the report’s authors recommend a number of steps, starting with a clarification and simplification of the schools’ mission. Not only is that mission too wordy, says the foundation (252, compared to 102 for North Carolina and an ultra-concise 18 in Virginia), but it is too broad.
The mission statement “is indicative of a lack of focus and an attempt to be all things to all people,” the authors state. “It is time for community colleges to embrace their role as the link between elementary education and career. This encompasses transfer to to a four-year college, technical education, certificate programs, and career retraining programs. The mission should be providing the Commonwealth’s residents with the education and skills necessary for a productive career with a family-supporting wage.”
Other recommendations include:
• “Developing a strategic blueprint for building a system that effectively leverages the capacity of community colleges to be leaders in meeting the workforce needs of Massachusetts”;
• Strengthening the community-college system of governance and accountability. “The existence of 15 community college governing boards, to whom the presidents report, completely independent from the Board of Commissioner of Higher Education, is not conducive to achieving state and regional workforce-development goals,” the authors write;
• Adopting performance metrics;
• Better preparing students for community-college-level work and graduation;
• Forming a community-college coalition; and
• Stabilizing community-college funding and consolidating the funding into one line item managed by the commissioner of Higher Education.
Paul Grogan, CEO of the foundation, told the Boston Globe, “I hope the colleges see this is not a blame game, not an assault, but just the reverse — we’re saying these institutions are crucial to the economic future of the state.”

Grade Expectations
The community-college presidents we spoke with said this message is certainly embedded in the report, although they believe it may likely get lost amid headline-making recommendations such as merging two of the schools, eliminating local governance, and narrowing the schools’ broad focus to workforce-related initiatives.
Meanwhile, they hint strongly that the authors may have overlooked Western Mass. in their research, and thus some evidence that the schools are working on some of the issues the report details — specifically that often-mentioned jobs-skills mismatch — and achieving progress.
“I thought the study lacked perspective on Western Massachusetts,” said Pura. “I thought that the wonderful work that’s going on in Springfield, Holyoke, the Berkshires, and here in Franklin County was not spoken to. That fact is that community colleges are very tied to the workforce agenda, and they’re serving the communities of this region in a rather powerful and significant way.”
As examples, he cited work at Berkshire Community College to partner with business leaders there to help make graduates workplace-ready; a regionwide effort called the Healthcare Workforce Partnership of Western Mass., designed to draw more people into health care fields and train them for those jobs; and the recently announced collaborative between HCC and STCC called TWO (Training and Workforce Options) through which the schools are essentially combining their workforce-training initiatives.
And he also summoned a recent anecdote from his own school that he believes is quite typical of what’s happening across the region.
“I know of one particular individual who was laid off; he worked with the regional employment board, and essentially went through the system,” Pura explained. “He had never been out of work before, and didn’t know how he would provide for his family. He wound up at GCC, got involved in our sustainable-energy program, did an internship with Sandri Energy Co., and is now gainfully employed there.
“If you asked him, this gentleman would say that the system works,” he continued, “and there are countless other people who could say the same thing.”
Messner had some similar observations, but noted quickly that workforce preparation is simply a part of the community-college mission — a large part, to be sure, but only one component that should not become the singular focus of such institutions.
“As you read this report, you come away with the sense that what they mean is we should be focused on short-term training and technical training, and that this whole focus on general education and liberal-arts transfer amounts to resources that are misallocated — which we simply don’t agree with here,” he told BusinessWest. “We’re a comprehensive community college; that’s our mission. We do transfer, we do liberal arts, we do adult basic education.
“Is that a lot? Yes, but that’s what we’re in business to do; that’s what we’re charged with doing,” he continued. “And the notion that we’re somehow going to truncate our mission doesn’t make sense; more and more students are coming to us because they’re being priced out of four-year education, and they’re coming to us for a start in that direction.”
Rubenzahl, meanwhile, without necessarily disagreeing with his colleague’s comments, said he’s choosing to view the report in the most positive way he can, and that is by focusing on its central theme — that community colleges are at the crossroads of education and the workplace, and must function effectively in that role if the state is to reverse those recent trends concerning out-migration, unemployment, and underemployment.
“There has been a fundamental change in the way education has to interact with the economy,” he explained. “We all have to be very thoughtful about how to improve education in order to help the economy recover.”

Thoughts in Passing
Echoing Pura’s thoughts, both Messner and Rubenzahl praised the report’s authors for bringing needed attention to the plight of community colleges as they go about their work.
“I was generally pleased that we’re getting this kind of attention,” said Rubenzahl. “Because generally, community colleges have labored in this state without a lot of recognition, and without the kind of support that goes with more recognition.”
Whether that support is coming is a matter of conjecture, but for now, community-college leaders and state legislators have been given something to think about — and debate — concerning the future of institutions who are finally getting some due, even if it comes complete with large doses of controversy.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Start Early When Determining and Preparing for Life After School

Dennis G. Egan

Dennis G. Egan

Parents and guardians of special-education students often misunderstand the rights that state and federal law affords such students, particularly in the area of transitional planning. Transition services are those designed to prepare children for education beyond high school, employment, and independent living, and must be included in the first individualized education plan (IEP) in effect when a child turns 16 years old (typically developed when the student is 15).
Federal and state laws dictate that school districts provide transition planning to special-education students between the ages of 14 and 22. These services are in furtherance of the free appropriate public education (FAPE) that special-education students are entitled to receive.
Melissa R. Gillis

Melissa R. Gillis

The IEP process for a student receiving transitional services is much like that of any special education student; however, it differs in one critical area — once a student reaches the age of 14, he or she must be invited, though is not required, to participate in the IEP process. The key to effective transition planning is starting early and understanding what services your special-education child is entitled to, and which are appropriate given his or her academic achievement and potential post-secondary life skills.
Effective transition planning starts well before the student reaches the age of 14, however, and takes into account individual needs, strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Specific services may include academic instruction, exposure to social experiences, training in adult living skills, or soft skills such as interviewing or résumé writing. Effective communication between your child (however he or she is able) and you, as the parent or guardian, is always the first step in successful transition planning. Although most students — special education or otherwise — don’t know what they want to do after leaving high school, these discussions should take place early and often during the child’s high-school career.
Whether your child wishes to attend college is another important consideration, because the answer to this question often dictates the transition services requested and received. For example, both formal and informal assessments should be performed in order to evaluate how your child compares to other students, as well as identify his or her strengths and weaknesses, all in an attempt to make a determination about whether college, trade school, life class, or another avenue should be pursued.
In order to identify your child’s needs, preferences, interests, and strengths, the following assessments can be performed. Formal assessments are standardized tests that include areas covering knowledge on independent living skills, the student’s personality, career preference tests, and vocational-skills evaluations. Informal assessments are the subjective observation of your child both in and out of the classroom setting, and may include viewing him or her in their workplace or interviews.
Transition planning is not an abstract idea. In fact, your child’s IEP should clearly identify his or her post-secondary goals, as well as the services being provided by the school district in furtherance of those goals. As with any effective IEP, post-secondary goals should be clearly stated, deemed achievable, updated at least annually, and address three general areas — those that the student hopes to achieve after high school, those appropriate to the individual student, and those capable of being objectively measured — all focusing on education and training, employment potential, and independent-living skills. Appropriate questions to ask when developing an effective IEP include:
• What are your child’s hopes and dreams?
• What skills are necessary in order for your child to achieve those hopes and dreams?
• What areas need attention in order for your child to master these skills?
• What services will help your child hone these skills? and
• How will you know that the services are or have been effective?
Effective communication with your special-education child is only the first step to ensuring that he or she receives appropriate and successful transition services. In fact, such communication will assure optimal results only if it is committed to writing. In other words, not only must the IEP be well-written, but the services requested to be provided by the school district must be memorialized in writing via the Transition Planning Form (TPF) in order to ensure that all services requested are accepted and document what services are to be provided.
It is important to note that, like any area of an IEP, the transition-services provision is a ‘living thing.’ That is, your child may want to attend college when they are 14 or 15, but by the time they turn 16 or 17, they may decide that a vocational skill is more desirable. In such cases, effective communication with both your child and the school district is imperative in order to assure that transitional services are adjusted when necessary so that the post-high-school student is on the desired path.
While this article contains only general considerations with regard to transition services, like any other part of special education, it is vital that you as a parent are an active participant in the process. Advocacy on behalf of your child, as well as self-advocacy, are the only ways to ensure that he or she receives the transition services necessary to promote a successful post-secondary life.

Melissa R. Gillis, Esq. is an attorney with Bacon Wilson, P.C. in the special-education, domestic, and real-estate departments; (413) 781-0560; baconwilson.com/attorneys/gillis. Dennis G. Egan Jr. is an attorney with Bacon Wilson, P.C., concentrating in special education, business, and corporate law; (413) 781-0560;  baconwilson.com/attorneys/egan.

Health Care Sections
Mercy’s Expanded, Renovated ER Is a Statistical Success

Dr. Louis Durkin

Dr. Louis Durkin says Mercy’s updated ER successfully addresses issues of flow and flexibility, improving the department’s overall performance.

‘Flow’ and ‘flexibility.’
There were and are many goals and ambitions behind the $1.3 million expansion and renovation of Mercy Medical Center’s Emergency Department, but those two words pretty much tell the story, said Dr. Louis Durkin.
He’s the medical director for the Department of Emergency Medicine at Mercy, and while he didn’t actually design the ER improvements, he worked hand-in-hand with the architect to blueprint a facility designed to enable the department to move patients in and out more quickly (the ‘flow’ part of the equation), due in large part to space that can be used for many different purposes and to treat patients with various levels of emergencies (there’s the flexibility).
Ready for business starting early this fall, the expanded and renovated ER is already yielding improvement in some of many barometers used to track performance in the ER, said Durkin, citing both the “door-to-provider” measure — the medical center is now averaging under 30 minutes, the industry benchmark — and the stat known as “door to door,” which is now under four hours, another industry standard.
“For fast-track patients, it’s usually under 90 minutes,” he said, referring to those with less-serious issues. “But for our total population, which includes the patients that are admitted to the hospital with large workups, there is now a turn-around of under four hours, which is pretty good.”
Meanwhile, there’s also been improvement in another measure, the so-called “left without treatment” measure,” which, as the name suggests, denotes people who have left the ER for one reason or another — the wait was too long or the simply changed their mind, for example. At Mercy, that number has come down from 6% to 2% over the past several months.
The renovated ER passed a significant test during the recent late-October snowstorm, said Durkin, noting that resulting power outages taxed the facility and its personnel because many patients couldn’t be discharged to homes without power. And it will get another test in the flu season due to start later this month.
But he is confident the facility will bear up to those challenges because of the detail that went into the design, and also because of that level of flexibility, which enables the ER team to continually tweak and improve the facility and its operations.
Durkin told BusinessWest that the enhancements to the ER have been in the planning stages for more than two years now, and were made necessary by escalating numbers that were not an aberration but a trend expected to continue for many years.
Elaborating, he said that ER volume, which was averaging just over 70,000 several years ago, has been escalating steadily, peaking at 79,000 in 2009, and averaging more than 75,000 the past few years. The reasons for upward movement of the needle are many, he explained, citing two important trends — a significant rise in the number of people who have health care insurance (thanks to reform measures in the Bay State) coupled with stagnancy in the number of primary care physicians — as primary drivers.
“You have more people with insurance, but you have the same number of primary care physicians,” he said, adding that the bottom-line result is more visits to all ERs, and especially Mercy’s, one of the busiest in the state.
In response to the trend and its impact on some of the statistics referenced earlier, Mercy blueprinted a project that would increase the number of ER beds from 32 to 43, said Durkin, adding that this would yield significant improvement in another industry barometer for emergency departments. This would be the one using an official target of one bed for every 1,200 patient visits per year.
Mercy was well above 2,000 per bed before the expansion, and is now much closer to the industry goal, Durkin continued, adding that it is not only the number of beds that is improving overall statistical performance, but also that aforementioned flexibility in how they can be used.
To illustrate, Durkin provided a quick tour of the new ER, which is the result of a project that involved expansion, consolidation, renovation, and modernization. There are now five color-coded pods, or areas designated for specific types of patients. These include the so-called fast-track, or less-serious cases; acute cases (those more serious); and those involving patients with behavioral-health or substance-abuse issues.
Before, the ER had just one bed designated for behavioral-health-related cases, he said, adding that capacity for such cases has quadrupled, and even those expanded facilities are usually at or near capacity.
While each pod has a specific use, there is a large amount of flexibility that is part and parcel to emergency-room operations, and the new ER provides more of that commodity.
“The ideal flexibility comes when any patient can be seen in any bed, as opposed to having specialized beds and specialized rooms,” he explained. “We still need to have those, in that we have acute-resuscitation pods, but for the most part, we have more flexibility; if we start getting a higher number of more-acute patients, we can treat them in the fast-track area, and vice-versa.
“Soon, we’ll be able to treat almost any patient anywhere in the department no matter how acute they are,” he continued, “and that’s important, because most bottlenecks occur when you have specific rooms that you can only use for suture, for example. The ratio of acute to not-so-acute patients changes from day to day and hour to hour, so you have to be ready and make sure you can evenly distribute the workload.”

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Health Care Sections
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.

Construction Sections
Raymond James Restoration Has This Art Down to a Science

James Simoncini

James Simoncini says his company specializes in matching original work with such quality that observers wouldn’t know a restoration project was undertaken.

A century ago, craftspeople spent endless hours doing intricate work on the exterior of buildings that is seldom replicated today.
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.

Health Care Sections
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.”

Cover Story
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.

Law enforcement is another market in which Troy Industries is looking for greater market share.

Along the way, there have been several prominent success stories, probably the most significant of which is an upgrade kit, known as the “M14 modular chassis system,” that has enabled the U.S. military to take thousands of mothballed M14 carbines produced at the Springfield Armory in the years just prior to its closure in 1968 and put them back into productive use as a more attractive alternative to the smaller-caliber M16.
“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]