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YMCA Celebration at Basketball Hall of Fame

June 18:  A celebration of the YMCA’s 160th anniversary will be staged at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, starting at 6 p.m. The event will feature a keynote address by sports and business leader Mannie Jackson and Boston Globe sportswriters and ESPN commentators Jackie MacMullan and Bob Ryan. MacMullan and Ryan, both Basketball Hall of Fame Award winners, will share their thoughts and experiences covering the celebrated Boston sports teams, with a special concentration on the Boston Celtics. Jackson is a former player for the Harlem Globetrotters who, after a successful business career, purchased the Globetrotters from near-bankruptcy and extinction, reinvigorating one of America’s most popular sports brands. He is now a philanthropist and author who recently released a book called Boxcar to Boardrooms: My Memories and Travels. Tickets to the June 18 celebration are available by contacting Peggy Graveline, development assistant at the YMCA of Greater Springfield, at [email protected], or by calling (413) 739-6951, ext. 179. Tickets are $160 each or $1,500 for a table of 10. All proceeds from the event will benefit the YMCA of Greater Springfield’s 2012 Annual Scholarship Campaign.

 

Health Care Expo and Career Fair

June 19: The Greater Chicopee Chamber of Commerce has partnered with Health New England to produce a Health care Expo and Career Fair to be held at The Castle of Knights on Memorial Drive in Chicopee, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. According to Gail A. Sherman, President of the Greater Chicopee Chamber of Commerce, the Healthcare Expo has a multi-level purpose. “It is an opportunity for companies in the health care industry to promote their products and services; but it will also include what we are calling the “Corridor to Your Career” section where companies that have job openings in the healthcare industry will be there to welcome and meet job seekers in that field.” Companies that are in the health care industry can reserve a skirted-marketing table. If they are members of the Greater Chicopee Chamber of Commerce, the cost is $125. For non-members, the cost is $175. Admission to the event is free. Health New England’s Lynn Ostrowski, director of Brand & Corporate Relations, will launch the day’s event by teaching attendees how to effectively manage their energy throughout the day. Complimentary coffee, herbal tea and seasonal fresh fruit will be available until 9:30 a.m. To sign up or to learn more about this event, call Sherman at (413) 594-2101.

 

Elder Planning Seminar

June 20: Williamstown Commons Nursing & Rehabilitation Center will host “The Ins and Outs of Health and Long-Term Care Planning” at 6 p.m. Elder-law attorney James Sisto of the Berkshire Elder Law Center — a member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and a certified public accountant — will discuss strategies for seniors in preparing for long-term care, financial planning, and estate planning. Certified senior adviser Kira Breard, branch manager of Interim Health Care, will discuss services designed to help with health and personal-care needs, as well as sharing information on a variety of programs and services available to seniors in Berkshire County. To RSVP for this program, call (413) 458-2111.

 

40 Under Forty

June 21: BusinessWest will present its sixth class of regional rising stars at its annual 40 Under Forty gala at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House in Holyoke. The gala will feature music, lavish food stations, and introductions of the winners. Tickets are $60 per person, with tables of 10 available. Early registration is advised, as seating is limited. For more information, call (413) 781-8600, ext. 100, or log onto www.businesswest.com.

 

WBOA 30th Anniversary

June 21: Chez Josef in Agawam will be the setting for the 30th anniversary celebration of the Women’s Business Owners Alliance of the Pioneer Valley (WBOA) at 6 p.m. The WBOA will recognize its 2012 Business Woman of the Year, as well as its 2012 Outstanding New Member, and will name its Top Women in Business in the Pioneer Valley. Renate Oliver, WBOA founder, will also be a featured speaker. The event will feature entertainment by Jeannie Pomeroy-Murphy, as well as a raffle fund-raiser. For more information or tickets, call (413) 525-7345 or visit www.wboa.org.

 

Walk for Miracles at Six Flags

June 23: Six Flags New England will host Walk for Miracles, a Children’s Miracle Network initiative to raise funds for patient-care programs at Baystate Children’s Hospital. “Six Flags New England is thrilled to be the sponsor of this incredible walk that benefits our local community,” said John Winkler, the park’s president. “We are proud of our commitment to our philanthropic work.” Registration for Walk for Miracles begins at 7:30 a.m., followed by step-off at 8:30 a.m. for a family-friendly stroll of about 1.5 miles inside the amusement park. Following the walk, from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., there will be a special celebration including music and entertainment, as well as a medal ceremony for Baystate Children’s Hospital’s “Miracle Kids.” Registration fee is $10 for all walkers and includes participation in the walk, a light breakfast snack, and a T-shirt, while supplies last. Walkers who raise $50 or more for their efforts will receive free admission to the park on June 23. Walkers who do not raise $50 are also welcome to enjoy the park at 50% off general admission. All proceeds will remain local and support pediatric needs throughout Baystate Health, including equipment, outreach programs, and services at Baystate Children’s Hospital in Springfield, Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, Baystate Mary Lane Hospital in Ware, and Baystate Visiting Nurse Assoc. & Hospice. To register, visit helpmakemiracles.org/event/walkformiracles.

 

Party with the Animals

June 23: The Zoo in Forest Park & Education Center is holding its 10th annual “Party with the Animals” fund-raiser at 5:30 p.m. under the big tent at the zoo. The October snowstorm hit the zoo especially hard. “We suffered damage to almost every exhibit at the zoo, from falling limbs from the trees that surround the zoo,” said John Lewis, executive director. Fortunately, the zoo was able to open on schedule this spring, but some exhibits are still undergoing repairs and renovations. The Party with the Animals includes gourmet food prepared by Noble Feast, a full-service bar, and music provided by the Westfield High School Jazz Band. Attendees will enjoy close encounters with some very special animal friends. The live auction, with Ray Hershel of Channel 40 as auctioneer, always generates an entertaining bidding frenzy. This is an adult-only event, and dress is casual-elegant. Tickets are $100 and can be ordered at www.forestparkzoo.org, or by calling (413) 733-2251.

 

Fork It Over

June 26: From 5 to 7:30 p.m., Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts present Fork It Over, a competitive, culinary fund-raising event featuring some of the region’s top chefs, who create original appetizers and desserts using Girl Scout cookies and present their creations to the public and a panel of judges at Storrowton Tavern and Carriage House. Participants include Hofbrauhaus, La Cucina di Hampden House, Magic Spoon Catering, School Street Bistro, Cornerstone Café, Nadim’s Mediterranean, Chandler’s, Johnsens Catering, Hampden Country Club, Eighty Jarvis, Four Main Street Bar & Grill, McLadden’s Irish Publick House, Chez Josef, Dana’s Grillroom, and Great Grapes Catering. The panel of judges who will determine the winners in both sweet and savory categories is led by Peter Rosskothen of the Log Cabin and Delaney House, and includes Lon Breedlove of the Massachusetts Restaurant Assoc., Bon Appetit Contributing Editor Dede Wilson, and West Springfield Fire Chief William Flaherty. Attendees will vote for a people’s-choice favorite. Live music will be provided by Ethel Lee and her Jazz Ensemble, and a raffle will feature items from dozens of Pioneer Valley businesses. Tickets are $30 each or four for $100 for advance purchases, and are available online at www.gscwm.org or by calling (413) 224-4031. All tickets at the door on June 26 are $30 each.

 

NYC Bus Trip

June 30: The Chicopee Chamber of Commerce will host a bus trip to New York City, leaving the chamber parking lot at 7 a.m. and returning around 9:30 p.m. Participants are on their own for the day in New York City. Tickets are $45 per person. For more information, contact Lynn at (413) 594-2101.

 

Massachusetts Chamber Business Summit

Sept. 9-11: The Massachusetts Chamber board of directors will conduct its annual Business Summit and Awards Ceremony Sept. 9-11 at the Resort and Conference Center at Hyannis. The two-day meeting allows participants to meet with business professionals from across the state, as well as listen to state and local elected officials who will discuss the future of business in Massachusetts. Additionally, representatives from the Mass. Office of Economic Development will discuss loans, grants, and tax incentives available to business owners. Industry experts will also be on hand to discuss topics such as leveraging social media, search-engine optimization, and health care cost containment. The winners of the Business of the Year Award and the Employer of Choice Award will also be announced during the summit. For more information, call (617) 512-9667 or visit www.masscbi.com.

 

Western Mass.

Business Expo

Oct. 11: BusinessWest will again present the Western Mass. Business Expo. The event, which made its debut last fall at the MassMutual Center in downtown Springfield, will feature more than 180 exhibitors, seminars, special presentations, breakfast and lunch programs, and the year’s most extensive networking opportunity. Comcast Business Class will again be the presenting sponsor of the event. Details, including breakfast and lunch agendas, seminar topics, and featured speakers, will be printed in the pages of BusinessWest over the coming months. For more information or to purchase a booth, call (413) 781-8600, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.wmbexpo.com.

Architecture Sections
Architects Increasingly Focus on Eco-friendly Design

From left, Aelan Tierney, Charles Roberts, and Ann Wills Marshall

From left, Aelan Tierney, Charles Roberts, and Ann Wills Marshall have all worked on LEED projects at Kuhn Riddle Architects.

New England Environmental (NEE) is an Amherst-based consulting firm that specializes in environmental assessment, restoration, and management. Oh, and setting a good example.

“We saw that project as sort of a laboratory for the kind of work they do, almost an exhibit of sorts,” said Ann Wills Marshall, an architect with Kuhn Riddle Architects in Amherst, which designed NEE’s new headquarters in Amherst with the sort of ‘green’ features that fit the company’s mission.

“They can take clients through and show them what a bioswale is, and a rain garden that uses all native plants and doesn’t require irrigation. It has a tremendous amount of green space,” Marshall noted.

The development will earn Platinum certification — the toughest-to-attain rating — from LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a program developed in 1994 by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to encourage environmentally friendly and energy-efficient design, construction, and operation of buildings.

And New England Environmental, which uses both geothermal heat and photovoltaic solar panels for energy, is only one of Kuhn Riddle’s recent LEED projects. Others include the George N. Parks Minuteman Marching Band Building, a 15,000-square-foot facility at UMass; the Ken Burns Wing of the Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography, and Video, a 6,700-square-foot addition to the facility at Hampshire College; and the Northeast Veteran Training and Rehabilitation Center in Gardner — which, like NEE, boasts both geothermal and photovoltaic energy.

In fact, LEED has become a major buzzword in the architecture and construction world; the state has mandated eco-friendly design on many projects, while individual cities and towns are increasingly seeking out the long-term benefits of energy-efficient, environmentally non-invasive design as well.

“It’s an involved process,” said Charles Roberts, a principal with Kuhn Riddle. “First, the client has to decide what they want to do, then we sit down with the user groups and our LEED consultants and basically go through the checklist typical for all projects and see what points are attainable. It’s important to do that as early in the design process as possible.”

Those ‘points’ are awarded according to a development’s adherence to five key areas: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

Sustainable site development includes the reuse of existing buildings, when possible, and preservation of the surrounding environment. Water conservation may include the recycling of gray (previously used) water or the installation of catchments for rainwater.

Energy efficiency can be increased by orienting buildings to take advantage of seasonal changes in the sun’s position and by the use of alternative energy sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, or water.

Meanwhile, developers are encouraged to use as much recycled or renewable materials as possible, or those that require the least energy to manufacture, are locally sourced, or are in themselves recyclable. Finally, indoor environmental quality emphasizes how the building user feels in a space and involves ventilation, temperature control, and the use of nontoxic materials.

New England Environmental

New England Environmental incorporated both geothermal and photovoltaic energy on its LEED Platinum project.

“Good architecture has always been environmentally responsible,” Roberts said. “Development and land-use patterns create stresses on the environment, and as buildings become much more complicated, LEED is kind of an effort to try to think about these pressures and minimize them.”

However, they should not get in the way of basic aesthetic appeal, said Aelan Tierney, an associate with Kuhn Riddle.

“While it’s important to focus on sustainability,” she said, “it’s also important to remember that buildings should be beautiful. So the form can still be beautiful if it’s a green building, or a LEED-certified building. I think there are some people out there who are so hyperfocused on sustainability that they forget about the aesthetics. In our firm, they’re equally important to us.”

 

Breaking Ground

Other architects are saying the same. Among them is Jim Hanifan, a principal with Caolo & Bienek in Chicopee, which recently completed the new UMass police station, the first LEED-certified building on the Amherst campus, but very likely not the last.

That project earned Gold status, just under platinum in the USGBC’s rating system, which is based on the points assigned for green compliance. Further down are Silver and simply ‘certified.’ The police station features a geothermal heating and cooling system drawing heat and cold from the earth.

“We’ve also got the Northampton police station,” Hanifan said. “They’re going to occupy the building in a couple of weeks, and that’s targeted for LEED Gold as well.”

Another of the firm’s jobs, the new Easthampton High School set to open in 2013, has earned certification from Massachusetts CHPS (Collaborative for High Performance Schools), a LEED-like green-building program for the Commonwealth. Among the considerations are bigger windows to maximize daylight, a photovoltaic array being installed on the roof to harvest solar power, and LED lighting. “It’s similar to LEED in its requirements,” he said of the CHPS designation.

Hanifan said building owners, whether governments or businesses, want to know the long-term savings built into an investment in green design — which can be costly up front. “You’re trying to balance improvements to a building’s system with what the projected payoff will be. Maybe you’ll spend $250,000 on improved mechanical or electrical systems, and you try to project out how many years it will take to pay that back.”

Tierney said the owners of the Northeast Veteran Training and Rehabilitation Center took this into account when they had 28 geothermal wells and more than 8,000 square feet of electrical panels installed. “It’s a large initial investment, but in the end, they’ll save money. In a lot of cases, it’s easier to get capital funding than it is to get operational funding.”

Added Marshall, “I think there’s a leap of faith you have to take, knowing you have these upfront costs, but they will pay for themselves in a very short time.”

And the initial costs can be significant, Hanifan said, noting that some LEED points are easier to come by than others, and not every type of point is attainable. “Some points you won’t get, depending on the building design,” he said. For instance, a developer can earn points for tearing down an existing building and reusing the site for a new structure. “But if it’s a clean site, there’s no way to get that point.”

The LEED certification process itself is costly, which is why some cities and towns will put a priority on green design, but not go for the certification, he added. “So you’re getting the payback for sure and achieving the intent of a LEED project; you just don’t have a plaque on the wall that says you achieved it.”

 

The Old College Try

The Liebling Center project at Hampshire College is a good example of a broad mix of LEED points, Roberts said, from the use of native plants to cutting-edge air-quality-monitoring systems, to white, reflective surfaces to keep the building cool. It also gained points for its location along a bus route and the installation of bike racks and showers, all of which encourage earth-friendly commuting.

“It’s a good example of a project done on a modest budget,” he said, “and just by doing pieces of all these things, were were able to achieve LEED Gold.”

Hampshire College has been pursuing eco-friendly development for some time, and other area schools have done the same. In fact, the U.S. Green Building Council recently opened a local branch on the UMass campus.

“The university has been working to expand its green-building commitment for more than a decade now,” said Ludmila Pavlova, a senior planner at the UMass Campus Planning Physical Plant, who started the branch. “Here, we can provide education, outreach, and information to the general public about the LEED rating system and green building.

“It’s really important that people who use the rating system talk to the general public, network, and learn together,” she continued. “It’s great to have a location where people looking into green building can come to learn how to become proficient in green building, and turn around and help their communities as well.”

UMass recently made a commitment to build all new structures to a minimum of LEED Silver, and the state already requires all publicly funded buildings of at least 20,000 square feet to be 20% over baseline in terms of energy efficiency. All of which makes plenty of sense to Pavlova.

“People live in buildings and spend most of their time in buildings,” she told BusinessWest. “Forty percent of our energy is embodied in buildings. If we want to improve the environment, one of the first basic places to improve it is in the places where you work and live.

“Our buildings constitute such a huge investment, and so much of our ongoing operations and capital costs go into facility maintenance,” she added. “And so much of our health depends on how buildings keep us healthy — or not.”

That’s just one more reason businesses and communities are increasingly choosing to build green — and often taking the LEED while they’re at it.

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Sections Women in Businesss
Having a Baby Can — and Often Does — Alter a Woman’s Career Path

Sylvia Callam

Sylvia Callam says she has no regrets about the time she took off from work to spend with her children.


Sylvia Callam had invested an enormous amount of time and energy into her career, so she said she “thought long and hard” about making the decision to have a child.

“I had worked on Wall Street for eight years,” said the Yale graduate and director of research at Gage Wiley Inc., a brokerage-dealer firm. She planned to take two months of maternity leave, then return to work full-time. And although she doesn’t consider herself overly emotional, Callam felt very conflicted when that time approached.

“When you have a baby, your heart changes,” she said. “I had always been the first one to get to work and the last one to leave. But I was definitely surprised and taken aback by how much I wanted to be with my son.”

So she made the decision to put her family first. “For a few years, my career took a backseat. The motherly love I felt was overwhelming, and I needed some time to make sure that going to work was worth it,” said the Hatfield resident, adding that she only worked two days a week.

When her son, Nathan, turned 3, Callam gave birth to her daughter, Alyssa, who was born with myriad medical issues. Thankfully, her boss was understanding, and although she had returned to work full-time, he allowed her to take six months off.

Today, her children are 7 and 4, and despite working part-time for a period of time, she has made remarkable advances in her career. “I was very fortunate that my boss was willing to be patient,” she said.

Still, Callam believes becoming a mother improved her performance. “It is a real success story even though I have always put my children first; I’m more decisive, more confident, and more resilient than I used to be. I had to learn to do the same amount of work in four hours that used to take me eight, and my boss finds my attitude refreshing,” she said. “I am a much better mom because I work and a much better employee because I am a mother. But it’s all a question of whether a woman has a flexible employer.”

Experts agree.

Iris Newalu, director of Executive Education for Women at Smith College, says women can have both high-power careers and children. “But it’s not easy,” she told BusinessWest, adding that many are able to do so only because of flex time or companies that allow them to work from home. “There is no one formula, and everyone has to figure it out for themselves and decide where to set boundaries.”

Fern Selesnick says there was a myth generated years ago that women could have a family and a job and do it all perfectly.

“The standards are unrealistic, but the myth still exists. And even though employers say they support working mothers, it really is not across the board,” said Selesnick, who works as a professional career coach and trainer at Fern Selesnick Consulting.

As a result, having a child or growing one’s family can pose real challenges for working women intent on climbing the career ladder. Although it can be done, the rate of ascension for those who take a significant amount of time off from their jobs depends on a variety of factors.

“There are competing priorities once a woman becomes a mother,” Selesnick said, adding that concerns change while a woman is pregnant, once she has a baby, and when she decides to return to work. “There is an identity shift. Most women realize after the fact that they can’t give 100% to motherhood and 100% to their job. It requires making adjustments, so they need to figure out how they can do both well and take care of themselves without burning out.”

Experts say women should talk to their supervisors about how a leave of absence will affect their job standing before they become pregnant. “Women need to look at a mixture of practical and emotional issues,” Selesnick said, advising them to begin by reading their employee manual to find out how much maternity leave their company allows.

And when a woman does leave, she should tell her manager, “I hope the door will be open for me to come back,” Newalu said.

 

Pregnant Pause

Fern Selesnick

Once a woman has a baby, Fern Selesnick says, she realizes she cannot give 100% to her career and 100% to her role as a mother.

Most women need to work for economic reasons. However, statistics show that it can be financially lucrative to delay motherhood until one has achieved a modicum of success.

A study conducted by Amalia Miller, an associate professor of Economics at the University of Virginia, shows that each year a woman delays having her first child while she is in her 20s and early 30s results in an earnings gain of 9%. This is significant, since other studies show earnings often plateau once a woman becomes a mother.

This results partly from an inability to continue advanced schooling due to the limited number of hours a woman can work due to child-care issues or her desire to be home with her family. Issues mothers discuss with Selesnick include time management, self-esteem, a realistic identity, and career changes or adaptations that must be made, since research confirms that women are still the primary caretakers in families.

Selesnick said the decisions a woman makes and her ability to advance within her company often come down to her supervisor. She cites the cases of clients who were allowed tremendous flexibility. “But some supervisors expect everything to be the same in terms of performance and availability,” she told BusinessWest.

Newalu says women must learn how to negotiate to achieve what they need to be successful as a mother and employee. “Flexibility is key. Once you have a child, you can’t control things; children get sick, have performances at school, and have accidents that require a parent to leave work,” she said.

Attorney Kathy Bernardo was working for the law offices of Bulkley, Richardson and Gelinas in Springfield when she had her first child. And although she continued at the firm, a few years later when she found out she was expecting twins, she made the decision to work part-time.

“I made a conscious decision to get myself off the partnership track — I thought it would be more than I could handle,” she explained. “I knew I couldn’t commit 100% to my firm and my family, and I wanted to be fair to everyone as well as myself.”

When she returned full-time, it took her a year before she re-established her standing within the practice. “It wasn’t easy because I had to prove to them and to myself that I could handle it, and wanted them to have wonderful data to assess,” she said.

Bernardo achieved her goal of becoming a partner, but it took her 10 years instead of seven. “But I got where I wanted to be without sacrificing my family and was actually able to enjoy my children and be there for them in those important early years; babies demand most of your time,” she said.

Today, her children are teenagers, and she has no regrets about her decisions.

“Sometimes people feel that, if they don’t proceed as planned, they will lose their opportunity,” she said. “But I was fortunate to be somewhere where I could have that dialogue with my employer.”

Experts agree that a woman should have a frank discussion with her supervisor, manager, or someone in the company’s human-resources department before she leaves her job. They advise women to maintain relationships at work while on extended maternity leave, which has personal and professional benefits.

“It’s important for a woman’s self-esteem and confidence to feel that she still has a hand in her career and her work identity isn’t gone,” Selesnick said.

Other safeguards can help her to remain marketable. Selesnick recommends working part-time or doing volunteer work in an area that correlates to one’s career so there is not a large gap in a résumé.

Women also have a responsibility to stay current in their fields, Newalu said, adding it is especially important for those who work in information technology or other areas where change occurs rapidly.

 

Fair Exchange

Tricia Parolo’s career began in 1997, when she became an intern at MassMutual. In 2000, she achieved full-time status and held a variety of positions within the company until 2007, when she left to become a full-time mother.

“My husband and I had planned for it for two years; I took a leap of faith because I had no idea what to expect and what it meant to be a stay-at-home mom,” she said, adding that she had her second daughter shortly afterwards and soon discovered that working in an office seemed easier and less stressful than raising babies.

“I found it was really, really hard being at home,” Parolo said, adding that other people perceived her differently once she lost her professional identity.

She retained the part-time retail job she’d had while she was at MassMutual, but sometimes felt jealous of her husband when he left for work. “I was constantly torn about my decision.”

In 2010, a co-worker who had risen to a management position contacted her and asked if she wanted to work 20 hours a week. Parolo’s former colleague allowed her to work at home from 7 p.m. to midnight, although she did have to go into the office for four hours one day a week.

The following year, when her youngest daughter was 2, Parolo returned full-time and found she had to prove herself all over again. “I worked really, really hard to make up the gap,” she said.

But she has no regrets. “I had the best of both worlds. I was able to stay home with my two little babies and pick up where I left off,” she told BusinessWest.

Newalu says the top companies in the country are willing to invest in a woman’s career and make accommodations if she has a good track record, has been an excellent employee, and has established good relationships. “Talent is very expensive, and companies do not want to keep training new people; they want good employees back.”

However, as Parolo and Bernardo discovered, no one should expect to take up to a year off without consequences.

“It is unrealistic to think that you can slip right back into the position you had — a woman will probably be put where she is needed,” Newalu said. “The situation is the same for anyone who takes time off; you lose seniority, and the people who have stayed on the job have more understanding of the current situation.”

Women who cannot return to their previous position or are unhappy about what they are offered may want to seek employment at another company. However, when they do return to work — whether it is with their previous employer or a new one — they should know what they need and be willing to talk about these needs, even though it may be uncomfortable.

“Research shows that women don’t tend to be good negotiators. It’s a learned skill,” Newalu said, explaining that they can take a course, read books on the subject, or get a coach to teach them how to leverage their talent.

“Early in my own career, I did what I was told, but as I got more experienced, I learned to ask for what I needed,” she said. “You have to be willing to step outside your comfort zone. If you ask for what you need in the right way, you often get it. It can’t hurt to ask, and if you don’t have an open-door situation, you have to define how you will re-enter the workforce.”

Prior to becoming a mother, Selesnick held positions in management where she was required to be available at all times. She took a few years off when she had her daughter, but continued her part-time job as a writer. “It was a cut in income, but it allowed me to be the mother I wanted to be,” she said. “If I had taken a corporate management position, I couldn’t have been a mother in the way I wanted.”

When she did return to full-time work, she chose a much easier position at a nonprofit agency with a set schedule that didn’t include night or weekend hours. “Plus, my boss let me bring my daughter to work if it was necessary. Life was much simpler.”

 

Back to Business

As children grow, women often find that juggling roles becomes easier. “Women need to know that the demands of motherhood decrease and the time will come when you have complete flexibility again,” Selesnick said.

In fact, taking time off can be simply viewed as a detour on a career path.

“I am so glad that I persevered,” Callam said, “even in the lowest of times.”

Sections Women in Businesss
WBOA Helps Area Business Owners Design a Plan for Success

Eileen Jerome, left, and Susan Kelley

Eileen Jerome, left, and Susan Kelley are proud of the caliber of educational programs that the WBOA offers area women in business.

‘Education’ and ‘inspiration.’

Those were the two words Susan Kelley summoned when asked what she gains through her participation in the Women Business Owners Alliance of Western Mass. (WBOA), a carefully chosen name that speaks volumes about what the organization is all about.

It truly is an alliance, said Kelley, owner of Kelley Tax Services in Westfield and current vice president of the WBOA board of directors. Elaborating, she said the group is comprised of mostly small-business owners who network, sometimes do business with one another, and raise money together to support nonprofit organizations that benefit women and girls. But mostly they learn from experts in the field and especially from each other, and come away empowered by the stories of perseverance that are told at the group’s monthly meetings.

“It is inspiring to learn from others who can share their work experiences,” said Eileen Jerome, current board president and owner of Jerome’s Party Plus/Taylor Rental in Westfield, who joined the group five years ago and has inspired others with her success.

This is what Renate Oliver had in mind when she started the organization in 1982, said Jerome, adding that Oliver will be one of many speakers at an elaborate 30th Anniversary Gala to be staged June 21 at Chez Josef. The event will honor a number of women for their contributions to the organization and their success in business, but mostly, the gala will be a celebration of how the WBOA has grown and evolved over the past three decades.

Indeed, the calendar is now filled with everything from a highly successfully fall speaker series appropriately named Kaleidescope to a raucous annual Women’s Night of Comedy, which is a fund-raiser for area nonprofits. Meanwhile, the group continues to meet monthly and thus carry out its primary mission: to empower women entrepreneurs to be all that they can be.

For this issue and its focus on women in business, BusinessWest looks at how that mission is carried out, and, in the course of doing so, explains why there will be much to celebrate at the upcoming gala.

 

Meeting of the Minds

Christine Parizo will be one of those honored on June 21.

Freda Brown

Freda Brown will be honored as 2012 Business Woman of the Year at the WBOA 30th Anniversary Gala.

A freelance copywriter who was already busy enough being a mother of two children with her own business, Christine Parizo Communications, she joined the Women WBOA because she saw it as an opportunity to grow professionally, learn from others in situations similar to hers, and become involved in the community.

From the start, she liked the group, and it liked her — enough to ask her to fill an open seat on the board, one involving communications and public relations, talents she specializes in. “I guess that if you want something done, ask a busy person,” said Parizo, who will be honored as the 2012 Outstanding New Member at the gala.

In many ways, her story is typical of those who become part of the organization — small-business owners who join to network and also tap into the collective wisdom in the room at the monthly breakfast meetings.

Jerome told BusinessWest she wasn’t quite sure what to expect when she attended her first meeting at the behest of a friend who thought she would fit in. “I walked into a room full of strange women,” she recalled, meaning people she had never met. Soon, they weren’t strangers, and Jerome eventually settled into a leadership role that put her on the path to becoming president.

She said there are currently about 80 members representing a number of professions and business sectors. The current roster includes attorneys, business coaches, financial planners, jewelry designers, and realtors, among others. Each has a different business story to tell, but there are common denominators: they own small businesses that want to grow, face myriad challenges as they go about that assignment, and often wear many, if not all, of the hats in their organization.

Such is the case with Kelley, a sole proprietor who came from the corporate world where literally everything was at her fingertips, and those little bothersome things like marketing, advertising, and ordering office needs were all done by other people. When she moved back to the area five years ago and started a new business on her own, it was a whole different world.

“I really needed to get out and meet other business owners, and having come from such a large company, it was very limiting being on my own,” she explained. “At WBOA, I felt welcomed; the speakers were very inspirational.”

Jerome told BusinessWest that WBOA is a very hospitable group, and every effort is made to welcome a new person, find them a place to sit, and let them know the routine immediately.

“We are a non-competitive group; we can have two women from the same type of business, and they support each other,” she said, adding that the goal isn’t for everybody to use each other as a prospect, but to grow each other’s business through support, education, and new relationships.

 

Sharing and Caring

Jerome told BusinessWest that there are many benefits to be derived from WBOA’s $95 annual membership fee. These include everything from the many kinds of learning opportunities to the opportunity to qualify for a low-interest business loan from the organization.

Indeed, financial assistance is available for those who qualify through the Cheryl Reed Memorial Loan Fund, which was established in 1991 in memory of Cheryl Reed, who owned Cheryl Reed Travel in East Longmeadow and was a founding member of WBOA. The funds can be used to get a business started or take it to the next level, said Jerome, adding that the program represents just one of the ways WBOA has evolved over the years.

Another is through refinement of the many educational components of the group’s mission, starting with the programs at the regular monthly breakfast meetings.

Topics are chosen based on both emerging trends in business and the common needs of the members, said Jerome, adding that the goal with every program is to give the assembled women information and insight that they can take back to their businesses and apply immediately.

She recalled one session in particular that featured a human-resources professional who described recent research showing that women are far less likely to ask for help, money, new opportunities, and pretty much anything to do with business. Her message was that the true secret to personal and professional success is to ask and ask often, and she punctuated her case by highlighting stories of others’ success.

All of the monthly series events are morning sessions, Jerome said, but in the fall of 2013, WBOA will offer five evening events for those members who can’t attend morning events due to child care or other work issues.

Meanwhile, the popular Kaleidoscope Fall Speaker Series, which specifically showcases members of the WBOA, will resume in September. “Part of our mission is to showcase our members because they have great experience and examples that we can all learn from,” said Jerome. “We really have a variety of talent in our members.”

For example, this past fall’s series, which was sponsored by Bay Path College, offered six WBOA members the opportunity to share their expertise about business, marketing, finance, and work/life balance. The members presented two at a time over a three-week period.

The first week’s workshop covered the nuances of finding a business niche and getting finances in order; week two focused on the broad topic of time management and how to improve it. The final week allowed the speakers to help answer some questions that are pretty much on the tongues of women business owners everywhere, such as, how does one move a customer from ‘I’m interested’ to ‘here’s my credit card’?

Another example of the group’s progression and ongoing evolution is the annual Women’s Night of Comedy, which draws a sellout crowd and raises money for three local nonprofit organizations that help women and girls in various aspects of life. Last March’s event featured four comediennes, including one of the most sought-after personalities on the national comedy scene, Patty Ross, and raised funds for Rick’s Place, Safe Passage, and Dress for Success.

Kelley is quick to point out that the Women’s Night of Comedy effort is a rocking and rolling night of kinship and networking, but it’s no laughing matter. Just a few years ago, the organization was able to give $250 to each nonprofit.  Two years ago, the amount escalated to $3,000 per organization, and this past year was raised again to $3,500 for each.

“More people have heard of it and are coming back, bringing their friends,” she explained, adding that the event is feeding off its own success, bringing more ticket sales, raffle prizes, and, most importantly, sponsorship money. “It’s awesome to see that it’s really a great night and, best of all, it’s growing.”

 

Fabric of Success

There is a full agenda for the upcoming 30th-anniversary celebration, said Jerome, starting with awards to members such as Parizo and Freda Brown, the organization’s treasurer, who will be named Woman of the Year.

The WBOA will also spotlight the Pioneer Valley’s Top Women in Business, chosen by the group based on community involvement, business growth, mentoring, volunteering, and innovation, and Oliver will deliver her highly anticipated address.

But overall, the night will be a celebration of 30 years of growth, evolution, and continued refinement of those qualities on which the organization was founded: education and inspiration.

 

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Commercial Real Estate Sections
Downtown Initiative May Prove to Be a Unique Stroke of Genius

John Simpson in the transformed space on the ninth floor at One Financial Plaza.

John Simpson in the transformed space on the ninth floor at One Financial Plaza.

Evan Plotkin says the ninth floor of One Financial Plaza had been “dark” — that’s a commercial real-estate industry term synonymous with vacant — for more than six years.

“With a few exceptions, no one had been in there, except for maintenance people, in a long, long time,” Plotkin, co-owner of the building and president of Springfield-based NAI Plotkin, told BusinessWest, adding that things have changed dramatically over the past month or so, and in a way that bodes well for Springfield and its downtown.

Indeed, roughly one-third of the ninth floor is now the exact opposite of dark, and while this space hasn’t exactly become a tourist attraction — not yet, anyway — a large and diverse group of people have hit that button in the elevator over the past several weeks. Many city officials have made the trek, as have many UMass trustees and administrators, including new president Robert Caret and recently named Amherst campus Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy. The city’s police chief, William Fitchet, has been up for a look, as have a number of Plotkin’s friends and lovers of art.

They’ve come to see a unique collection of paintings, sculptures, and other works of art assembled by John Simpson, manager of the Hampden Gallery at UMass Amherst and an art professor in the Commonwealth Honors College at the university. Many of these same works had been occupying space — meaning that, in many cases, they were leaning up against walls, often back-to-back — in a gallery/theater in the old Hampden Dining Commons in the Southwest residential area at the university.

When Simpson was essentially evicted from that space by the building inspector several months ago, he launched a frantic search for alternative accommodations in which he could display art and create more of it. Before he really got started, Plotkin, who has been at the forefront of efforts to use art to stimulate economic development in Springfield, offered him a good chunk of the ninth floor free of charge.

It was, as they say, a deal he couldn’t refuse, and what the two men have created is intriguing on myriad levels.

Starting at the elevator doors, art abounds, ranging from self-portraits of the Commonwealth College students who created many of the works on display to various pieces that were part of a display on Egypt that Simpson helped create for the Springfield Museums nearly a decade ago.

But as they look out on all this art, both Plotkin and Simpson see something else — opportunities that come in many forms. These include the ability to demonstrate the potential for art to bring attention, energy, and vibrancy to a city or downtown, as well as a chance to show the leaders at UMass how an expanded presence in Springfield, something city leaders have desired for some time, could benefit both the school and the community.

“I like to say that we’ve planted a seed,” Plotkin told BusinessWest. “We’re watering it, we’re going to nurture it, and hopefully at some point in time this will grow into something bigger.”

The ninth floor is crowded with an eclectic mix of art, including this piece from an exhibit on Egypt at the Springfield Museums.

He envisions UMass eventually taking over all or most of the ninth floor and bringing a program or programs to the downtown, perhaps in the form of a satellite campus.

“We’re hoping that someday, UMass will plant its flag here,” he said, “and that some component of the university is located here. We have serendipitously gone in this direction, and now we have something wonderful that we can build on.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Plotkin and Simpson about what they’ve done in One Financial Plaza, and also about how they expect that seed that’s been planted to germinate and yield something special.

 

Brush with Fame

Printed over one of the entranceways to the ninth floor from the bank of elevators is a famous quote from author John Updike: “What art offers is space — a certain breathing room for the spirit.”

In this case, though, it was the need to create physical space for the art in question — not to mention breathing room for Simpson — that provided the first compelling chapter of a story that could unfold in any number of ways.

For now, it’s a tale of new life for formerly dark square footage, or an opportunity, as Plotkin put it, to “activate” more space in Springfield’s downtown. He’s been using that term often in recent years, always in reference to taking facilities that were dark — in either a literal or figurative way — and putting them back into use, or better use.

Examples include everything from the revamped plaza area at 1550 Main St. (the former federal building) to the park-like spaces within the Morgan Square apartment complex further down Main Street, to the lobby of One Financial Plaza, which has become an art gallery of sorts in recent years. Meanwhile, many buildings and open spaces downtown have been further activated by the placement of many works created by local artist James Kitchen. His welded-metal creations, such as the massive ‘Saturn’ now gracing the small park created on the former Steiger’s lot, adorn many public and private spaces as part of another initiative spearheaded by Plotkin.

How the ninth floor at One Financial Plaza came to join that list is a saga that began when Simpson was turned out of his space at UMass.

Evan Plotkin, right, with John Simpson

Evan Plotkin, right, with John Simpson, equates his activation of the ninth-floor space to “planting a seed.”

Backing up nearly a decade, Simpson said he’s been involved with several projects, such as the display on ancient Egypt for the Springfield Museums, as well as creation of the Art Discovery Center in the George Walter Smith Art Museum at the Quadrangle, and a Buddhist temple that was displayed at the Smithsonian as well as the Springfield Museums. His search for space to store and display these pieces and others brought him to the Hampden Theater, which the university allowed him to use for more than eight years. But this arrangement conflicted with the university’s plans to put Hampden back into use as a dining commons, he continued, so he was forced to vacate the premesis.

The university has been cooperative in trying to find alternative arrangements, Simpson went on, but in the meantime, Plotkin offered something more immediate and potential-laden, in a building that has made great strides in recent years in terms of reducing a high vacancy rate, but still has several vacant floors.

“Pushing us out of Hampden created this opportunity to display all these years of work by the students, making it a living thing,” Simpson explained. “So people can make things and at the same time look at these previous accomplishments, and learn how to do their own.”

In less than two months, Simpson and some of his students have transformed a large portion of the ninth floor from a dark, cold (figuratively) place with peeling wallpaper in many places into an oasis of art worthy of that Updike quote.

There is ample gallery and reception space, with walls crowded with paintings and other art forms, most of them created by Commonwealth Honors College students who are not art majors, but have created art that somehow expresses their chosen field of study. There is also a large studio — formerly the cafeteria for the most recent tenant, UniCare — that boasts the large amount of natural light that artists require.

 

The Shape of Things to Come

The donation of the ninth floor for the foreseeable future solves Simpson’s immediate need for space, said Plotkin, but it also provided a significant opportunity for more of that “activation” work that he described.

“We’ve been successful in using art as a vehicle to transform space, and now it’s happened again here,” he said, gesturing with his hand to the art all around him. “This floor was vacant and dark for more than six years; now, it’s alive with energy.”

Simpson and Plotkin said the eclectic collection usually draws a one-word response from those seeing it for the first time — ‘wow.’

“Their jaws just drop,” said Plotkin, who has taken many friends and business associates through the space, which was also visited by many of those attending a pre-concert gallery opening and reception in the lobby of One Financial Plaza. The works hanging there, created by Commonwealth Honors College students, were inspired by Gustav Holt’s The Planets, which was performed that night by the Springfield Symphony Orchestra.

But while the present picture is drawing positive reviews, it is the prospects for the future that Plotkin, Simpson, and others find most intriguing. And speculation comes on many levels.

For starters, those involved with this project see the ninth-floor space as a possible site for events and fund-raising initiatives, and they speculate that it could someday be open for public visitation. They also see the strong possibility of collaborative initiatives with area schools, with the gallery and studio space providing unique learning opportunities for young people. Meanwhile, they also see it as a potential catalyst for more artists to seek to work and perhaps live downtown.

“This is where the business world and the art world intersects, and in a way that allows that revitalization thing to happen,” Plotkin said of what he believes is taking place at One Financial Plaza. “People can see this through all the things we’re doing in this building — it’s an example of what can happen.

“It’s like a test tube,” he continued. “We’ve created this environment, and people are looking at it as a microcosm of what can take place on a larger scale.”

And, on an even bigger scale, they see this collaboration as a possible springboard for creating a larger UMass Amherst presence downtown, one that might include a satellite campus, but also perhaps housing for students, which Plotkin described as a potential catalyst for further growth and new business development in the central business district.

“Everyone who’s talked about economic development has touched on the importance of creating student housing downtown,” he said. “Westfield State University has done this, and it has helped to re-energize economic development efforts in that city.”

Meanwhile, he believes that what has been created at One Financial Plaza can serve as an effective recruitment tool for UMass, as potential students see art created by others and hear how it has helped them gain confidence and resolve.

“The narrative here is that these very bright kids, many of whom didn’t know they had any artistic ability, discovered themselves,” he explained. “It’s incredible, it’s profound, and it’s enormous in its scope when you look at the quality of this work.”

 

Art of the Matter

As he looked around the ninth floor, Plotkin shook his head a few times while attempting to sum up all the possibilities.

“There is so much that can happen here — and also happen elsewhere because of this,” he explained. “As this matures, we’re hoping UMass can find the funds to have this fulfill all of its vast potential.”

Whether this will happen, and when, remain to be seen, but for now, what’s important is that the seed has been planted.

 

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

 

Commercial Real Estate Sections
Strong Interest Projected for the Former Asylum Nightclub Building

Kevin Kennedy expects several proposals for what is now known as 1600 Main Street.

Kevin Kennedy expects several proposals for what is now known as 1600 Main Street.

Kevin Kennedy says the original plan for what has long been known as the Asylum nightclub building in Springfield’s downtown was to take the property with the checkered past — there were a number of controversial all-night concerts there before the building was eventually shuttered due to safety concerns — and give it a new use as home to public offices.

In fact, his large department, Planning and Economic Development, or parts of it, was among many possible public-sector tenants that became part of the discussion when it came to the Asylum’s future.

But that was a few years ago, said Kennedy, the city’s chief development officer, noting that many positive things have happened in the interim that have prompted him to change his perspective on the now-renovated Asylum property. Indeed, a number of success stories, including the redevelopment of 1550 Main St. (the former federal building), the pending arrival of Thing5 and 300 new jobs in One Financial Plaza, plans for WFCR-AM to move into the Fuller Block across Main Street from the Asylum property, and other developments, have prompted Kennedy to believe there is strong private-sector interest in the building and its 21 on-site parking spaces.

He’ll find out just how much over the next several weeks as the city first issues a request for proposals (RFP) for development of the property’s 6,000 square feet, and then awaits responses.

He believes there will eventually be many to consider.

“I think there will be an active market for that building,” he told BusinessWest, adding that he considers commercial office space the most likely — and desired — reuse of the property. “Downtown is changing — for the better — and this could be another big success story there.”

Recounting the recent history of the Asylum building, Kennedy said that, as MassDevelopment proceeded with plans to revitalize and retenant the former federal building, the city knew it had to do something with the troubled property across Worthington Street from 1550 Main St.

The eventual plan conceptualized by the control board that was essentially running the city at that time was to raze all but the 6,000 square feet fronting Main Street, and create parking, as well as space for community events, on the demolished portion of the property.

And those plans were carried out over the past year in a $1.6 million initiative, funded with state and federal money, that included façade work that includes new signage that essentially renames the property 1600 Main Street.

The original intended tenants were public-sector entities, said Kennedy, adding that the Business Improvement District, the Springfield Parking Authority, and the Planning and Economic Development Department (currently located on Tapley Street) were all considerations.

But with those aforementioned positive developments downtown in recent months, those plans changed.

“When I came to this office [in December 2011], I took a look at the changing conditions in the downtown, with Thing5 coming in, the revitalizing of 1550 Main, the work that Herbie Flores [president of the New England Farm Workers Council] was doing on the blocks immediately adjacent to it, WFCR, progress in Morgan Square, and other developments, and came to the conclusion that we should RFP this for private use.

“That would enable us to get it back on the tax rolls,” he continued, “and that makes far more sense than public-sector use.”

And Kennedy believes there will be considerable interest from the private sector, especially with nearly two dozen on-site parking spaces, an attractive selling point to companies who might consider a downtown mailing address but have been hesitant to locate or relocate downtown due to concerns about available, convenient parking.

“Having 21 spaces adjacent to the building should help create a strong market for the property,” said Kennedy, adding that the RFP includes plans to locate a public market in that parking area on Saturday mornings.

Kennedy acknowledged that it’s difficult to forecast the level of response to an RFP — some recent projects have drawn considerable interest, while others, such as the former York Street Jail, failed to capture the attention of the development community — but he anticipates several proposals due to the strong combination of location, amenities, and the momentum gained in that part of downtown over the past several years.

Time will tell if Kennedy’s optimism about the site is fully warranted, but at the moment, he’s quite confident that the property’s reuse and return to the tax rolls will become part of that list of positive developments along Main Street — and perhaps prompt still more additions.

If it does, then it is likely that the city can retire that phrase ‘Asylum building,’ something it’s been trying to do for many years now.

 

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

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]


Woman of the Year

Freyman1Freyman2Ellen Freyman, attorney and shareholder at Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C., was recently honored as Woman of the Year 2012 by the Professional Women’s Chamber of Western Massachusetts. The gala event, staged at the Springfield Sheraton, celebrated Freyman’s outstanding leadership, professional accomplishments, and many hours of service to the community. At top, Freyman shares a moment with John Doleva (center), CEO of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and Paul Lambert, vice president of Programming & Guest Experience at the Hall. Bottom, Freyman celebrates with (from left) her son Stephen, her husband Richard, and her son Neal.














Groundbreaking Event

Elms College officials broke ground on June 2 for the school’s new Center for Natural and Health Sciences, which is projected to open in January 2014. Doing the honors are, from left, Mary Lou Wright, SSJ, professor of Biology; Linda Mansfield, chair of the board of trustees; Maxyne Schneider, SSJ, president of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield; Elms College President Mary Reap, IHM; William and Cynthia Lyons, co-chairs of the campaign steering committee; John Flynn, trustee emeritus; and Kevin Chroback, project architect.

Columns Sections
Record Retention for Small, Closely Held Businesses

Patricia Murphy

Patricia Murphy

Now that 2011 has come to a close and tax returns have been filed, many businesses may be considering purging old files. All businesses produce a variety of records; however, maintaining these records is more than a matter of filing away a few important documents.

Determining how long to keep documents is a combination of judgment and state and federal limitations. Document retention in small businesses might not be as challenging as it is in large corporations, but the small-business owner has a bigger role in keeping track of records and ensuring that they are both retained correctly and properly maintained.

Determining how long to keep business and financial records can quickly become complex and confusing. However, business-record retention is important for several reasons, including potential tax audits, litigation, future sale of business, and succession planning. Establishing and following a record-retention schedule will go a long way toward ensuring that your company keeps the vital records it will need. Here are some things to keep in mind.

 

Tax Records

Although actual tax returns should be kept permanently (including cancelled checks from tax payments), the supporting documentation from previous years should be kept until the chance of an audit passes.

The IRS generally has three years to examine your return. This limit can increase to six years if the agency believes you under-reported income by more than 25%. No limit exists if you failed to file or filed a fraudulent return. As such, it is wise to keep tax records for at least seven years after a return is filed.

Special attention should be paid to records connected to assets (i.e. residences, real estate, stock purchases, etc). Keep records relating to property until the period of limitations mentioned above expires for the year in which you dispose of the property itself. You must keep these records to figure any depreciation, amortization, or depletion deductions and to figure the gain or loss when you sell or dispose of the property.

Generally, if you have received property in a nontaxable exchange, your basis in that property is the same as the basis in the property you have given up, increased by any money you have paid. You must keep the records on the old property, as well as the new property, until the period of limitations expires for the year in which you dispose of the new property.

 

Accounting Systems

Audit reports and financial statements from accountants, trial balances, general ledgers, journal entries, cash books, charts of accounts, check registers, subsidiary ledgers, and investment sales and purchases should be kept permanently. Other records, such as payable and receivable ledgers, bank reconciliations, bank statements, and cash and charge slips, should be retained for seven years.

For certain assets (residences, real estate, stocks, etc.), all statements, invoices, and purchase documents that substantiate cost should be kept, typically for seven years after the asset is sold. Depreciation schedules and asset-inventory records should be kept permanently.

 

Corporate Records

Small businesses that have a corporate structure also need to retain certain corporate records. All information for annual reports, articles of incorporation, stock ownership and transfers, bylaws, capital-stock certificates, dividend registers, cancelled dividend checks, and business licenses and permits should be kept permanently.

 

Employee Records

Small businesses that employ individuals other than the owner or partners should keep each employee’s records for the duration of employment. These records can then be disposed of beginning seven years after the date of termination. Payroll records should be kept for the following periods.

Permanently:

• W-2 forms;

• Payroll tax returns; and

• Retirement plan agreements.

10 Years:

• Workers’ compensation benefits;

• Employee-withholding-exemption certificates; and

• Payroll records.

Seven Years:

• Payroll checks;

• Time reports;

• Attendance records;

• Medical benefits; and

• Commission reports.

Three Years:

• Contractor information upon completion of contract; and

• Tip substantiation.

 

Insurance

Copies of all current insurance policies should be maintained in separate files and kept for 10 years after the policies expire.

 

Legal

Documents such as bills of sale, permits, licenses, contracts, deeds and titles, mortgages, and stock and bond records should be kept permanently, while canceled leases and notes receivable can be kept for 10 years after cancellation.

 

Storage of Documents

To save time and space, consider an electronic storage system to file your data. The IRS has accepted electronic supporting documentation for several years. All requirements that apply to hard-copy books and records also apply to electronic storage systems that maintain tax books and records. The electronic storage system must index, store, preserve, retrieve, and reproduce the electronically stored books and records in a legible format. All electronic storage systems must provide a complete and accurate record of your data that is accessible to the IRS.

With the threat of identity theft, it is also good practice to shred all of the records you no longer need, especially those with personal information.  Shredders are an inexpensive means of destroying small amounts of information. However, a personal shredding service should be considered with a large volume of shredding.

The suggested retention periods shown above are not offered as a final authority, but as a guide to determine your needs. If you have any unusual circumstances or wish to delve further into record-retention rules and regulations for a specific industry, you should consult with your CPA, attorney, or other industry professional. This is especially important if you plan on destroying any important legal, business, or financial paperwork.

 

Patricia Murphy is a senior associate at the Holyoke-based public accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.; (413) 322-3540; [email protected]

Building Permits Departments
The following building permits were issued during the month of June 2012.

AGAWAM

Agawam CVS Realty, LLC
163 Silver St.
$95,000 — Alterations

O’Leary/Vincunas No. Two, LLC
200 Silver St.
$20,000 — Interior renovations

SBA/AT&T
850 South Westfield St.
$25,000 — Modify antenna facility

AMHERST

Dragonfly Health, LLC
17 Research Dr.
$1,933,600 — New two-story medical office building

Village Center North Amherst, LLC
83 Sunderland Road
$5,000 — Interior renovations to create sound-protected office suite

CHICOPEE

CDM Properties, LLC
924 Chicopee St.
$1,700 — Repairs caused by fire

Citizens Bank of MA
1283 Memorial Ave.
$70,000 — Repair interior finishes at bank

PJC Realty MA, Inc.
571 Meadow St
$123,000 — Interior remodel of Rite Aid

SCP 2002E-31, LLC
1616 Memorial Dr.
$103,000 — Remodel pharmacy area of CVS

GREENFIELD

Channing Beete
46 Greenfield St.
$15,000 — Install a tornado-approved room in lower bay of warehouse

Beth Reynolds
22 Riddell St.
$25,000 — New roof

Country Club of Greenfield
180 Country Club Road
$13,000 – Install new fire-alarm system

Elizabeth Dolby
306 High St.
$27,000 — Strip and re-roof

Rosenberg Property, LLC
311 Wells St.
$18,000 — Interior renovations

Second Congregational Church
16 Court Square
$30,000 — Replace rotten floor in chapel

Weldon Associates
54 High St.
$9,000 — Interior renovations

HADLEY

Frederic Englander
47 East St.
$25,000 — Install three antennas

I.M. Real Estate, LLC
10 Mill Valley Road
$195,000 — Construct a self-storage building

Pearson Hadley, LLC
380 Russell St.
$35,000 — Build out 800-square-feet of office space

Pearson Hadley, LLC
380 Russell St.
$4,000 — Second-floor renovations

HOLYOKE

CFM Buckley South, LLC
282 Cabot St.
$4,400 — Install storage shed

City of Holyoke Schools
222 Whiting Farms Road
$12,500 — Install solar array

Holyoke Boys Club
70 Nick Cosmos Way
$75,000 — Install new roof

Holyoke River Inc.
920 Main St.
$12,300 — Construct 18’ x 12’ structure

LUDLOW

Frank Baltazar
181 State St.
$21,000 — Reshingle

Mapletree Square Condo Association
200 Center St.
$82,000 — Siding

SOUTHWICK

Nicholas C. Ventrice
59 College Highway
$30,000 — Re-roof

SPRINGFIELD

Caring Health
1063 Main St.
$11,585,000 — Renovation of three buildings for use as a walk-in health center

C & W Realty
1200 Main St.
$42,000 — Replace existing first-floor windows

Dunkin Donuts
694 Page Blvd
$58,000 — Remodel

Maria & Silver Serra
673 White St.
$6,500 — Interior renovations for hair salon

Nick Recchia
988 Main St.
$246,000 — Renovations to retail store

Northeast Healthcare
200 Kendall St.
$33,000 — Interior renovations

Superbrush
800 Worcester St.
$79,000 — New roof

WP Realty Inc.
1377 Liberty St.
$65,000 — Interior remodel

WESTFIELD

City of Westfield
33 Smith Ave.
$5,700,000 — Replace roof and windows

DevCon Enterprise
475 East Main St.
$67,500 — Create new Lil’ Caesar Pizza

Goodman Networks
14 Greif Way
$15,000 — Telecommunications tower

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Dirk Kidwell
98 Front St.
$10,000 — Renovation for beauty salon

Emilie’s LLC
1319 Riverdale St.
$19,500 — Renovate existing retail space

U-Name-It Self-Storage, LLC
203 Circuit Ave.
$300,000 — Replace roof

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

 

Allen, Gerald G.

Allen, Laurie J.

3 Katie Way

Springfield, MA 01128

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Anderson, Oral-Hugh

74 Shattuck St.

Springfield, MA 01109

Chapter: 13

Filing Date: 05/11/12

 

Arroyo, Hector

26 Chapman Ave.

Easthampton, MA 01027

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/15/12

 

 

 

Barcomb, Robert M.

696 Bradley Road

Springfield, MA 01109-1425

Chapter: 13

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Bridges, Lynne B.

Bridges, Royal

115 Berkshire Ave.

Southwick, MA 01077

Chapter: 13

Filing Date: 05/11/12

 

Cabrera, Juan

21 Grant St.

Springfield, MA 01109

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/15/12

 

CJ Distributors

Coolidge, Christopher J.

1082 South Main St.

Athol, MA 01331

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/12/12

 

DeLaCruz, Ramon L.

DeLaCruz, Monserrate

41 Suffolk St.

Springfield, MA 01109

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Figueroa, Wilfredo

Santiago, Ilia

152 Pearl St.

Holyoke, MA 01040

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/15/12

 

Herrick, Charles R.

PO Box 427

760 South Main Road

Otis, MA 01253

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/11/12

 

Mema’s II Family Daycare

Elegant Prints

45 Valley Road

Springfield, MA 01119

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/11/12

 

Moore, Larry James

27 Barry Wills Place

Springfield, MA 01118

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/15/12

 

Pappas, Lisbeth L.

182 Applewood Dr.

Chicopee, MA 01022

Chapter: 13

Filing Date: 05/15/12

 

Platt, Peter G.

39 Alfred Street

Agawam, MA 01001

Chapter: 13

Filing Date: 05/13/12

 

Poulin, Richard L.

19 Saab Court, Apt. 505

Springfield, MA 01104

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Siano, Daniel J.

447 East St.

Chicopee, MA 01020

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Simula, Shawn C.

76 Main Road

Phillipston, MA 01331

Chapter: 13

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Springer, Diane

20 Blake St.

Springfield, MA 01108

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Stacy, Brandon Dennis

P.O. Box 814

Whately, MA 01093

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Thadison III, Edvertis E.

35 Juniper Dr.

Springfield, MA 01119

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/14/12

 

Tobin, Joseph F.

30 Benz St.

Springfield, MA 01118

Chapter: 7

Filing Date: 05/14/12

DBA Certificates Departments
The following Business Certificates and Trade Names were issued or renewed during the month of June 2012.

 

AGAWAM

 

A+ Services

1135 North Westfield St.

John J. Snide

 

C & C Installation

837 Springfield St.

Andrew Clough

 

My Tan Factory

850 Suffield St.

Samantha Cloud

 

The DHL Group

387 Springfield St.

Andrew Clough

 

The Skin Salon

159 Main St.

Debra Pazik

 

AMHERST

 

Food 2 Go Delivery Service

1040 North Pleasant St.

Webster A. Marfo

 

Hampshire Hospitality Group

220 North Pleasant St.

University Motor Lodge LLC

 

Hickory Ridge Golf Club

191 West Pomeroy Lane

David Wasenda

 

Integrated Therapeutic Massage

664 Main St.

Kristine Sullivan

 

Julian’s Home Renovation & Repair

52 Chapel Road

Julian Albo

 

CHICOPEE

 

444 Front Street LLC

444 Front St.

Neesha Patel

 

Diverse Academy of Martial Arts

155 Front St.

Stephen Majgier

 

First Class Cuts

55 Springfield St.

Luis Graceski

 

Forget Me Knot Funbooths

95 Wheatland St.

Craig Galipeau

 

Hank’s Variety

457 Granby Road

Priti Patel

 

J and P’s Lawn Service

16 Amherst St.

Julie Murphy

 

 

SVT

124 Exchange St.

Ali O. Kosfoglu

 

Video Game Castle

40 Center St.

Ralph Cotter

 

GREENFIELD

 

Deerfield River Recycle

116 Meridian St.

Richard Plotczik

 

Franklin Spectacle Shop

489 Bernardston Road

Brian W. Wadman

 

Healing Works Salon

55 Cleveland St.

Diane Morrison

 

Kleeberg’s Sugar House

343 Adams Road

Brian Kleeberg

 

HADLEY

 

Active Chiropractic

8 Goeffe St.

Bradford Eichwald

 

Dwight Home Improvement

27 Maple Ave.

Thomas Dwight

 

Hadley Coin-op Laundry

206 Russell St.

Richard Czarniecki

 

Mountainview Auto Sales

71 Lawrence Plain

Wayne Asselin

 

TD Bank

140 Russell St.

Derrick Feuerstein

 

HOLYOKE

 

Aeropostale

50 Holyoke St.

Harry Axt

 

Bunt Down

49 Calumet Road

Thomas Kelliher

 

CPL LLC

279 Cabot St.

Stuart Lindeman

 

Dollar World

237 South St.

Aisha Ghuman

 

Fresh Paint Design

67 Lawler St.

Filipe Medes

 

New York Nails

778 Homestead Ave.

Karen A. Spear

 

Red Robin

27 Holyoke St.

Phyllis R. Mercurio

 

Ronald E. Gillis Insurance Agency

290 High St.

James R. Gillis

 

PALMER

 

J.C. Construction

2124 Palmer Road

Justin J. Coyer

 

Majestic Masonry

11 Pearl St.

Jacob Gehlhausen

 

Patriot Consumer Services

63 Belanger St.

Jason C. Brooks

 

Russell Baker Realty

1700 Park St.

Russell Baker

 

The Yellow House Inc.

1479 North Main St.

Bonny Rathbone

 

SOUTHWICK

 

David Sutton Heating

207 Mort Vining Road

David Sutton

 

Ham Hill Tents LLC

11 Ham Hill Road

Julie Servis

 

SPRINGFIELD

 

350 Grill

350 Worthington St.

Sherri L. Via

 

4King Edward Enterprises

20 Lemnos Lane

Keshawn Dodds

 

A2Z Convenience Store

115 Chestnut St.

Zaman Sajid

 

A.S.N.S. Landscape

64 Pasadena St.

Aramis Perez

 

Asian Market

19 Pomona St.

Truong Nguyen

 

 

Beautiful Lady Beauty

618 Belmont Ave.

Duane M. Dowd

 

Bedel Omar

685 State St.

Bedel A. Omar

 

Big Daddy’s Homemade Ice

955 Boston Road

Filomena Dibenedetto

 

Branandez Trucking

393 Water St.

Laura K. Brazier

 

C.J.D. Construction

23 Ingersoll Road

Carlo Dilizia

 

Cosmoprof

1726 Boston Road

Beauty Systems Group

 

County Chimney of Massachusetts

4 Berbay Circle

Edith Engelhard

 

Crafty Are We

52 Frederic St.

Carol A. Bissonnette

 

Darlene & Mary Sisters

76 Embury St.

Darlene D. Francis

 

Deals on Wheels

170 Main St.

Aramis Perez

 

Divalicious Salon

1601 Main St.

Javier Mulero

 

Economico T.V.

183 Pendleton Ave.

Rafael D. De Cola

 

Eight Residential LLC

32 Hampden St.

Daisy Sanchez

 

Exclusives Barber Shop

162 Boston Road

Dwayne R. Scott

 

Healthy Neighborhoods

50 Silver St.

Armando Roman

 

It’s a Snap Creative Photo

155 Lucerne Road

Richard R. Fullwood

 

J.J. Gleason Company

314 St. James Ave.

David J. Baker

 

Kaos to Kosmos

1655 Main St.

Luz S. Ramirez

 

Kishu Kali Corporation

823 Belmont Ave.

Kalpesh B. Patel

 

WESTFIELD

 

Creative Hairdressers Inc.

459 East Main St.

Michele Johnson

 

Follow Me

36 School St.

Gina Berte

 

Full Tilt Fabrication

121 Summit Lock Road

Michael Rossman

 

Liberty Lifting & Hoisting

7 Belmont St.

Thomas M. Johnson

 

M & Y Designs

404 Southwick Road

Shelly Hawley

 

Management Solutions Northeast

34 Country Club Dr.

Christopher W. Nagle

 

Santiago Family Restaurant

34 Franklin St.

Ismael R. Santiago

 

WEST SPRINGFIELD

 

Asian Star

753 Union St.

Nar Rai

 

Cosmo Prof

464 Riverdale St.

Beauty Systems Group LLC

 

Five Guys Burgers and Fries

1268 Riverdale St.

Robert Zinck

 

J. Paier Carpentry

265 Lancaster Ave.

Joseph L. Paier

 

J & J Archery

1102 Riverdale St.

Balise Motor Sales

 

John’s Home Improvement

97 Chester St.

John E. Richard

 

Mind Body and Skin

117 River St.

Angela Lamothe

 

Native Lands

33 Terry Road

James D. Poteat

 

Natural Nails

244 Memorial Ave.

Lien A. Chen

 

New Day Church

864 Riverdale St.

Michael Sorcinelli

 

Shrub Man

120 Interstate Dr.

Thomas P. Mauer

 

Z Case to go Distributor

703 Westfield St.

Yuri Murzin


Departments Incorporations
The following business incorporations were recorded in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties and are the latest available. They are listed by community.

 

CHICOPEE

 

Krishna Gopal Inc., 457 Granby Road, Chicopee, MA 01013. Priti H. Patel, 2 Smith Place, Williston Park, N.Y. 11596. Convenience store and liquor license.

 

FEEDING HILLS

Che Bella Salon & Spa Inc., 833 & 835 Springfield St., Feeding Hills, MA. Anna Lisa Martino, same. Beauty salon.

NORTHAMPTON

Wishbone Productions Inc., 43 Warburton Way, Northampton, MA 01060. Matthew McCloghry, same. Fundraising sales and marketing services.

RUSSELL

 

Russell Enterprise Inc., 265 Dickinson Hill Road, Russell, MA  01071. Nadezhda Burkovskiy, same. Truck leasing.

SPRINGFIELD

Metropolitan Insurance Union Inc., 251 Boston Road, Springfield, MA 01109. Lance D. Letourneau, same. Insurance company.

 

Goodness Outreach Ministries Inc., 145 Bay St., Springfield, MA 01109. Derrick Augustus Samms, 801 Chicopee St., Chicopee, MA 01013. Community outreach.

Re Green Springfield, Inc., 1441 Main St. Suite 601, Springfield, MA 01108.

Timothy J. Ryan, 72 Morningside Park, Springfield, MA 01108. Non-profit organization designed to include the development, creation, and implementation of sustainable planting, caring, and maintenance of trees and vegetation in the city of Springfield. This includes the development of programming and initiatives to raise and expend funds for the planting, care, and maintenance of trees and the urban forest on both public and private lands within the city of Springfield.

Iglesia Pentecostal Jesus La Rosa De Saroin Inc., 316 1/2 Bermont Ave., Springfield, MA 0110. Mercedes Figueroa, 44 Allen Park Road Springfield, MA 01118. Bible studies and religious services related to the church.

Bonneau Anesthesia Services, Inc., 69 Mashapaug Road, Sturbridge, MA 01566. Jean-Paul Bonneau, 69 Mashapaug Road Sturbridge, MA 01566. Nurse anesthesia services.

 

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Ar-Rahman Co. Inc, 470 Main St., West Springfield, MA  01089. Abdulkadir Hussein, 483 Union St., West Springfield, MA 01089. Grocery store.

Car Development Inc., 122 Doty Circle, West Springfield, MA 01089. James E. Balise, 122 Doty Circle, West Springfield, MA 01089. Financing and redevelopment of real estate.

Affordable Home Improvement By Paul Inc., 533 Elm St., West Springfield, MA 01089. Pavel Panasyuk. 533 Elm St, West Springfield, MA 01089. Home improvements.

 

WILBRAHAM

 

Lucmar Livery Inc., 2460 Boston Road, Wilbraham, MA 01095. Paul J. Martins, 16 Lembo Dr. Wethersfield, MA 06109.

 

 

 

Company Notebook Departments

United Financial Bancorp Announces Acquisition

WEST SPRINGFIELD — United Financial Bancorp Inc., the holding company for United Bank, and New England Bancshares Inc., the holding company for New England Bank, recently announced the execution of a definitive merger agreement pursuant to which United Financial Bancorp will acquire New England Bancshares in a transaction currently valued at approximately $91 million, based on United Financial Bancorp’s 20-day volume-weighted average stock price of $15.89 per share as of May 30, 2012 and excluding shares used to terminate New England Bank’s employee stock ownership plan. United Financial Bancorp’s acquisition of New England Bancshares will add approximately $726.5 million in total assets, $557.9 million in gross loans, and $581.6 million in total deposits before acquisition-accounting adjustments. The transaction will expand United Financial Bancorp’s presence into Hartford, Tolland, New Haven, and Litchfield counties in Connecticut, where New England Bank operates 15 full-service banking offices and two administrative offices. Under the terms of the definitive merger agreement, at the effective time of the merger, each share of New England Bancshares common stock will be converted into the right to receive 0.9575 of a share of United Financial Bancorp common stock. The consideration received by New England Bancshares stockholders is intended to qualify as a tax-free transaction. United Financial Bancorp expects the transaction to be immediately accretive to its earnings per share, excluding one-time transaction expenses. The transaction represents 163% of New England Bancshares’ tangible book value and a core deposit premium of 7.4% at March 31. Richard Collins, chairman of the board, president, and CEO of United Financial Bancorp, said that “we are very pleased to announce our plans to partner with New England Bancshares. This combination presents a tremendous opportunity to expand our presence in Connecticut, where United Bank does not currently maintain any branches. Connecticut is an attractive and growing banking market, and one we have had our eye on for some time. Like us, New England Bancshares has deep roots in the communities it serves, and we look forward to introducing our brand of banking to this region. We believe the strategic value of this transaction will enhance our franchise and add value to our stockholders’ investment. We are excited about the future of our combined company.” David O’Connor, president and CEO of New England Bancshares, said, “we feel that this merger is an excellent opportunity for our customers and the communities we serve. Partnering with United Bank will allow us to continue providing our customers with a high level of personalized service and local decision making while preserving our community-bank atmosphere.” The transaction, which has been approved by the board of directors of both New England Bancshares and United Financial Bancorp, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2012. T

 

Research Spending Up 7% at UMass Amherst

AMHERST — According to UMass President Robert L. Caret’s office, research spending at the Amherst campus of UMass is up 7% over last year, while research spending at the five-campus system is up more than 8%. The funds, which helped the Amherst school reach a total of $181.3 million in research spending, come mostly from federal grants, with some private corporations also contributing to research projects. According to a report prepared by the UMass Office of Institutional Research, the university as a whole spent $586.7 million in fiscal 2011, up from $542.7 million in fiscal 2010. Some money on the Amherst campus has been spent developing new radar systems to provide earlier warnings of severe weather events such as tornadoes and hurricanes, while other funds were spent on nanotechnology.

 

Universal Plastics Acquired

HOLYOKE — The father-son team of Sunil and Jay Kumar has acquired Universal Plastics from the Peters family, pledging to serve as on-site managers and grow the business as the Whiting Farms Road company, founded in 1966 by James R. Peters, transitions from one family ownership group to another. Terms of the sale were not made public. Universal Plastics has gross annual sales of approximately $10 million, employs 70 people, and manufactures thermoforming plastics that include custom containers, protective covers, and enclosures for many large companies including Pratt & Whitney, General Electric, and BE Aerospace. The company also does work for the U.S. military. The new owners plan to keep senior management in place at the company and hope to expand and grow the product line. The Kumars also plan to serve as on-site owners and managers of the business. Sunil Kumar has an extensive background in manufacturing, having previously worked as president and CEO of International Specialty Products and GAF Materials Corp., and as executive vice president and member of the board of Bridgestone/Firestone Tires. His son Jay, who will join him in ownership, is a graduate of Cornell University and has worked extensively in the investment arena, most recently as managing principal at PAON LLC. According to Joseph Peters, president of Universal Plastics, closing on the sale of the business occurred this week, and the new ownership group has already reached out to many of Universal’s customers to inform them of the acquisition. Peters and his brothers Michael and Richard serve as senior managers of the company and will stay on for the foreseeable future to ensure a smooth transition.

 

HMC Earns Accreditation from Joint Commission

HOLYOKE — Holyoke Medical Center has earned the Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval for accreditation by demonstrating compliance with the commission’s national standards for health care quality and safety in hospitals. The accreditation award recognizes Holyoke Medical Center’s dedication to continuous compliance with the Joint Commission’s state-of-the-art standards. The medical center underwent a rigorous, unannounced on-site survey in January. A team of Joint Commission expert surveyors conducted a full evaluation for compliance with standards of care specific to the needs of patients, including infection prevention and control, leadership, and medication management. “In achieving Joint Commission accreditation, Holyoke Medical Center has demonstrated its commitment to the highest level of care for its patients,” said Mark Pelletier, executive director of Hospital Programs, Accreditation, and Certification Services for the Joint Commission.

Departments People on the Move

Westfield-based engineering firm Tighe & Bond announced the following:

Eric Fontaine

Eric Fontaine

• Eric Fontaine, LEED AP has joined the staff as a Mechanical Engineer. He has more than 10 years of mechanical-engineering experience in heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. His expertise includes sustainable and integrated system designs for education, government, commercial, industrial, and residential buildings. He is a member the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers and the U.S. Green Building Council; and

Jean Christy

Jean Christy

• Jean Christy, PE has joined the staff as a Civil Engineer. She has more than 10 years of experience in the management, design, permitting, and construction of civil-engineering design projects that range from site and roadway design to complex stormwater-management analyses. She is also a licensed soil evaluator.

•••••

The law firm Annino, Draper & Moore, P.C. announced that Attorney Tracie Kester has been made a Partner. Kester focuses her practice on residential and commercial real estate, estate planning and administration, elder law, and small-business representation.

•••••

Easthampton-based Hogan Technology announced that Sean Hogan, President of the company that is a provider of unified communications, has been invited by Technology Assurance Group, an international organization representing nearly $350 million in product and services, to speak at its national convention in New Orleans on Sept. 9-12. He will share his vision of the future of unified communications with some of the industry’s top manufacturers, vendors, suppliers, and resellers.

•••••

Patrick J. Willcutts

Patrick J. Willcutts

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney announced that Patrick J. Willcutts, Vice President, Financial Advisor, Certified Financial Planner Practitioner, and Certified Investment Management Analyst Professional in the Springfield office, has earned the Certified Private Wealth Advisor designation. Willcutts has been a member of the firm since 2008.

•••••

Glenmeadow Retirement announced the appointment of Allan J. Ouimet to the position of Director of the Glenmeadow at Home program. Ouimet has 20 years experience in human services, including various senior-director-level positions at the Stetson School in Barre, Mass.

•••••

Garvey Communications Associates announced two recent appointments:

Kelsey C. Vella

Kelsey C. Vella

• Kelsey C. Vella has been named Public Relations Analyst and will create search-engine-optimized content for new media, social networks, and organic searches. She will also manage 30 different social-media platforms for public relations and advertising purposes; and

Jamie M. Dunkan

Jamie M. Dunkan

• Jamie M. Dunkan has been named accounts analyst and will insure contract compliance for more than $1 million in financial transactions annually. She will also support the agency’s online advertising and content-management efforts.

•••••

Big Y Foods Floral Manager John Heon has been honored by United Fresh Foundation’s Center for Leadership Excellence. Heon was among 25 outstanding produce managers representing 20 different supermarket chains, commissaries, and independent retail stores in the U.S. and Canada.

•••••

Epstein Financial Group announced the addition of Brian N. Caine, ChFC as Director of Retirement Income Planning. Caine will provide EFG clients with his expertise and knowledge in creating successful retirement outcomes customized for each individual’s unique objectives.

Chamber Corners Departments

ACCGS

www.myonlinechamber.com

(413) 787-1555

 

• June 20: ACCGS Ambassadors meeting, 4-5 p.m. in the EDC Conference Room, Springfield.

• June 21: ACCGS Executive Committee meeting, noon-1 p.m. in the TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.

• June 27: Professional Women’s Chamber Board of Directors meeting, 8-9 a.m.

• July 9: ACCGS Annual Golf Tournament, at the Ranch in Southwick. Registration starts at 10:30 a.m., with a 12:30 shotgun start. Sponsors to date include: Lunch Sponsor: MassMutual Center; Reception Sponsor: Blue Cross Blue Shield; Photography Sponsor: NUVO Bank; Putting Contest Sponsor: H.L. Dempsey Co.; Hole in One Sponsors: Rocky’s Ace Hardware, Hampden Bank, and Teddy Bear Pools & Spas. The chamber is still looking for sponsors at all levels. New this year is the Flag Sponsor for $250. Costs: foursomes, $600; individual golfers, $150; reception only, $30. Interested parties may register online for any of the sponsorships as well as for golf and dinner, or by e-mailing Cecile Larose at [email protected], or by faxing a registration form to (413) 755-1322. For more information, call (413) 755-1313.

 

CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.chicopeechamber.org

(413) 594-2101

 

• June 19: Health & Career Fair presented by Health New England, 8:30-11:30 a.m. at the Castle of Knights, 1599 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. If you are in the health care industry and have job openings, be a part of the job fair that will be at this event in the section “Corridor to Your Career.” The event is free to attend, and the public is welcome. Complimentary coffee, herbal tea, and sliced fresh fruit will be available until 9:30 a.m.

• June 27: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Grandview Estates off of Granby Road in Chicopee. Cost: $5 for pre-registered members, $15 for non-members.

• June 30: Bus trip to New York City — a day on your own in the city. The bus leaves the chamber parking lot at 7 a.m. and returns around 9:30 p.m. Cost: $45 per person. Call (413) 594-2101 or sign up online at www.chicopeechamber.org.

 

FRANKLIN COUNTY

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.franklincc.org

(413) 773-5463

 

• June 29: Breakfast Series, 7:30-9 a.m., Annual Legislative Breakfast and Annual Meeting, FY 2013 budget and business news from our delegation on Beacon Hill. Sponsored by People’s United Bank. Cost: $12 for members, $15 for non-members.

 

GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.easthamptonchamber.org

(413) 527-9414

 

• July 12: Networking By Night Business Card Exchange, 5-7 p.m., featuring a gala waterski show. Hosted by the Oxbow Water Ski Show Team, 100 Old Springfield Road, Northampton. Door prizes, hors d’ouevres, host beer and wine. Tickets: $5 for members, $15 for non-members.

• July 27: 28th Annual Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce Golf Tourney, 9 a.m. shotgun start for the Scramble event. Hosted by Southampton Country Club, College Highway, Southampton. Major sponsors: Easthampton Savings Bank and 5 Star Building Corp. Cost for the outing, which includes golf with cart, lunch, dinner, and a gift, is $100 per person and $400 per foursome. “Win a Buick Hole in One” sponsored by Cernak Buick. A $10,000 hole in one sponsored by Finck & Perras Insurance. Register at www.easthamptonchamber.org.

 

GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.explorenorthampton.com

(413) 584-1900

 

• June 21: New Member Info Session for June, 8-9 a.m. This is the chance to tell us more about your business and how the chamber can best serve you. Meet other new members and learn how to make the most of your chamber membership. RSVP to (413) 584-1900 or [email protected]. A light breakfast will be served.

 

WEST OF THE RIVER

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.ourwrc.com

413-426-3880

 

• June 21: Economic Development Committee Meeting, 7:30-8:30 a.m. Hosted by the Work Opportunity Center, Agawam.

• July 11: Wicked Wednesday, 5-7 p.m., EB’s Restaurant, 385 Walnut St. Ext., Agawam. Cost: free for members, $10 for non-members.

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.

 

CHICOPEE DISTRICT COURT

Brandi Sabourin v. Stop & Shop Holdings Inc.

Allegation: Negligent maintenance of premises, causing injury: $4,667.23

Filed: 4/25/12

 

Granite City Electric Supply Co. v. Pelland Electrical Contractors Inc. and John Pelland

Allegation: Breach of contract for electrical materials supplied: $19,510.01

Filed: 6/4/12

 

FRANKLIN SUPERIOR COURT

Russell and Kathryn Scott v. Farm Family Insurance Co.

Allegation: Failure to pay on insurance policy: $80,000

Filed: 4/13/12

 

HOLYOKE DISTRICT COURT

Lillian Santos v. Holyoke Mall Co. and UGL Services UNICCO Operations

Allegation: Slip and fall on foreign substance: $4,766.97

Filed: 5/30/12

 

PALMER DISTRICT COURT

Cach, LLC v. Linda Mason aka Linda L. Johnston and Joe’s Handyman

Allegation: Breach of credit-card agreement: $4,818.96

Filed: 5/24/12

 

SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Catherine Gaynor v. Price Rite

Allegation: Slip and fall: $6,883

Filed: 5/18/12

 

Constellation New Energy Inc. v. Apple Tree Market Inc.

Allegation: Non-payment of services rendered: $19,812.27

Filed: 5/17/12

 

Wanda Roche v. Patalono Pizza, LLC

Allegation: Failure to clear ice, causing slip and fall: $16,097.18

Filed: 5/17/12

 

WESTFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Bobbie Demers v. Walmart Stores Inc.

Allegation: Failure to provide adequate security, causing personal injury: $9,550.36

Filed: 5/15/12

 

Vellano Brothers Inc. v. Lagone Plumbing & Heating Supply Inc.

Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $3,925.26

Filed: 4/6/12

Manufacturing Sections
Instrument Technology Inc. Has an Eye on the Future

ITI

ITI has found a number of military and law-enforcement uses for its scopes.

Walk inside the Westfield headquarters of Instrument Technology Inc., and the first thing you’ll notice is the totem pole. It’s kind of hard to miss, rising dramatically up two levels of the front atrium.

In fact, an abundance of Native American art graces many of the walls and offices of the facility. ITI President Greg Carignan says there’s a good reason for this, and it has to do with a hobby his father, Donald, stumbled upon by accident decades ago, shortly after founding the company.

“He was on the road, in very remote areas of the United States, calling on nuclear power plants that were usually out in the boonies,” Carignan said. “Usually, there was nothing around except Indian reservations. So, when he had time on his hands, he’d visit these reservations and meet artists, and he started growing an interest in Indian art. He started collecting it, and when his house overflowed, it started coming here. It’s quite a collection.”

Why nuclear power plants? When he launched ITI in 1967 as a manufacturer of optics equipment, the elder Carignan got heavily involved in the nuclear-energy market; “he started building underwater periscopes and wall periscopes to look at the spent fuel rods being stored underwater.”

Greg Carignan explained that, after a period of time, a nuclear fuel rod’s energy is spent, but it’s still radioactive, which has led to debate over the years about establishing a national repository for those spent rods in the Southwest, but bureaucracy and public opposition have made that all but impossible.

“So nuclear plants are required to store spent rods at their facility, mostly underwater, and they’re required to be inspected periodically,” he said. “Dad developed a large-diameter periscope that could go down underwater and look at those spent fuel rods and make sure they’re in good condition. He built quite a few of those scopes in the late ’60s and early ’70s.”

Greg Carignan

Greg Carignan says the company’s diversity has allowed it to thrive during societal changes, such as a shift away from nuclear power plants.

Today, Carignan, who, along with two siblings, took over the company from their father in 1990, oversees a 47-employee workforce designing and building cutting-edge optical equipment for a wide range of purposes, from peering around corners in war zones to helping doctors navigate inside the human body.

For this issue’s focus on manufacturing, BusinessWest pays a visit to Instrument Technology, which has been scoping out new opportunities in an intriguing field for the last 45 years — and shows no signs of slowing down the pace of innovation.

 

Solo Act

Donald Carignan, his son recalled, had a background in optics and worked as a project engineer for American Optical from 1960 to 1966. He then took a job with Kollmorgen Electro-Optical; “that’s where he got his experience building borescopes and periscopes.” Just a year later, he was ready to strike out on his own, launching ITI in Southampton.

“My dad was a pretty driven individual; he worked hard to make it a success,” Greg Carignan said, noting that the company was a bit gypsy-like during its first two decades, moving from Southampton to West Springfield, then to Westfield, and finally to the current facility on the other side of the city in 1985.

“We specialize in the design and manufacturing of remote-viewing instruments,” he explained, noting that the company employs designers and engineers, as well as a full machine shop and assemply department to build the products it designs.

“What is remote viewing? It’s the ability to view a photograph or video-record any area that’s inaccessible or hostile, as well as the ability to view covertly,” he explained. “We added that last portion over the past 20 years because, before that, it hadn’t been used for covert operations.”

But he backed up a bit to describe how ITI has branched into so many diverse fields.

It began with the nuclear-power plants, for which the company developed not only those underwater-viewing scopes, but wall periscopes that allowed workers to see past thick concrete walls into the ‘hot cells’ where radioactive materials were handled. But societal changes that impacted the nuclear-power industry would force ITI to shift its focus — and not for the last time.

“During the Carter years of the late 1970s,” Carignan said, “the nation saw a drastic decline in the number of nuclear facilities being built. And most facilities had our equipment in them. My dad was in need of business, so he looked elsewhere to try to continue moving ITI forward.

“He looked at the industrial market and saw that it was being served by medical endoscopes at the time, and nobody was building industrial borescopes,” he said, noting that the two words are essentially interchangeable, with ‘endoscope’ typically referring to a medical instrument and ‘borescope’ a non-medical one.

“Endoscopes for the human body came on the scene about 40 years ago, but it wasn’t until later on that people figured out they could use the same scopes to look into jet engines, castings, pipes, and other things in industry,” Carignan said. “My dad started working for companies like Pratt & Whitney and General Electric to build delicate industrial borescopes to inspect their engines. They called it the ‘jetscope.’”

Many years ago, he explained, the airline industry had to take apart engines to conduct inspections required by the Federal Aviation Administration — a very costly, time-consuming process. But the development of a flexible borescope that could be inserted into each end of the engine was a revolutionary and cost-saving change.

“Designers started designing points along the engine so they could look in the middle, too,” he said. “You take out a plug and stick in the scope to look at the different sections of the engine.”

During the ’80s and ’90s, the industrial market grew for ITI, and the scopes became more complex, with flexible shafts and articulated tips allowing for more flexible movement.

 

A Time to Kill, a Time to Heal

Dawn Carignan Thomas

Dawn Carignan Thomas holds one of ITI’s scopes used for medical applications.

Throughout this expansion, ITI hadn’t done anything in the medical market. “But that changed in the 1990s when a company on the West Coast — Accuscan in Mountain View, Calif. — knocked on our door and asked us to make what they called a gastroscope for them,” Carignan said.

“They didn’t want to see through it; they didn’t want fibers in it or optics of any kind,” he continued. “They were going to put a transducer in the tip and use it as an ultrasonic device for an esophageal probe down the throat to scope the heart, which is much easier than to try to do it externally and look through the rib cage and all the muscle and fatty tissue.

“We worked with them for a year and a half, and that’s when we started in the medical business,” he continued — a shift that has seen the company produce rigid arthroscopes, ureteroscopes, otoscopes, spine scopes, and laparoscopes; flexible gastroscopes, bronchoscopes, and colonoscopes; as well as equipment for video intubation.

“After 20 years, we’ve become a lot more selective about who we decide to work with,” Carignan said regarding the ideas potential customers pitch to ITI. “If it sounds like a very high risk, or a low chance of successfully bringing it to market, we may not get involved. If it’s a startup company or doctor/inventor that’s asking us to do it on our dime and pay for the development costs, oftentimes we’ll say no.

“The model we’ve come to develop,” he continued, “is companies that have some success already and are willing to share the developent costs of the product.”

Eventually, ITI expanded its offerings even further by getting involved in the law-enforcement and military markets, with products such as telescopic cameras that can see around corners and in darkness, under-door scopes, and scopes that see into rooms using tiny (as small as 2.6 mm) holes in the wall.

“We also needed non-conductive probes that could look into a package or parcel to check if there was anything explosive,” Carignan said. “You don’t want to stick in something metallic that could short the device and cause an explosion.”

The original models used infrared light to expose images, and “that was very successful — then the bad guys figured it out,” Carignan said. “So we were asked to find out new ways of seeing. So we developed a blue-light diode, with different characteristics that wouldn’t trigger detection devices. We always want to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.”

ITI also built a pole camera to look into second stories of buildings, down stairwells, into ceiling tiles, and even underwater. “This was a scope we sold quite a bit of to special-ops groups in Iraq, to clear buildings, streets, and neighborhoods, to look around corners and into rooms where the bad guys might be before clearing out a room. They were eventually used in caves to hunt down Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.”

The wars and Iraq and Afghanistan saw a surge in the production of such devices. Carignan showed BusinessWest a chart breaking down sales from 1999 through 2008, and while medical devices tend to make up the biggest percentage of the company’s sales in a typical year, the law-enforcement and military division took that spot from 2003 through 2006. Meanwhile, sales of industrial scopes have fallen off somewhat over the years, but are rebounding.

 

Next Generation

The three siblings — Greg, Controller and Purchasing Manager Dawn Carignan Thomas, and Manufacturing Manager Jeff Carignan — admit their devices don’t allow a clear view into the company’s future. With six kids among them, third-generation ownership is always possible.

“We’re wondering where the next generation might take us,” Greg Carignan said, “but it’s still early for that.”

For now, they continue to grow and innovate, scoping out new ideas to help people — manufacturers, surgeons, and soldiers alike — see a lot more clearly.

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at  [email protected]

Features
Chicopee Chamber to Celebrate a Milestone

Gail Sherman

Gail Sherman says the Greater Chicopee Chamber will have a lot to celebrate at its 50th-anniversary party later this year.

Oct. 12 is shaping up as a big night for the Chicopee Chamber of Commerce. Make that the Greater Chicopee Chamber of Commerce (GCC).

That’s the original, corporate name of the organization that will celebrate its 50th anniversary on that evening with a dinner dance at the Castle of Knights on Memorial Drive. “Through the Years” will be the theme for the event, which will feature a special commemorative program, complete with a pictorial history of the chamber, a salute to board members, recognition of the 13 remaining charter members, (a list that includes Elms College, Chicopee Savings Bank, Spalding, and others), and the unveiling of a new logo that will return the word ‘Greater’ to the chamber’s brand.

And while much of the focus this fall will be on the past, there is much to celebrate concerning the present and future as well, said Gail Sherman, who this year will mark 15 years as director of the organization.

“We’ve developed a reputation as a chamber that’s very active, very inclusive, innovative, and that thinks outside the box,” she said, adding that there are many recent examples of how those qualities have manifested themselves to the benefit of members and the businmess community as a whole. They include:

• A new advocacy policy that represents a dramatic departure from the chamber’s longtime approach to issues impacting the business community. Where before, the GCC sought only to thoroughly educate its members on such matters, it will now do that while taking a position as well. Adopted in April, the new policy’s first position statement came in the form of opposition to a state budget proposal to centralize policy and budget control of community colleges under the state’s Board of Higher Education (more on that later);

• A new health care expo and career fair that will make its debut on June 19. Also located at the Castle of Knights, the fair, which is expected to draw at least 30 exhibiting companies from across the broad health care sector, has been designed to showcase those businesses, continue a chamber-wide focus on health and wellness, and help match companies in the field with qualified job candidates;

• Another new job fair — this one focused on veterans — that will take the name ‘Employ Wisdom — Hire a Veteran.” A collaborative effort between the chamber, the Chicopee Department of Veterans Service, and the Employer Support of the Guard & Reserve, the event, slated for July 3, is designed to bring veterans and employers together under one roof and create effective matches;

• Continuation of the chamber’s Business Executive Roundtable Series, a monthly program designed to help business owners and managers confront the many challenges involved with surviving and thriving in an increasingly global economy;

• A recent initiative called “Easy to Enter Chicopee Center,” a collaborative effort involving the chamber and downtown businesses that was launched to help those companies, especially retailers, cope with the closing of the Davitt Bridge; and

• Continuation of an accelerator program, or incubator initiative, that has helped a number of companies move from the garage or home office into the Western Mass. business community.

For this issue and its Getting Down to Business series, BusinessWest talked with Sherman about the coming milestone anniversary, but more about why she believes there will be much more to celebrate in the years and decades to come.

 

The Party Line

When Sherman arrived at the chamber in 1997 after career stops that included a lengthy stint as managing editor of the Chicopee Herald and later president of the Jay Peak Area Assoc. in Vermont, she didn’t expect that the stay would approach 15 years.

What has kept her in the chamber offices on Exchange Street in the heart of downtown has been the ongoing challenge to grow the chamber and make it a more effective force in what would be called the Greater Chicopee business community — and the way it has energized her and yielded a number of successful responses.

“It’s a busy, interesting, dynamic position,” she said of her role. “You get to know the business community and a lot of people, and you become so immersed in what’s going on in the community. I love the challenge of creating new programs and making this a better chamber.”

Indeed, over the years, and in collaboration with several other area chambers and other economic-development-related agencies, the Chicopee chamber has been part of a number of initiatives, ranging from innovative networking events, such as the recent Mine Your Business, to educational programs and the recently launched Business Roundtable series.

The key moving forward, said Sherman, is to continue to find new ways to serve the business community as a whole, while also bringing more value to a chamber membership.

And this brings her to the new advocacy program, which will involve issues — and there are many of them — that:

• Involve or pertain to the business community as a whole;

• Impact more than a substantial portion of the chamber membership;

• Influence the overall economic development of the area;

• Impact an entire business sector such as manufacturing, education, or tourism/retail; or

• Impact the enture business climate.

The state budget proposal to centralize policy and budget control of community colleges falls into each of those categories, said Sherman — so much so that a firm position statement on what the GCC calls a “red-flag issue” was deemed necessary.

“The chamber considers the local community colleges to be an important economic-development partner,” it reads. “We believe their ability to quickly identify and respond to particular local needs is a fundamental role that the colleges play in preparing residents for the available jobs and future employment opportunities. This ability would be drastically compromised if management were shifted to a centralized entity in Boston.

“We recognize that there are important gaps in the state’s overall arrangement for workforce preparation statewide that must be addressed,” the statement continues. “However, community colleges are only part of that system, and such issues have little to do with their governance. … Allowing for local control and self-determination to meet the ever-changing needs of the business community empowers the community colleges and their local boards.”

There will be more such position statements — reached when there is a consensus among chamber members on a specific issue — as the need arises, said Sherman, adding that possible subjects include everything from local property tax rates to unemployment insurance rates to a controversial proposal regarding mandated sick leave.

“Chambers are being pushed more and more toward becoming very involved in economic-development issues,” she told BusinessWest. “And that includes taking a position that would give our voice some power. We represent about 11,000 employees; to give them a voice is very important.”

 

Value Proposition

Due in part to the advocacy program and a desire to better reflect the regional impact of its programs and services, the chamber is re-emphasizing its original corporate name and the phrase ‘Greater Chicopee,’ which has not been used in many years, Sherman noted, adding that two area marketing firms, Jasin Advertising and Westwood Advertising, both based in Chicopee, are working on a new logo that will be launched at the October gala.

Meanwhile, there are a number of other new initiatives that are also part of that broad strategy to bring more value to members, she continued. These include the two job fairs slated for this summer. They were created to help job seekers find opportunities, she noted, but also to assist employers facing the ongoing challenge of finding qualified workers to fill job openings.

The health expo and career fair actually has many goals, she continued, and is in many ways an expansion of a collaborative effort with Health New England focused on health and wellness that included a unique event last fall called “Dancing Your Way to Wellness.” The June 19 event will feature exhibitors from across the medical field, a “Corridor to your Career” section, and a number of health screenings, including blood pressure, blood glucose, and body mass index.

“In order to lower their health-insurance premiums, people have to take an interest in becoming healthier,” she said. “One of the things we want to do with this expo is to keep the focus on wellness and remind people of the importance of taking care of themselves.”

The job fair focused on veterans, meanwhile, will have a singular purpose — bringing employers and potential employees together, said Sherman, who cited statistics showing that roughly one in three recently discharged young male veterans is unemployed, far more than double the current national jobless rate.

“Veterans can offer employers extensive skills sets — they have a lot of wisdom and skills that they can transfer to a job,” she explained. “But many veterans struggle to market themselves effectively. “Employ Wisdom — Hire a Veteran” was created to bring the employer and veteran employee together under one roof to meet face to face and interact in a less-stressful environment.”

And then, there’s the Easy to Enter Chicopee Center initiative, which has been active in raising money for an immediate need — promoting the downtown while the Davitt Bridge is closed, which it will be for the next two years — if all goes according to schedule.

The program includes a Web site (www.easytoenterchicopeecenter.com) that includes a button visitors can hit to find alternative routes into the central business district and a video featuring former Mayor Richard Kos explaining the many things people can do in Chicopee Center once they get there.

“We’re not doing this just because the bridge is closed,” Sherman told BusinessWest. “We want to start focusing on downtown and the gem that it could be. There are many mainstays that do bring people downtown, and we want to start shedding a positive light on downtown, but in the meantime, while people are readjusting their behavior because of the bridge closing, we want to make sure we stay positive.”

In addition to these new programs, the chamber is continuing and expanding many existing initiatives, said Sherman, citing, as just one example, the accelerator program that has been in place for more than a decade.

There are four incubator spaces of varying sizes at the chamber offices, she explained, noting that, at any given time, at least two are being rented by entrepreneurs trying to get ventures off the ground or to the next level. Current tenants include a massage therapist and Sandler Training, a business started by long-time consultant Jim Mumm that focuses on providing sales-staff training and other services to area businesses.

“We give people the opportunity to gain a downtown presence at a very affordable price,” said Sherman. “For businesses that are coming out of their home office or their cellar and want to have a professional environment, this is the perfect setting. We’ve had a lot of people come and go, and many have done very well in business.”

Another ongoing program is the series of business executive roundtables. Led by Lynn Turner and Ravi Kulkarni, principals with the Clear Vision Alliance, these sessions, staged on the second Thursday of each month from November through June, are a forum for leaders to stretch their thinking and challenge current assumptions in order to remain relevant and competive into the future.

 

The Bottom Line

The chamber’s 50th birthday actually arrives on Oct. 3, said Sherman, adding that she and her staff have been working for the past several months on the party that will come just over a week later and is expected to draw more than 200 people.

It will be a celebration of everything that’s happened since 1962, she told BusinessWest, adding quickly that, while this chamber is content to look back for this important milestone, its real mission is to look ahead and find new ways to build on that reputation for innovation and thinking outside the box.

 

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

Opinion
No One Said This Was Going to Be Easy

The casino era in Massachusetts is only seven months old, but we wouldn’t blame anyone if they thought it was closer to seven years. It certainly seems that way.

Indeed, since passage of the legislation approving Las Vegas-style gambling last November, after years of debate and near misses, things have proceeded in slow motion, according to many observers, who, citing many apparent missteps and controversies, predict only more of the same for the immediate future.

Experts and media representatives assessing what’s happened thus far — including everything from questions about a conflict of interest involving local Gaming Commission member Bruce Stebbins (a former Springfield economic-development administrator) to the embarrassing resignation of interim Executive Director Stanley McGee only three days after he was hired — have used the phrase ‘rocky start’ early and often.

And while they’re right to some extent — the Gaming Commission has often looked the gang that couldn’t shoot straight — should we have expected anything else? This is a huge, complex industry Massachusetts is entering, where the stakes are enormous and the scrutiny is intense.

Gaming Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby might have been glossing things over when he recently told the Boston Globe, “I think it’s gone really well,” in reference to the start of the casino era, but in some respects he’s not far off base. Anyone who expected a smooth, fast ride was not thinking realistically. Crosby hit the nail on the head, actually, when he also told the Globe, “we have to learn to be comfortable with the fact that controversy is inevitable.”

And for evidence of that fact, one need look no further than the rebuke — that’s the only word to describe it — administered to Crosby by state Rep. Joseph Wagner, a Chicopee Democrat and key player in the fashioning of the casino bill last year, after Crosby put forth comments that simply suggested that the commission might license fewer than three casinos and a slots parlor.

The legislation that Wagner helped draft clearly states “up to three” casinos and a slots parlor, but he looked between the lines at Crosby’s comments and reasoned that, if only two casinos were licensed, then it would be the Western Mass. license that would be most in jeopardy, and he was right to come to that conclusion. And he quickly called out Crosby for saying the commission would do essentially what it was empowered to do — look at all the data and make decisions that make the most sense for everyone in the Commonwealth.

This is the way it’s going to be for the next two years, or however long it’s going to take the Gaming Commission to do its analysis and render its decisions. Every word, every step, every bit of conjecture is going to be scrutinized, analyzed, and probably overanalyzed.

And in many ways, all that is good because, despite the urgent need for jobs and revenue in this state — those are the reasons why this measure was passed in the first place — the goal here is not to get this job done fast, but to get it done right, with the understanding that ‘right’ is most certainly a relative term and there will never be agreement on what that actually means, and that’s part of what makes this compelling and maddening.

The rocky, bumpy start for the casino era — if those terms are even appropriate — has certainly been eye-opening. As if there were any doubt, we have been reminded that there is probably nothing that is going to come quickly or easily in the process of bring casino gaming to Massachusetts.

As Crosby said, we all have to get comfortable with the fact that controversy is inevitable — and unavoidable.

Sections Women in Businesss
Understand Your Obligations for Maternity and Paternity Leave

Kevin V. Maltby

Kevin V. Maltby

At any given time, a female employee may approach you and share the wonderful news that she is pregnant. Similarly, a male employee may approach you with the news that he is going to be a father.
While such news is usually well-received, it also serves as notice that you, as the employer, should begin making preparations for your employee’s maternity or paternity leave. You must be mindful of both state and federal law.

The Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act
Under state law, the Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act (MMLA) applies to all businesses that employ six or more employees. As written by the state Legislature, the MMLA is gender-specific to females, and provides eight weeks of unpaid leave to full-time female employees for purposes of giving birth, adopting a child under the age of 18, or adopting a child under the age of 23 who is mentally or physically disabled.
The MMLA requires the employee to give her employer at least two weeks notice of her anticipated date of departure and intention to return. It should be noted that an employer cannot refuse to grant MMLA leave on the grounds that doing so would constitute a hardship.
The Mass. Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) is the state’s chief civil-rights agency and is empowered with enforcing and overseeing the MMLA. As the chief enforcement agency, the MCAD has taken the position that the MMLA should be applied equally to both men and women despite it being gender-specific. In doing so, the MCAD effectively converted the MMLA to a paternity-leave act so that it would apply equally to men and women. Therefore, employers should treat both male and female employees equally under the MMLA when reviewing guidelines and leave requirements.
In a recent case involving a pregnant employee, the MCAD awarded an employee almost $25,000 in damages after finding that the employer had taken adverse employment action against the employee based on her pregnant status. In Sally Scaife v. Florence Pizza Factory, the MCAD found that, despite the employee’s positive work-performance reviews, the employer cut her hours upon learning that the employee was pregnant. The MCAD found that, as her pregnancy started to show, her boss reduced her work, stating, “it was bad for her and bad for the business” if she mopped or lifted. When she contested, her boss grew frustrated and reduced her hours, and finally told her “not to come in for the next shift because … she was too big.”
In another recent case involving the MMLA, the MCAD awarded an employee $111,300 in back pay and $35,000 in emotional-distress damages. In Patricia D. Kane v. College Central Network, the employee mostly worked from home, as one of 10 employees in a national company. In April 2000, she started working full-time as a regional manager, and she became pregnant in July 2001. She requested maternity leave, and was told that she “could take four weeks maternity leave and receive compensation equal to one week’s salary.” She made use of that time, and also took five sick days. In time, she became pregnant again, and was told that she “could take no more than four weeks of maternity leave and could not use any sick time toward her maternity leave.” The company president started to divert work from her and to pressure her to return as soon as possible.
Before she delivered her second child, she requested a full eight-week unpaid leave and a transition period of three days a week thereafter. She gave birth on Oct. 7, 2003, and started her leave. During that time, her boss took actions to remove her from the company, including stopping the lease payments on her car, shutting off her work cell phone, and replacing her name in the newsletter.
When she tried to come back to work, she found she was locked out of the intranet and e-mail. Her boss later informed her that her regional office was being closed and she was being laid off. Based on the employer’s conduct, the MCAD awarded the employee back pay and emotional-distress damages.

The Family Medical Leave Act
Under federal law, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) applies to businesses that employ more than 50 employees. The FMLA provides for 12 weeks of leave to an employee, regardless of the gender, for the birth and care of a newborn child or care for a newly adopted or foster child, or leave for a serious illness.
Leave can either be for paternity, maternity, or specified personal health reasons, depending on the needs of the employee. Under the FMLA, employees are eligible for FMLA benefits if they have worked for their employer for at least 12 months and at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months immediately preceding the leave, and they work within 75 miles of the location of the business.

A Case for Both MMLA and FMLA
As you can see in the chart above, some of the parameters of MMLA and FMLA seem contradictory. In addition, there are some circumstances where an employee may be entitled to 20 weeks of leave. These circumstances include a pregnant employee who has experienced complications and is on bed rest. During this pre-birth period, the employee can make use of her FMLA leave because she is experiencing a serious illness. Once the employee gives birth, she may then use her MMLA, because it applies only for the purpose of giving birth. Under these circumstances, the employer must comply with both FMLA and MMLA.
If you are unsure whether MMLA, FMLA, or both apply to your employee’s circumstance, and given the possibility of a discrimination claim, you should be sure to consult with a lawyer who concentrates their practice in employment law to be sure that you are in compliance with the law.

Kevin V. Maltby is an associate with Bacon Wilson, P.C. and a former prosecutor for the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office. He was named by SuperLawyers as a Rising Star from 2009 to 2011 in the field of employment and labor law, has extensive jury-trial and courtroom experience, and is an adjunct faculty member in the Legal Studies department at Bay Path College; (413) 781-0560; baconwilson.com/attorneys/maltby; bwlaw.blogs.com/employment_law_bits

Briefcase Departments

Springfield Parking Authority Reorganized

SPRINGFIELD — Mayor Domenic Sarno and Springfield Parking Authority (SPA) Chairwoman Mary E. McNally recently announced several changes at the Springfield Parking Authority. The SPA board has eliminated the position of executive director effective June 30, 2012. Harold King currently serves as the SPA’s Executive Director. Ehsanul Bhuiya will oversee day-to-day operations at the SPA on an interim basis. Springfield Redevelopment Authority Executive Director and former SPA Executive Director Christopher Moskal will temporarily provide management oversight for the SPA. In preparation for a refinancing of the SPA bonds due in June of 2013, and the issuance of a request for proposals (RFP) for the management of on and off street parking currently contracted to Republic Parking and expiring in early 2013, Sarno has directed the City’s Director of Internal Audit Cecilia Goulet, to undertake a review of the SPA’s current financial position and report back to him and the SPA Board of Directors within 60 days.
“Taking better advantage of the economic development capabilities of the Springfield Parking Authority as an essential element in our economic development delivery system is key to our continued success,” said Sarno. “With the current debt of the authority and the conditions of its facilities, especially the civic center garage, it is important for the city to make sure that there is a clear expectation of the SPA, better management and marketing of all on and off street parking in the downtown area and its return to its original role as an economic development tool for the city.” Since last year, the City has been working with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and MassDevelopment on the issue of parking in the downtown. A study was commissioned by MassDevelopment and was recently presented to the business community by Utile Inc. The study assesses the current parking inventory and demand in downtown as well as locations for potential new parking sites to replace the aging Civic Center garage in the central business district.

 

UMass Family Business Center Forges Partnership with BFF Affiliate Network

AMHERST — The UMass Amherst Family Business Center has joined the Business Families Foundation (BFF) Affiliate Network to work collaboratively on developing additional educational material, supporting business-family communities, and encouraging research in the field of family business. As a philanthropic organization, the BFF supports research and develops and disseminates educational material to family enterprises and professionals working with them to help them be aware of and address their unique growth and development challenges. It has been working for the past decade with a collaborative network of university-based centers for family enterprise and is welcoming new centers to join this affiliate network worldwide. These centers provide a wide range of courses, services, and activities to business family communities and are also providers of BFF’s “Road Map for Entrepreneurial Families” in-class program. “The UMass Family Business Center shares our values and those of our affiliate network members in their dedication and care in serving business-family communities in their region through quality continuous education,” said Dr. Pascale Michaud, president of BFF. Members of the BFF Affiliate Network contribute to the shared goal of increasing awareness of the unique features of family-owned enterprises and entrepreneurial families by offering educational and continuous learning options for business family members, those who advise them, and students in the field who may be helpful in anticipating and dealing with family business growth and development. For more information, contact Ira Bryck at the UMass Family Business Center at (413) 545-4545 or [email protected].

 

U.S. Family Wealth Shrank During the Recession

WASHINGTON — The Great Recession left the median U.S. family in 2010 with no more wealth than it had in the early 1990s, erasing more than two decades of accumulated prosperity, the Federal Reserve announced recently. The median family had a a net worth of $77,300 in 2010, compared to $126,400 in 2007, the Fed announced. The crash of housing prices explained three-quarters of the loss, which was compounded by the loss of income, as the earnings of the median family fell by 7.7% during the same period. The new data comes from the Fed’s release of its triennial Survey of Consumer Finance, one of the broadest and deepest sources of information about the financial health of U.S. families. The latest survey is based on data collected in 2010, and figures are reported in 2010 dollars. The survey underscores the fact that Americans are saving less for future needs and making little progress in repaying debt. The share of families saving anything over the previous year fell to 52% in 2010 from 56.4% in 2007.

 

Insurance Sections
Third Generation of Ross Insurance Agency Looks to the Future

Kevin Ross and Maureen Ross O’Connell

Kevin Ross says he and Maureen Ross O’Connell work well together because they understand where each excels.


While Maureen Ross O’Connell said that her father didn’t want her to work at the family’s insurance company during her college years, her brother, Kevin Ross, laughed and said he knew since he was 5 years old that the company would one day be in their hands.
“I can remember my father bringing me into his office, and as a kid I would point to a desk and say, ‘that’s mine, dad!’” he remembered with a laugh.
Today, the siblings comprise the third generation of their family to run Ross Insurance Agency Inc. Their brother, Ernie, was also part of the team until he passed away last year. Sitting down with BusinessWest recently, the partners offered a look into an agency that, in many intriguing ways, is looking squarely to the future.
Like many family-business owners, both Ross and O’Connell said that their best education came from the daily interaction and on-the-job words of wisdom from the generation before them. And having grown up in the agency together, Ross added, the siblings have honed their collaborative technique.
“Family businesses have their struggles,” he acknowledged. “Every one of them does, and I won’t say that we don’t sometimes. But we know where we excel. Maureen runs the inside of the house, administration, the staffing, company communications, and I’m in sales. We play off each other, and that’s why it’s been so successful.”
And it isn’t just the walk-in, brick-and-mortar business where Ross Insurance excels. The partners long ago recognized the changing marketplace for their service-based industry, and have been steadily trending in the direction dictated by technology.
Like a seasoned IT whiz, O’Connell explained both how the firm has maintained a regularly updated insurance blog, and the efficacy of spiking its professional online presence with current information, all for the purposes of search-engine optimization (SEO). “When people Google, we want to be right up there,” she continued. “We’ve been working very hard on organic SEO for almost a year and a half. It’s been very beneficial.”
But as the third generation talked about the shifting sands of technology and how it impacts their industry, they stopped before a wall of photos in their office. In front of this large grid of Little League team pictures, all sponsored by Ross Insurance, O’Connell said, “as much as this digital age allows us to grow, it’s not to say that this community and this local piece isn’t important.”

Shop Talk
O’Connell and Ross are just the latest generation to put their stamp on the company — and they are well aware of all the contributions needed to take the venture to this point in its long history.
“In 1925 our grandfather, George Ross, had a grocery store in Holyoke,” Ross said. “But he decided that he wanted to get into the insurance business instead. Holyoke was growing and booming, and he saw it as a real opportunity. So he started the business from scratch.”
In the years after World War II, his sons, George Jr. and Ernie, and son-in-law Jim Gorman took over the firm. Returning to the story of her first days in the company, O’Connell said that she had always been a diligent worker — “I didn’t play any sports in high school; I worked.
“When I entered college, my father insisted that I quit work and devote my time to my studies,” she continued, adding with a laugh, “I was furious!”
The time soon came for Ernie to revisit his moratorium on her collegiate employment. “He called me one day in November,” she remembered. “The business had recently moved from Suffolk Street to High Street. And basically, he said, ‘the bills aren’t getting out — can you come and send out statements?’ It didn’t take me long to say, ‘sure!’ I was going to get paid, it was work, I was thrilled.
“I finished that job before the day ended,” she continued, “so my uncle had me start another project. That wasn’t finished by day’s end, so I had to come back, and then that went on for several days. Finally my uncle said to my father, ‘either give her a job or let her go.’ And so my Uncle Jim hired me as a file clerk. That was my first official job here.”
Meanwhile, her sibling contrasted this story with his own tale, as an early adopter of the family business. “I went into the office with dad on nights and weekends,” Ross said. “I just knew from day one that this is what I wanted to do. I went to business school at Bryant, and there was no question about it; I was coming into the family business.”
While their stories might have diverged up to that point, once they were part of the staff, the two spoke similarly of the benefits of working in a generational family business.
“From my perspective as an in-house employee with my beginnings here,” O’Connell said, “dad was harder on me than any of the other staff — from day one.
“But we had the greatest working relationship,” she went on. “I learned everything from that second generation. I would come in the morning, grab a coffee, and sit at the spare chair at my dad’s desk and just hash things out — talk about the business, where we were going, what we were doing. I loved working with them.”
With Ross nodding in agreement, she added, “it was sad, very sad, when they all retired.” Their father eventually bought out his partners in the firm, and when the time came for his legacy to be built upon by the next generation, both O’Connell and Ross said the transition was as smooth as could be expected.
“In the last few years of his owning the business,” Ross explained, “he went into semi-retirement and passed the reins of operation over to us, which gave us valuable education, but also gave him a comfort level, knowing that, when he was ready to sell out, we could take it on successfully.”

Linked In
Pausing to reflect back on her earliest days in the firm, O’Connell recalled her first official job at Ross, in claims. “In those days we paid our own claims. So that means a customer would call in with a claim, I go into Jim’s office, ask him if it was a payable claim, he’d have me pull the form, and from that moment on, every claim that came in, I’d pull the form. He made me research every single claim. It was the best education I could ever have gotten in the industry.”
The pair’s professional development in many ways mirrors their industry. O’Connell said that, while the office isn’t paperless — yet — much of its registration and filing is streamlining in that direction. Their marketing budget has seen a similar shift.
“Years ago, quite a bit of our business was walk-in,” Ross added. “We were on High Street, and that’s the way things were done. Now, we have an employee who handles all of our social media. We post four blogs a week on our on-site blog, and we post to our off-site blog. And the bottom line is that this works for our SEO.
“The first thing the modern consumer does before he makes a purchase, he gets on the computer,” he continued. “We want to be the first agency that pops up, so we get the opportunity to deal with that person. Maureen really has been spearheading this process.”
The new walk-in customer, she said, is anywhere with an Internet connection. “We’re writing policies across the state,” she said. “We wrote a workmen’s comp policy for a business in Hawaii. They had a salesman in Massachusetts, and they had to have a workmen’s comp policy. Their agent couldn’t provide it, so they got in touch with us.”

Neighborhood Watch
O’Connell said that the firm is in the formative stages of digital growth.
“But while the digital age is very young, we think it’s the future of our business,” she continued. “So we’re embracing that and working as hard as we can to make that a very important part of our future. We’re growing without bricks and mortar.”
However, in talking about the future of their industry, both O’Connell and Ross gestured to that wall of Little League pictures. “We’re a committed, third-generation business in our community,” Ross said. “Maureen and I spend a lot of time trying to grow our business and be the best answer for all of their questions and needs. But it’s also important to give back to the fabric of our community. Immediately since we took over in 1990, we paid close attention to two areas — youth and education; they’re important to us.”
O’Connell said that is the difference — a locally based family business maintaining its community roots. “When auto insurance in Massachusetts went competitive in 2008,” she added, “we first had the Geicos, Progressive, all of them. To compete with that, we have to be an important part of our community, giving back to it. The direct writers don’t do that. They don’t care.”
As part of the ongoing renovations at the Holyoke Public Library, O’Connell and Ross have created the Team Ernie Charitable Golf Tournament; the goal is to raise $60,000 for the construction project, and in turn the newspaper and periodicals room at the new facility will be named for their late brother.
Speaking to the technology that has secured their generation’s ascent into the digital age, O’Connell said that, while it is necessary to have a strong online presence, some things will never change.
“Yes, we want to be straightaway on Google searches,” she said. “Otherwise, you’re not getting that primary opportunity. And then you get the chance to show them the personalized customer service.
“Face to face is not obsolete,” she added. “But it is important to get them here first.”

Health Care Sections
Coping with Being Stuck in the Middle, Caring for Parents and Kids

Lisa L. Halbert

Lisa L. Halbert

They call it the ‘sandwich generation,’ those individuals who care for their young, college-aged, adult, or boomerang kids, while at the same time caring for parents or in-laws who need some level of assistance. These stuck-in-the-middle people are overworked, stressed, tired, and oftentimes financially strapped from the burden.
Typically there is some hope or expectation that, as a child ages, parenting modulates from hands-on caregiving duties to those of chauffeur, disciplinarian, and behavior-modeling duties, and then the child goes their own way. For many with aging parents, however, the roles reverse, and caring for parents expands from driving them to appointments to moving them in to live with you, to engaging in disagreements as if you had another grumpy child — and even to the adult equivalents of diapering and assisting with feeding.
For some, it is an honor to care for aging parents. This commitment comes not only from a strong sense of family, but also from concern that nursing-home experiences are not ideal and can be prohibitively expensive. For others, it is an obligation, whether self-imposed or not. For most people caught in the sandwich generation, perhaps it is a blend of love, obligation, and concern about how they would want to be treated if or when they become stuck in such a needy situation.
While the sandwich generation connotes comfort, the nitty-gritty is that caregiving for any one person is hard enough, but when attention and care must be divided among three generations — your parents, spouse, and children — the emotional, physical, and financial toll can become devastating. From both a practical and estate-planning perspective, steps that caregivers might consider taking include the following:

Anticipate Problems Before They Arise
As early as possible, consider typical sandwich-generation issues. Initiate discussions with your parents about how they want to live, whether they have long-term-care insurance, what kind of health care and life-saving measures are desired, and who should make legal and medical decisions for them if they are no longer able to handle their own affairs. Yes, these are difficult topics and not ripe for the holidays, but as an adult child of aging parents, you must address these types of questions while there is still time to plan. This can help your whole family avoid a lot of problems down the road.

Apply the Golden Rule
Remember your parents telling you that you should treat others as you would want to be treated? Well, now is the time to take that to heart, especially as even loving family members are sometimes not nice to those who are infirmed. You might talk about them rather than to them, or make decisions for them rather than with them. You might overestimate your loved one’s disabilities and underestimate their capabilities.
Too often, we equate intelligence with language and the ability to communicate, but how would you feel if you became hard of hearing or lost your ability to speak? Would that make you less intelligent?
Now is also your opportunity to train your children about how to treat you a few decades down the road. Teach them by example to be tolerant, loving, and kind. Teach them to include seniors in decision making and to be respectful.

Essential Legal Documents
In addition to a will, there are three basic estate-planning documents that every adult should consider. A health care proxy (HCP) authorizes another to make health care decisions when someone cannot make those decisions for himself or herself. A durable power of attorney (POA) authorizes someone to make decisions about issues in another’s legal world, such as bank accounts, brokerage accounts, or almost anything relating to money. This document can be drafted so that you and your elderly relative can access accounts at the same time. As the attorney-in-fact under a POA, therefore, you can help reinforce your family member’s independence in that he or she can retain some control until capacity diminishes.
The third document, a living will, provides a specific directive to the individual’s physician regarding under which circumstances the individual is to be kept alive by life-sustaining equipment and when the physician is to stop such mechanical approaches and allow the patient to die with as much dignity and as little pain as possible.  Some attorneys combine this directive within the HCP, while others leave it as a standalone document. Either approach works.
It is important to note that a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or early dementia does not prohibit the consideration and signing of essential estate-planning documents. As early as possible, you must have your parent talk to estate-planning counsel. If your parent remains aware of basic information, he or she may still have capacity to sign the forms. This documentation is important, if not imperative, for both you and your parent. Statistics show that caregivers actually frequently falter because the stress and the pressure of caregiving may lead to their own injury or illness.
When documentation is in place, have it reviewed periodically, especially with any change in family structure, to ensure that the appropriate people are named to the appropriate positions.
Keep in mind that, while you might be a wonderful caregiver, loading up with financial responsibilities may result in too much of a time commitment for you. Sharing those same responsibilities with siblings or others might be the better choice.
Understand that, without a POA and/or HCP in place, situations will likely arise that require court action, whether guardianship or conservatorship, to be initiated. And while a POA and/or HCP are not a guarantee that you can avoid these actions (and additional costs), the chances of needing court involvement drops significantly.

Preserve Your Own Assets
Financial planners constantly say it is foolish to raid your retirement savings to pay for your children’s college education or your parents’ long-term care. Your kids can take out student loans that they have plenty of time to repay, and your parents’ own assets should finance their care for as long as possible.
If caregiving to a parent is likely to be in your future, urge your children to explore multiple financial-aid options to fund college, which will help alleviate the burden on you, especially merit grants and scholarships that neither of you will have to repay after they graduate. For some, one part of the puzzle might be to consider having your child spend a couple years at a community college, and then transfer to a four-year program, which can save tens of thousands of dollars. For others, consider whether your child might qualify for more money from needs-based aid as opposed to merit-based scholarships. A good college advisor should be fluent in advising which schools look at what information relative to financial aid. Also, understand that the optimal time to consider college financial-aid planning is when your child is in 9th or 10th grade.
As for your parents, you might consider involving a financial planner in advance of their caregiving needs changing. An evaluation of assets and income as well as expenses (current and then modified for the new living situation) can be done to consider whether investments should be adjusted so as to produce more or less income. Also consider long-term-care insurance, whether for nursing home care and/or home care — and the earlier, the better.
Identify a qualified financial planner who can advise whether a long-term-care insurance or home-care insurance policy may suit your parents’ needs. It is important to ascertain that the policy you’re considering meets current Medicaid requirements. These requirements are quite specific, so while your financial planner or insurance agent may have some knowledge of the issues, check with your legal counsel, who should be able to lend insight. Typically the premium will increase with age, and you and your parents should carefully consider the services provided and length of the term. Your lawyer may also be able to provide guidance while you’re in this process.
A caregiving contract may also be appropriate for services that you will provide for your parents, especially in cases where you leave or decline traditional employment in favor of caregiving. Such contracts should address the prospective wages and range of services to be paid under the contract. Contracts can also address your parent’s financial contribution to any modification of the residence where your parent will be living, yours or their own.
When considering caring for a parent who could potentially need traditional nursing-home assistance or renovating your home to accommodate the new caregiving duties, in order to avoid violating certain Medicaid regulations, a properly written contract must be made in advance of the cash outlay. If your parents make promises to compensate you via their will, or you are too proud to discuss the issues in advance, the result could be you bearing the financial brunt and never receiving appropriate compensation, irrespective of good intentions.

Check Your Health
From a practical standpoint, it must also be mentioned that you will be no good to your parents or your children unless you make yourself a priority. Get proper exercise, rest, and relaxation. Remain involved with your interests and friends. Keep communication lines open with your partner, parents, siblings, and children, and enlist the help of others. You cannot bear this burden alone without considerable stress taking its toll on you.

Lisa L. Halbert, Esq. is an associate in the Northampton office of Bacon & Wilson, P.C. A member of the estate-planning, elder, and real-estate departments, she is especially focused on legal matters relating to asset protection; (413) 584-1287; baconwilson.com/attorneys/halbert

Opinion
The Education State, for Now

For many years, Massachusetts has enjoyed the unofficial title of the Education State. It is the mecca of American higher education with more than 50 universities and colleges in the Boston area alone. Bay State K-12 students rank first in national reading and mathematics test scores. High-school graduation rates may not be best in the country, but with four in five freshmen receiving diplomas within four years, it is toward the head of the class and well above the national average.
The rankings, however, do not tell the whole story. Although Massachusetts ranks first on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, half of the Commonwealth’s fourth graders scored below proficient in reading. Massachusetts also has a large achievement gap. One key to a happy ending is to support preschoolers and early education. Yet according to a landmark national study released recently by the National Institute for Early Education Research, Massachusetts continues to struggle in maintaining its commitment to state funding for high-quality pre-kindergarten. In the long run, this could threaten Massachusetts’s status as the Education State and its accompanying benefits as the achievement gap becomes insurmountable and costly.
The National Institute for Early Education Research’s 2011 report on the state of preschools ranked the state 23rd in funding for pre-kindergarten, compared to eighth a decade ago. It also trailed 27 other states in research-based quality standards, achieving only six of 10. The Universal Pre-Kindergarten grant program, which is designed to support and enhance quality, is currently funded at $7.5 million, down from $12.14 million in fiscal year 2009. The state currently contributes $7.5 million to Head Start, down from $10 million in fiscal 2009. The Department of Early Education and Care is currently funded at $495.16 million, down from $570.58 million in fiscal 2009. The institute’s calculations find a precipitous drop in dollars spent per pre-K child of nearly 45% over the past decade, and there has been little progress in enrolling more children in quality pre-K programs at a time when the need is escalating. These results are surprising for a state priding itself on its education system.
Massachusetts was one of nine states to win a federal Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge grant, a $50 million infusion to the state over the next four years. The award shows that the ideas and desire to keep young children in the forefront of education reform are present, even if the state’s allocation of resources is lacking.
Over the next four years, plans are to strengthen early education in Massachusetts by addressing quality, standards and assessment, family engagement, workforce development, data systems, and children’s mental health.
Unfortunately, Early Learning Challenge grant funds will not last. Neither are they to be used to supplant state investments. To build on the momentum created by the Early Learning Challenge, Massachusetts must increase investments in high-quality early education. Science and economics both confirm the benefits of investing in quality early education. An overwhelming body of research shows that high-quality pre-K prepares children to succeed in school, enroll in college or career training, and ultimately get better jobs in the increasingly competitive global economy.
For Massachusetts to retain its perceived advantage as the nation’s Education State, with the ensuing benefits of that title, policymakers need to change course and make prudent new investments in early education now.

Jim Squires is senior research fellow at the National Institute for Early Education Research.

Features
A Passing of the Torch at the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce

Kathy Anderson, right, has taken the reins of the Greater Holyoke Chamber from the retiring Doris Ransford.

Kathy Anderson, right, has taken the reins of the Greater Holyoke Chamber from the retiring Doris Ransford.

Doris Ransford was looking back on her 26 years as director of the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce when she paused for a short while at one of the seminal moments in her tenure — the chamber’s 100th anniversary in 1990.
This was a time of celebration, but also a chance to reflect on the many changes that had come to the community over that century, said Ransford during an interview in her last week on the job before stepping into retirement, adding that the pace of change has only accelerated since that milestone.
“I was looking over a special supplement we did as part of the 100th anniversary,” she recalled. “We honored all the companies that were over 100 years old, and there were a lot of them, mostly manufacturers. And, sadly, the majority of them aren’t here anymore.”
But while the complexion of the Holyoke business community has changed markedly over the past several years and the manufacturing base that put the city on the map has dwindled, there have been many positive developments as well, said Ransford, listing everything from new retail to a host of new small businesses to successful revitalization efforts downtown.
And the chamber has played a significant role in many of them.
Some of its most significant contributions, she said, have been in the broad realm of workforce development, a key issue in a community where business owners have long struggled to find employees with the requisite skill sets. The chamber has taken a leadership role in such initiatives as the creation of the one-stop career center CareerPoint, continuation of programs administered by the Mass. Career Development Institute after scandal there a decade ago, and a host of training and placement programs.
“Companies had job openings, but couldn’t find skilled workers,” she recalled, adding that the challenge persists today. “For many years, we were actually placing people into jobs from this office.”
Meanwhile, the chamber has been involved in other endeavors, ranging from the transformation of the old central fire station into a multi-modal transportation center and adult-education facility, to the advancement of plans for the return of rail service to the center’s downtown.
And while doing all this, the organization has been steadfast in its primary mission — providing effective service to its membership, said Ransford just a few days before she turned over the keys to her successor, Kathy Anderson, a veteran economic-development leader in the city, serving most recently as director of the Holyoke Office of Planning and Development.
Looking ahead, Anderson said she plans to continue building on the foundation created by Ransford and those who came before her, while also broadening the organization’s focus somewhat to include more work to assist and mentor fledgling entrepreneurs and small business owners.
“I’d really like to find ways to support small businesses that aren’t part of a chamber, and don’t have a lot of outside contact with others they can network with or learn from with regard to running their business effectively,” Anderson said. “We have to better understand the needs of the young entrepreneurs, and then help meet those needs.”
For this, the latest installment of its Getting Down to Business series, BusinessWest uses the leadership change at the chamber as an opportunity to look at where this venerable organization has been, and where it wants to go next.

History in the Making
The walls in many of the rooms of the Greater Holyoke Chamber office on High Street are covered with portraits of past board chairs. When asked if her likeness would eventually join them, Ransford laughed and said, “I seriously doubt it.”
But even if her picture doesn’t end up on the wall, there is no doubting Ransford’s impact on the chamber, Holyoke’s business community, and the city itself. Indeed, while many of the jokes at a testimonial staged at the Delaney House on May 29 concerned the length of Ransford’s tenure — Mayor Alex Morse noted that he wasn’t alive when she started, and state Sen. Mike Knapik recalled that he was still in college — there was also high praise for a long list of accomplishments.
And also recognition of a career in chamber work that spans more than 45 years and assignments in the region’s two largest cities.
Ransford started working for the Springfield Chamber of Commerce in the  late 1960s, and eventually held a number of positions with that organization, eventually rising to senior vice president. She handled a number of responsibilities as well, from public relations to program development to running two affiliates, in Agawam and West Springfield.
When the director’s position came open in Holyoke in 1986, Ransford saw it as an opportunity to lead her own chamber, while also taking a leadership role in a city undergoing significant change as it continued the process of reinventing itself from its legacy as the country’s first planned industrial city.
During her lengthy tenure, she has presided over a number of initiatives, from support of Greater Holyoke Inc.’s efforts to revitalize downtown to the creation of a fall trade show that involved a partnership with the Chicopee Chamber. But perhaps the most noteworthy accomplishments came in the broad realm of workforce development.
Indeed, in addition to being one of five agencies that collaborated to create CareerPoint in the mid-’90s, the Holyoke Chamber was one of six chambers to receive grants for workforce efforts through a partnership involving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Assoc. of Manufacturers, the Ford Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“That enabled us to put someone on staff and work with companies that were needing employees,” she explained. “We were doing a lot of work with employers at that time, especially in manufacturing and health care.”
Ransford, who announced her retirement several months ago, has spent the past several weeks working on transition issues with Anderson, who told BusinessWest that she sought the chamber job because it would enable her to continue working on many of the issues that have occupied her time and energy for the past 13 years, but also narrow what had been a very broad focus to local businesses and how to assist them.
“I saw this as a great opportunity to continue to work with the business community and support it in a different way than I did before,” said Anderson, who worked in the mayor’s office in Holyoke for several years before moving on to the Office of Planning and Development, where she succeeded Jeffrey Hayden as director in 2006.
Looking ahead, Anderson said she wants the chamber to continue to take active roles in economic-development and workforce-development initiatives. These include everything from support programs for young entrepreneurs and small-business owners to efforts to introduce young people to possible career paths and jobs within the city through summer internships and other programs.
She noted that the city has indeed lost many older, larger employers over the past several decades, and that one of the many strategies for replacing those lost jobs is to encourage entrepreneurship while also providing support and educational opportunities for small businesses with the hope that some will remain in the city and achieve solid growth.
“It comes down to understanding the needs of this new generation of entrepreneurs,” she said, “and try to tailor workshops, breakfast meetings, or speakers to help them understand how to run their businesses more effectively so they can grow.
“Also, funding is always an issue for businesses, especially small, startup businesses,” she continued. “The first part to get started is easy, but the next round, the one they need to grow their business, is much harder to attain, so I would like to put together programs that would help them understand their options for getting funding.”
Another priority is to continue work Ransford started to get city businesses more involved in the school system in what can be a mutually beneficial partnership.
“I’d like to get kids into internships, summer-job-placement programs, shadowing, and more,” she said, “so they can see what types of jobs are available here in Holyoke, and to get them thinking, ‘I can do that,’ and have have a focus, or goal, of getting back to that company to work someday.”
Overall, Anderson sees a number of positive developments in Holyoke, from the High-performance Computing Center to infrastructure projects such as the Canal Walk, to the plans for restoring rail service. These, coupled with a changing population that includes more young professionals and members of the creative economy, have many thinking positively about the city’s future.

Epilogue
Returning to that 100th anniversary celebration and all that’s happened since, Ransford said that, while looking back can be a somewhat painful exercise, it doesn’t have to be.
“There’s always been a ray of hope in this city, and people have always worked hard to make a difference,” she told BusinessWest. “So while people look back and see all that’s been lost, a lot has been gained, too; I think this is quite a different city from when I first came here.”
Ransford is one of those who made a difference, and because of what she and others have been able to accomplish, Anderson and the chamber can indeed look forward with optimism.

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

Features
Plan Addresses Downtown Springfield’s Parking, Pedestrian Issues

This architect’s rendering shows the proposal for building a new, smaller parking garage on the site of the TB Bank parking lot.

This architect’s rendering shows the proposal for building a new, smaller parking garage on the site of the TB Bank parking lot.

Tim Love called it “a large gap between perception and reality.”
That’s how he chose to describe what he and others say is Springfield’s actual downtown parking problem — not the lack of inventory that many believe exists.
“There is plenty of parking in downtown Springfield, and when I say plenty, I mean plenty,” Love told BusinessWest, while quickly acknowledging that many people are simply not aware of this volume, leading to that perception he mentioned — that there is no place, or no good place, to park.
The city’s real issue lies with properly managing all that parking, he said — and this means everything from more-effective marketing of that supply to better signage to bring people to it, to perhaps more-creative pricing on the various products to incentivize people to use some of that underutilized inventory.
This need for better management is spelled out in something called the Downtown Springfield Parking and Pedestrian Plan (a carefully chosen name), which was prepared by Utile Inc. Architecture + Planning, with which Love is a principal, and Nelson Nygaard, a Boston-based transportation-planning firm, and funded by Mass Development.
The plan was commissioned in response to ongoing questions from city officials about what to do with the crumbling, 41-year-old, 1,232-space Civic Center Parking Garage. And while the document addressed that matter, it went much further in its scope.
Indeed, while the plan’s headline-making proposal is a suggestion to raze the Civic Center garage, build a new facility slightly more than one-third that size on a portion of the parking lot of the TD Bank building (owned by the Springfield Redevelopment Authority), and create a 250-space surface lot on the site of the old garage, there are many other suggestions, all aimed at making the downtown easier to navigate for motorists and pedestrians alike.
These include making Dwight Street, currently one way going south, a two-way road; closing down Falcons Way (the street that runs between the Civic Center garage and MassMutual Center) for many events, thereby creating what Love and others called a “Yawkey Way Effect,” in reference to the street outside Fenway Park in Boston where crowds gather before and after games; and improving the Market Street pedestrian way.
As for the specific plans for the garage and its proposed replacement, it would actually reduce the inventory of parking downtown by roughly 600 spaces, said Jason Schrieber, a principal with Nelson Neygaard.
But given the supply that exists downtown and the large percentage (more than half) of that supply that’s not being used, the city can easily absorb that loss, he said. Meanwhile, moving large amounts of parking even another block from the convention center could spur additional development in that area, he noted.
Using Boston and Northampton as examples, Schreiber said there are benefits to putting a few blocks of retail and hospitality venues between parking facilities and the front doors of event venues.
“If you look at the Academy of Music [in Northampton], there’s no parking there,” he explained. “You have to park in the city’s garage and walk past a number of shops and restaurants to get to the Academy of Music. That’s just one small, local example of what you see in many older downtowns.”
Kevin Kennedy, Springfield’s chief development officer, said, with the plan in hand, city leaders will closely consider all its points, from its basic premise — that perception is the real issue — to its major recommendation, and decide when and how to proceed.
While he agrees with some suggestions, he said there are questions about whether taking 600 spaces out of the inventory may hinder additional development, whether a 250-space surface lot on the footprint of the old garage is the best option for that site, and other matters.
And if they’re answered effectively, the city must then pursue financing for a plan that currently carries a price tag approaching $17 million.
For this issue, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at the parking plan, thus shedding some light on what has become an important, and also complex, issue for many urban centers.

Reading Between the Lines
Matt Hollander described May 19 as “a great day for Springfield.”
There were three college commencement ceremonies going on that afternoon — AIC and Westfield State University at the MassMutual Center, which he serves as general manager, and Western New England University School of Law in Symphony Hall — as well as other, much smaller events in the convention center, he said. The various ceremonies and gatherings brought thousands of people downtown — as well as some serious gridlock.
It was the kind of day that would prompt questions about the wisdom of removing 600 parking spaces from the area around the convention center, he noted, while adding quickly that these are not the kinds of days on which to base one’s parking inventory.
“We don’t have many days like that Saturday,” he explained. “To build for your worse-case scenario doesn’t make any sense.”
Schreiber agreed.
“No one plans their system to the 100-year flood — it’s just not worth it,” he said, adding that Springfield and communities like it should create inventory sufficient to meet typical needs during peak weekday use — 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Going by that standard, Springfield is using not quite half (46%) the spaces in garages, on the street, and in surface lots within a 5-minute walk from the convention center, according to the report, and 51% of those within a 2.5-minute walk.
The ideal utilization rate, the identified target for most communities, is 85%, said Schrieber. But few communities actually come close to that number, he noted, adding that Springfield is in many ways typical of Northeast urban centers, although its utilization rates are even lower than those found in most other cities.
“I’ve found literally one place that actually has a parking-supply problem,” he told BusinessWest. “Every other community has plenty of supply, far more than anyone would have ever thought. We’re talking about hundreds or thousands of empty spaces at the peak hour of the day, and it all has to do with the need for better management programs.
“And those programs are starting to happen in various places around the country,” he continued. “There’s a couple of places in New England where they’re moving in the right direction. Nashua, N.H. is one of the better examples; they’ve implemented some fairly progressive management fixes in recent years.”
Elaborating, he said Nashua has implemented creative pricing policies, whereby busy streets are priced somewhat higher than those a little further away from the center of downtown, while parking in locations that would be considered remote is free or close to it.
“They used to price everything the same,” he explained. “When they changed, parking suddenly opened up; employees were willing to park in the cheaper spaces, and the prime customers who wanted the front door were willing to pay more for it.”
Such dynamic pricing programs can be a tool for improving overall parking management, said Corey Zehngebot, an urban designer and planner at Utile, noting that they help communities increase their utilization rates while reducing the kind of congestion Springfield saw on May 19.

On the Spot
But parking management starts with having the proper amount of inventory, said Love, returning to the study and its main recommendation — building a new garage much smaller than the existing facility and taking several hundred spaces out of the inventory.
“When you have too much parking, there are other negative effects,” he explained. “There are too many vacant lots; if you have too many surface parking lots and garages in your downtown, it’s not an attractive place.
“To always be well ahead of demand for the busy times … that kind of parking landscape is going to dominate a downtown, and you don’t want that,” he continued. “Providence figured this out 15 years ago; to make a downtown an asset, it has to be a place that people want to visit, and not just because of specific targeted destinations.”
Still another aspect of effective parking management is putting the inventory in the right places, said Zehngebot, noting that having 1,200 spaces literally across the street from the convention center, while convenient for visitors, isn’t exactly conducive to generating commerce and additional vitality in the city’s downtown.
A garage on the TD Bank lot would help create development opportunities along the block between Harrison Avenue and Falcons Way — and even on the site of the old garage itself, she said, while also facilitating efforts to create that aforementioned Yawkey Way look and feel on Falcon Way and bringing new life to a somewhat tired Market Street.
“There are several somewhat hidden corridors, like Market Street, which are pedestrian only,” she noted. “By increasing foot traffic through some of these places, we can help unlock some of their potential.”
Love agreed, and summoned the phrase “double duty” to describe what the authors of the parking garage have in mind for the proposed new garage. Elaborating, he said that it will not only meet parking-supply needs, but also funnel pedestrian areas, especially the Market Street corridor, while also perhaps serving as a catalyst for new retail and hospitality-related venues in that area.
“If we put the smaller garage on the TD Bank lot, with its lobby more or less oriented toward Market Street, we’ll be taking people who before would just get out of their cars and go directly to the MassMutal Center and not really experience the city, and require them to walk down Market Street to get to the convention center, and actually have a better experience,” he explained. “That’s already a well-scaled, well-designed space [Market Street], and we get that for free. At at the same time, the new garage could incentivize retail activity because it will have a measurable audience, a measurable demographic.”
Kennedy said city officials will closely consider the parking plan’s many recommendations, and as they do so, they will attempt to answer several questions. One of the biggest, he noted, is why the parking-utilization rate in Springfield is so low.
To be determined is whether the problem lies with awareness — do people actually know these spaces exist? — or resistance to using some of the city’s supply because of locations that might be considered poorly lit or unsafe, or still-sluggish economic conditions and a resulting high commercial real-estate vacancy rate. Or is it a combination of all these and other factors?
Also to be determined is whether a new 400-space garage (where 200 spaces must be reserved for TD Bank employees) and a 250-space surface lot on the site of the old garage will be sufficient to attract new development and handle the needs of the new businesses and residential units the city hopes to add in the years to come.
“We have a lot to look at and consider, and we need to continue the discussion with the downtown business community,” said Kennedy. “And we need to know exactly what we want before we move on financing.”

Casting Their Lot
Summing up the situation for Springfield, Love told BusinessWest that something has to be done about the Civic Center Parking Garage — either shoring it up at a high cost, something he wouldn’t recommend, or replacing it.
The key is for officials to get ahead of the situation and basically control the outcome, he continued, adding that the city still has an opportunity to do that. And while addressing the fate of that aging structure, the goal should not be to merely replace parking spaces, but to take major strides in the direction of more-effective management of the city’s parking inventory.
“Parking can and should be an integral part of economic development downtown,” said Kennedy, hinting strongly that the city has many questions to answer and steps to take before its parking supply can effectively play such a role.

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

Sections Technology
Normandeau Communications Is All About Making Connections

Kim Durand and Brett Normandeau

Kim Durand and Brett Normandeau say they strive to match clients with business technologies that, in many cases, they weren’t even aware of.

WestIt wasn’t too long ago that business phone calls had to be made from a desk, and call management meant having a good secretary.
But there’s more than a hint of gee-whiz in Kim Durand’s voice when she describes some of the technology being installed by Normandeau Communications these days. Take the LG-Ericsson iPECS-LIK product, which manages all kinds of communication — phone calls, e-mails, texts, faxes, etc. — across multiple sites, and even on the road.
“The system processes all calls and does the call management for you,” said Durand, director of sales. “Not only can calls be sent to your cell phone, but voice mails left at your office can automatically appear on your smart phone with the .wav file attached, so you can listen to voice mail at any time. Any time people are on the road and not at their desks, like salespeople, it’s really important for them to be able to do the things they need to do.”
Normandeau has been selling, installing, and servicing telephone systems for 22 years, but voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology — which uses the Internet to exchange various forms of communication that have traditionally been carried over land lines — has added elements of convenience unheard of in those early days.
The company’s primary product line, Estech Systems Inc., gives business clients the option of a traditional digital business phone system, an Internet protocol telephony system, or a mix of the two.
But Normandeau is also touting a new patnership with LG-Ericsson, whose iPECS-LIK product further streamlines communication within any size business, from small offices to multi-site corporations with thousands of users, allowing calls to be forwarded between sites and even, as Durand mentioned, to mobile phones.
“We’re also providing surveillance systems as well as loudspeaker paging systems,” said Brett Normandeau, the company’s president and Durand’s brother. “All that ties in very well to your telephone system or your whole communication system. With Web access, I can log in and check the surveillance cameras, tie into the phone system, check e-mails” — all from a distance.
These are certainly exciting times in communications, and Normandeau has tried to stay ahead of the curve as it grows its presence in the Valley. Its visibility was boosted two years ago by a move from Florence to Riverdale Street in West Springfield.
“For us it’s been a convenient spot because a lot of our customer base is located in the Hampden County area,” Normandeau said, “and having acess to Interstate 91 and the Mass Pike makes it more convenient.”
In this issue, BusinessWest sits down with Normandeau and Durand to talk about how these siblings — and the company their father began — is making new connections every day.

New Menu
“Communications is not just talking anymore,” Normandeau said at one point. “It’s the integration of many different types of technology that allows you to communicate more effectively — be it Web sharing, desktop collaboration, instant messaging.”
“We’re taking these technologies,” Durand quickly added, “and merging them into single platforms that are able to offer comprehensive solutions for the customer.”
At its heart, Normandeau commiunications has been trading in phone systems since Ray Normandeau launched the enterprise in Florence in 1990, using money from an early-retirement package offered by a streamlining AT&T.
As Ray built his business on word of mouth and a few loyal customers, Brett started working alongside his father from the start, having been licensed as an electrical journeyman shortly before Ray launched the company. He took over as president when his father retired about 10 years ago.
At the start, clients were mainly residential, but gradually, the emphasis turned to business customers, which today comprise more than 90% of the client base.
“We’ve been expanding slowly since we started with just me and my father,” Normandeau said. “We’re moving into different avenues now. We just opened up a training room to hold seminars.”
That’s an important development, he and Durand said, because technology is changing so rapidly that employers don’t always understand what’s available to help their teams do their jobs.
“It’s technical training, training people on different technologies being brought to market,” Durand said. “These are business customers and commercial clients that might be looking for training on these technologies and how to apply them to their business. We’re really trying to find the right applications to fit our customer base.”
With the LG-Ericsson product, the focus is on consolidating different modes of communication. “It collects all technology — digital, analog, wi-fi, phones — and integrates them all with one solution,” Durand said. “That’s really important when you have multi-site networks with multiple locations, like bank branches or realtors. A lot of different types of businesses can benefit from this type of technology.”
Take the Three County Fair in Northampton, for example, which is now using the iPECS-LIK system to manage communication among seven buildings and across the grounds, while incorporating staff mobile phones and providing options for exhibitors as well.
“Because it’s an old fairgrounds, they have an antiquated communications infrastructure,” Normandeau said. “But because of the technology, we were able to utilize all that infrastructure and bring it up to IP specifications, so they could link it all together. It allows them to use old analog-type techniques and IP techniques in the same system.”
But the technology links sites much more far-flung than across a fairgrounds.
“We’ve gone from very small home offices to large companies with multiple sites across the country,” Normandeau said. “We’re implementing a system to connect an East Longmeadow office with a San Jose, Calif. office. Two weeks ago, we finished one connecting Hartford to Orlando.”
Such new products have allowed Normandeau to expand its reach from the smaller businesses that were long its bread and butter to bigger clients.
“The larger customers are definitely much more accessible to us now,” Durand said. “We’ve been doing this for so long now that we know what the implications are for each business; even if they don’t understand them, we can help them find what the right solution is, by making use of their existing infrastructure and minimizing the costs to the customer. That’s the thing we’ve excelled the most at — offering cost-effective solutions while still providing the technology to see them into the future.”

Knowledge Is Power
On July 18, Normandeau will host a seminar with a representative from LG-Ericsson to talk about the how its communications technology can benefit businesses, especially those with multiple sites. It’s just one of many such events aimed at educating clients — and potential clients.
“Customers in general are becoming more informed,” Durand said. “They’re looking at different technologies, and they do recognize what was not possible years ago is really feasible now.
“It’s really about educating customers so they know what they’re getting,” she continued. “We want people to know what the differences are. We know it’s a significant investment to update technology and phone systems. As a family business, this level of customer service has been really critical for us.”
Added Normandeau, “telephone systems don’t even have to be hardware-based on a customer’s premises anymore. They can be hosted IP systems. We are improving that solution as well, so customers can have an IP phone, but all system connectivity and features are located off-site.”
That option is especially important at a time when disaster recovery and business continuation are on the minds of Western Mass. businesses more than ever, following a year marked by tornadoes in June, tropical-storm flooding in August, and a freak snowstorm and widespread power outages in October.
“We moved a lot of clients, especially in the downtown Springfield area” following the tornado, he noted.
“As soon as it happened, Brett drove down there to try to reach out to our customers,” Durand added. “So many were impacted, with physical damage to their buildings, and communications were lower on the priority list at the moment.”
Still, she said, “it was a very busy year.” And yet another teaching opportunity — and those are, after all, yet another chance to make connections.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Columns Sections
Rank-and-file Employees on the Hook for Employment Discrimination

Amy Royal

Amy Royal

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.” — Horton Hears a Who, Dr. Seuss
This quote describes perfectly the general takeaway of a recent federal court decision finding that rank-and-file, hourly employees can be sued individually in an employment discrimination lawsuit brought under state law.
While Title VII, which is our federal anti-discrimination law, does not permit individual liability at all, our state counterpart, Mass. General Laws Chapter 151B, provides for it.  In fact, state courts interpreting Chapter 151B have found that supervisors and managers can be sued individually in an employment-discrimination lawsuit. Now, at least according to the federal trial court in Massachusetts (as well the MCAD), rank-and-file, minimum-wage workers can be sued individually for employment discrimination.

Why the Court Got It Wrong
First, Chapter 151B is a statute that applies only in the context of employment. The statute is further limited in its application to only those employers with six or more employees. By its very nature, Chapter 151B applies to employers and those ‘persons’ standing in the position of some authority at the employer, such as authority to discipline or terminate, authority to affect the terms or conditions of another’s employment, or some other supervisory-type authority. For persons with such authority, they are acting as if they are the employer. Indeed, the entire purpose behind Chapter 151B is to prohibit employment actions on the basis of discrimination.
While Massachusetts courts interpreting Chapter 151B have recognized that supervisors can be held individually liable by virtue of their position in management and the accompanying authority that comes with such a position, they have not held that such liability extends to a rank-and-file worker.
In the recent federal court case allowing for individual liability of rank-and-file workers, the court erroneously cited a Massachusetts Appeals Court case (Beaupre v. Cliff Smith & Associates) as grounds for its decision. That case is completely distinguishable: individual liability was imposed on the company’s top leader, its president and controlling shareholder, not a minimum-wage, rank-and-file worker.
Secondly, a plain reading of the statutory language simply does not provide for the individual liability of a rank-and-file worker. Chapter 151B, in pertinent part, provides as follows:
“It shall be unlawful … for any person to coerce, intimidate, threaten, or interfere with another person in the exercise or enjoyment of any right granted or protected by this chapter, or to coerce, intimidate, threaten, or interfere with such other person for having aided or encouraged any other person in the exercise or enjoyment of any such right granted or protected by this chapter.”
While recognizing that the Chapter 151B statutory language is broader than its federal counterpart insofar as it uses the word ‘person’ whereas Title VII does not, Chapter 151B language seems to allow for individual liability in the context of supervisory or management-level employment only, not a rank-and-file hourly worker. Linking the word ‘person’ to ‘coerce, intimidate, threaten, or interfere’ and to the exercise or enjoyment of a right connotes the actions of an individual possessing some level of control, power, or authority, or the appearance thereof. In other words, the statutory language implies that the word ‘person’ applies to someone with power to act or to influence in some way.
Furthermore, words such as coercion, intimidation, threats, and interference suggest that an individual has some level of power or influence over an employee’s exercise or enjoyment of a right. Therefore, a liberal construction of the statute, which is required and which in turn accomplishes its remedial purpose of prohibiting discrimination in the context of employment, is to extend liability to those individuals in positions of authority or perhaps even perceived authority, but not to a rank-and-file worker.
Third, in enacting Chapter 151B, our liberal Massachusetts legislature could never have intended to ascribe liability for employment discrimination to a low-wage, hourly worker who has no authority over a co-worker’s employment. Extending liability so broadly and under such circumstances would completely run afoul of legislative intent.
Fourth, as a matter of pure public policy, it would be patently unfair to hold a rank-and-file hourly worker (and low-wage earner) individually liable for discrimination in the context of employment. Such an interpretation would clearly offend public policy.

Why This Case Should Not Matter Anyway
This case was from a federal court, not our state court. As such, it has no mandatory effect on how our state courts should decide if faced with this same issue. Further, it was a trial court decision, not an appellate one, and no Massachusetts appellate court (or even federal appellate court covering Massachusetts) has ever decided this specific issue. While the federal court points to a case from the Massachusetts Appeals Court, as noted above, that case is completely distinguishable (it involved a company president who was sued, not a rank-and-file worker).
Although these are compelling reasons for arguing why this case should not matter, do not discount this case by any means. Until our state’s appellate courts are confronted with and rule on this issue, this decision, for now, will provide support to any plaintiff’s attorney who decides, for whatever reason, to sue a rank-and-file worker.

The Problems This Case Presents for You
Now, as the defendant employer, you have a non-management, rank-and-file worker as your co-defendant in a lawsuit. This worker very likely does not have the means and/or resources necessary to obtain separate counsel. Your options then become paying for an attorney for this worker yourself, having your labor- and employment-law attorney represent both of you, provided there is no conflict, or having the worker proceed pro se.
All three options create potential issues. When a rank-and-file worker represents himself, you lose a certain amount of control over the way the case progresses, the litigation may not be as efficient, the worker may become uncooperative, and/or the worker may default. While there are benefits to a joint representation arrangement, such as presenting a unified front, cooperation from the worker, and retaining more control over the direction of the case, issues and/or conflicts could arise down the road, such as with strategy or settlement. Hiring a separate attorney for the worker is obviously costly. These types of issues will need to be explored carefully with your labor- and employment-law counsel.

Amy B. Royal, Esq. specializes exclusively in management-side labor and employment law at Royal LLP, a woman-owned, SOMWBA-certified, boutique, management-side labor- and employment-law firm; (413) 586-2288; [email protected]

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]

Doris’ Day

More than 200 friends, colleagues, and area business leaders turned out at the Delaney House on May 29 to honor Doris Ransford, who recently retired after 26 years as director of the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce. At top, Ransford is flanked by Robert Gilbert, president and CEO of Dowd Insurance, and Deborah Buckley, president of Goss & McLain Insurance. Bottom, she shares a moment with Peter Rosskothen, left, co-owner of Delaney House and the Log Cabin and former chamber board president, and state Sen. Michael Knapik, who represents Holyoke.











By the Book

Steven Bradley, a vice president at Baystate Health and a Link to Libraries Celebrity reader, recently read to grade 2 students at the William DeBerry Elementary School in Springfield. Bradley read the book Grace for President and shared with the students his experience, visit, and photograph with President Obama. He spoke to the students on the importance of reading 20 minutes every day, education, and being the best they can be. Each student received a donation of a new book and bookbag donated by Link to Libraries and supported by Baystate Health. Link to Libraries conducts more than 30 readaloud programs each school year throughout Western Mass. and Connecticut. For more information, visit www.linktolibraries.org.


Cutting the Ribbon

The Polish National Credit Union staged a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 24 to celebrate the grand reopening of its Granby branch at 34 West State St. The branch, one of PNCU’s busiest, has been completely renovated and expanded, doubling its size. It now includes a suite of private offices for mortgage originators and loan officers and a spacious lobby and expanded teller line. The six-month project was directed by general contractor Barber Associates of Ludlow. Cutting the ribbon are, from left, Edward Ryback, PNCU board of directors chairman; James Warren, representing state Sen. Gale Candaras’ office; Virginia Snopek, trustee chairperson of the Granby Public Library; and Lynn Trompke, PNCU Granby branch manager.

Building Permits Departments
The following building permits were issued during the month of May 2012.

AMHERST

Amherst College
280 Main St.
$58,000 — Basement structural repairs

Dragonfly Health,LLC
17 Research Dr.
$86,000 — Foundation only for a two-story medical office

Northampton Co-Op Bank
390 College St.
$2,500 — Install night deposit

EASTHAMPTON

Berkshire-Easthampton, LTD
118 Northampton St.
$60,000 — Renovate pharmacy

David Pascoe
72 Union St.
$7,000 — Interior renovations

Interland Real Estate, LLC
180 Pleasant St.
$250,000 — Install equipment and fixtures to brewing, bottling, and distribution of beer and soda

J & J Elkins Properties
6 Industrial Way
$15,000 — Create lunch/break room for employees

Paul Sise
92 Cottage St.
$4,000 — Minor non-structural renovations

Riverside Industries Inc.
1 Cottage St.
$29,000 – New roof

HOLYOKE

City of Holyoke Dept. of Public Works
1 Berkshire St.
$37,500 — Remove existing roof and install new

Contemporary Apartments Inc.
59 Mosher St.
$250,000 — Replace rear porches

Fiesta Café
305-307 Main St.
$7,000 — Frame new walls

SBA Sites Inc.
29 Mt. Tom Ski Road
$20,000 — Modify wireless antenna

LUDLOW

Cumberland Farms
320 East St.
$3,000 — Alterations

Town of Ludlow School Central Office
63 Chestnut St.
$60,000 — Alterations

Englewood Properties, LLC
194 East St.
$11,000 — Alterations

Ludlow Housing Authority Community Room
48 Higher St.
$6,500 — Reshingle

Robin Wdowiak
588 Center St.
$104,000 — New construction

NORTHAMPTON

Cooper’s Dairyland of Northampton
51 State St.
$7,000 — Strip and re-roof

Erin McCarthy
14 Hatfield St.
$4,500 — Porch repair and replacement windows

Northampton City Hall
210 Main St.
$100,000 — Replace windows

Smith College
51 College Lane
$9,000 — Strip and shingle roof

SOUTHWICK

Greenhill Services
51 Lakemont St.
$36,000 — Exterior renovations

R.A.C. Builders
224 Sheep Pasture Road
$879,000 — Addition to church

SPRINGFIELD

Baystate Medical Center
759 Chestnut St.
$26,000 — Expand supply room

Mass Mutual
1500 Main St.
$20,000 — Upgrade antennas and cables

NEC Family Enterprise II
1095 Main St.
$20,000 — Renovate office space

New Hope Pentecostal Church
364 Central St.
$70,000 — Interior repairs

Springfield Housing Authority
231-239 Pine St.
$107,000 — Insulation and repairs

WESTFIELD

Frank DeMarinis
395 Southampton Road
$475,000 — Addition to medical building

Gulf Stream
31 Elise St.
$23,000,000 — Construction of a new hangar

SBA Communications
395 Southampton Road
$20,000 — Replacing antennas

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Chris Nekitopaulos
339 Bliss St.
$18,000 — Strip and re-roof

Paul Longtin
20 Crescent Circle
$320,000 — Renovations to existing restaurant

Sergei Starosielski
181 Doty Circle
$10,000 — Re-roof

Victory Temple Church
521 Union St.
$3,500 — New siding

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

Albert, Douglas R.
735 Memorial Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Altro, Karin M.
15 Leclair Ter.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Anderson, Theresa
174 Spear Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/29/12

Arroyo, April
132 Myrtle Ave., 1st Fl.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/23/12

Aukstikalnis, Joan M.
163A Leyden Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/26/12

Avery, Jason D.
Avery, Jennifer A.
76 Penncastle St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/10/12

Avery, Michael L.
24 Elm St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/29/12

Bachelder, Todd C.
554 East Main St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/27/12

Balser, Erik R.
31 Ludger Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Balser, Jessica A.
a/k/a Antoine, Jessica Ann
a/k/a O’Leary, Jessica Ann
31 Ludger Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Batchelor, Tanza L.
414 Chestnut St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/18/12

Bellucci, Anthony A.
13 Plum St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/24/12

Bellunduno, Helen Rita
132 Lovefield St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Bergeron, Mary E.
104 Pearl St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Berthiaume, Nathan H.
413 Belchertown Road
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/23/12

Biladeau, Diane Mary
2 Jones Dr.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Botta, Roberto G.
Botta, Carmela
32 Green St.
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/20/12

Bowell, Robert A.
28 River Road
Apt. #147
Sunderland, MA 01375
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Bradford, James H.
P.O. Box 795
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/04/12

Brooks, Jason C.
63 Belanger St.
Three Rivers, MA 01080
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/18/12

Brooks, Kristy A.
a/k/a Francis, Kristy Ann
63 Belanger St.
Three Rivers, MA 01080
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/18/12

Brothers, Nelson W.
81 Hanson Dr.
Springfield, MA 01128
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/10/12

Cady, Gabriel
264 Alden St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/24/12

Carney, John B.
a/k/a Carney, Burke
95 Davis St., Apt. 5
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/26/12

Christianson, Robert L.
226 New Boston Road
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/18/12

Clifford, Myla J.
22 Williams Ave.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Coburn, Richard
PO Box 905
Warren, MA 01083
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Cochran, Adam W.
76 Enfield St.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/20/12

Connor, Steven J.
19 Church St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Cook, Deborah D.
P.O Box 1017
Sheffield, MA 01257
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/04/12

Coppedge, James Darnell
Coppedge, Lakisha Marie
45 Valley Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/11/12

Coulombe, Alan J.
51 Amherst Road
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/08/12

Couture, Elizabeth E.
a/k/a Stevens, Elizabeth
11 Freyer Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Cranstoun, Mary-Joan
22 Town Farm Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/18/12

Creamer, Guillermo D.
1 Ladd Road
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Crocker, Douglas George
11 Giovina Dr.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/25/12

Croteau, Judith G.
279 Pleasant St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/27/12

Cusson, Jarid C.
Cusson, Heather L.
833 Pendleton Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Danforth, Brenda L.
100 Elizabeth St.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/16/12

Davis, Gary C.
Davis, Maryann
a/k/a Zelazo, Maryann
118 Belchertown St.
Three Rivers, MA 01080
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/24/12

Dean, Betsy E.
a/k/a Dean, Autumn
75 Lyman Road
Northfield, MA 01360
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/27/12

DeJesus, Eva M.
74 Elmer Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/18/12

Devine, Shawn P.
38 Louis Road
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/02/12

DeVree, Brett L.
36 Gillette Circle
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Dixon, Marjorie M.
220 Maple St., #1
Springfield, MA 01105
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/08/12

DLB Computer Technology
Couture, Duane Edward
Couture, Lori Ann
37 Rosie Lane
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Drobiak, Richard P.
65 Hitchcock St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/24/12

Duplessis, Paula A.
459 East River St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/27/12

Dupuis, Richard Robert
25 Kon Tiki Circle
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Ehmann, Amy Nicole
20 Conz St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

F.I.T. Inc.
Leao, Linda N.
a/k/a Raina, Linda Leao
39 Shaw St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Fernet, Tabitha M.
23 Burrill Ave.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Figueroa, Emily
P.O. Box 663
Chicopee, MA 01021
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Flagg, Cory J.
PO Box 216
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Flores, Porfirio
84 Hockanum Road
Hadley, MA 01035
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Foster, Merianne L.
a/k/a Myers, Merianne
a/k/a Thompson, Merianne
40 Partridge Road
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/06/12

Garziano, Leslieanne
18 Lyman Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/03/12

George, Starla C.
2205 Boston Road, #0147
Wilbraham, MA 01095-1164
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Germain, Michelle D.
41 Crest Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/11/12

Goggin, Stephanie Lee
a/k/a Miner, Stephanie L.
127 Balfour Dr.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/23/12

Guzman, Marta I.
1574 Memorial Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/18/12

Hall, LaTasha M.
a/k/a Hall-Fletcher, LaTasha M.
95 Dickinson St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Hanks, Kathleen E.
47 Huntington Road
Hadley, MA 01035
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Hanks, Russell F.
47 Huntington Road
Hadley, MA 01035
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Harris, Teresa Ann
967 Worcester St.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/25/12

Hayes, James E.
459 East River St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Himmelreich, Herbert N.
Himmelreich, Debra A.
67 Theroux Dr. # 7F
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/10/12

Hinckley, Michael W.
57 Calumet St.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Huot, Rodney R.
Huot, Ann-Marie
222 Freedom St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Ihedigbo, Joy C.
2082 Page Blvd.
Springfield, MA 01151
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/21/12

Ireland, Debra Ann
48 Wimbleton Dr.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/23/12

Jacobson, Steven E.
1111 Hubbardston Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Joanides, Maria E.
a/k/a Martel, Maria E.
110 Britton St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/20/12

Jones, Candace E.
390 Montague Road
Shutesbury, MA 01072
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

JR Simmons Group
Simmons, Jacqueline
a/k/a Betts, Jacqueline
45 Central St., Apt. A
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/20/12

JR Tower & Sons
Tower, James R.
Tower, Shirley P.
346 North Main St.
Sunderland, MA 01375
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Katand Inc.,
Katok, Andrew
a/k/a Katok, Andrei
19 Norman Ter. Ext.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Kelley, Susan J.
a/k/a Kelley-Thibault, Susan J.
46 Cleveland St.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/24/12

Krol, Stephen R.
15 Gardner Road
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Kupiec, Freddie J.
Kupiec, Laurie Anne
4 Fern Hill Road
Palmer, MA 01069
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Kuzmenko, Pavel
69 Line St.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Lacoste, David D.
59 Orchard St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Lamorticelli, Dana J.
243 Cutt Off Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/29/12

Lamorticelli, Sherri L.
243 Cutt Off Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/29/12

Lemay, Edward A.
Reilly, Rose A.
31 Hillcrest St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/18/12

Lesko, Alishia Lyn
a/k/a Baker, Alishia Lyn
136 Main St.
Hatfield, MA 01038
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Lind, Susan L.
547 Fuller St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Little Explorers Learning
Poole, Cynthia L.
a/k/a Jochim, Cynthia L.
a/k/a Jochim-Poole, Cynthia L.
97 Klaus Anderson Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Lopez, Richard
126 W. Alvord St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Lorenz, Harry L.
Lorenz, Debra M.
132 Pine St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Lozada, Juana
29 Beacon Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/20/12

Manarite, Thomas J.
58 Merriam St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Marcille, Barbara A.
P.O. Box 1485
Warren, MA 01083
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/24/12

Martin, John M.
23 Cottage St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Martin, Kathy L.
26 Gay St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

McCann, Jason R.
McCann, Kimberly R.
161 Stafford Road
Wales, MA 01081
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

McClain, Shawn A.
McClain, Lisa A.
41 Gould Road
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/27/12

Meredith, Sally
106 Hitchcock St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/26/12

Michalowicz, Carolyn
311 Regency Park Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Miller, Wayne A.
Miller, Wendy J.
a/k/a Nye, Wendy
a/k/a Cook, Wendy
1 Students Lane
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Mims, Edward
55 Dupuis Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/08/12

Moore, Fannie Mae
27 Barry Wills Place
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/04/12

Moriarty, Daniel F.
88 Country Road
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Moya, Sandy Misael
PO Box 1333
Holyoke, MA 01041
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Newton, Heather M.
33 Center Dr.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/23/12

Ogden, Charlotte H.
PO Box 13
West Springfield, MA 01090
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Olivo, Yanira
167 Russell St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Osei-Bonsu, Prince
24 Crystal Ave.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Ostrowski, Christopher M.
311 Regency Park Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Ozdemir, Yasemin
24 McKinley Ter.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/10/12

Pagios, Mark S.
302 Rogers Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Parent, James C.
Mulvenna-Parent, Kristen M.
189 Hillcrest Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Parker, Brian J.
150 Cloran St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/08/12

Parker, Mary Jane
189 Stratton Road E4
Williamstown, MA 01267
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/16/12

Parker, Michael J.
Parker, Carolyn J.
37 Laconia St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/08/12

Pelkey, David J.
Bussiere-Pelkey, Beverly A.
86 Beacon Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/08/12

Perrier, Jeremy J.
Perrier, Laura L.
12 Madison St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/08/12

Piazza, Trina M.
81 Columbia Dr.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/26/12

Polite, Tracey
33 Metzger Place
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/25/12

Pomeroy, Frank E.
Pomeroy, Shirley M.
344 Belmont Ave.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/29/12

Porter, Aaron R.
2518 Chestnut Hill Ave.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Quick Stop Package Store
Wes’s Package Store
Wes’s, Inc., LLC
Zachara, Wesley
Zachara, Marzena
P.O. Box 239
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Rapisarda, Clifford Ernest
62 Goss Hill Road
Huntington, MA 01050
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/26/12

Raymond, Allan D.
Raymond, Cindy K.
a/k/a LaHair, Cindy K.
a/k/a Greenwood, Cindy K.
5 Highland Village, Apt.
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Redmond, Jeremy L.
Redmond, Joanna R.
a/k/a Bruneau, Joanna R.
11 Acrebrook Dr.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Rejouis, Jean Delix
P.O. Box 81371
Springfield, MA 01138
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/04/12

Rivera, Daisy
a/k/a Ortiz, Daisy
21 Nassau St., Apt. 1R
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Robienczak, Cheryl L.
133 Janet St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/25/12

Rock, Gilbert E.
Rock, Kimberly A.
40 Elizabeth St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Rooney, Krystle A.
a/k/a Renkie, Krystle Ann
21 Reed Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/24/12

Rousse, Toni F.
22-B Castle Hill Road
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/27/12

Rowe, David J.
Prechtl, Mary E.
P.O. Box 80812
Springfield, MA 01138-0812
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Salvi, Michael A.
Salvi, Nichole D.
11 High Meadow Road
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Sanchez, Emmanuel
a/k/a Sanchez, Manny
31 Carlton St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/23/12

Santiago, Dionisio
41 Chestnut St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/23/12

Santiago, Jose M.
229 Kent Road
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Sargent, Jamie Roger
Sargent, Danielle Joy
a/k/a Ericson, Danielle J.
36 Lake Mattawa Road
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Sarno, Sara E.
81 Somers Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Schneider, Blanca I.
10 Wolcutt St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Schroth, Tonya L.
a/k/a Beaudry, Tonya L.
125 Marion St. Ext.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/11/12

Serrano, Eliezer
Serrano, Candida
20 Windermere Dr.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Shurtleff, Arthur L.
Shurtleff, Anne M.
111 Wealthy Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Siciliano, Scott M.
50 Howland Ave.
Adams, MA 01220
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Solivan, Ana
140 Chestnut St.
Apt. 614
Springfield, MA 01103
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/03/12

Soucy, Roger L.
76 Apple Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Stephens, Shirley R.
124 Balis St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Still, Gary S.
60 Braddock St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Sullivan, Katie M.
15 Franklin St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/26/12

Supinski, Thomas R.
47 Kensington St.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Suprenant, George N.
Suprenant, Mary Ann
282 Little Alum Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/19/12

Tatro, Brenda L.
429 Main Road
Colrain, MA 01340
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/04/12

Thagard, Scott
20 Denwall Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Tompkins, Doreen Lynn
281 Turkey Hill Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/17/12

Twin Brook Farm
Wide Range Inv.
Giard, Paul Arthur
42 Purington Lane
Colrain, MA 01340
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/11/12

Vandall, Donna L.
770 Moore St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/01/12

Velez, Monica
353 Ingleside St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/07/12

Venne, Thomas R.
28 Pencasal Dr.
Florence, MA 01062
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/04/12

Walton, Lynne A.
42 South Park Ter.
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/02/12

Watt, Cleveland W.
Watt, Gwenn P.
709 Suffield St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/10/12

Westley, Anthony R.
Westley, Averil H.
269 B Roadway St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/22/12

Williams, Gary S.
Williams, Cynthia G.
30 Craig St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Willis, Irene
2 Cornwall Dr.
Great Barrington, MA 01230
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/26/12

Wiseman, William E.
Wiseman, Jannette K.
a/k/a Segona-Wiseman, Jannette K.
26 Brookside Ave.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Wohllebe-Swider, Linda J.
65 South Tallyho Dr.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 04/30/12

Wood, Christopher T.
Wood, Amanda L.
105 Agnes St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/09/12

Young, Marty Neilson
62 Goss Hill Road
Huntington, MA 01050
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 04/26/12

Departments Incorporations
The following business incorporations were recorded in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties and are the latest available. They are listed by community.

BLANDFORD

N.E. Pat’s Franchise Investment Partners Inc., 239 Otis Road, Blandford, MA 01008. Wayne E. Yvon, 3641 Lone Wolf Trail, St. Augustine, FL 32086. Franchise business operations.

EASTHAMPTON

Ernest Inc., 72 Union St., Easthampton, MA 01027. Lynne Dunn, 43 Burt Road
Westhampton, MA 01027. Beauty Salon.

GRANBY

Swing Oil Brewery Inc., 34 Barton St., Granby, MA 01033. Thomas Pluta, same. Manufacturing.

HADLEY

Budget Auto Repair and Rentals Inc., 8 Pine Hill Road, Hadley MA, 01035. Kevin Michelson, 18 Grand Oak Farm Road, Hadley, MA 01035. Budget auto repair and rentals.

HOLYOKE

Los Masters Social Club Inc., 65 Commercial St., Holyoke, MA 01040. Beatriz Rodriguez, same. Operation of a social club.

INDIAN ORCHARD

Shyam Corp., 253 Pasco Road, Indian Orchard, MA 01151. Chetan J. Patel, 65 Beverly Lane, Indian Orchard, MA 01151. Gas station and convenience store.

LENOX

Massachusetts Equine Welfare Council Inc., C/O Barbara E Kellogg , 431 New Lenox Road, Lenox, MA, 01240. Barbara E. Kellogg, same. To promote the welfare of equines; to provide assistance and education to equine owners and the public to ensure equine welfare; to foster and encourage and assist in the humane care and treatment of equines.

NORTHAMPTON

Hai Architecture Inc., 64 Gothic St., Northampton, MA 01060. Richard E. Katsanos 129 Southampton Road, Westhampton, MA 01027. Professional architecture and design services.

PITTSFIELD

Berkshire Lockshop Inc., 24 Dalton Ave., Pittsfield, MA 01201. David Hicks, same. Locksmith services.

R & A Bertolino Inc., 43 Bellmore Dr., Pittsfield, MA 01201. Robert M. Bertolino, same. Food services.

SOUTHWICK

Paul Martin Construction Corp., 23 Berkshire Ave., Southwick, MA 01077. Paul Martin, same. Construction services.

SPRINGFIELD

Charlene’s Boutique Inc., 114 State St., Springfield, MA 01103. Charlene S. Naylor, same. Beauty salon.

Easy Checks & Variety Inc., 494 Central St., Springfield, MA 01109. Rajesh R. Patel, 102 Sterling Road, Springfield, MA 01119. Convenience store and check cashin

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.

CHICOPEE DISTRICT COURT
Brandi Sabourin v. Stop & Shop Holdings Inc.
Allegation: Negligent maintenance of premises causing injury: $4,667.23
Filed: 4/25/12

HAMPDEN SUPERIOR COURT
Alves Fuel Inc. v. W & I Construction Inc.
Allegation:  Non-payment of diesel fuel delivered: $26,414.52
Filed: 4/26/12

Delta Capital Group, LLC v. 66 Holyoke, LLC
Allegation: Failure to pay outstanding fees for services rendered: $300,000
Filed: 4/17/12

Falcetti and Clark Electrical Supply v. Classic Envelope Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment of electrical supply: $45,903.19
Filed: 4/18/12

James L. Hansmann v. Nationstar Mortgage, LLC
Allegation: Intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress: $10,155
Filed: 4/26/12

Kristine Morrison v. Wheely Fun Inc.
Allegation: Negligent maintenance of property: $200,000
Filed: 4/12/12

HAMPSHIRE SUPERIOR COURT
Credit Cash NJ, LLC v. University Motors, LLC
Allegation: Failure to pay on credit-card agreement: $105,024.16
Filed: 3/29/12

Richard O’Riley v. Green Seal Environmental Inc., John Blaisdell, and Garrett Keegan
Allegation: Breach of contract: $37,000
Filed: 3/20/12

Roxanne H. Labonte, administratrix of the estate of Brian C. Labonte v. J.D. Rivet and Co. and New England Scaffolding Inc.
Allegation: Negligence on job site causing wrongful death of Brian C. Labonte: $25,000+
Filed: 3/22/12

NORTHAMPTON DISTRICT COURT
Reuben and Nicole Moore v. Lia Northampton Inc.
Allegation: Violation of Lemon Law: $14,740.86
Filed: 3/13/12

SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT
ABC Supply Co. Inc. v. West Side Builders and Peter J. Lingley
Allegation: Non-payment on merchandise sold and delivered: $4,796.35
Filed: 4/19/12

Bank of America v. Brothers Pizza, Nicholas and Catherine Markantoris
Allegation: Failure to pay small-business loan: $89,779.90
Filed: 4/24/12

Daniel Toniatti v. Weatherproofing Technologies Inc.
Allegation: Failure to pay wages: $20,000
Filed: 4/2/12

Sherrill A. Simpson v. Travelers of MA
Allegation: Breach of contract and failure to pay medical expenses and lost wages: $3,850
Filed: 4/4/12

Tamika Rivera v. Geico
Allegation: Failure to pay all PIP benefits due: $1,076.53
Filed: 4/19/12

Departments People on the Move

James F. Truden III

James F. Truden III

TD Bank has named James F. Truden III the Store Manager of the store located at 10 Center St. in Adams. An assistant vice president, he is responsible for new-business development, consumer and business lending, managing personnel, and overseeing the day-to-day operations at the store serving customers throughout Berkshire County.
•••••
In a third return engagement, Carol Cioe Klyman an attorney with Springfield-based Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C. recently acted as co-chair of the 13th annual New England Elder and Disability Law Conference in Boston. Klyman, who concentrates her practice in the areas of elder law, estate and special-needs planning, estate settlement, guardianship, and trust and estate litigation, co-presented a workshop titled “The Hidden MassHealth: What You Need to Know That’s Not in the Rule
Carol Cioe Klyman

Carol Cioe Klyman

Book.” Klyman covered the unwritten rules of MassHealth long-term care policies and procedures, including the use of caregiver agreements and private annuities, transfer of assets issues, and the application process.
•••••
Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc. has appointed Geno Auriemma as a Director of the company and of Berkshire Bank.Additionally, Berkshire Bank intends to enter into a marketing arrangement with Auriemma, subject to final approval, whereby he will serve as a spokesperson for the bank. Auriemma has been head coach of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team since 1986, is a seven-time national Coach of the Year and has won or shared the Big East Coach of the Year award eight times. He has served as president of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Assoc., and is involved in the national V Foundation for Cancer Research.
•••••
Brad Larsen was recently named head coach of the American Hockey League’s Springfield Falcons by Columbus Blue Jackets Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Scott Howson. Larsen spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach with Columbus’ AHL affiliate, and was an assistant coach for the Springfield Falcons prior to the start of the 2010-11 season after concluding a 13-year playing career in 2009-10 with the AHL’s Portland Pirates.
•••••
Lawrence B. Smith

Lawrence B. Smith

Lawrence B. Smith recently joined the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission as a senior planner. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the UMass Amherst Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning. Smith comes to PVPC with more than 30 years’ experience in municipal planning and community development serving numerous Western Mass. communities.
•••••
MassMutual recently named two individuals to senior vice president positions:
• Sri Dronamraju is the new Senior Vice President for Enterprise Technology and serves as MassMutual’s chief information risk officer, where he is responsible for developing and maintaining a multi-faceted approach for identifying and mitigating information risk, including strong policy, threat detection and deterrence, data-loss prevention, and employee education; and
• Scott Palmer was named Senior Vice President of Retirement Services Systems. He is responsible for managing information technology and systems for the corporate, union, nonprofit and governmental employers’ defined-benefit, defined-contribution, and non-qualified deferred-compensation plans for MassMutual’s Retirement Services division.
•••••
Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage office in Chicopee announced that Linda Blackburn has been added as a Sales Associate.  Blackburn will provide residential real-estate services in Chicopee as well as Belchertown, Palmer, Monson, Ware, and Warren.
•••••
John Henry has been named associate at the environmental firm of O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun Associates in Springfield. Henry is a Massachusetts- and Connecticut-licensed professional engineer with more than 20 years experience in the civil-engineering and environmental-consulting fields. Henry is very active in solar-power development projects as well as soil and groundwater remediation projects at airports, industrial and commercial facilities, schools, and religious institutions.
•••••
PeoplesBank in South Hadley recently named Jessica L. Wales Branch Manager.

Chamber Corners Departments

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

• June 5: Springfield Chamber of Commerce Executive Committee, noon-1:30 p.m., in the EDC Conference Room, Springfield.
• June 6: ACCGS June Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at Springfield College. Cost: members, $20; non-members, $30.
• June 8: ACCGS Legislative Steering Committee meeting, 8-9 a.m., at the TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.
• June 12: ACCGS Annual Meeting, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., at the MassMutual Center. Keynote speaker is state Attorney General Martha Coakley. Cost: members, $40; tables of eight, $300; non-members, $60.
• June 13: ACCGS After 5, at the Glass Room, Elegant Affairs, Springfield, Cost: members, $20; non-members, $30.
• June 20: ACCGS Ambassadors meeting, 4-5 p.m., in the EDC Conference Room, Springfield.
• June 21: ACCGS Executive Committee meeting, noon-1 p.m., in the TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.
• June 27: Professional Women’s Chamber Board of Directors’ Meeting, 8-9 a.m. Hosted by the Professional Women’s Chamber.

CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101

• June 19: Health & Career Fair presented by Health New England, 8:30-11:30 a.m., at the Castle of Knights, 1599 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. Calling all businesses in the health care industry. Be an exhibitor: $125 for members, $175 for non-members. If you are in the health care industry and have job openings, be a part of the job fair that will be at this event in the section “Corridor to Your Career.” The event is free to attend, and the public is welcome. Complimentary coffee, herbal tea, and sliced fresh fruit will be available until 9:30 a.m.
• June 27: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Grandview Estates, located off of Granby Road in Chicopee. Cost: $5 pre-registered members; $15 for non-members.
• June 30: Bus trip to New York City, a day on your own in the city. The bus leaves the chamber parking lot at 7 a.m. and returns around 9:30 p.m. Cost is $45 per person. Call (413) 594-2101 or sign up online at www.chicopeechamber.org.

FRANKLIN COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.franklincc.org
(413) 773-5463

• June 29: Annual Legislative Breakfast and Annual Meeting, 7:30-9 a.m. Attendees will be briefed on FY ’13 budget and business news from our delegation on Beacon Hill. Sponsored by People’s United Bank. Cost: $12 for members; $15 for non-members.

GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414

• June 14: Networking by Night Business Card Exchange, 5-7 p.m. Network on Shop Row, Main Street, Easthampton. Sponsors: Daily Hampshire Gazette, Silver Spoon Restaurant, and Taylor Agency Real Estate. Hors d’ouevres, door prizes, host beer and wine. Tickets: $5 for members; $15 for future members.

GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900

• June 6: Northampton Chamber Monthly Arrive @5, 5-7 p.m. A casual mix and mingle with your colleagues and friends. Hosted by Pioneer Valley Landscapes at the Garden House at Look Park, Florence. Sponsored by Finck & Perras Insurance Agency, United Bank, and Verizon Wireless/Wireless Zone. Catered by Captain Jack’s. This event will also be accompanied by the band Changes in Latitude. V-1 Vodka will be on hand for a martini sampling, and there will be door prizes, including a handheld leaf blower and a professional line trimmer donated by Pioneer Landscapes, and an iPad donated by Verizon Wireless/Wireless Zone.
• June 21: New Member Info Session, 8-9 a.m. A chance to tell us more about your business and how the chamber can best serve you, meet other new members, and tell you how to make to the most of your chamber membership. A light breakfast will be served. RSVP to (413) 584-1900 or [email protected].

NORTHAMPTON AREA YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
www.thenayp.com
(413) 584-1900

• June 13: Looking to stand out in the crowd? The Northampton Area Young Professionals are looking to help. Join us for a unique opportunity to meet with more than 20 local nonprofit organizations with upcoming board-level openings who are looking for their next leaders. In addition, they’ll showcase their organizations an discuss other volunteer opportunities. The event will be staged from 5-8 p.m. in the Smith College Conference Center. The event is free to members of NAYP and the Greater Northampton, Greater Easthampton, and Amherst chambers of commerce; $5 entry for all others. For more information, contact [email protected].

PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CHAMBER
www.professionalwomenschamber.com
(413) 755-1310

• June 7: Woman of the Year, honoring Attorney Ellen Freyman, 6-9 p.m., at the Springfield Sheraton. Cost is $55 per person.

SOUTH HADLEY/GRANBY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.shchamber.com
(413) 532-6451

• June 13: Beyond Business, 5-7 p.m. Sponsors: Big Wide Smiles and Chicopee Savings Bank. Entertainment by Berkshire Hills Music Academy. Refreshments available. Cost: $5. Reservations are encouraged by June 6 by calling (413) 532-6451 or e-mailing [email protected].

WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
(413) 426-3880

• June 5: Membership Committee meeting, 8-9 a.m., Westfield Bank, Agawam.
• June 6: Education Committee Meeting, 8-9 a.m. Hosted by Agawam High School and the Career Development Center, Agawam.
• June 6: Wicked Wednesday and Member Appreciation, 5-7 p.m., at the Hampton Inn of West Springfield. WRC invites you to join us on the first Wednesday of every month at businesses across Agawam and West Springfield. Get a little wicked with us and see what WRC is all about. These events are free for WRC members and $10 for non-members.
• June 7: Annual Breakfast Meeting, 7-9 a.m., at Chez Josef in Agawam. Tickets are $25 for WRC members, $35 for non-members. The WRC hosts Seth Mattison of BridgeWorks, an organization dedicated to helping businesses successfully bridge the generational gaps they face in their workforce, as it announces its 2012-13 chairman and board of directors. This event is sponsored in part by Development Associates and Westfield Bank.
• June 14: Programs Committee meeting, 7:30- 9 a.m., at Management Search Inc., West Springfield.
• June 15: Executive Committee meeting, 8-9 a.m., at Hampden Bank, West Springfield.
• June 21: Economic Development Committee meeting, 7:30- 8:30 a.m., at the Work Opportunity Center, Agawam.

GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618

• June 8: June Chamber Breakfast, 7:15 a.m., at the Ranch Golf Club. Guest speaker is Richard K. Sullivan Jr., secretary of the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Platinum Sponsor is First Niagara; Gold Sponsors are United Bank and Westfield State University; Bronze Sponsor is AIM. Tickets are $25 for members; $30 for non-members. For more information or to register, contact Carrie Dearing at (413) 568-1618 or [email protected]. The Ranch Golf Club is offering a golf special for those who attend the breakfast; $75 for 18 holes with a cart. Call (413) 569-9333 to make a reservation.
• June 12: Chamber WestNet, 5-7 p.m., at Maple Brook Alpaca Farm. Sponsors are AIM and Wal-Mart. Featured speaker is Sarah Tanner of the United Way of Pioneer Valley Inc. Attend the WestNet for business-connection opportunities; bring your business cards. Tickets are $10 for members, $15 for non-members. For more information or to register, contact Carrie Dearing at (413) 568-1618 or [email protected].
• June 18: 51st Annual Golf Tournament, 10 a.m.-7 p.m., at East Mountain Country. Title Sponsor is Westfield Gas & Electric, Cart Sponsor is United Bank, and there are seven Eagle Sponsors: Air Compressor Engineering, Field Eddy Insurance, Peppermill Catering, Savage Arms, Wal-Mart, Westfield Bank, and the Westfield News Group. We are still accepting foursomes, sponsorships, and raffle prizes. Contact Kate Phelon at (413) 568-1618 or [email protected].