A chart of the region’s insurance agencies
Click HERE to download the PDF chart
SPRINGFIELD — The rising cost of dental insurance, or lack of coverage, can cause families to skip going to the dentist. Combine that with pre-existing complications or fears of having work done, and it’s tough to be in the business of treating patients who are in need of help.
Dental hygiene students at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) are no strangers to the anxiety, fears, and frustrations many patients have when it comes to oral hygiene and visits to the dentist. The students, who undergo the rigorous two-year program to obtain their associate degree, are qualified to help patients navigate through the process of good dental healthcare. Many patients don’t realize routine cleanings are as important as visiting their primary-care physicians, as oral hygiene is the window to their overall healthcare.
“We educate our students not just for a career, but also to provide outreach services to our community,” said STCC Associate Professor of Dental Hygiene Michelle Sirois. “Dental hygienists have a long history of supporting access to care and being a part of the healthcare profession that is truly focused on prevention as its core foundation. We play a key role in the delivery of healthcare services to prevent and help treat disease while it’s still manageable.”
As part of their training, students must work on a number of patients with a variety of dental issues in the STCC dental hygiene clinic, which is conveniently located on the STCC campus in Building 20. The clinic, which is open to the public, offers a full range of dental hygiene services to the community and is overseen by licensed dentists and hygienists. Services offered include routine cleanings, sealants, chemotherapeutic placement, tooth whitening, dietary assessment/nutritional counseling, X-rays, deep scaling, and much more.
For those patients with dental insurance, reimbursement paperwork can be submitted after treatment. But for those who do not have insurance, the clinic is a cost-effective way to get the treatment they need. The one-time fee patients pay for their services is all they pay — so there’s no further billing once they’ve walked out the door. And the quality of care and services provided mirror what a local dental office would provide, Sirois said. “Our students are trained to provide the highest level of excellence in dental hygiene care. Area dentists are constantly seeking our graduates.”
Anyone interested in services provided by the clinic should call (413) 755-4900. To learn more about the dental hygiene program or how to enroll, call the STCC Admissions office at (413) 755-3333.
AGAWAM — Jean Deliso, president of Deliso Financial and Insurance Services and a 20-plus-year veteran of the financial-planning profession, recently earned one of the premier designations in financial services as a certified financial planner (CFP). This certification is generally recognized as the highest standard in personal financial planning.
Deliso is committed to educating individuals about their finances and has helped them take control of their unique situations since she has been in practice. Achieving this certification, she said, further heightens her ability to help lead her clients to personal success and financial freedom. She works with many business and high-net-worth individuals providing retirement and estate planning. She also assists women in planning for their financial future, particularly in times of transition such as divorce or widowhood.
The CFP Board holds its members to the highest degree of ethical standards and professional conduct. As a designated certified financial planner, Deliso promises to uphold this high level of conduct and ensures that her clients will receive the most extensive and comprehensive level of financial planning. The CFP Board was founded in 1985 as a nonprofit organization that serves the public interest by promoting the value of professional, competent, and ethical financial-planning services, as represented by those who have attained CFP certification.
Established in 2000, Deliso Financial and Insurance Services is a complete financial-services agency; however, Deliso’s extensive experience in several areas has led to a reputation for certain specializations.
CHICOPEE — For as long as he can remember, Shawn Wrisley has watched small businesses in Western Mass. grow from ideas to seedlings to thriving success stories. And for him, watching those other businesses grow provided not only inspiration, but satisfaction as well.
“I take more enjoyment in watching small businesses grow than in watching a Wal-Mart or Target pop up,” Wrisley said. “I want to deal with small businesses. And that’s who Western Mass is. The mom-and-pop small businesses here are our lifeblood.”
So when Wrisley, a Greenfield native, neared his 40th birthday this year, he decided it was time to take his years of payroll experience and start Total Business Solutions NE, a small business-solutions company that offers payroll, insurances, merchant services, bookkeeping, and accounting. Headquartered in Chicopee, Total Business Solutions NE provides solutions to small and medium-sized businesses throughout Western Mass.
“I’m here. I’m local. I’m not a big corporation,” Wrisley said. “There aren’t a lot of layers here. When you call TBS, you’re going to talk to me — to the same person every week.”
With his back-office solutions, Wrisley said, he’s able to accomplish everything bigger payroll companies can accomplish, but with a small-business heart. In addition to payroll and merchant services such as credit-card processing, he offers all insurances: home, life, auto, workers’ compensation, liability, and health.
“I can run my business and service my clients in a very hands-on way,” he said. “I’m the business owner now, and what comes with that is the flexibility to be able to do the things that clients ask me for.”
Brian Savlick, co-owner of Friendly Ride Transportation in Springfield, said working with TBS allows him to keep his business local. “Shawn is personable and customer-service oriented,” he noted. “He takes my business seriously and provides exceptional customer service and knowledge of the products he sells.”
Katie Clifford, Owner of Salon 241 in Northampton, said she’s able to contact Wrisley directly whenever necessary. “Shawn is honest and reliable, looking out for the best interest of my business. When I have questions or issues, I know I can get Shawn on the phone and he will handle things in a prompt manner. He allows me to focus on my business with excellent customer service.”
Added Wrisley, “I don’t know how to run a salon or a restaurant, but what I do know is that it’s much easier for those small-business owners to use someone like me who takes as much pride in their businesses as I do my own. Watching other people become successful is incredibly rewarding.”
The benefit of working with TBS, Wrisley said, is that all services are provided through one source. “Whether it’s payroll or insurance or merchant service or bookkeeping, I’m the one company that serves all those needs. As a small-business owner, I understand that everything is so complex. I offer simplicity for the small-business owner.”
For more information, visit www.totalbusinesssolutionsne.com.
Banks, Schools, Colleges Team Up to Boost Financial Literacy
Roosevelt Charles says financial-literacy programs at STCC help level the playing field for students in need.
“Thirty-five percent of households in Massachusetts have less than three months’ worth of savings, and 48% of Massachusetts consumers have subprime credit,” she said, citing a study conducted by the Corporation for Enterprise Development. “These statistics show that we have a real problem, and they illustrate the need for financial education.”
Furthermore, said Warren, vice president of marketing at Monson Savings Bank, “it’s worth noting how these statistics work together to create a cycle of debt and worsen financial insecurity. If someone with less than three months of savings faces an unforeseen expense, such as a broken-down car or a medical bill, they have to borrow to cover the tab. If that person also has subprime credit, the only option may be to take out a high-cost — often predatory — loan. It’s difficult for them to get a loan at an affordable rate.”
As a community bank, Monson has encountered many people in just that circumstance. While life’s circumstances are different for everyone, Warren said, many of them graduated from school and entered adult life without truly understanding the importance of credit, debt, savings, and many other facets of finance.
That’s why MSB is one of many area banks that have teamed with schools to reach young people with lessons in how to handle money.
“By teaching financial literacy in the schools, we can teach kids early how to become better savers, spenders, and money managers — so that, maybe, they won’t find themselves in that situation,” she said.
During the annual Statewide Summit on Financial Education — staged recently at the UMass Center at Springfield and sponsored by the financial-education coalition MassSaves — state Treasurer Deb Goldberg, the event’s keynote speaker, talked about how today’s students don’t grow up with the same exposure to financial education as she did, and how it needs to be reintroduced in public schools, as early as the primary grades.
“I believe we can embed into the curriculum financial skills that kids will need,” she said, recalling the bank passbook she received as a child. “Once in a while, my parents would drive me to an actual bank so I could see what’s going on. That’s how you learn. Kids today can program any iPhone, download any app, but ask them to look at these pieces of money and explain to me a penny, nickel, quarter, they can’t do that. It’s fascinating. My feeling is, let’s step back and start with the basics again.”
Polish National Credit Union has a well-established branch at Chicopee Comprehensive High School that doubles as a way to help students — both those who use it and those who work there as part of their education — learn about finance.
“We employ students — we go through the process just as if they’re going to apply here at the main office — and we train them,” said Jennifer Gallant, the credit union’s chief financial officer.
“Then, once the summer comes and the school branch is closed, we bring the employees over here as summer interns,” she continued. “A lot of the students who have worked at the school branch have enjoyed it and stayed on with us in a greater capacity when we’ve had openings at other branches. Some have even gone on to finance in college.”
Even for students who are casually exposed to the Chicopee Comp branch, she told BusinessWest, “it’s an eye-opener to how finance and banking works. I think it also helps encourage all of the kids in the school to at least look into a savings account, a checking account, what else the credit union has to offer, and how it benefits them — to get them on the right road economically.”
Between efforts like the summit — which drew representatives from many banks, schools, colleges, and financial-education organizations — and efforts by community banks and nonprofit entities to reach out to both students and adults, increasing focus is being placed on the broad issue of financial literacy.
After all, “when we talk about financial literacy and educating kids about what they need to understand these decisions they will be making, we are creating an economic foundation in the state that is stable, breaking down inequality,” Goldberg noted. “Through financial education, we see that, when we invest in people, we’re empowering people to invest in themselves.”
Education for Life
It’s not just happening at the K-12 level, said Kelly Goss, associate director of the Midas Collaborative, a statewide organization that focuses on financial literacy and connecting people with a range of financial resources.
“Our bread and butter is our matched savings account programs,” she noted, referring to a number of different programs that, in partnership with public and private organizations, provide low-income individuals with savings accounts and match their contributions. Clients generally use the funds for one of three purposes: home buying, small-business development, or post-secondary education.
Chicopee Comp students Chad LePage and Ludmila Kaletin work as tellers in the school’s Polish National Credit Union branch.
During the one- to two-year period of the matched savings program, the students also join peer groups, attend workshops, and participate in individual coaching sessions to build their financial skills, rectify financial issues, learn about the economy, and engage them in planning for the future.
“Students receiving the matched savings are required to take eight hours of finance education outside of their course work,” Goss said. “The school provides workshops — teaching them what is credit, what is debt, what is the significance of having a bank account? Some of these students have never had a bank account before.”
Roosevelt Charles, director of access and student services at STCC, said the college ramped up its financial-literacy initiatives — including its partnership with the Midas Collaborative — about a year and a half ago, when administrators noticed students dropping out for financial reasons, who didn’t have the knowledge to access different public benefits or navigate the financial arena, period.
“We’ve done a few other things to level the playing field as related to financial literacy,” he added. “We collaborate with Single Stop USA, a national community-college initiative that provides space on campus where students can go for a variety of public and community benefits. Students can apply for food assistance, housing, fuel assistance — all these benefits, all those resources, in one area. We do have a large percentage of students seeking those benefits.”
The school has also teamed up with MassMutual through that corporation’s LifeBridge program, which offers free term life insurance to families in need. These programs and others, Charles said, represent an effort to offer students both tangible financial resources and education and guidance in putting them to use.
“Once we get students talking about their knowledge — or lack thereof — as related to accessing resources, they realize there are other things out there — ‘did you know MassMutual is offering free life insurance?’ It’s amazing for us; we didn’t expect to get this granular in terms of community support. But, over past two semesters, these conversations have motivated us to go back out into the community and seek out additional resources to offer.”
On the state level, Goldberg said, the recently created Office of Economic Empowerment, led by Deputy Treasurer Alayna Van Tassel, is seeking to create more such partnerships between the state, schools, and businesses. Goals include expansion of Credit for Life fairs and more matched college savings accounts like those pioneered by Midas.
Goldberg said studies have found clear correlations between financial literacy at a young age and college enrollment, or vocational or technical training, after high school.
“Why is that important here in Massachusetts? Well, where is our economy? Biotech, high tech, higher education, healthcare — so we need to make opportunities available to kids,” she explained. “If we provide opportunities to educate, kids will seize upon it.”
Breaking Barriers
In short, Goldberg claimed, financial literacy may be the key ingredient to financial stability across Massachusetts, because it affects so many areas of life.
“All the work we do around teaching kids, teaching women, teaching veterans how to empower themselves is not a partisan issue; it’s an issue that creates opportunities for folks, and candidly, if we can empower people to take care of themselves, they don’t need [as many] safety nets,” she told the summit attendees. “Financial challenges impact every one of us — children to adults, students, teachers, advocates, and policy makers.”
MassSaves, which was created in 2011, complements its work in schools and colleges with financial trainings — “train the trainer” sessions, Goss called them — with the United Way and other community-based organizations that deliver financial-education services. But it all starts with those outreaches into schools.
“The reality is, we need financial education to be taught at every level,” she said. “We want to see it in the curriculum as early as possible, so people grow up with it as an early tool, like math. Why would you not? Particularly in this day and age, it’s really difficult to function without a knowledge of finance and access to a bank account. It’s certainly a barrier for those who don’t have that access.”
Warren, who serves on the steering committee of MassSaves, said Monson Savings Bank became a strategic partner with the organization a little over a year ago, in an effort to help members of the community become more financially confident and capable.
“Here at the bank, we do have people coming through the doors on occasion who can’t get a loan, who may not even be able to get a checking account because they have outstanding balances with other banks,” she told BusinessWest. “That’s why we’ve gotten involved in this. We’re a community bank, which means we’re here to help the community, and we want to help everyone who comes through our doors.”
Now, the bank can direct those customers to MassSaves, which can hook them up with a financial coach by phone, e-mail, or Skype, and connect them to other financial resources they might require.
“It’s definitely needed, and that’s why we’re working on this issue in this manner, in this broad collaboration with lots of different partners,” Warren said. “Really, the more, the merrier. Everything we do collectively is a positive thing.”
Starting with a child’s first introduction to pennies, nickels, and quarters.
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
Roger Dulude Jr.
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Amie Miarecki
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Michael Hutton-Woodland has been named director of ServiceNet’s REACH program. Last year, REACH provided services to 500 children, including babies born with physical or mental disabilities, toddlers whose speech or motor skills are delayed, and children diagnosed with autism. REACH staff — from physical therapists to speech pathologists — provide interventions during the critical development window of birth to age 3. A key part of the program is support to families to address the d eep, often painful concerns parents have for their young child. The program is available to all families who need the service, regardless of their ability to pay. After many years of teaching clinical psychology, running a health foundation, and private consulting, Hutton-Woodland is grateful to be serving young children and their parents in this role. “It’s wonderful work,” he said, “and the staff are all dedicated, loving, caring, skilled, thoughtful people. They go into people’s homes to work with their children. That’s a sacred occupation.” Since starting at REACH, he’s been sitting down individually with all 45 staff members to learn about their experiences. He brings some new ideas for streamlining program processes so staff can focus more of their time on direct services and less on paperwork, with a goal of ensuring that staff remains “passionate and excited.” He added that “these kids and families need to be helped now, when a child’s brain is growing and developing the fastest in his or her entire life.” Since the program works with any family whose child needs early intervention, REACH also navigates the effects of two troubling trends: homelessness and increased referrals by the Department of Children and Families. Whatever a family’s situation, Hutton-Woodland emphasizes that “this is prevention work, available to all children with developmental issues, all of whom are very, very special little babies.” Families can contact REACH to inquire about services at (413) 665-8717. Staff members include educators, nurses, nutritionists, occupational and physical therapists, speech and language pathologists, social workers, and autism specialists. The program serves Hampshire and Franklin counties and the North Quabbin area of Worcester County. REACH services are funded by private insurance, Medicaid, the state Department of Public Health, United Way of Hampshire County, and an annual participation fee from families.
AFFILIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• May 26: ACCGS Pastries, Politics & Policy, 8-9 a.m., hosted by TD Bank Conference Center, 1441 Main St., Springfield. For political and policy junkies. Cost: $15 for members, $25 general admission, which includes continental breakfast. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• June 3: Business@Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., hosted by Springfield College, Richard B. Flynn Campus Union, 263 Alden St., Springfield. Sponsored by United Personnel and Wolf & Company, P.C. Celebrate success at the last ACCGS Business@Breakfast of the 2014-15 season. Includes presentation of “A Year in Review” and the Richard J. Moriarty Citizen of the Year Award. Cost: $20 for members ($25 at the door), $30 for general admission.
AMHERST AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.amherstarea.com
(413) 253-0700
• May 27: After 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m., hosted by Florence Savings Bank, 377 Russell St., Hadley. Sponsored by Florence Savings Bank. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members. Register online at www.amherstarea.com or call the office at (413) 253-0700.
June 18-22: Taste of Amherst, Amherst Town Common. June 18-19, 5-9 p.m.; June 20, noon to 10 p.m.; June 21, noon to 4 p.m. Featuring 22 individual restaurants on the common for a weekend of fun, food tasting, food demos, live music, kids area, zoo, and much more. All food is under $5 per item. No entry fee.
• June 23: After 5, 5-7 p.m., hosted by J.F. Conlon, 29 University Dr., Amherst. Sponsored in part by J.F. Conlon & Associates. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members. Register online at www.amherstarea.com or call the chamber office at (413) 253-0700.
GREATER CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101
• May 20: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Renaissance Manor on Cabot, 279 Cabot St., Holyoke. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
• May 21: Golf Tournament, 10 a.m. shotgun start, hosted by Chicopee Country Club. Cost: $125 per golfer.
• May 27: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., hosted by Elms College. Cost: $23 for members, $28 for non-members.
• June 13: 5K Road Race/2-mile Walk. Cost: $25, $15 for kids 12 and under. Registration includes T-shirt and free lunch provided by the Munich Haus.
• June 17: Breakfast & Health Fair, American Red Cross Blood Drive, hosted by Castle of Knights, 1599 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. Exhibitor space available: $125 per table for members, $175 for non-members.
• June 18: Mornings With the Mayor, 8-9 a.m., hosted by Willimansett Center West, 546 Chicopee St., Chicopee. Free for chamber members.
• June 24: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Wireless Zone, 601E Memorial Dr., Chicopee. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414
• June 1: Greater Easthampton and Greater Holyoke Chambers of Commerce 2014 Collaborative Networking Event. Register online at www.easthamptonchamber.org or call Denise at (413) 527-9414.
• June 8: Monday Morning with the Mayor, 8-9 a.m., hosted by Easthampton Savings Bank, Financial Services. Enter via Campus Lane entrance, 36 Main St., Easthampton. This is your opportunity to bring your questions to Mayor Karen Cadieux for casual conversation and direct answers. Register online at www.easthamptonchamber.org or call Denise at (413) 527-9414.
• June 18: Speaker Breakfast, 7:30-9 a.m., hosted by Williston Northampton School, 19 Payson Ave., Easthampton. Join us for breakfast and educational discussion with keynote speaker Tim Brennan, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission executive director, regarding the regional impact and importance of the North South Rail Project. Register online at www.easthamptonchamber.org or call Denise at (413) 527-9414.
GREATER HOLYOKE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376
• May 21: Chamber Business Connections, 5-7 p.m., sponsored and hosted by PeoplesBank, the Atrium in the PeoplesBank Building, 330 Whitney Ave., Holyoke. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members. Join your friends and colleagues for this fun and casual evening of networking. Refreshments, door prizes, and 50/50 raffle.
• June 19: 125th Anniversary Gala Ball, hosted by the Log Cabin, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Cocktails at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. Enjoy an elegant meal and dance to the music of the Floyd Patterson Band. Join Marcotte Ford as one of the major event sponsors by calling (413) 34-3376. Event is open to the public, More details to follow.
GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900
• June 3: June Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Mineral Hills Winery, 592 Sylvester Road, Florence. Sponsored by Keiter Builders. Cost: $10 for members. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 584-1900.
• June 12: 2015 Workshop: “Using Excel Pivot Tables to Analyze Your Business’ Data,” 9-11 a.m., hosted by Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, 99 Pleasant St., Northampton. Presented by Pioneer Training. Pivot tables are Excel’s most powerful tool for data analysis. A pivot table lets you easily separate data by various criteria into rows and columns in order to extract significant information from large, complex data sets. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to create and customize pivot tables using your own data. Participants are encouraged to bring laptops and follow along with the instructor, but this is not required. Admission: $20 for members, $30 for non-members. Pre-registration is required; space is limited. To register, visit [email protected].
• June 26: 2015 Workshop: “Microsoft Excel: Tips, Tricks & Shortcuts in Microsoft Excel,” 9-11 a.m., hosted by Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, 99 Pleasant St., Northampton. Presented by Pioneer Training. This workshop will present our favorite tips, tricks, and shortcuts that we have collected and developed over 15 years of teaching and using Microsoft Excel. Participants are encouraged to bring laptops and follow along with the instructor, but this is not required. Admission: $20 for members, $30 for non-members. Pre-registration is required; space is limited. To register, visit [email protected].
GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
• June 1: June Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., hosted by Westfield Vocational Technical High School, 33 Smith Ave., Westfield. Free and open to the public. Register by calling (413) 568-1618.
• June 10: June After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Westfield Bank, 462 College Highway, Southwick. Sponsored by Southwick Tae Kwon Do. Cost: $10 for members, $15 cash for non-members. Refreshments will be served. Bring your business cards and make connections. Register online at www.westfieldbiz.org.
• June 16: Eat & Educate: “Employee-sponsored Retirement and Benefit Programs,” 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., hosted by Westfield Bank, 141 Elm St., Westfield. Presented by Shawn Torres, MBA, Westfield Wealth Management and Westfield Bank. Cost: free for chamber members, $30 for non-members. RSVP is required; space is limited. Call Pam at the chamber at (413) 568-1618 to register.
• June 19: Chamber Breakfast, 7:15 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Hosted by The Ranch Golf Club, 65 Sunnyside Road, Southwick. Platinum sponsor: Mestek. Golf sponsor: Berkshire Bank. Silver sponsor: First Niagara and Prolamina. Cost: $25 for members, $30 for non-members. Golf special: Registered attendees of the breakfast can golf at a discounted rate of only $65 at the Ranch Golf Club following the breakfast. Call Bill Rosenblum, golf pro, to register at (413) 569-9333, ext. 3. For more information on sponsorships, to register, or to donate a raffle prize, call Pam at the chamber at (413) 568-1618.
• June 22: Social Security Workshop: “Make Social Security Work for You,” 4:30-5:30 p.m., hosted by Holiday Inn Express, 39 Southampton Road, Westfield. Sponsored by Renaissance Advisory Services, LLC. Guest speaker: William Sheehan, district manager (retired), Springfield Social Security Office. Before you retire, ask questions: when should I begin Social Security? Do I plan to keep working? Will all my expenses be covered? What will my beneficiaries receive? Learn about Social Security strategies that may fit into your overall plan. Cost: free for chamber members, $30 for non-members.
NORTHAMPTON AREA YOUNG PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY
www.thenayp.com
(413) 584-1900
• June 11: Nonprofit Board Fair, 5 p.m., hosted by Union Station, 125A Pleasant St., Northampton. Nonprofits count on volunteers to lead them to success. Join us for the fifth-annual Nonprofit Board Fair, a signature event featuring organizations from throughout the Pioneer Valley whose leadership will be on hand to speak to about opportunities to serve on their boards of directors. In addition, there will be a cash bar, hors d’oeuvres, and raffle prizes. Sponsors and partners: Florence Bank, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, and WGBY public television. Register online at www.thenayp.com.
PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CHAMBER
www.professionalwomenschamber.com
(413) 755-1310
• May 19: Professional Women’s Chamber Woman of the Year, 5:30 p.m., hosted by Carriage House, Storrowton Tavern, 1305 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Sponsored by BusinessWest. Honoring Anne Paradis, CEO, Microtek Inc. Cost: $55. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
413-426-3880
• May 20: Networking Lunch, noon to 1:30 p.m., hosted By Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative – BISTRO, 174 Brush Hill Ave., West Springfield. Enjoy a sit-down lunch served while networking with fellow chamber members. Each attendee will get a chance to offer a brief sales pitch. Cost: $10 at the door, which includes served lunch. Must be a member or guest of a member to attend. For more information, call the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
• June 3: Wicked Wednesday, 5:30-7:30 p.m., hosted By Lattitude, 1338 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Cost: free for chamber members, $10 at the door for non-members. Event is open to the public. Wicked Wednesdays are monthly social events, hosted by various businesses and restaurants, that bring members and non-members together to network in a laid-back atmosphere. For more information, call the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
• June 18: Annual Breakfast Meeting, 7-9 a.m., hosted By Chez Josef, Agawam. Sponsored by OMG, Ormsby Insurance, and Development Associates. Event will kick off with the welcoming of new chairman Chuck Kelly and the incoming WRC board of directors. Cost: $25 for chamber members, $30 for non-members. For more information and for tickets, call the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
Recent SJC Rulings Reject Efforts to Constrain Employers
By PETER VICKERY, Esq.
Peter Vickery
The first relates to the Tips Act (M.G.L. c. 149, §152A) and should come as good news to restaurateurs and bar owners. The second case involves the independent-contractor law (M.G.L. c. 149, §148B), and, although it concerns the highly regulated field of Boston taxi cabs, the way the SJC interpreted the statute may help businesses in other fields rebut the legal presumption that any given individual performing a service is, by default, an employee.
The case about tips, Meshna v. Scrivanos, concerned a Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee that adopted a no-tipping policy. In Massachusetts, employers have to ensure that employees receive their tips by the end of the day or in their next paycheck at the latest. Violating the Tips Act can have drastic consequences: having to pay restitution plus 12% interest, and criminal penalties ranging from hefty fines to one year’s imprisonment (for a first offense).
To avoid both potential liability under the Tips Act and the administrative costs of dividing up tips among the employees, the franchisee adopted a policy of prohibiting tips altogether. In addition to telling employees not to accept tips, the employer put up signs for customers stating “no tipping” and “thank you for not tipping.”
Prior to the Meshna case, two Superior Court justices and one federal district court had ruled no-tipping policies lawful under the Tips Act. Nevertheless, some current and former Dunkin’ Donuts employees, all of whom earned at least the minimum wage, filed suit in Superior Court alleging that the no-tipping policy violated the law.
The Tips Act provides that no employer “shall demand, request, or accept from any staff employee, service employee, or service bartender any payment or deduction from a tip or service charge given to any such staff employee, service employee, or service bartender by a patron.” The employees and the Labor Relations and Research Center at UMass Amherst (which filed an amicus brief) argued that the words ‘deduction from’ are flexible enough to mean ‘prohibit’ — i.e. no employer shall prohibit an employee from receiving a tip.
Not so, said the SJC. When it enacted the statute, the Legislature’s intent was to bar employers from deducting or retaining tips that customers had given to the waitstaff. Making it unlawful for restaurant and bar owners to keep or skim tips is not the same as forbidding employers from trying to prevent customers from tipping in the first place. A no-tipping policy simply does not violate the statute. And so long as the owner clearly communicates the policy to customers, if they still leave money behind, the servers do not have the right to claim that money as theirs. The employer is not breaking the law by keeping it or giving it away.
The take-away for employers? If you have a no-tipping policy, make sure that you get the message across to your customer clearly.
In the second case, Sebago v. Boston Cab Dispatch Inc., the issue was whether licensed Boston taxi drivers were independent contractors or the employees of the defendants (taxi-cab license owners, radio associations, and a taxi-servicing garage). Three drivers, together with the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, argued that the separate defendants really constituted one monolithic industry, a sham designed to evade the strictures of wage and overtime laws.
The SJC disagreed, holding that the various entities were not all one and the same and that “distinctions in services within the taxi-cab industry as a whole are not illusory, but quite real.”
Much of the court’s decision revolves around the municipal rule that regulates taxis in Boston, namely Police Department Rule 403, which establishes four possible business models for cabs. One permissible model allows the owners of medallions (taxi licenses) to lease their medallions to drivers at a flat rate, not a percentage of the fares. This was the model at issue in the Sebago case: the drivers paid the medallion owners a fixed amount rather than a cut of their takings.
Rule 403 requires parties using that business model to sign a City of Boston Hackney Carriage Shift Lease Agreement, which includes an optional independent-contractor clause. Under the independent-contractor clause of the city-mandated contract, the drivers are free to operate anywhere they choose, and to pick and choose which radio dispatches to accept. As the SJC noted, drivers “may lease taxicabs and medallions from whomever they wish … each day of the week, they may lease from a different owner, each using a different radio association… earn as much as they are able and need not accept a single dispatch.” Moreover, the statutes governing workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and income-tax withholding all exclude taxi drivers operating under flat-rate leases from the definition of ‘employee.’
Nevertheless, the plaintiffs argued that they were employees. This is because, under Massachusetts default rule, the onus is on the defendant to rebut the presumption that an individual is an employee, and this can be done only by clearing three distinct hurdles. The defendant has to prove that:
(1) the individual is free from control and direction in connection with the performance of the service, both under his contract for the performance of service and in fact;
(2) the service is performed outside the usual course of the business of the employer; and
(3) the individual is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession, or business of the same nature as that involved in the service performed.
The Sebago case hinged on the second factor, i.e. whether the service that the drivers provide is outside the usual course of the defendants’ business. That depends on whether the service is necessary to that business or merely incidental to it. So is taxi-driving necessary or incidental to the medallion owners’ business? Incidental, said the SJC. The medallion owners are in the business of leasing medallions, something that is “not directly dependent on the success of the drivers’ endeavors.”
At first blush, this interpretation of the term ‘usual course of the [defendant’s] business’ may appear a stretch. How can cab drivers be merely incidental to — rather than necessary to — the business of a company whose sole raison d’être is the leasing of taxi licenses? After all, without the drivers, the medallions would be worthless. In fact, this was the approach that the Superior Court judge took in denying the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
But the SJC said that the judge’s reasoning “proves too much.” Taken to its logical conclusion, it would mean that “all lessees would be deemed presumptive employees of their lessors.” Instead, the SJC stated that the second prong (the ‘usual course of the business’) does not include all aspects of the business.
The nutshell for business owners? First, Sebago arose in a unique regulatory environment involving city-prescribed contracts governing the leasing of city-issued licenses. Second, the courts remain vigilant for Rube-Goldbergian contractual arrangements involving several legal entities designed to evade the Wage Act. But with those two caveats, business owners operating several connected but distinct entities should remember that individuals claiming to be employees rather than independent contractors must establish — and not simply assert — that the several entities are merely alter egos.
If the companies are not organized as part of a ruse but are legitimately separate, the courts will be more likely to define the ‘usual course of the business’ narrowly, to the benefit of the business owner. So, while the Massachusetts independent contractor remains an endangered species, it is not yet extinct.
Peter Vickery practices law in Amherst; (413) 549-9933; www.petervickery.com
Berkshire Bank Acquisition of Hampden Bank Becomes Official
Mike Daly says the affiliation of Berkshire Bank and Hampden Bank is a marriage of similar cultures.
“We’re careful in selecting partners; we don’t acquire just to do acquisitions,” said Daly, Berkshire Bank’s president and CEO. “We have a set of core competencies here, and we look to develop relationships with companies that have the same core competencies and beliefs. We want to determine whether or not we can, as partners, make a bigger impact with what we do.”
Earlier this year, Berkshire Hills Bancorp and Hampden Bancorp signed a definitive merger agreement under which Berkshire acquires Hampden in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $109 million. The deal, which recently received all necessary regulatory approvals, increases Berkshire’s total assets to $7.1 billion, including the $706 million in acquired Hampden assets.
Daly said the in-market merger will create efficiencies while expanding Berkshire’s market share, particularly in the Springfield area. “It’s always easier when you partner with someone in a market where you already operate, where you already know the lay of the land and have some commonality with the customer base and commercial lenders; those things are always very important,” Daly told BusinessWest, adding that the merger complements the bank’s recent expansion initiatives in Central Massachusetts and Hartford.
“Our acquisition growth is a result, not a cause,” he added. “When we do well organizationally in communities where we have a presence, and the bank continues to do well, we become a viable partner with other companies all around New England and New York who are looking for a cultural fit like the one we provide. We continue to operate on a day-to-day basis and do the best we can in our communities, and when an opportunity to partner with somebody arises and the cultural fit is good, we’ll act on that.”
Making Change
Berkshire’s acquisition of Springfield-based Hampden Bank means that, for the first time in generations, no bank will be headquartered in the City of Homes. But Berkshire leaders say customers and the community will both benefit from the merger.
Specifically, Hampden operates 10 branches in the Greater Springfield area and reported $508 million in net loans and $490 million in deposits as of Sept. 30, 2014. Berkshire operates 11 branches with $627 million in deposits in the same market area. Three branches — 977 Boston Road, Springfield; Tower Square, Springfield; and 475 Longmeadow St., Longmeadow — will close due to overlapping footprints.
“We have increased our branch count in the area to 18, and that starts to become the type of density that you need in order to serve an area. Increasing the number of branches is important,” Daly said. “Yes, we will have some overlapping branches, and three branches will close. But taking care of employees is one of the most important, if not the most important, thing for us. So we’ve actually been able to ensure that 100% of the people in those branches will have jobs in the company.”
When the merger was announced last fall, Hampden had 126 employees, and Sean Gray, Berkshire Bank’s vice president of retail sales, told BusinessWest that the organization’s priority was to make sure they all kept their jobs or similar positions, citing the bank’s acquisition of Legacy Bancorp in 2010, when it was able to do the same with the vast majority of that institution’s employees.
“People like to find fault with a bigger company,” Daly said. “But that’s one of the benefits of a bigger company — we have a lot of opportunities.”
Meanwhile, he hopes Hampden customers see very little impact on their day-to-day interactions with the bank, both now and when new signage and branding starts to emerge next month.
“Hopefully, as we’ve seen in other successful partnerships, there will be a positive impact on customers. They will see little change in who they deal with; they’ll still see the same faces in the branches they visit,” he noted, adding that they will enjoy what amounts to their current set of services “on steroids.”
“We’ll be able to bring a significantly more diverse and broader product set than the one they had when dealing with Hampden, in areas like insurance, wealth management, mortgage products, and consumer loan programs,” he said. “The only impact on customers ought to be a positive one.”
Allie O’Rourke, Berkshire’s vice president of investor relations, told BusinessWest that conversions to expanded product offerings are ongoing. “We’re working to introduce new products and service offerings, and enhance the customer experience, even though most of the branding won’t happen until June.”
Daly added that, while Hampden has done a “great job” in the commercial-lending arena, larger loans have sometimes proven difficult. “This gives them an opportunity to play in a bigger space.”
Specifically, he added, “as we talk about our commercial presence in the area, we’re now the number-one SBA lender in Western Massachusetts. We continue to push that hard and provide opportunities in the Springfield area, where small-business lending is so critical.”
Helping small businesses grow, he went on, is important to a city on the rebound — and he believes Springfield is certainly that. “A lot of people don’t believe Springfield can come back to where it was at one point. I’m not one of those people. I believe it can, and I want to be a part of what’s happening. There are issues in the Springfield area, but if everyone pulls in the same direction, Springfield could become an economic hub again.”
Size and Scope
While recognizing the value of community banks in Western Mass., Daly also makes an argument for banks with size and reach — and believes Berkshire can be both.
“The industry will continue to see consolidation because smaller banks have a more difficult time dealing with the additional costs that have come to bear in order to stay in business,” he said, noting that regulatory oversight, and the resources necessary to meet new reporting mandates, have both grown significantly since the financial crisis of 2008.
But he also emphasized Berkshire’s civic role, noting that Berkshire, like Hampden, boasts a culture of community involvement through both donations — $269,852 since 2013 — and employee volunteerism. Ray Smith, Berkshire’s assistant vice president of marketing, said “decisions about which local organizations to support, through grants and sponsorships, will be made by local committtees.”
In addition, “Berkshire Bank pays its employees for two full days of volunteer work in the community,” O’Rourke said, a figure that totaled 50,000 volunteer hours last year alone. “Hampden Bank employees will have that now.”
It’s one more example, Daly said, of how the two organizations match in terms of values and culture.
“They are a company that cares very deeply about its employees, cares very deeply about the communities that they’re in. They do everything they can to provide a high level of customer service. Those things are attractive to us — they are things that we also concentrate on. They are right up our alley.
“People ask us whether our shareholders believe the deals we do are good deals,” Daly went on. “I always say, if we deal with companies that share the values we do, companies that make a commitment to the community, our shareholders always benefit. This is one of those deals, and we’re excited about it.”
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
Entrepreneur Resurrects Chicopee’s Fabled Kielbasa Festival
In the event’s revitalized form — as it was in the ’70s and ’80s — kielbasa is king at the K-Fest.
What he does remember is meeting the professional wrestler Ivan Putski — known then, and probably still, as the “Polish Power” and “Polish Hammer” — as he made the rounds during Chicopee’s annual Kielbasa Festival.
“He was quite the hit as he walked around the grounds — kids, and grown-ups, kept running up to him,” said Kos, who was city solicitor then, and is now in his second go-around as mayor. “That’s just one of many memories I have from the old days.”
Seemingly everyone from Chicopee has a mental photo album crammed with snapshots from the festival and those ‘old days,’ meaning the ’70s and ’80s, when the K-Fest, as it was called, would draw north of 80,000 people to the rear parking lot of the old Fairfield Mall for its annual four-day run in September.
License plates from states half a continent away would dot the parking lot, and national and even international acts, including some of polka’s greatest legends, would entertain the throngs. There were rides, attractions, and the ‘world’s largest kielbasa’ contest, with the winner weighing in at several hundred pounds.
Alas, the old days eventually became solely the stuff of memories, as the K-Fest succumbed to many ills (more on all that later) in the mid-’90s and was discontinued.
And it might have remained a part of the city’s past if Tom Kielbania Jr. didn’t set about to create some new old days more than 18 months ago.
That’s when this serial entrepreneur of sorts — he’s been involved with everything from music (as drummer for the ’80s dance band Orange Crush) to real estate — decided the K-Fest could be revived, and it could succeed as a for-profit venture, even if there was no shortage of people telling him that was flawed thinking.
“There were a lot of doubters — some people told me I was crazy,” he told BusinessWest as he recalled how he brought back the festival roughly a year ago at Szot Park. He believes more than 16,000 attended that rain-bothered event, which did well enough in his estimation to convince him that he had made the right decision.
Year two of the ‘new’ Kielbasa Festival is set for Memorial Day weekend. Kielbania is expecting perhaps 40,000 people if the weather cooperates. They’ll be treated to a wide array of entertainment, including a host of polka banks and, yes, Orange Crush. There will be a wide assortment of kielbasa, Polish food, barbecue, and other menu options, as well as rides and other attractions.
“This will be a family event, like it was all those years ago,” he said, adding that now, as it was then, the K-fest will be a celebration of Chicopee as much as it is a celebration of Polish food and traditions.
For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Kielbania about why and how he resurrected this event once synonymous with Chicopee, and with others about what it all means for this community.
Spicing Things Up
The ‘new’ Kielbasa Festival, or K-Fest, as it’s called locally, drew solid crowds its first year, despite some inclement weather.
He told BusinessWest that, ironically, the festival was started not by a member of the city’s large Polish population, but rather by an Irishman, Neil O’Leary.
He owned a dry-cleaning business down the street from the main entrance to Westover Air Reserve Base, said Jendrysik, adding that it was O’Leary’s idea to create a community event centered around what was arguably Chicopee’s signature product. There were several shops producing kielbasa at that time, including Chicopee Provision Co., makers of the Blue Seal label for more than a century.
He pitched the idea to the Chamber of Commerce, and it eventually became the purview of that agency’s fund-raising arms, known as the Fireball Club (a men’s group) and the Super Cs (for women).
“This was a product of that era — in the ’70s, festivals were very big,” said Jendrysik, citing Wilbraham’s Peach Festival and the myriad ‘Tastes’ that became popular in the ’80s as other examples.
The festival started small, as a larger version of an event run by St. Stanislaus’ parish, he said, but eventually gained momentum — and much larger crowds — through the participation of big-name polka bands from around the country — including Jimmy Sturr’s Orchestra, Lenny Gomulka and the Chicago Push, and others.
The K-Fest, staged the week before the Big E and often featuring many of the same rides and attractions as the fair, enjoyed a mostly healthy 20-year-run, said Jendrysik, adding that there were several factors that eventually led to its demise in 1994.
Chief among them was simply fatigue on the part of organizers, he noted, adding that this was a volunteer-led effort, and there was quite a workload. But rising insurance costs also played a part, as did a lawsuit (one that threatened to push those rates considerably higher) stemming from an altercation during the festival and near one of its parking areas.
Over the ensuing years, there were some minor efforts to resuscitate the festival and some much smaller events launched in its wake, including something known as the Festiv-All. But there were seemingly too many obstacles standing in the way of a comeback.
Enter Kielbania, who by that time was looking for a new, additional outlet for his considerable entrepreneurial energy.
Orange Crush, which started performing as an R.E.M. tribute band in 1996, was and still is immensely popular — it has played at more than 250 colleges and in more than 20 states, and a few years ago it released an original album — but music is a difficult business and, in this case, not as lucrative as it once was.
Tom Kielbania says the K-Fest has a great legacy in Chicopee, and he fully expects that the event will return to its past glory.
As he mentioned, the idea met with skepticism from those who knew of the event, its rise and fall, and with question marks from those who understood none of the above.
“My wife is from Northfield,” he noted. “When I got the rights to the festival, I was ecstatic — I knew about all the possibilities; I knew what it could be as a business — but she didn’t get it, because she didn’t know the history.”
Music to His Ears
After several long and quite stressful months of planning — Kielbania says he lost 30 pounds while putting it all together — the inaugural version of the reinvented festival was staged the week before Memorial Day to avoid the considerable competition that dominates the summer weekends.
Attendance was roughly 12,000 paid — young children are admitted free, he said, adding that the four-day festival itself was profitable, and the year-round venture as a whole broke even, a solid performance for events of this kind.
“For a new event, usually it takes five years to become profitable,” he said. “The fact that my event was profitable in the first year … no one expected that; all my promoter friends told me I was going to lose or, at best, break even. We did way better than break even.”
He’s taken that first year’s success and the momentum it generated to create a show for 2015 that will be bigger in every respect, in large part because that first year convinced people that Kielbania was serious and, more importantly, capable of pulling off an event worthy of its name.
“I had a lot of people who didn’t think it was going to happen, and I had a lot of people who didn’t think this was going to work, because they remember the old days,” he said, adding that many didn’t believe he could properly honor the event’s legacy. “They didn’t realize that there’s new blood in the mix. We’re a different generation; we get things done, and we can get it done.”
That first year’s performance has also led to more support from some of the players in the business community — an outcome resulting in part from Kielbania’s efforts to convince business owners that, despite the event’s for-profit nature, it gives back to the community.
“This year, I’m hoping to put $20,000 back into the schools’ coffers, to the PTOs, and several nonprofits,” he said, adding that, as in those often-mentioned old days, those groups are involved with the operation of the event.
“I’m not trying to push the event or stress why people should go to it,” he said in reference to his formal and informal marketing efforts. “Instead, I’m focused on how we can benefit the city and how we can get the city to help run it, using the nonprofit organizations.”
Chicopee Savings Bank is one of those businesses that has stepped up to sponsor the event. Its president, Bill Wagner, remembers the old days, and believes Kielbania has shown that he can potentially replicate them.
“It rained for two days last year, and they still had a lot of people there — I was surprised at how well they did,” Wagner said, adding that the bank has gone to a higher sponsorship level this year. “I never thought he’d make it work, but he did, and you’ve got to give credit where credit’s due.”
Kos, who regained the corner office a few months before the 2014 event, agreed. He said Kielbania talked with him about his plans and impressed him with his resolve.
“We talked about how this was quite an endeavor, and he said he was up for it,” the mayor recalled. “He showed that he was.”
Ivan Putski will not be making an appearance at this year’s K-Fest, but there will be plenty of star power in other forms. The entertainment list includes a host of polka bands, including the Chardon Polka Band from Ohio and the Chris & Ronnie Polka Band from New Jersey, as well as many other acts, from A Ray of Elvis to a slew of tribute bands.
Meanwhile, Kielbania says he’s addressed the three main complaints from last year — lack of a dance floor, a shortage of Polish food, and not enough options when it came to kielbasa — and especially that last one.
“I have my own ‘Tour of Kielbasa’ tent, where I’m bringing in different kielbasas from Poland, Chicago, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and lots of local guys,” he told BusinessWest. “I’m making it a kielbasa festival — I’m celebrating kielbasa.”
Food for Thought
Looking down the road, and not far down, Kielbania expects to take this business — meaning the staging of festivals and like events — to the next level.
He’s talking with a potential partner and is already mulling options for more events in Chicopee and well beyond, including a Kielbasa festival in the Berkshires and maybe another on the Cape.
At the moment, though, most of his energy is focused on bringing an end, or at least a sharp reduction, to talk about the old days and heightening attention on the present day.
And he’s already well on his way to doing just that.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
AFFILIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• May 6: ACCGS Business@Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Colony Club, 1500 Main St., Springfield. Speed networking — a fast-paced way to work the room. Sponsored by United Personnel. Reservations are $20 for members (in advance, $25 members at the door), $30 for general admission. Reservations may be made online by visiting www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 13: ACCGS After 5, 5-7 p.m., at the Residence Inn by Marriott, 500 Memorial Ave., Chicopee. Join us for our last After 5 of the season for a tailgate party, featuring food trucks with tailgating cuisine, parking-lot games like cornhole and ladder toss, music, and cash bar. Reservations are $5 for members, $10 for general admission. Reservations may be made online by visiting www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 14: East of the River Five Town Chamber Feast in the East, 5-7:30 p.m., at Twin Hills Country Club, 700 Wolf Swamp Road, Longmeadow. Enjoy culinary tastings from local restaurants and caterers to benefit the ERC5 Scholarship Fund. Reservations are $25. Reservations may be made online by visiting www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 19: Professional Women’s Chamber Woman of the Year, 5:30 p.m., at the Carriage House, Storrowton Tavern, 1305 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Honoring Anne Paradis, chief executive officer, Microtek Inc. Reservations are $55 and may be may be made online by visiting www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 26: ACCGS Pastries, Politics & Policy, 8-9 a.m., at TD Bank Conference Center, 1441 Main St., Springfield. For political and policy junkies. Reservations are $15 for members, $25 general admission, and includes continental breakfast. Reservations may be made online by visiting www.myonlinechamber.com.
AMHERST AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.amherstarea.com
(413) 253-0700
• May 6: After 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Bridgeside Grille, 9 Amherst Road, Sunderland. Register online at www.amherstarea.com or call the chamber office at (413) 253-0700. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
• May 27: After 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Florence Savings Bank, 377 Russell St., Hadley. Sponsored solely by Florence Saving Bank. Register online at www.amherstarea.com or call the office at (413) 253-0700. Tickets are $10 members, $15 for non-members.
• June 18-21: Taste of Amherst, on the Amherst Common. Featuring 22 individual restaurants on the common for a weekend of fun, food tasting, food demos, live music, kids’ area, zoo, and much more. Hours: June 18-19, 5-9 p.m.; June 20, noon-10 p.m.; June 21, noon-4 p.m. All food is under $5 per item. No entry fee.
• June 23: After 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at J.F. Conlon , 29 University Dr., Amherst. Sponsored in part by J.F.Conlon & Associates. Register online at www.amherstarea.com or call the chamber office at (413) 253-0700. Tickets: $10 per member, $15 per non- member.
GREATER CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101
• May 15: Lunch & Learn, 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m., at the Hampton Inn, 600 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. “ACA Compliance: Employer Requirements and Management Tools.” Learn about a solid, user-friendly road map for understanding compliance issues. Tickets: $15 for members, $23 for non-members.
• May 20: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Renaissance Manor on Cabot, 279 Cabot St., Holyoke. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
• May 21: Golf Tournament at Chicopee Country Club; 10 a.m. shotgun start. Registration: $125 per golfer.
• May 27: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at Elms College. Tickets: $23 for members, $28 for non-members.
• June 13: 5K Road Race/2-mile Walk. Begins and ends at Portuguese Club, 149 Exchange St., Chicopee. Registration: $25 per person; $15 for children 12 and under. Registration begins at 7:45 a.m. Fee includes T-shirt and free lunch provided by the Munich Haus.
• June 18: Mornings with the Mayor, 8-9 a.m., at the Willimansett Center West, 546 Chicopee St., Chicopee. Free for chamber members.
• June 24: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Wireless Zone, 601E Memorial Dr., Chicopee. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414
• May 11: Monday Morning with the Mayor. “Getting Down to Business About Business: Casual Conversation with Mayor Cadieux,” 8-9 a.m., at Easthampton Savings Bank, 36 Main St., Easthampton. Free and open to the public.
GREATER HOLYOKE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376
• May 15: Chamber After Hours, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored and hosted by Pic’s Place, 910 Hampden St., Holyoke. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for the public. Call the chamber at (413) 534-3376 or sign up online at holyokechamber.com.
• May 18: Annual Chamber Cup Golf Tournament celebrating the chamber’s 125th anniversary, at Wyckoff Country Club, 233 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Registration and lunch at 10:30 a.m.; tee off at noon (scramble format); dinner following game with food stations catered by the Log Cabin. Cost: $125 includes lunch, 18 holes of golf, cart, and dinner. Dinner only: $25. Awards, raffles, and cash prizes follow dinner. Sponsors: Log Cabin and PeoplesBank. Corporate sponsors: Dowd Insurance, Goss & McLain Insurance Agency, Holyoke Gas & Electric, Mountain View Landscapes, Holyoke Medical Center, People’s United Bank, the Republican, and Resnic, Beauregard, Waite & Driscoll. For reservations, call (413) 534-3376 or register at holyokechamber.com.
• May 21: Chamber Business Connections, 5-7 p.m., in the Atrium in the PeoplesBank building, 330 Whitney Ave. Sponsored and hosted by PeoplesBank. Join your friends and colleagues for this fun and casual evening of networking. Refreshments, door prizes, and 50/50 raffle. Cost: $19 for chamber members, $15 for non-members.
• June 19: 125th Anniversary Gala Ball, starting at 6 p.m., at the Log Cabin, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Cocktails at 6, dinner at 7. Enjoy an elegant meal and dance to the music of the Floyd Patterson Band. Join Marcotte Ford as one of the major event sponsors by calling (413) 534-3376. Event is open to the public. More details to follow.
GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900
• May 6: May Arrive@5, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored by Whalen Insurance Agency. For more information or to register, call the chamber at (413) 584-1900.
• July 1: July Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored by Pioneer Landscapes and Easthampton Electrical. For more information or to register, call the chamber at (413) 584-1900.
GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
• May 4: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Renaissance Manor, 37 Feeding Hills Road, Westfield. Join us for our monthly coffee hour with Westfield Mayor Dan Knapik. This event is free and open to the public. Call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618 to register for this event.
• May 13: May After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., at Armbrook Village, 551 North Road, Westfield. Sponsored by Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity and the ReStore. Refreshments will be served. Bring your business cards and make connections. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for non-members; cash at the door. To register, call Pam at the chamber at (413) 568-1618.
• May 18: 54th Annual Golf Tournament, at Tekoa Country Club, 459 Russell Road, Westfield. Schedule: 10 a.m., registration and lunch; 11 a.m., shotgun start; 4 p.m., cocktail hour; 5 p.m., dinner. Title sponsor: Westfield Gas & Electric. Premium gift sponsor: Westfield Bank. Cart sponsor: Doctor’s Express.
• June 1: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Westfield Vocational Technical High School, 33 Smith Ave., Westfield. Free and open to the public. Register by calling (413) 568-1618.
• June 19: Chamber Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Ranch Golf Club, 65 Sunnyside Road, Southwick. Platinum sponsor: Mestek. Golf sponsor: Berkshire Bank. Silver sponsors: First Niagara and Prolamina. Registered attendees of the chamber breakfast can golf at a discounted rate of only $65 at the Ranch following the breakfast. Call Bill Rosenblum, golf pro, to register at (413) 569-9333, ext. 3. Cost for the breakfast: $25 for members, $30 for non-members. For more information on sponsorships, to register, or to donate a raffle prize, call Pam at the chamber at (413) 568-1618.
PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CHAMBER
www.professionalwomenschamber.com
(413) 755-1310
• May 19: Professional Women’s Chamber Woman of the Year, 5:30 p.m., at the Carriage House, Storrowton Tavern, 1305 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Honoring Anne Paradis, CEO of Microtek Inc. Sponsored by BusinessWest. Reservations are $55 and may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
(413) 426-3880
• May 6: Wicked Wednesday, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Northeast IT, 777 Riverdale Road, West Springfield. Free for chamber members, $10 at the door for non-members. Event is open to the public. Wicked Wednesdays are monthly social events, hosted by various businesses and restaurants, that bring members and non-members together to network in a laid-back atmosphere. For more information, contact the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
• May 20: Networking Lunch, noon-1:30 p.m., at the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative, 174 Brush Hill Ave., West Springfield. Must be a member or guest of a member to attend. Enjoy a sit-down lunch served while networking with fellow chamber members. Each attendee will get a chance to offer a brief sales pitch. Cost: $10 at the door, which includes lunch. For more information, contact the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
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.
FRANKLIN SUPERIOR COURT
Christian Antunes v. City of Greenfield
Allegation: Plaintiff’s home was flooded with sewage backflow when town employees attempted to repair a main sewer line: $48,179
Filed: 3/11/15
Multimedia Center Inc. v. Lange Chiropractic Inc. and Kimberly Lange
Allegation: Non-payment of promissory note: $58,000
Filed: 2/25/15
HAMPDEN SUPERIOR COURT
Cosale Inc. v. NiSource Inc. and Baystate Gas Co. d/b/a Columbia Gas of MA
Allegation: Employees of Columbia negligently ruptured a pipe causing a massive explosion, property damage, and lost revenue: $301,066.59
Filed: 3/13/15
PALMER DISTRICT COURT
Jordan Quitero v. Boston Road Auto Mall and Platte River Insurance Co.
Allegation: Breach of contract and odometer fraud: $12,650
Filed: 3/25/15
SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT
Security Credit Services, LLC v. Silks Auto Service Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment on business credit account: $58,063.19
Filed: 3/20/15
Tamaro Ako-Brew v. Graham’s Package Store Inc. and 1655 Main St., LLC
Allegation: Negligent maintenance of property causing slip and fall: $1,634
Filed: 3/19/15
SPRINGFIELD — The Loomis Communities’ annual spring reception will honor the founding board of directors of Loomis Lakeside at Reeds Landing on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the senior living community on Thursday, May 21 at 4:30 p.m. at the retirement-community campus, 807 Wilbraham Road, Springfield.
The founding board of directors will receive the Elvira Whiting Ball Award for outstanding service to older adults. The reception will honor retired Michael Daly, Bruce Dewey, Jack Dill, Dr. Richard Flynn, John Gallup, Barbara Jefferson, Ronn Johnson, George Kuselias, David Longworth, John Mailhot, Keith McLean-Shinaman, Anthony Mott, Dr. Jill Russell, Scott Stearns Jr., J. Michael Wallace, Dr. Stephen Wittenberg, and deceased members Carl Breyer, Dr. Randolph Bromery, and John Mann.
The community opened in 1995 on the east campus of Springfield College on Lake Massasoit, the result of a collaboration between its founders, Baystate Health and Springfield College. When established, Loomis Lakeside at Reeds Landing became the first continuing-care retirement community in Springfield with independent living, assisted living, and skilled nursing all on the same campus and under one roof.
According to David Scruggs, CEO of the Loomis Communities, “the establishment of the community 20 years ago was the result of a vision shared by leadership from Baystate Health and Springfield College, who were intent on building a first-of-its-kind retirement community in Springfield. There is no better way to honor these founders than with the Elvira Whiting Ball award, named after another visionary leader who, over 100 years ago, with a group of Holyoke women, established the first Loomis community to provide older adults a place to live ‘exempt from strife.’”
The award is presented annually to an individual or group for outstanding service to older adults who personify the spirit of Loomis’ founding leader.
The reception is open to the public. Tickets to the event are $35, with proceeds to benefit the nursing centers at Loomis House in Holyoke and Loomis Lakeside at Reeds Landing. Reservations can be made by calling Carol Constant, director of community engagement, at (413) 532-5325.
The spring reception sponsors include benefactor sponsors Mountain View Landscapes and Peoples Bank; sustaining sponsors Goss & McLain Insurance and Health New England; patron sponsors Lyon & Fitzpatrick and Smith Brothers Insurance; and platinum sponsors Easthampton Savings Bank, Holyoke Medical Center, O’Connell Care at Home, Retirement Dynamics, and Specialized Construction.
AMHERST — Hollister Insurance of Clinton, Mass. has acquired J.F. Conlon and Associates of Amherst.
J.F. Conlon has been a leading employee-benefits broker in Western Mass. for 20 years. Jim Conlon, president of J.F. Conlon and a former regional director with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, has plans to retire within a year of the transition, and Hollister President Matt Hollister has assumed the role of CEO for the overall business. April Williams, who has worked at J.F. Conlon for 15 years as a producer and account manager, has been promoted to regional manager and will head up the Amherst office.
The consolidated business gives Hollister Insurance a broader presence in the Massachusetts employee-benefits market, increases the number of plans offered, and adds significantly to the depth of experience in the brokerage staff. J.F. Conlon will continue to maintain the same close relationships with its customers while being able to offer additional support available through Hollister Insurance, such as human-resources support and benefit technology solutions.
Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Donald Courtemanche noted that “J.F. Conlon and Associates has long been a strong partner of the Amherst Area Chamber. We wish Jim Conlon the very best in retirement, and are confident that the company is in great hands with April Williams at the helm. I also look forward to getting to know Matt Hollister and think that he will be a good resource for the community here in Amherst.”
Common Capital Program Helps Individuals Fuel Small Businesses
Beverly Weeks spent close to two decades as a librarian at West Springfield High School, so she understands the importance of researching matters thoroughly.
And that’s exactly what the now-retired Weeks did several months ago when she decided to reel in one of her investments, which she determined was too heavily focused on fossil fuels, and redirect that money toward something far more sustainable — and rewarding.
That research took her to Common Capital’s Community First Fund, which pools investments from people like Weeks and loans them to individuals trying to get a business off the ground or to that proverbial next level.
And that’s where her search ended.
“I was looking around for alternatives — I was searching for investments that would go back into my community, and this struck me as a good one,” she told BusinessWest. “I liked the fact that I would be making a loan that then makes it possible for a venture to get on its feet or add a new aspect or product to its business.
Claudine Baj says loans channeled to her through Common Capital have helped her expand her kitchen and bring in needed help.
Such sentiments are exactly what administrators at Common Capital had in mind a few years ago when they decided to become part of what is now a national trend toward creating community loan pools to assist fledgling businesses.
Chris Sikes, Common Capital’s CEO, said this movement, if it can be called that, can be traced to New Hampshire, and it has quickly spread to many other areas of the country.
That’s because the concept is fairly simple, and — to the growing number of people who, like Weeks, desire investments that that can in some way be categorized as ‘sustainable’ — it’s also quite appealing.
Here’s how it works locally: the Community First Fund will accept donations of any size from $500 to $50,000 (the old floor was $1,000, but it was lowered to enable more people to participate). The loan term is three years with a 2% annual rate of return (better than most currently advertised CD rates certainly), with interest paid to participants semi-annually. Common Capital’s initial goal was to raise $500,000, but that has been passed — approximately $600,000 has ben amassed to date — and the new target is $1 million.
Contributions are pooled and placed in Common Capital’s general fund, where they are loaned to a diverse and growing roster of entrepreneurs who need some capital to make an important step forward, whatever that might be.
People like Claudine Gaj.
She started the Magic Spoon, a catering business, in 1998, and, over the ensuing years, has recorded steady if unspectacular growth. By early last year, she had come to a point most entrepreneurs reach, where she really wanted and needed to bring in help.
Jerry Zalucki, seen here with his wife, Suzanne, says that, when banks wouldn’t listen to his plans for his fledgling business, Common Capital would.
“I went to a Brewing the American Dream event, a meet-and-greet, and I got to meet Jim Koch,” Gaj recalled. “He said, ‘where do you want to be?’ And I said, ‘I really want to hire someone who has skills so I can get out of the kitchen, do more marketing, and be the boss, not the business.’
“He said, ‘what’s stopping you?’ and said, ‘I need to remodel my kitchen,’” she went on, adding that the second loan ($8,500) came through in January. She has, in fact, hired someone, and is “getting there” when it comes to bringing in more business.
Baj is, in many respects, the type of small-business owner that Common Capital assists, said Sikes, adding that the unofficial mission behind the Community First Program is to put more companies like Magic Spoon in the portfolio.
Thus, the program represents the quintessential win, win, win scenario. Donors win because they enter into totally safe investments (loans are secured by Common Capital) with a decent rate of return while spurring economic development and job creation in the region; loan recipients win because they secure financing they probably couldn’t receive from traditional sources; and the region wins because the fund is fueling a recognized surge in entrepreneurial activity.
For this issue, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at the Community First Fund and the many different ways it can measure success.
The Ride Stuff
Jerry Zalucki was searching for the right words. It’s not that he didn’t know what to say — he certainly did. He just didn’t know how, at least without offending a large group of business professionals.
He was trying to describe the commercial-lending environment in early 2011, just a few years after the Great Recession, and, more specifically, what it was like to be on the other side of the table from those doing the lending — or not.
“Let’s just say … well, let’s just say … it wasn’t a good time to be out there for looking for a loan,” he told BusinessWest, adding that it was his misfortune to be seeking some capital at that time for a venture called Auto Custom Leathers, an offshoot of a larger enterprise that had been sold.
It specialized in after-market leather and vinyl auto interiors — its current marketing slogan is ‘cover your ride with our hides’ — and Zalucki was able to use his own money to get the business into what he would approximate as first, maybe second gear.
“We had about 1,000 patterns, and I had the know-how, the knowledge, and the market idea, and thought I could make a go of it,” he recalled. “I had a little bit of money and did what I needed to do to get it going — but I knew it wasn’t enough.”
Indeed, to gain any real speed, Zalucki knew he needed capital, but the banks weren’t bashful about saying no, without even really hearing him out, at least in Zalucki’s estimation.
“You know when someone looks like they’re listening, but you know they’re not really listening … that’s how I felt. I had an idea, I did the numbers, I crunched everything, but no one cared,” he recalled, adding that a friend put him in touch with Sam Ortiz, director of Lending at Common Capital, who not only listened, but asked a number of questions.
Fast-forwarding a little, Common Capital was able to award Zalucki a $100,000 loan and a $50,000 line of credit. He used that capital to buy some equipment and expand the venture. His workforce went from eight to 15, and to accommodate the new growth created by that expansion, Common Capital awarded him a second package totaling $225,000.
“If it wasn’t for them, there’s no way I would have continued, and no way all this would have happened,” said Zalucki, adding that, while he’s not exactly in the driver’s seat, figuratively speaking, he certainly has his business on the right road.
In essence, Common Capital was created to help people like Zalucki and ventures like Auto Custom Leathers, said Sikes, adding that the Community First Fund, which accurately reflects the agency’s mission statement, was launched so the institution could assist more ventures like this one.
“Our goal as a nonprofit and as a community lender is to create economic opportunity,” he explained. “And central to that is creating a local, sustainable economy, and one of our main strategies for doing that is getting the community involved in its own economy.
“We have the ‘buy local’ movement, and we have the ‘invest locally’ movement as well,” he went on. “The Community First Fund provides an opportunity for people to invest locally and see their loans go into local businesses, create jobs, generate more local goods and services, and provide area residents and businesses more opportunities to buy local goods and services. We see this as a multiplier effect.”
In many respects, the timing for the launch of the program could not have been better. Indeed, several forces are coming together to make the Community First Fund a vehicle for economic development — and an attractive investment.
First, Baby Boomers — and also the generations behind them — are coming into money, record amounts of it, noted Sikes, quoting statistics showing that the Boomers stand to inherit something north of $30 trillion through what’s known as the ‘great wealth transfer.’ Meanwhile, many Boomers have done pretty well themselves, he went on, adding that many are seeking not only places to put their money, but places that meet a growing sense of environmental and societal sustainability — and responsibility.
At the same time, there is a great deal of entrepreneurial energy in the region, said Sikes, citing the efforts of groups such as Valley Venture Mentors and others to encourage entrepreneurship and mentor small-business owners. Also, with the arrival of MGM Springfield, there may be opportunities to do business with the casino giant for those with the wherewithal to take advantage of them.
Inevitably, most small-business owners will need capital, he continued, and some will need to turn to what would be considered non-traditional sources to get it.
Generating Interest
Chris Sikes, CEO of Common Capital, says the Community First Fund enables individuals to get involved with the local economy.
“For the investor, it’s a chance to really feel and know that, financially, they’re investing in the community,” he said. “And that has a psychological, social, and even emotional impact on people, so they’re more concerned about the community.”
Elaborating, he said that, in the larger scheme of things, $500,000 or $1 million is not a large amount of money. But when one is talking about small (often very small) businesses, such an amount can go a long way and make a huge impact in the life of an enterprise.
“What we’re doing at Common Capital is really exciting, and we’re going to need a lot more local capital moving forward,” he explained. “Public monies are going to be diminishing, and the private investments are going to be more and more important.”
Those sentiments, or words to that effect in literature introducing and explaining the Community First Fund, resonated with Marty Wohl.
A Northampton-based dentist, he was, like Weeks, searching for investments that would do more than earn a respectable return. And he was motivated by the opportunity to get involved in a meaningful way.
“This program piqued my interest because, living in a community for a long time, you support different activities, causes, and charities,” he explained. “And this seemed a little like providing a fishing pole instead of a fish. It just made sense to provide funds that can be returned, but also make a difference.
“In a sense, it’s like a municipal bond, but obviously without any collateral or security or insurance,” he went on, adding that he became a participant nearly two years ago. “But being so local, it’s very effective for community building. And there’s a recognizable need for this, and that’s satisfying as well.”
Sikes said Wohl is typical of many donors to the fund in that he’s a professional from the Northampton-Amherst area (the northern portion of the region seems to be embracing this concept more than the Springfield area to the south), has a strong sense of community, and was looking for a sound, safe, and sustainable investment.
Moving forward, Common Capital’s goals are to grow the fund through wider participation, eventually improve the rate of return to make it more attractive, and perhaps give investors more control over where funds are directed — such as to a specific region or economic sector, Sikes told BusinessWest.
To reach more potential participants, Common Capital will more aggressively market the concept; to date, it has relied on word of mouth and information on its own website, common-capital.org. And one of the most effective ways to market the fund is simply to tell the stories of business owners who have been supported by loans from the agency.
“We want to get people excited about this, because it’s helping us do some great things in the community,” he explained. “We want to grow this fund and give it a broader impact across the region.”
Wohl’s first commitment to the Community First Fund will run its course in roughly a year. He’s already thinking about re-upping — he considers that a strong possibility — and might opt for a larger investment.
“I’ll decide that when the time comes,” he said. “Right now, I see no reason not to participate again.”
Weeks offered similar sentiments.
“I think this is something I may do again,” she told BusinessWest. “I didn’t give a whole lot the first time, but it was enough to make a difference, I hope, and I like that part about this.”
Bottom Line
Like everyone else who has secured a business loan, Baj now has some dueling emotions.
She’s elated that she received the money and is excited about what it means for her and her venture. At the same time, she’s naturally a little apprehensive about paying it back and taking the step forward needed to generate that revenue.
“We’re going to do some additional marketing and do whatever else we need to do to get where we want to be,” she said. “I’m not a grow-by-leaps-and-bounds person; it’s through small, steady steps — that’s how I want to run my business, because I never want to be too far ahead of what I can really handle. This is an exciting time for us.”
The Community First Fund was created to place more people in such a state, said Sikes, adding that he believes the program will continue to grow, gain momentum, and help write more entrepreneurial success stories.
That’s because, as he said, there are multiple winners in this scenario, including people like Weeks, who want to lend a helping hand — and a helping dollar.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Normandeau Technologies Named Partner of the Year
WEST SPRINGFIELD — Normandeau Technologies (NTI) announced it has been awarded the 2014 Ericsson-LG Enterprise North American Partner of the Year Award at the Ericsson-LG Global Partner Conference held in Cancun, Mexico. The award celebrates the excellence Normandeau Technologies has achieved in helping to build the North American distribution channel for the iPECS communications platform and for its success in bringing IP telephony, unified communications, mobility, and call-center solutions to SMBs in industries such as manufacturing, insurance, realty, medical, education, government, and financial. Bob Rankin, general manager of Presence Management, the largest distributor of Ericsson-LG iPECS products in North America, noted, “NTI continues to expand sales of our award-winning iPECS LIK VoIP platform with the iPECS Unified Communications Solution (iPECS UCS) and iPECS Contact Center Suite Solution (iPECS CCS). We recognize and appreciate the continuous hard work NTI performs in their region, and we applaud their continued success with iPECS.” Successfully marketed worldwide with a dominant market share in South Korea, Australia, and South Africa, and significant market share in many other countries, the iPECS is a highly scalable and fault-tolerant platform that connects up to 1,200 endpoints per system and up to 300,000 endpoints with networking. It’s a versatile, premise-based IP phone platform with a competitive entry cost, five-year warranty, and one of the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership (TCO). The Ericsson-LG UCS is a collaboration platform for organizations of virtually any size that integrates voice, presence, video conferencing, and instant messaging on the IPECS platform. The Ericsson-LG CCS is a multi-channel call-center solution providing intelligent management of multiple communication mediums. “We’re honored to receive this recognition for our sales success with the Ericsson LG line of advanced communication applications in the Massachusetts area and for our success in bringing these new technologies to our clients,” said Brett Normandeau, president of NTI. “Solutions like the iPECS UCS and iPECS CCS offer a tightly integrated, next-generation communications environment for telecom resellers at a very compelling price point.”
Survey Touts Growth of Whittlesey & Hadley
HARTFORD, Conn. — Whittlesey & Hadley, P.C., one of the area’s largest independent accounting, audit, tax, and business-advisory firms, ranks ninth in the 2015 Accounting Today annual survey of regional leaders in New England. The firm’s expansion into Western Mass. in August 2014 helped precipitate a growth in revenue of 10%. The average firm growth for top firms in New England was 6.8%. “From our early beginnings in 1961, our firm has continued to focus on achieving steady growth through unmatched service to our clients and the retention of a highly skilled and committed team of professionals,” said Managing Partner Drew Andrews. “Today, we are embracing a more aggressive growth plan that combines the acquisition of professional service firms throughout New England with a similar culture and philosophy as Whittlesey & Hadley, where our unwavering commitment to exceed client expectations every day, in every way possible, will prevail.” The annual survey is published in Accounting Today’s March issue and is based on total revenue.
AFFILIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• April 29: ACCGS Beacon Hill Summit 2015, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. at the Massachusetts State House. Hosted by state Sen. James Welch. Day-long opportunity to meet with members of the Baker-Polito administration and the Massachusetts delegation. Reservations are $180 per person and includes continental breakfast, transportation, lunch, reception, and all materials. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 6: ACCGS Business@Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Colony Club, 1500 Main St., Springfield. Speed networking — a fast-paced way to work the room. Sponsored by United Personnel. Reservations are $20 for members (in advance, $25 members at the door), $30 general admission. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 13: ACCGS After 5, 5-7 p.m., at the Residence Inn by Marriott, 500 Memorial Ave., Chicopee. Join us for our last After 5 of the season for a tailgate party, featuring food trucks with tailgating cuisine, parking-lot games like cornhole and ladder toss, music, and cash bar. Reservations are $5 for members, $10 for general admission. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 14: East of the River Five Town Chamber Feast in the East, 5-7:30 p.m., at Twin Hills Country Club, 700 Wolf Swamp Road, Longmeadow. Enjoy culinary tastings from local restaurants and caterers to benefit the ERC5 Scholarship Fund. Reservations are $25. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 19: Professional Women’s Chamber Woman of the Year, 5:30 p.m., at the Carriage House, Storrowton Tavern, 1305 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Honoring Anne Paradis, chief executive officer, Microtek Inc. Reservations are $55 and may be may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• May 26: ACCGS Pastries, Politics & Policy, 8-9 a.m., at TD Bank Conference Center, 1441 Main St., Springfield. For political and policy junkies. Reservations are $15 for members, $25 general admission, and includes continental breakfast. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
AMHERST AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.amherstarea.com
(413) 253-0700
• May 6: After 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Bridgeside Grille, 9 Amherst Road, Sunderland. Register online at www.amherstarea.com or call the office at (413) 253-0700. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
• May 27: After 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Florence Savings Bank, 377 Russell St., Hadley. Sponsored solely by Florence Saving Bank. Register online at www.amherstarea.com or call the office at (413) 253-0700. Tickets are $10 members, $15 for non-members.
• June 18-21: Taste of Amherst, on the Amherst Common. Featuring 22 individual restaurants on the common for a weekend of fun, food tasting, food demos, live music, kids’ area, zoo, and much more. Hours: June 18-19, 5-9 p.m.; June 20, noon-10 p.m.; June 21, noon-4 p.m. All food is under $5 per item. No entry fee.
• June 23: After 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at J.F. Conlon , 29 University Dr., Amherst. Sponsored in part by J.F.Conlon & Associates. Register online at www.amherstarea.com or call the chamber office at (413) 253-0700. Tickets: $10 per member, $15 per non- member.
GREATER CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101
• May 15: Lunch & Learn, 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m., at the Hampton Inn, 600 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. “ACA Compliance: Employer Requirements and Management Tools.” Learn about a solid, user-friendly road map for understanding compliance issues. Tickets: $15 for members, $23 for non-members.
• May 20: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Renaissance Manor on Cabot, 279 Cabot St., Holyoke. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
• May 21: Golf Tournament at Chicopee Country Club; 10 a.m. shotgun start. Registration: $125 per golfer.
• May 27: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at Elms College. Tickets: $23 for members, $28 for non-members.
• June 13: 5K Road Race/2-mile Walk. Begins and ends at Portuguese Club, 149 Exchange St., Chicopee. Registration: $25 per person; $15 for children 12 and under. Registration begins at 7:45 a.m. Fee includes T-shirt and free lunch provided by the Munich Haus.
• June 18: Mornings with the Mayor, 8-9 a.m., at the Willimansett Center West, 546 Chicopee St., Chicopee. Free for chamber members.
• June 24: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Wireless Zone, 601E Memorial Dr., Chicopee. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for non-members.
GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414
• May 11: Monday Morning with the Mayor. “Getting Down to Business About Business: Casual Conversation with Mayor Cadieux,” 8-9 a.m., at Easthampton Savings Bank, 36 Main St., Easthampton. Free and open to the public.
GREATER HOLYOKE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376
• May 15: Chamber After Hours, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored and hosted by Pic’s Place, 910 Hampden St., Holyoke. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for the public. Call the chamber at (413) 534-3376 or sign up online at holyokechamber.com.
• May 18: Annual Chamber Cup 2015 Golf Tournament Celebrating the chamber’s 125th Anniversary, at Wyckoff Country Club, 233 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Registration and lunch at 10:30 a.m.; tee off at noon (scramble format); dinner following game with elaborate food stations catered by the Log Cabin.
Cost: $125 per player includes lunch, 18 holes of golf, cart, and dinner. Dinner only-$25. Awards, raffles, and cash prizes follow dinner. Tournament sponsors: Log Cabin and PeoplesBank. Corporate sponsors: Dowd Insurance, Goss & McLain Insurance Agency, Holyoke Gas & Electric, Mountain View Landscapes, Holyoke Medical Center, People’s United Bank, the Republican, and Resnic, Beauregard, Waite & Driscoll. For reservations, call the chamber Office at (413) 534-3376 or register online at holyokechamber.com.
• May 21: Chamber Business Connections, 5-7 p.m., in the Atrium in the PeoplesBank building, 330 Whitney Ave. Sponsored and hosted by PeoplesBank. Join your friends and colleagues for this fun and casual evening of networking. Refreshments, door prizes, and 50/50 raffle. Cost: $19 for chamber members, $15 for non-members.
• June 19: 125th Anniversary Gala Ball, starting at 6 p.m., at the Log Cabin, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Cocktails at 6, dinner at 7. Enjoy an elegant meal and dance to the music of the Floyd Patterson Band. Join Marcotte Ford as one of the major event sponsors by calling (413) 534-3376. Event is open to the public. More details to follow.
GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900
• May 6: May Arrive@5, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored by Whalen Insurance Agency. For more information or to register, call the chamber at (413) 584-1900.
• July 1: July Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored by Pioneer Landscapes and Easthampton Electrical. For more information or to register, call the chamber at (413) 584-1900.
GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
• April 28: Southwick Home to Business Show. Hosted by Tucker’s Restaurant. For more information, contact Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618.
• May 4: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Renaissance Manor, 37 Feeding Hills Road, Westfield. Join us for our monthly coffee hour with Westfield Mayor Dan Knapik. This event is free and open to the public. Call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618 to register for this event.
• May 13: May After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., at Armbrook Village, 551 North Road, Westfield. Sponsored by Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity and the ReStore. Refreshments will be served. Bring your business cards and make connections. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for non-members; cash at the door. To register, call Pam at the chamber at (413) 568-1618.
• May 18: 54th Annual Golf Tournament, at Tekoa Country Club, 459 Russell Road, Westfield. Schedule: 10 a.m., registration and lunch; 11 a.m., shotgun start; 4 p.m., cocktail hour; 5 p.m., dinner. Title sponsor: Westfield Gas & Electric. Premium gift sponsor: Westfield Bank. Cart sponsor: Doctor’s Express.
• June 1: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Westfield Vocational Technical High School, 33 Smith Ave., Westfield.
Free and open to the public. Register by calling (413) 568-1618.
• June 19: Chamber Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Ranch Golf Club, 65 Sunnyside Road, Southwick. Platinum sponsor: Mestek. Golf sponsor: Berkshire Bank. Silver sponsors: First Niagara and Prolamina. Registered attendees of the chamber breakfast can golf at a discounted rate of only $65 at the Ranch following the breakfast. Call Bill Rosenblum, golf pro, to register at (413) 569-9333, ext. 3. Cost for the breakfast: $25 for members, $30 for non-members. For more information on sponsorships, to register, or to donate a raffle prize, call Pam at the chamber at (413) 568-1618.
PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CHAMBER
www.professionalwomenschamber.com
(413) 755-1310
• May 19: Professional Women’s Chamber Woman of the Year, 5:30 p.m., at the Carriage House, Storrowton Tavern, 1305 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Honoring Anne Paradis, CEO of Microtek Inc. Sponsored by BusinessWest. Reservations are $55 and may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
(413) 426-3880
• May 6: Wicked Wednesday, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Northeast IT, 777 Riverdale Road, West Springfield. Free for chamber members, $10 at the door for non-members. Event is open to the public. Wicked Wednesdays are monthly social events, hosted by various businesses and restaurants, that bring members and non-members together to network in a laid-back atmosphere. For more information, contact the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
• May 20: Networking Lunch, noon-1:30 p.m., at the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative, 174 Brush Hill Ave., West Springfield. Must be a member or guest of a member to attend. Enjoy a sit-down lunch served while networking with fellow chamber members. Each attendee will get a chance to offer a brief sales pitch. Cost: $10 at the door, which includes lunch. For more information, contact the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
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
Esteban Sanchez-Mejias and Maria Hernandez v. Commerce Insurance Co.
Allegation: Breach of contract and refusal to issue agreed-upon settlement checks: $7,325+
Filed: 4/3/15
FRANKLIN SUPERIOR COURT
Lisa Wood v. Massachusetts Department of State Police, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Executive Office of Public Safety and Security
Allegation: Plaintiff’s vehicle was struck by a Mass. State Police, resulting in injury: $91,922.18
Filed: 2/25/15
GREENFIELD DISTRICT COURT
Deborah G. Earle v. BJ’s Wholesale Club
Allegation: Negligent maintenance of property causing slip and fall: $7,183.16
Filed: 2/15/15
HAMPDEN SUPERIOR COURT
La Casse v. Lego Systems Inc.
Allegation: Defendant failed to compensate for damages to property: $42,524.55
Filed: 3/6/15
PALMER DISTRICT COURT
Hibu Inc. f/k/a Yellowbook Sales and Distribution Co. Inc. v. Alban Insurance Agency and Orlando Alban
Allegation: Monies due for breach of contract, monies owed, advertising, and other services rendered: $10,797.78
Filed: 3/4/15
SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT
Caserta Co., LLC v. Chase Management Services Inc.
Allegation: Breach of commercial lease: $19,550
Filed: 3/19/15
Laura Bardelli v. GA and BJ, LLC d/b/a Ambiance HR
Allegation: Negligence in hair-removal service, causing significant burns and scarring: $25,000+
Filed: 3/18/15
Vice President of Global Risk Management, MassMutual Financial Group; Age 37
Sarah Williams
A brief bio issued by the company puts it this way: “Williams is responsible for leading the assessment and analysis of international capital standards, including field testing for the proposed International Assoc. of Insurance Supervisors Common Framework requirements. She also oversees MassMutual’s enterprise risk appetite analysis and reporting.”
Williams, who came to MassMutual roughly a year ago after a lengthy stint at the Hartford, where she handled a variety of roles, provided an effective translation to that synopsis.
“As a result of the financial crisis, there’s a great deal of change happening with regard to regulation of the financial-services industry,” she said, noting that this includes insurance companies like MassMutual. “My job, and I really enjoy it, involves determining what we should be doing today to strategically position ourselves to continue to be competitive and profitable given all of these new regulations that are coming out.”
This is a job that takes her abroad at least a few times a year — she recently returned from Rome, for example, and has made trips to Switzerland, Canada, and the Netherlands in recent months — and to Washington, D.C. frequently. There is little time for sightseeing, however, she said, adding that this is definitely business travel.
When not assessing risk for MassMutual, Williams is kept busy with work within the community, and also as part of what she called a “football family.”
With regard to the former, she is treasurer and immediate past president of the corporate board for the YMCA of Greater Springfield, and also leads Springfield Youth Cheerleading, an organization devoted to promoting and teaching that activity.
“When my sons were little, my husband ran the youth football program, so I took over the cheerleading program in Springfield,” she said, adding that she cheered herself in high school. “We have about 80 girls in that program every year.”
As for the latter, well, the cheerleading is part of it, but this family also watches and plays the game. Indeed, Williams’ husband, Richard, is offensive-line coach at Springfield’s Central High School, while her sons and stepson all played for Central, and her youngest son is the projected starting quarterback at Monmouth University in New Jersey next season.
— George O’Brien
Photo by Denise Smith Photography
EAST LONGMEADOW — HUB International New England, formerly FieldEddy Insurance, a leading insurance brokerage firm, in conjunction with AIG, a leading international insurance organization, will host an upcoming seminar focused on cyber liability — everything businesses need to know about how to protect themselves, identify exposures, and handle liability and losses.
During this educational session on Wednesday, April 15, presenters from HUB and AIG will provide an overview of how the coverage works, how to identify exposures, trends in the marketplace, policy provisions that should be sought after, and what preventative measures can be taken. Presenters include Shiraz Saeed, AIG cyber product specialist, and Michelle Lopilato, director of Cyber and Technology Solutions at HUB International New England.
The two sessions — 8 to 10 a.m. (complimentary breakfast included) and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. (complimentary lunch included) — will take place at the Basketball Hall of Fame in the MassMutual Room, 1000 West Columbus Ave., Springfield. Limited space remains. To reserve a seat, call Taryn Siciliano at (413) 224-7111.
Photos From the 2015 Difference Makers Gala
Thursday, March 19, 2015 held at the Log Cabin, Holyoke
Sponsored By:
Photos by Denise Smith Photography
To see all the photos go HERE
More than 350 people turned out at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House in Holyoke on March 19 for a celebration of the Difference Makers for 2015. The photos on the next several pages capture the essence of the event, which featured entertainment from the Springfield Boys & Girls Club, as well as fine food and thoughtful comments from the honorees. This year’s class, chosen by the editors and publishers of BusinessWest from dozens of nominations, include Katelynn’s Ride, represented by Domenic Battista, Michelle Battista, Kim Zachery, Dan Williams, Steve Stark, and Corinne Briggs; MassMutual Financial Services, represented by Nick Fyntrilakis; Spirit of Springfield Executive Director Judy Matt; Valley Venture Mentors, represented by Paul Silva, Scott Foster, and Jay Leonard; and the new ownership group of the Student Prince/Fort: Andy Yee, Peter Picknelly, Michael Vann, and Kevin Vann.
From left: John Veit, marketing and recruiting senior associate, Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.; 2015 Difference Maker Paul Silva, executive director, Valley Venture Mentors; and 2013 Difference Makers Sr. Kathleen Popko and Sr. Mary Caritas of the Sisters of Providence.
Ethel Griffin (left), program manager, Revitalize Community Development Corp., with 2014 Difference Maker Colleen Loveless, the organization’s executive director.
From left: BusinessWest Publisher John Gormally; 2013 Difference Maker Jim Vinick, senior vice president of investments, Moors & Cabot Inc.; and Marjorie Koft.
Scott Foster (right), partner at Bulkley Richardson and board member with 2015 Difference Maker Valley Venture Mentors, with his wife, Stephanie Foster, and son, James Foster.
From left: Brenda Olesuk, director of operations and development, Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.; Kathleen Plante, advertising consultant, BusinessWest; Meghan Lynch, CEO and president, Six-Point Creative Works; and 2009 Difference Maker Susan Jaye-Kaplan, founder of GoFIT and co-founder of Link to Libraries.
2015 Difference Maker Andy Yee (right), one of the new owners of the Student Prince/Fort, with his wife, Sarah Yee, and son, Matthew Yee.
Peter Galiardi (left), president and CEO, HAPHousing, with 2011 Difference Maker Bob Perry, retired partner/consultant at Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.
From left: 2015 Difference Maker Peter Picknelly, chairman and CEO of Peter Pan Bus Lines and one of the new owners of the Student Prince/Fort; Paul McDonald; Susan Walsh; and Dennis Walsh, general manager, Sheraton Springfield.
Once again, the honorees received glass plates hand-crafted by Lynn Latimer, representing butterflies, the symbol of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers since the program was launched in 2009.
From left: Maureen Scanlon, owner, Murre Creative; Susan Bergeron-West, owner, Sirius Design; Jean Jinks; Florence DeRose; and 2015 Difference Maker Judy Matt, president, Spirit of Springfield.
Front row, from left: from Health New England, Nicole Santaniello, content management specialist; Brian Kivel, sales executive; Elin Gaynor, assistant general counsel; and Cinnamon Azeez. Back row, from left: also from HNE, Laura Dellapenna, administrative assistant; Heidi Fountain, senior special accounts manager; and Robert Azeez, Medicaid behavioral health manager.
Front row, from left: Robert Zywno, attorney, Royal LLP; Tanzania Cannon-Eckerle, attorney, Royal LLP; and her husband, Joe Eckerle. Back row, from left: Joanne Salus, director of Human Resources, Community Enterprises Inc.; and Karina Schrengohst, attorney, Royal LLP.
Front row, from left: from MassMutual Financial Group, Michelle Sussmann, assistant vice president and chief of staff, Marketing Strategy, Planning, and Operations; Nick Fyntrilakis, vice president, Community Responsibility; Cindy Adams, program manager; and Nicole Fyntrilakis. Back row, from left: also from MassMutual, Tracy Shaw, assistant vice president; John Chandler, chief marketing officer; Mike McNamara, Media Relations and Communications; and Sonja Shaw, relationship manager.
Front row, from left: from Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C., Kaylin Helitzer, associate; Jim Krupienski, senior manager; Kristi Reale, senior manager; and Jim Barrett, managing partner. Back row, from left: also from MBK, John Veit, marketing and recruiting senior associate; Brenda Olesuk, director of operations and development; Melyssa Brown, senior manager; Chris Marini, associate; and Kris Houghton, partner.
Front row, from left: Dennis Murphy, administrative specialist, First American Insurance Agency; Noni Moran, Human Resources director and claims adjustor, First American Insurance Agency; and Molly Murphy. Back row, from left: Moe Brodeur, controller, Peter Pan Bus Co.; Tom Picknally, senior vice president of Maintenance, Peter Pan Bus Co.; David Matosky, operations director, First American Insurance Agency; and Edward Murphy, chairman, First American Insurance Agency.
Front row, from left: from Fathers and Sons, Lori Monroe, business development; Trae Morrison, product specialist; and Bill Visneau, product specialist. Back row, from left: also from Fathers and Sons, Angela Lebel, service advisor; and Steve Langieri, sales manager.
Musical performances by area children are a Difference Makers tradition, and this year was no exception, with a choir from the Springfield Boys & Girls Club kicking off the evening’s ceremonies by singing Mariah Carey’s “Hero” and Katy Perry’s “Roar.”
BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien (center) presents the 2015 Difference Makers award to the new ownership group of the Student Prince/Fort, from left, Andy Yee, Peter Picknelly, Michael Vann, and Kevin Vann.
BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien (third from left) presents the 2015 Difference Makers award to representatives from Katelynn’s Ride, from left, Corinne Briggs, Domenic Battista, Michelle Battista, Kim Zachery, Dan Williams, and Steve Stark.
Front row, from left: Marsha Montori, chief client strategist, Six-Point Creative Works; Marion Griswold, membership coordinator, Connecticut River Watershed Council; and Angela Mrozinski, outreach and events director, Connecticut River Watershed Council. Back row, from left: Melody Foti, senior vice president, Investments, Wells Fargo; and Meghan Lynch, CEO, Six-Point Creative Works.
Representing 2015 Difference Maker Valley Venture Mentors, from left, Jay Leonard, Paul Silva, and Scott Foster.
Steven Schwartz Looks Back at a Lifetime in Law
Steven Schwartz
“Some people, when they’re young, they have a dream of what kind of profession or job they would like to have when they grow up,” he told BusinessWest. If he had forgotten his childhood dreams, he was reminded when his parents were moving and uncovered a paper he had written in the sixth grade at Washington School in Springfield.
“It was a combination of autobiography and future dreams,” Schwartz recalled. “I wrote that I would like to go to Boston University Law School, which I did, and I would like to be a lawyer. When I saw this, I was very surprised because, even while going through law school, I had never expected to become a practicing lawyer, but to be a businessman.
“But,” he quickly added, “I’m so lucky that I decided to practice law, as I’ve had the most wonderful career, and had the pleasure to work with so many fabulous people in this firm, and other law firms, in pursuing my craft.”
Prior to launching the firm that bears his name — Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C. — he and Stephen Shatz were legal-services attorneys working with a neighborhood program. “We were staff members, but in 1969, we decided to set up our own firm. For about two years, we had another experienced lawyer who joined with us. In January 1971, we established our own firm without him.”
Later that decade, Gary Fentin came on board and would eventually find his name on the door as well.
“At the beginning, we were in general practice,” Schwartz said. “When you start a firm, you want to eat, and you are not too selective in the areas you are going to represent — provided that your lack of experience is not a detriment to the people who come to you with problems. Fortunately, we had many friends who were experienced lawyers who we could call on to hold our hand and give us the guidance we needed to ably represent our clients.”
Eventually, however, the firm garnered more business, to the point where the partners began developing the niche work they most enjoyed.
“Steve Shatz was interested in real-estate development and finance and banking law, and I pursued a career as a business lawyer and an estate planner,” he explained. “Fortunately, after about five years, we could focus on these areas and become specialists in our field. Over the years, we’ve added other practice areas in our firm based on later hires and the interest those lawyers had in particular fields.
“Some of the areas we were engaged in over the years have been eliminated because of changes in tax laws,” he added. “But we have been able to attract people to our firm who are interested in the areas we were interested in, and we’ve expanded those practices substantially. We now have a bankruptcy practice, a tax practice, and a regulatory practice in the area of zoning and land use.”
Today, 13 attorneys specialize in a broad range of business-law work for both for-profit and nonprofit entities, including estate planning and elder law; probate and guardianships; real-estate development, permitting, land use, and zoning; telecommunications siting and permitting; affordable-housing development and finance; corporate and business planning; contract preparation and negotiation; business exit planning; bond financing; bankruptcy; litigation; and licensing.
It’s a different legal world than it was 45 years ago, Schwartz said, and not always for the better. But he can look back at that long-ago school assignment with gratification, recognizing that not everyone actually gets to live out their sixth-grade dreams.
Start to Finish
Schwartz, who graduated from Babson College in 1963 and earned his law degree at BU in 1966, concentrates his practice in the areas of family business planning, mergers and acquisitions, corporate law, and estate planning — a range of specialties that involves representing principals in family business planning, including exit planning; representing individuals and corporations in the purchase and sale of business enterprises; strategic planning for the future of clients’ businesses; and providing advice on financing alternatives through loans and venture capital.
It’s a mouthful, but it basically boils down to helping other people reach their goals like he reached his, and there’s satisfaction in that.
“I’ve always been very interested in business, and many of my clients have included me in discussions related to the future of their business — whether to do an acquisition or not, or how to finance the business’s future,” he explained. “This has been extremely rewarding, as I’ve always taken pleasure in the success of my clients. I also learned that I’m better-positioned to be a lawyer than a manager, which takes many skills which I lack.”
Schwartz’s skill at helping business owners steer their ships has been recognized regularly on annual lists of Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers in America lists.
“It turns out, when you represent a family-owned or closely held business, a basic knowledge — and, really, more than a basic knowledge — of estate planning is necessary to represent their interests,” he explained. “Over the past few years, as many of my clients have dealt with the issue of what to do with their business when they get to retirement age, we’ve been very busy — transitioning into issues of transferring the interests of the family business to the next generation, or establishing employee stock-option plans for the business to be transferred to its employees.”
What economists call ‘Great Transfer’ — a handover of about $12 trillion from those born in the 1920s and 1930s to the Baby Boomers — has been going on for some time. But that figure is expected to be dwarfed by an anticipated $30 trillion in assets that the Boomers will transfer to their heirs over the next 30 to 40 years in the U.S. alone.
For that reason, attorneys who work in business planning are doing so at an intriguing, and busy, time in the country’s history. “Transitioning is a hot topic,” he noted, “mostly for people who own businesses.”
And with some of his clients dating back decades, Schwartz, in some ways, has had a hand in the region’s economic development over the years by helping businesses form, grow, and transition.
Love of the Game
As for Schwartz, he has no plans to transition into retirement, although communication — he’s watched landline phones and faxes give way to smartphones, texts, and e-mail — makes it easier these days to conduct business remotely. “That’s given me the opportunity to work from a different place and not retire, and still be effective at my craft.”
What makes him effective, he told BusinessWest, isn’t just knowledge and almost five decades of experience, but also a sincere love for his calling.
When he started practicing, he said, “I always felt that lawyers were interested in making a living, but their love of what they did was more important to them than the financial rewards. Today — as in many fields — the fact that there are so many lawyers means more financial pressures, and that makes the business end of the practice more important.”
Which leads to developments that confound the old-school side of Schwartz, even as his own firm has acquiesced to the times.
“I cannot remember any law firms back then having a marketing staff on board, or hiring outside agencies to service the law firm in that capacity,” he said. “I think a lot of it has to do with technology. In the early days, our new clients would come from referrals from bankers and insurance agents. Today, we get referrals for new clients from media advertising, public relations, public seminars, social media — and still some traditional referral sources.”
He even took a self-deprecating swipe at his own attire, which today involved a turtleneck and sport jacket. “That’s one substantial change,” he said. “I would never come to the office without a jacket or tie. That wouldn’t have been the case in the ’60s.”
Plenty has changed since then, of course, and many companies Schwartz helped off the ground in those early days have closed or transitioned to new owners — or, in many cases, are still growing, still contributing to business life in the Pioneer Valley.
“A lot of my clients are older,” he said, “and at some point, I’ll be dealing with their estates, which is necessary but very sad for me. I have clients in their 90s still working.”
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
Mercy Announces $1 Million Gift for Cancer Center Campaign
SPRINGFIELD — Mercy Medical Center announced that Cynthia and William Lyons have made a $1 million challenge gift to Transforming Cancer Care – the Capital Campaign for the Sister Caritas Cancer Center. The Lyons’ gift will support the 26,000-square-foot expansion of the Cancer Center and is particularly significant because it reflects the largest single gift for the Capital Campaign from members of the community. “We have been inspired by the high level of care and compassion that runs throughout the Sisters of Providence Health System,” said Cynthia Lyons. “The work being done at the Sister Caritas Cancer Center is especially exciting.” Added Daniel Moen, president and CEO of the Sisters of Providence Health System, “The tremendous support we have received from Cynthia and William Lyons is indicative of the importance and necessity of the services provided by the Sister Caritas Cancer Center. We are grateful for their generosity on behalf of the patients who will benefit from the expansion project.” Under the leadership of Dr. Philip Glynn, director of Oncology, the Sister Caritas Cancer Center staff has expanded significantly to meet patient need that continues to increase. By 2022, demand for outpatient cancer services is expected to grow by 26%. In addition to increasing treatment space, the $15 million expansion will bolster the cancer center’s already strong capabilities by enhancing communication among the oncology providers and facilitating ease of access to existing services. The design of new infusion bays will increase privacy for patients, as well as for a supporting family member or friend. “We are so impressed with the new leadership and forward thinking of Mercy Medical Center and its oncology center,” Lyons said. “The commitment and vision of the physicians directly involved with the growth of the cancer center speaks to the investment of the hospital community. The new plan unites state-of-the-art treatment, research, and clinical-trial opportunities with Mercy’s trademark mission-driven qualities of compassion and respect for the individual. “This expansion is important because, directly or indirectly, cancer touches all of us,” she continued. “People really do want to be part of something that is successful and meaningful. We sincerely hope our gift inspires others in our community to give as well.” To make a gift to Transforming Cancer Care – the Capital Campaign for the Sister Caritas Cancer Center, call (413) 748-9920 or visit www.mercycares.com.
Normandeau Receives Partner of the Year Award
WEST SPRINGFIELD — Normandeau Technologies (NTI) announced it has been awarded the 2014 Ericsson-LG Enterprise North American Partner of the Year Award at the Ericsson-LG Global Partner Conference held in Cancun, Mexico. The award celebrates the excellence Normandeau Technologies has achieved in helping to build the North American distribution channel for the iPECS communications platform and for its success in bringing IP telephony, unified communications, mobility, and call-center solutions to SMBs in industries such as manufacturing, insurance, realty, medical, education, government, and financial. Bob Rankin, general manager of Presence Management, the largest distributor of Ericsson-LG iPECS products in North America, noted, “NTI continues to expand sales of our award-winning iPECS LIK VoIP platform with the iPECS Unified Communications Solution (iPECS UCS) and iPECS Contact Center Suite Solution (iPECS CCS). We recognize and appreciate the continuous hard work NTI performs in their region, and we applaud their continued success with iPECS.” Successfully marketed worldwide with a dominant market share in South Korea, Australia, and South Africa, and significant market share in many other countries, the iPECS is a highly scalable and fault-tolerant platform that connects up to 1,200 endpoints per system and up to 300,000 endpoints with networking. It’s a versatile, premise-based IP phone platform with a competitive entry cost, five-year warranty, and one of the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership (TCO). The Ericsson-LG UCS is a collaboration platform for organizations of virtually any size that integrates voice, presence, video conferencing, and instant messaging on the IPECS platform. The Ericsson-LG CCS is a multi-channel call-center solution providing intelligent management of multiple communication mediums. “We’re honored to receive this recognition for our sales success with the Ericsson LG line of advanced communication applications in the Massachusetts area and for our success in bringing these new technologies to our clients,” said Brett Normandeau, president of NTI. “Solutions like the iPECS UCS and iPECS CCS offer a tightly integrated, next-generation communications environment for telecom resellers at a very compelling price point.”
Braman Termite and Pest Elimination Earns Award
AGAWAM — Braman Termite and Pest Elimination, a provider of pest-management services in Southern New England since 1890, has earned the service industry’s coveted Angie’s List Super Service Award, reflecting an exemplary year of service provided to the local marketplace, according to the consumer-review site in 2014. “We are honored at Braman Termite and Pest Elimination to have once again earned the Angie’s List Super Service Award, especially this year as we celebrate 125 years in business,” said Jerry Lazarus, third-generation owner. “I am confident that we provide a superior level of customer service that our customers have come to expect. This service is the result of our entire staff, but also under the leadership of several dedicated members that have been with Braman for decades.” Only about 5% of the companies in the Greater Springfield market have performed consistently well enough to earn the Super Service Award, said Angie’s List founder Angie Hicks. Service-company ratings are updated daily. Companies are graded in areas ranging from price to professionalism to punctuality. Angie’s List Super Service Award winners have met strict eligibility requirements, which include an ‘A’ rating in overall grade, recent grade, and review-period grade. The company must be in good standing with Angie’s List, pass a background check, and abide by Angie’s List operational guidelines.
BHS Partners with Ob/Gyn Practices
PITTSFIELD — In a move that will help to ensure long-term obstetric and gynecologic services throughout the region, Berkshire Health Systems (BHS) has announced that three key ob/gyn physician practices have joined together and formed Berkshire Ob/Gyn of BMC, which solidifies and stabilizes critical women’s health services for the community. The three practices joining under the Berkshire Health Systems Physician Practice Group are Berkshire Ob/Gyn Associates, located in Pittsfield and Lenox, and Northern Berkshire Ob/Gyn and Gyn Services of the Berkshires, located in Adams. This investment in ob/gyn stabilizes these essential physician services and supports consistent and reliable access to care. The partnership was partially precipitated by the 2014 closure of the former North Adams Regional Hospital (NARH) and the community need to provide ongoing maternal-child healthcare for residents of North Berkshire. A former NARH physician practice, Northern Berkshire Ob/Gyn was able to continue to provide care without interruption of service when Berkshire Health Systems assumed responsibility for the practice, and Berkshire Ob/Gyn provided coverage for the North Berkshire physicians and their patients. Growing changes in healthcare policy and in the health insurance reimbursement system have challenged the viability of private physician practices, which was a major factor in prompting Berkshire Ob/GYn to join together with the two BHS practices to form one unified service under BHS. At the same time, healthcare systems like BHS are increasingly relied upon to ensure current and future access to critical services for the community by investing in physician practices and ensuring they have the necessary support systems and financial stability and investment to succeed in the long term. Working together, the physicians of Berkshire Ob/Gyn of BMC can provide 24/7 coverage for maternity and routine, surgical, and emergency gynecological care throughout the region. Berkshire Ob/Gyn of BMC includes Drs. Andrew Beckwith, Daniel Barraez-Masroua, Robert Benner, Herbert Kantor, Joan Lister, Charles O’Neill, Cassandra Service, Michael Shreefter, Lauren Slater, and Susan Yates. In addition, the practice features the expertise of three certified nurse midwives: Robin Rivinus, Lydia Kelly, and Evelyn Resh. The practice will continue to provide services throughout Central and Northern Berkshire County, with offices in Pittsfield, Lenox, and Adams. O’Neill and Yates will primarily work out of the Adams office, but will also provide services in Central Berkshire County. Lister will provide urgent-care gynecological services. “The strength of this combined physician practice will allow us to continue to provide comprehensive ob/gyn and women’s-health services for all who need this care in the Berkshires,” Beckwith said. “Healthcare has become increasingly complex, and private physician practices are faced with significant challenges that threaten their long-term viability. By becoming part of Berkshire Health Systems, we have preserved these practices, and, as one unified provider, we can assure access to our patients to the best physician and healthcare services possible.”
<strong>Loomis House Nursing Center Earns Top Scores
HOLYOKE — The Loomis Communities announced that the Loomis House Nursing Center has received perfect scores on surveys from the Mass. Department of Public Health (DPH) for the third year running. The DPH reviews all areas of care practices to make certain that all regulations are followed. These areas include resident rights, facility practices, infection control, quality of life, resident satisfaction, quality of care delivered, culinary services, all nursing and ancillary services, rehabilitation, physical environment, and administration. In addition, a second life-safety survey reviews the physical plant issues that make a safe living and working environment. “Deficiency-free surveys are a top indicator of excellence in nursing homes,” said David Scruggs, president and CEO of the Loomis Communities. “We are extremely proud of the dedicated staff at the Loomis House Nursing Center.” Loomis House Nursing Center was the first nursing home in Massachusetts to receive certification as a leader in providing person-centered care, a concept that adapts the way care is delivered to accommodate each resident’s preferences. “This holistic approach to successful aging and self-determination honors and respects the individual,” Scruggs said. The certification comes from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities International, an independent, nonprofit accreditor of health and human-services organizations. The Loomis Communities offers independent-living apartments and cottages, assisted living, and skilled nursing care at Applewood in Amherst, Loomis House in Holyoke, Loomis Lakeside at Reeds Landing in Springfield, and Loomis Village in South Hadley.
John Howland
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Monson Savings Bank recently announced the election of five new corporators who are advisors to the bank, representing the communities the bank serves. They also possess certain governing functions, including the election of the bank’s president. Monson Savings has 55 corporators, including the five elected at the bank’s annual meeting on March 4:
• Louis Abbate, president emeritus, Willie Ross School for the Deaf, Longmeadow;
• Mark Borsari, president, Sanderson MacLeod, Palmer;
• Joseph Lawler, benefits consultant, the Gaudreau Group, Wilbraham;
• Roy St. George, vice president, Moulton Insurance Agency Inc., Ware; and
• Julie Quink, managing principal, Burkhart, Pizzanelli, P.C., West Springfield.
“We’re extremely fortunate to have these folks join our team,” said Steve Lowell, president of Monson Savings Bank. “We rely on our corporators to keep us in touch with the needs of our communities, provide invaluable insight into our operations, and also to help us spread the word of all that we have to offer. Our corporators are leaders in the communities we serve, they are highly engaged with us, and we very much appreciate their involvement.”
•••••
David Griffin Jr.
•••••
Samantha Coulter
•••••
Jack Ferriter
•••••
Keith Tatlock of New England Financial Group, an office of MetLife and a part of the MetLife Premier Client Group, has been authorized by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. to use the certification marks ‘CFP’ and ‘certified financial planner practitioner’ in accordance with CFP Board certification and renewal requirements. Tatlock met the rigorous experience and ethical requirements, completed financial-planning coursework, and passed the CFP certification examination. He has also agreed to meet ongoing continuing-education requirements and to uphold the CFP Board’s Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility and Financial Planning Practice Standards. Tatlock has 10 years of experience in the financial-services sector. He is a graduate of Westfield State University and holds securities series 7 and series 63 as well as life- and health-insurance licenses. He is a member of the Estate Planning Council of Hampden County, the Financial Planning Assoc. of Massachusetts, and Business Networking International. He is also currently a major in the Massachusetts Air National Guard at the 104th Fighter Wing in Westfield.
AFFILIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• April 8: ACCGS Lunch ‘n’ Learn, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at La Quinta Inn and Suites, 100 Congress St., Springfield. “When Creative Meets Data.” Learn the ‘where’ and ‘how’ to harness the power of real one-to-one personalized marketing. Presented by Mary McCarthy of Andrews Associates. Reservations are $25 for members, $35 for general admission. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• April 16: East of the River Five Town Chamber Member Appreciation Night, 5-7 p.m., at Europa Black Rock Bar & Grill, 782 Center St., Ludlow. Enjoy networking, games of chance, and more. Reservations are $5 for members, and may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com. East of the River Five Town Chamber is an affiliate of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield.
• April 29: ACCGS Beacon Hill Summit 2015, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. at the Massachusetts State House. Hosted by state Sen. James Welch. Day-long opportunity to meet with members of the Baker-Polito administration and the Massachusetts delegation. Reservations are $180 per person, including continental breakfast, transportation, lunch, reception, and all summit materials. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
GREATER CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101
• April 15: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Summit View Banquet & Meeting House. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• April 16: Mornings with the Mayor, 8-9 a.m., at the Boys & Girls Club, 580 Meadow St., Chicopee. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• April 17: Lunch & Learn, 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Hampton Inn, 600 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. Attorney Kate O’Brien from Sullivan, Hayes & Quinn will present “No Union, No Worries? No Way!” This is an informative program about what almost all private-sector, non-union employers need to do to avoid being a target of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• April 22: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at La Quinta Inn & Suites, 100 Congress St., Springfield. For more information, call the chamber at (413) 594-2101.
• May 15: Lunch & Learn, 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Hampton Inn, 600 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. “ACA Compliance: Employer Requirements and Management Tools.” Learn about a solid, user-friendly road map for understanding compliance issues. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• May 20: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., Renaissance Manor on Cabot, 279 Cabot St., Holyoke. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• May 21: Greater Chicopee Chamber Golf Tournament, 10 a.m., at Chicopee Country Club. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• May 27: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at Elms College, 291 Springfield St., Chicopee. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414
• April 13: Monday Morning with the Mayor: Getting Down to Business about Business. Casual conversation with Mayor Karen Cadieux, 8-9 a.m., at Burger King, 113 Northampton St., Easthampton. Free and open to the public.
• May 11: Monday Morning with the Mayor: Getting down to Business about Business. Casual conversation with Mayor Karen Cadieux, 8-9 a.m., at Easthampton Savings Bank, 36 Main St., Easthampton. Free and open to the public.
GREATER HOLYOKE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376
• May 15: Chamber After Hours at Pic’s Place, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored and Hosted by Pic’s Place, 910 Hampden St., Holyoke. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for the public. Call the chamber at (413) 534-3376 or sign up online at holyokechamber.com.
• May 18: Annual Chamber Cup 2015 Golf Tournament, celebrating the chamber’s 125th anniversary, 10:30 a.m. at Wyckoff Country Club, 233 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Registration and lunch at 10:30 a.m.; tee off at noon (scramble format); dinner following game with elaborate food stations catered by the Log Cabin. Cost: $125 per player includes lunch, 18 holes of golf, cart, and dinner. Dinner only: $25. Awards, raffles, and cash prizes follow dinner. Tournament sponsors: Log Cabin and PeoplesBank. Corporate sponsors: Dowd Insurance, Goss & McLain Insurance Agency, Holyoke Gas & Electric, Mountain View Landscapes, Holyoke Medical Center, People’s United Bank, the Republican, and Resnic, Beauregard, Waite & Driscoll. For reservations, call the Chamber Office at (413) 534-3376 or register online at holyokechamber.com.
• May 21: Chamber Business Connections, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored and hosted by PeoplesBank, in the atrium in the PeoplesBank Building at 330 Whitney Ave. Cost is $10 for chamber members, $15 for non-members. Join your friends and colleagues for this fun and casual evening of networking. Refreshments, door prizes, and 50/50 raffle.
• June 19: Save the date for the chamber’s 125th Anniversary Gala Ball at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Cocktails at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. Enjoy an elegant meal and dance to the music of the Floyd Patterson Band. Join Marcotte Ford as one of the major event sponsors by calling (413) 534-3376. Event is open to the public. More details to follow.
GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900
• May 6: May Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m. at Whalen Insurance Agency. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 584-1900
• July 1: July Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored by Pioneer Landscapes and Easthampton Electrical. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 584-1900.
GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
• April 8: April After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., at Vantage Sports & Rehab, 130 Southampton Road, Westfield. Refreshments will be served. Bring your business cards and make connections. Tickets are $10 for members, $15 cash for non-members. To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618.
• April 28: Southwick Home to Business Show, at Tucker’s Restaurant. For more information, contact Pam at the Chamber office at (413) 568-1618.
• May 4: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Renaissance Manor, 37 Feeding Hills Road, Westfield. This event is free and open to the public. Call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618 to register, so we may give our host a head count.
• May 13: May After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., at Armbrook Village, 551 North Road, Westfield. Refreshments will be served. Bring your business cards and make connections. Tickets are $10 for members, $15 cash for non-members. To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618.
• May 18: Annual golf tournament at 10 a.m. at Tekoa Country Club. More details to come.
PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CHAMBER
www.professionalwomenschamber.com
(413) 755-1310
• April 14: Professional Women’s Chamber Ladies Night, 5-7 p.m., at Hofbrauhaus, 1105 Main St., West Springfield. Enjoy complimentary wine and refreshments.
Reservations are complimentary but required. To reserve a spot, contact Gwen Burke at (413) 237-8840 or [email protected].
WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
(413) 426-3880
• April 16: Networking Lunch, noon to 1:30 p.m., at Cal’s, 1068 Riverdale Road, West Springfield. Enjoy a sit-down lunch while networking with fellow chamber members. Each attendee will get a chance to offer a brief sales pitch. The only cost to attend is the cost of lunch. Attendees will order off the menu and pay separately the day of the event. Please note, we cannot invoice you for these events. Attendees must be members or guests of members.
For more information, contact the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
HOLYOKE — The Dowd Insurance Agencies, a leading insurance provider serving New England for more than 115 years, announced that Nadine West has joined the organization as a commercial-lines account manager.
“We are very excited to have Nadine join our team of insurance professionals,” said John Dowd Jr., president and CEO of the Dowd Insurance Agencies. “She has a great deal of industry experience and brings a lot of enthusiasm for customer service.”
West has been specializing in property and casualty insurance since 1998. She is a licensed property and casualty producer and holds the Certified Insurance Service Representative designation. Prior to joining Dowd, West was employed by Borawski Insurance of Northampton.
As a commercial-lines account manager, West will manage a roster of insurance clients at Dowd’s Holyoke office and support producers with business-development initiatives. She has a strong focus on customer service and is dedicated to continuing education opportunities as the industry advances.
“I consistently challenge myself to stay on top of industry trends and learn all I can about my competitors and carriers to strengthen my industry relationships,” said West. “I have extensive training in sales, management, and customer service, and I look forward to applying these skills for the benefit of our customers at the Dowd Insurance Agencies.”
WEST SPRINGFIELD — Normandeau Technologies (NTI) announced it has been awarded the 2014 Ericsson-LG Enterprise North American Partner of the Year Award at the Ericsson-LG Global Partner Conference held in Cancun, Mexico.
The award celebrates the excellence Normandeau Technologies has achieved in helping to build the North American distribution channel for the iPECS communications platform and for its success in bringing IP telephony, unified communications, mobility, and call-center solutions to SMBs in industries such as manufacturing, insurance, realty, medical, education, government, and financial.
Bob Rankin, general manager of Presence Management, the largest distributor of Ericsson-LG iPECS products in North America, noted, “NTI continues to expand sales of our award-winning iPECS LIK VoIP platform with the iPECS Unified Communications Solution (iPECS UCS) and iPECS Contact Center Suite Solution (iPECS CCS). We recognize and appreciate the continuous hard work NTI performs in their region, and we applaud their continued success with iPECS.”
Successfully marketed worldwide with a dominant market share in South Korea, Australia, and South Africa, and significant market share in many other countries, the iPECS is a highly scalable and fault-tolerant platform that connects up to 1,200 endpoints per system and up to 300,000 endpoints with networking. It’s a versatile, premise-based IP phone platform with a competitive entry cost, five-year warranty, and one of the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).
The Ericsson-LG UCS is a collaboration platform for organizations of virtually any size that integrates voice, presence, video conferencing, and instant messaging on the IPECS platform. The Ericsson-LG CCS is a multi-channel call-center solution providing intelligent management of multiple communication mediums.
“We’re honored to receive this recognition for our sales success with the Ericsson LG line of advanced communication applications in the Massachusetts area and for our success in bringing these new technologies to our clients,” said Brett Normandeau, president of NTI. “Solutions like the iPECS UCS and iPECS CCS offer a tightly integrated, next-generation communications environment for telecom resellers at a very compelling price point.”
PITTSFIELD — In a move that will help to ensure long-term obstetric and gynecologic services throughout the region, Berkshire Health Systems (BHS) has announced that three key ob/gyn physician practices have joined together and formed Berkshire Ob/Gyn of BMC, which solidifies and stabilizes critical women’s health services for the community.
The three practices joining under the Berkshire Health Systems Physician Practice Group are Berkshire Ob/Gyn Associates, located in Pittsfield and Lenox, and Northern Berkshire Ob/Gyn and Gyn Services of the Berkshires, located in Adams. This investment in ob/gyn stabilizes these essential physician services and supports consistent and reliable access to care.
The partnership was partially precipitated by the 2014 closure of the former North Adams Regional Hospital (NARH) and the community need to provide ongoing maternal-child healthcare for residents of North Berkshire. A former NARH physician practice, Northern Berkshire Ob/Gyn was able to continue to provide care without interruption of service when Berkshire Health Systems assumed responsibility for the practice, and Berkshire Ob/Gyn provided coverage for the North Berkshire physicians and their patients.
Growing changes in healthcare policy and in the health insurance reimbursement system have challenged the viability of private physician practices, which was a major factor in prompting Berkshire Ob/GYn to join together with the two BHS practices to form one unified service under BHS. At the same time, healthcare systems like BHS are increasingly relied upon to ensure current and future access to critical services for the community by investing in physician practices and ensuring they have the necessary support systems and financial stability and investment to succeed in the long term.
Working together, the physicians of Berkshire Ob/Gyn of BMC can provide 24/7 coverage for maternity and routine, surgical, and emergency gynecological care throughout the region.
Berkshire Ob/Gyn of BMC includes Drs. Andrew Beckwith, Daniel Barraez-Masroua, Robert Benner, Herbert Kantor, Joan Lister, Charles O’Neill, Cassandra Service, Michael Shreefter, Lauren Slater, and Susan Yates. In addition, the practice features the expertise of three certified nurse midwives: Robin Rivinus, Lydia Kelly, and Evelyn Resh. The practice will continue to provide services throughout Central and Northern Berkshire County, with offices in Pittsfield, Lenox, and Adams. O’Neill and Yates will primarily work out of the Adams office, but will also provide services in Central Berkshire County. Lister will provide urgent-care gynecological services.
“The strength of this combined physician practice will allow us to continue to provide comprehensive ob/gyn and women’s-health services for all who need this care in the Berkshires,” Beckwith said. “Healthcare has become increasingly complex, and private physician practices are faced with significant challenges that threaten their long-term viability. By becoming part of Berkshire Health Systems, we have preserved these practices, and, as one unified provider, we can assure access to our patients to the best physician and healthcare services possible.”
Added David Phelps, president and CEO of Berkshire Health Systems, “with the precarious state of the health-insurance reimbursement system, BHS has taken on an increasing role in helping to stabilize physician practices in order to guarantee continued access to these essential services, and that they are able to care for our community’s healthcare needs now and in the future. The integration of these three practices into one comprehensive service will provide the foundation for that continued access to high-quality care for the women of the Berkshires.”
Berkshire Ob/Gyn of BMC is accepting new patients and can be reached in Pittsfield at (413) 499-8570 or in Adams at (413) 664-4343.
MassMutual Partners with Smith, Mount Holyoke to Advance Data Science
Gareth Ross says a pipeline of data scientists, or people who possess skills related to the emerging field, is critical to the future of every company. But he also knows it’s difficult to find, attract, and retain qualified job candidates.
“It’s a very, very specialized area. The analytics involved are very complex and require a doctorate in statistics, computer science, or both,” said Ross, MassMutual’s senior vice president of Data Analytics and Target Markets.
Indeed, studies show there are not enough qualified individuals to analyze, interpret, explain, and make use of the enormous amounts of data spawned by modern technology, which range from the online behavior of Facebook users to outcomes of medical procedures, to the purchasing habits of shoppers. The information has merit because it can be used to increase sales, save money, and anticipate the products and services that consumers need, want, and are likely to buy.
“About two years ago, MassMutual hired four data scientists from Boston to determine whether they would be useful,” said Ross. “And within six months, it became absolutely clear just how valuable they were.”
However, when the company began to seek more people proficient in the field, it quickly became evident that it was extremely difficult to compete with Internet giants such as Google that were scooping them up and paying them six-figure salaries. After thinking about the problem, MassMutual officials realized that the machine learning, statistics, and computer science programs at UMass are among the top 10 in the nation, and the Five Colleges are renowned for their education, so they made the decision to resolve the quandary by hiring seven graduates with bachelor’s degrees related to data science and put them in a special training program.
“We told them, if they came to work for us, we would pay them to become data scientists over a period of three years,” Ross told BusinessWest. “It is a different path than students would normally take to get a master’s or doctorate degree, but we are sending them to classes and supplementing their skills with projects here. They are incredibly bright, and we have paired them with our data scientists and built an office for them in Amherst.”
The program is so innovative that it has attracted national attention, and students from as far away as California have expressed interest in it. However, Ross said the female graduates from Mount Holyoke and Smith have done exceptionally well, and since the data science field is male-dominated, MassMutual decided to form a partnership with the two women’s colleges and create a pilot program that will begin in the fall to help more women become versed in statistics and other data-science-related disciplines.
To that end, the company has allocated $2 million that will be given to the colleges over a four-year period. It will be used to pay for five new, non-tenure track positions and will also help support the development of classes associated with data science. Smith will get two new professors, and Mount Holyoke will hire three, but students can take classes from any of them as part of the five-college exchange program.
“We believe strongly in promoting women in science and engineering. There are not enough of them in these fields, and this program will increase the pipeline of students available to us and give us a way to tap into the talent at these two schools, which are among the best in the country,” Ross said, adding that the new professors will also provide week-long training modules during the summer for students already in the MassMutual program, which include a second group hired several weeks ago.
From left, Martha Hootes, Sonya Stephens, and Amber Douglas say 23 faculty members at Mount Holyoke College have been working to create a program that will allow more students to gain knowledge in data science.
“There is an enormous push to enhance profits with computer-generated recommendations,” Ross told BusinessWest, noting that their data scientists assign scores to the leads the company purchases, with the goal of determining who is most likely to buy life insurance, an annuity, a 401(k) product, or a long-term-care or disability policy. “We hope to build models that will predict what the customer will need next, and data gives us an efficient way to know our customers deeply in the same way that Google does.”
Numbers Game
These goals are in line with demand across the nation for data-science specialists. In fact, a recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute reveals that the U.S. needs to increase the number of graduates with skills to handle large amounts of data by as much as 60%, and predicts there will be close to 500,000 new jobs associated with the field in the next five years and a shortage of up to 190,000 qualified data scientists, along with a need for 1.5 million executives and support staff with an understanding of data.
The report adds that the use of big data will become a key basis for business growth, and companies will begin leveraging data-driven strategies to innovate and compete as they capture real-time information.
Those numbers — and those sentiments — underscore the importance of MassMutual’s initiative with the two women’s colleges.
Ben Baumer, a visiting assistant professor and director of the program of Statistical and Data Sciences at Smith College, is enthusiastic about the initiative.
“It’s a huge win for us because our goals are perfectly aligned,” he said. “Five years ago, we weren’t talking about this, but today virtually every industry or company is probably collecting data about something or believe it will be useful to them.
“But the problem they face is finding someone to analyze it,” he went on. “They must be rooted in statistics, be a good programmer, and be able to link data of different styles and sizes. Just creating an informative graphic can be enough to make a difference if it can be easily digested.”
He explained that the term ‘big data’ refers to the problems people have when the volume of data they have is too large to manage, and that, unlike information collected in a clinical medical trial, almost all of it is observational and obtained from places ranging from cash registers to web server logs.
Students are recognizing the importance of the subject, however, and Smith College has created a minor in applied statistics that is overseen by its department of Statistical and Data Sciences. “Enrollment in statistics and data-science classes has doubled over the last decade,” said Baumer. “It’s a national trend, and although the tech industry is a male-dominated field, we have an opportunity to change that. It’s the right time to do it, and the job market is exceptionally strong.”
Charles Staelin agreed, and said data scientists must be well-versed in math and statistics as well as computer science.
Gareth Ross says MassMutual wants to create a pipeline of female college graduates well-versed in the field of data science.
Smith had already begun to focus on adding courses before MassMutual approached the institution, but funding that will pay professors’ salaries will make a significant difference. “It will help us to get this off the ground more quickly than we could have otherwise,” Staelin said.
Amber Douglas, associate professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College, said the school is vested in the same goal, and the merger between statistics and computer science is helpful to professors as well as students.
“We have 23 faculty members from different backgrounds who have been collaborating to develop a curriculum across a variety of disciplines, and as we speak, data is being analyzed across genres in different time periods,” she said. “So, even if students aren’t going into data science, they need to take an introductory course in the subject so they can take part in conversations and consider the ethical implications of using it in the workplace.”
She noted that Mount Holyoke had been moving in a parallel direction with MassMutual before they collaborated to pilot the program. “Data science is the fastest-growing industry, and although some larger universities have undergraduate programs, they tend to be focused without the breadth that only liberal-arts colleges can bring to it,” she said.
Mount Holyoke hopes to create a minor and standalone major in data science, and has two pending proposals to establish internships through its Nexus Curriculum to Career Program.
Sonya Stephens, Mount Holyoke’s vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of faculty, agrees that learning about data science at a liberal-arts college yields myriad benefits.
“One of the things we do well is create flexible thinkers who can work collaboratively. That’s important, as data science involves a lot of collaboration because statistics, economics, computer-science skills, and communication skills are involved,” she said.
“We want to increase the number of women prepared to use this science, as everything we do is data-driven due to the increasing amounts of information becoming available,” Stephens added. “It is a critical skill in almost every domain and is about collaboration, creativity, and analytic ability.”
She added that the college has been extraordinarily successful in producing women scientists in a variety of fields.
“We’re thrilled to be working with MassMutual, because we have a similar agenda,” Stephens noted. “We want to advance understanding of the field and empower faculty to do their best with it, and we see this as an opportunity to work with not only a local firm, but one that has a national presence that will further our goals.”
Bright Futures
Since colleges and universities can’t turn out data scientists fast enough, creating a local pipeline of women in the field is a sure pathway to success.
Ross says MassMutual will use graduates to create ways to inspire people to purchase insurance products they need.
“Everyone wants to retire, be secure, and make good financial decisions, but 50% of Americans are underinsured, and 30% have no retirement. So, data science will help us to know our customers well enough to custom-tailor recommendations for them,” he said. “We want to drive people to take action, and having access to incredible pools of talent will help us make real progress. Our focus is to get the best scientists we can working for us.”
As the two women’s colleges and UMass continue to move forward on a parallel track with MassMutual, the hope is that graduates in this emerging field will help not only the financial services giant, but all companies in Western Mass. thrive in a world increasingly driven by technology.
Businesses Help Link to Libraries Carry Out Its Critical Mission
Susan Jaye-Kaplan says the Business Book Link Project is about far more than monetary donations.
Their success has been laudatory, and since that time, more than 225,000 new books in seven languages have been distributed to students in preschool through grade 7 through schools and nonprofit organizations. But it would not have been possible without help from local businesses, whose generous contributions of time and money have made a significant difference in the lives of local children.
To that end, Link to Libraries launched its Business Book Link project in September 2013 to raise awareness about the program, and 51 companies signed up and agreed to two requirements: to perform some sort of volunteer service at the school they adopt and make a donation of $1,200 a year for three consecutive years, with the guarantee that the school or group will receive 250 to 400 books each year to give away or put in their library.
“It’s important to build home libraries because 60% of the children we serve have never owned a book,” Jaye-Kaplan told BusinessWest, adding that more than 85% of the children in schools Link to Libraries works with qualify for free lunch.
Businesses that join the program visit the school they adopt, where they meet the principal, are taken on a tour of the building, and receive a plaque as well as a wish list of intangible and tangible things the school needs but cannot afford.
However, Jaye-Kaplan said they are not mandated to provide anything on the list. Instead, they talk with the principal and figure out what they can do to help that is mutually agreeable, which can be as simple as sending someone to read a book to a classroom.
Jaye-Kaplan said a business with six employees decided to knit hats, mittens, and scarves for children who needed them, while others have taken students on tours of their workplaces or purchased a computer, TV, or picnic tables for a school’s playground.
But the most critical component of the program is the relationships that are forged. “This program is about far more than making a monetary donation,” said Jaye-Kaplan, explaining that, when a business professional takes time to interact with children in a way that promotes literacy, it encourages them to read and lets them see that people in the community care about their future.
Crimmins says the experience is rewarding for volunteers.
“It’s easy for our community business partners to get hooked when they realize the program is an opportunity to put their resources to work by offering children exposure to their world,” she said. “Whether they send an employee to a school to provide computer tutoring or take students on a field trip, the activity ignites the children’s natural curiosity. And once their interest is sparked, they are encouraged to read a book about the topic.”
Unexpected Benefits
David Kalicka told BusinessWest that being involved with Link to Libraries, which provided 70,000 new books and 3,000 gently used tomes to children in fiscal year 2014 alone, is a gratifying experience. He’s a partner at Meyers Brothers Kalicka, CPA, and his wife is a guidance counselor at Sullivan Elementary School in Holyoke, which the firm adopted.
“I have a deep connection to Holyoke schools; I graduated from Holyoke High and believe literacy is critical to children and businesses have an obligation to give back to the community,” he said. “Although this is not the only organization we are involved with, it’s very rewarding to see the excitement on the children’s faces when I visit the school, read to them, and give them books to take home.”
Bill Trudeau concurs, and said that when he made the decision to have the Insurance Center of New England join the Business Book Link project, he had no idea his wife and children would become involved and that he would find the program so rewarding, he would convince another business to sign up and adopt a school.
But that’s exactly what happened.
“Reading is so important, and it’s easy to see the results of this program. It strengthens the Pioneer Valley in many different ways,” Trudeau said as he spoke about children at the Martin Luther King Charter School of Excellence in Springfield, which his firm adopted.
But despite the altruism of many local businesses, Link to Libraries still has 28 schools on its waiting list, and the need for help continues to grow.
“Getting sponsors is a big challenge for us, so we are thrilled when a business wants to visit our site and learn about our grassroots organization,” Jaye-Kaplan said, adding that making a large financial donation is unnecessary. “Having heart and soul and a commitment to the community is what is important.”
She noted that 90 cents of every dollar donated is used to purchase books, and the $1,200 businesses donate to the program annually does not cover the cost of the tomes the school they adopt receives.
Grants and private donations make up the difference, and she has forged strong relationships with publishers who provide discounted pricing, and with educators who provide lists of books appropriate for different age groups.
“We also work very closely with the Irene and George Davis Foundation, as they are the leaders in education in Western Mass.,” she continued.
Limitless Possibilities
Link to Libraries has a Read Aloud Program for elementary-school students, one for homeless children, and another that provides every kindergartner in Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke with a welcome bag containing a bookmark, books, and educational materials from the Davis Foundation and Big Y.
“The children we serve today are the leaders, parents, and employees of the future,” Jaye-Kaplan said. “Books are food for the brain, and the Business Book Link project allows local companies to give children a gift that is truly meaningful.”
Businesses or individuals who want to learn more about the Link to Libraries Business Book Link program are invited to call (413) 224-1031 or e-mail [email protected].
Shakeout from Casino Project Stabilizes Downtown Market
Attorney Gerald Berg in his new office at 130 Main St. in Springfield. In the background is 95 State St., his former business address.
It was from MGM Springfield, and it essentially informed him that he had to vacate his offices at 95 State St. in Springfield, inside the footprint of the planned $800 million casino complex, within 30 days.
He was expecting such a missive — as well as that time frame — and basically knew he would have to find new quarters once the election returns started coming in last Nov. 4 and it became clear that voters would reject a referendum question that would have effectively ended the casino era before it really got started.
So Berg, who specializes in real-estate and domestic-relations law, started looking for a new mailing address within days of the election. He briefly considered leaving downtown Springfield after spending nearly four decades in a succession of offices at 95 and 101 State St., but eventually concluded that he still wanted to be within walking distance of the various courts and the Hampden County Registry of Deeds just down the street.
What’s more, he feared that casino construction and pending repair work on the I-91 viaduct would make parking in the vicinity of the court complex a nightmare, so he passed on the suburbs.
He looked at several locations in the central business district, experienced some mild (but, again, certainly expected) sticker shock as he looked at certain properties, especially the Class A buildings, and eventually settled on 990 square feet in 1350 Main St., a.k.a. One Financial Plaza.
“It’s a nice spot,” he told BusinessWest. “It’s good space, I’m on the 11th floor, we have a nice view, we face southeast, so we get the sun … things worked out well.”
With those comments, Berg is truly representative of what has transpired since the election and during the great commercial-real-estate shakeout prompted by MGM’s pending transformation of Springfield’s South End. The shuffle isn’t officially over yet, but most of the dust — at least the immediate fallout from MGM’s property acquistions —has settled.
And while this wasn’t exactly a seismic event, it has had a definite impact on the downtown market, in terms of filling some long-vacant space and bringing a dose of stability to rates when, by most all accounts, some was needed.
“There’s still a good amount of office space left in downtown Springfield,” said Doug Macmillan, president of Macmillan & Son Inc. “But this has done a lot to stabilize rents; it’s put something solid under lease rates that had been vacillating and floating up and down for years.”
Evan Plotkin, a principal with NAI Plotkin and co-owner of 1350 Main St., agreed, and said MGM’s movement into the South End and the forced relocation of several commercial tenants helped improve an occupancy rate that had been lagging for the better part of the past 15 years and certainly since the economic downturn.
“It’s great for the market when you can absorb office space when we’ve had chronically high vacancy rates in the Class A office market, as well as Class B and C,” he explained. “There’s long been a glut of office space downtown, and that’s why I’ve been against the development of new space.”
But while most everyone forced to relocate by the casino project has found a new home or is close to doing so, the overall impact from the MGM project downtown may be far from over.
Indeed, Kevin Jennings, owner of Jennings Real Estate, who has placed — or is placing, to be more precise — several of the impacted businesses, says he’s seeing heightened interest downtown from those not in the official casino footprint.
“I don’t think we can look at it purely in terms of those who needed to be relocated,” he said. “I think there’s activity in addition to those parties, a heightened interest in downtown overall.”
For this issue and its focus on commercial real estate, BusinessWest looks at what’s transpired in recent weeks — and might happen next — as the casino era enters a new and intriguing phase in Springfield.
New Lease on Life
Macmillan called it “an interesting footrace.”
That’s how he chose to describe the past four months or so, or since the fate of the referendum question became clear.
What that vote did was send dozens of commercial tenants — a slew of lawyers, a few nonprofit agencies, Springfield’s Office of Health & Human Services, and the Hampden County Alcohol Correctional facility, among others — looking for new quarters into a greatly accelerated process of acquiring space.
“It’s been interesting because many of them had a demanding timeline to meet,” he explained. “It was ‘here’s your notice; you have less than 90 days to get out.”
Tenants in 95 State St., most of them attorneys, were among those who had to relocate to make way for MGM Springfield.
Some did go to the suburbs — Macmillan said he placed a few in surrounding communities — but most chose to stay in the central business district (CBD), and for those reasons listed by Berg.
There were some incentives offered by MGM to do so — $3 per square foot to stay in what’s considered downtown and $4 to remain in the CBD (generally considered to be the stretch between the Arch and State Street) — but Travaun Bailey said that was not a real consideration in his decision to relocate his office at 83 State St. to 1350 Main.
He was swayed more by convenience and parking, and that’s what prompted him to grab nearly 3,000 square feet on the third floor, a large portion of which he’s subleasing out to several other lawyers.
“We had a conversation about moving out of downtown, but it wasn’t seriously considered, said Bailey, who specializes in criminal defense, personal injury, and family law. “We wanted to stay close to the courts.”
Overall, 10 lawyers landed in 1350 Main, the Class A building closest to the court complex, together occupying nearly 8,000 square feet on three different floors. Others touched down in 115 State St. (a.k.a. the Clocktower Building), the Colonial Block further south on Main Street and across from the casino site, as well as Monarch Place, Tower Square, the TD Bank Building, and the buildings between Harrison Avenue and Falcons Way.
“Almost every building downtown has benefited from these relocations, in addition to those coming in from outside the market,” said Jennings. “It’s just been a real healthy shot in the arm for downtown.”
Some of the displaced entities are still looking for homes, including a few law firms, HHS, and the correctional facility, but much of the shakeout is over.
However, the overall activity level remains high — or at least higher than it’s been for much of the past 10-15 years.
Jennings said he’s been talking with interested parties about space in Harrision Place, including the long-vacant and highly visible ground floor, and to others, including a restaurateur, about storefronts along Main Street.
Meanwhile, Plotkin said he’s showing space at 1350 Main to a number of prospective tenants, including an insurance company, an entity specializing in shared office concept, and others.
Both attribute at least some of this interest to the casino and, more specifically, the interest they believe it is generating in Springfield and its downtown.
“There’s a new optimism concerning Springfield,” Plotkin said, choosing that word carefully. “And much of it stems from the building of this resort. Forget for a minute that it’s a casino as well, which is a huge draw; this is a resort, a destination resort, and one that will bring 8 million visitors a year to Springfield. The spinoff and benefit from that tourism and that activity in the downtown is huge.
“There’s been a lot of interest in downtown office space from some of the large real-estate search firms, the site selectors that are looking at space for clients based outside of the area that are looking for locations in different markets,” he went on. “And Springfield is one of them.”
Jennings agreed.
“We’re showing space to a lot of interested parties, and it runs the gamut, from restaurants to professionals,” he told BusinessWest. “It’s an exciting time for Springfield.”
Building Momentum
Meanwhile, Plotkin believes the destination resort that will be MGM Springfield will have an impact throughout downtown, not only in the direct vicinity of the casino’s footprint, including Pynchon Park, Union Station, Stearns Square, and other landmarks.
“Now that there’s new optimism and a new direction for downtown — and more money available to do these kinds of things — I see lots of positive things happening,” he said.
In other words, the impact downtown will likely extend far beyond the recent game of musical chairs.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
<strong>Unemployment Rises Slightly in January
BOSTON — The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported that the seasonally unadjusted unemployment rates for January were up in all 24 labor market areas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), compared to December 2014 rates. However, compared to January 2014, over-the-year unemployment rates were down in all of the labor market areas. BLS also released job and unemployment estimates for the new geographical boundaries of the labor market areas that were redrawn based on 2010 Census area delineations. These changes allow job estimates to be published for 15 areas, and labor-force and unemployment-rate estimates to be released for 24 areas. During January 2015, both Massachusetts and the 15 local areas for which job estimates are published experienced seasonal job losses. Since January 2014, all 15 areas added jobs. The Barnstable, Lawrence, Worcester, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Framingham, and Pittsfield areas added more jobs than over the same time period last year. In order to compare to the local unemployment rates, the statewide unadjusted unemployment rate for January was 5.6%, up 0.7% from the revised December 2014 rate. Over the year, the statewide unadjusted rate was down 1.3% from the January 2014 rate of 6.9%. The seasonally adjusted statewide January unemployment rate, released on March 10, was 5.1%, down 0.2% over the month and down 1.0% over the year. The rate was 0.6% below the national unemployment rate. The statewide seasonally adjusted jobs estimate showed a 2,600-job gain in January and an over-the-year gain of 68,000 jobs. Once a year, BLS revises and updates area job estimates, which are available back to 1990. The revised labor-force and unemployment rates go back to 2014. The labor force, unemployment rates and jobs estimates for Massachusetts and every other state are based on several different statistical methodologies specified by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unadjusted unemployment rates, labor force, and job estimates for the labor market areas reflect seasonal fluctuations and, therefore, may show different levels and trends than the statewide seasonally adjusted estimates.
MGM Springfield Names VP, Slates Groundbreaking
SPRINGFIELD — MGM Resorts International announced that Brian Packer has been named vice president of Development and Construction for MGM Springfield, as it makes preparations for a March 24 groundbreaking event. As part of the MGM Resorts development team, which provides oversight and construction management on all regional and international integrated-resort projects, Packer will provide executive oversight for all aspects of construction and program-management activities at MGM Springfield. He has been an owner’s representative for MGM Resorts for more than 10 years, specializing in large, complex design and construction projects. He most recently served as director of Design and Construction. While in this role, he assembled the team that helped open ARIA Resort & Casino, one of the largest private developments of its kind. “Our team designs and delivers the most distinct hospitality properties in the world,” said Michael Mathis, MGM Springfield president. “Brian is the right person to assist in developing MGM Springfield, the largest development in Springfield and one of the largest in the region’s history.” Added Packer, “I was thrilled to have been asked to come to Springfield on behalf of MGM. Our company has been abuzz about the revolutionary and integrated downtown design and what we hope to accomplish for the Western Massachusetts region. I look forward to working together with our local partners to achieve this new vision for Springfield.” The construction of MGM Springfield will offer opportunities in a wide range of property components, such as early work and off-site work for the garage, casino, hotel tower, and retail plaza. Each component will allow for various bid opportunities for local contractors, in both prime and sub roles. MGM has and will continue to advertise additional opportunities for future construction packages as they become available. Interested bidders will learn about the scope of work, how to participate in the pre-qualification process, and MGM Springfield’s policy on minority contractors, vendors, and purchasing. “As certain aspects of the construction phase become the next priority, we will roll out this meeting process to get the right people for each piece of this design,” Mathis said.
ACCGS Releases 2015 Legislative Agenda
SPRINGFIELD — The Affiliated Chamber of Commerce of Greater Springfield (ACCGS) has released its 2015 legislative agenda, addressing the major legislative issues intended to strengthen business competitiveness, lower business costs, and stimulate growth in the Greater Springfield region. The agenda touches upon key issues in the areas of tax policy, workplace ethics, healthcare, and workforce development. The ACCGS will continue to update the legislative agenda throughout the session so to stay current with the evolving nature of the region. With revenues growing at a 4.5% rate, the chamber will focus on how those revenues are prioritized and spent in the areas of Gateway Cities, infrastructure, and local aid. The chamber continues to work hard in making the region competitive when it comes to the costs of doing business, and is addressing issues in the workplace with a focus on mandated sick leave, unemployment insurance, treble damage, and non-compete legislation. Healthcare costs are a major priority in this session’s agenda and remain a point of concern for the chamber and its members. The chamber will focus its efforts on addressing the federal Affordable Care Act, mandated benefits, and insurance disbursements. With more than 6,000 pieces of legislation filed at the commencement of the session on Jan. 1, the ACCGS will be monitoring the progress of these bills to better assert its position throughout the 2015-16 legislative session.
Springfield Establishes Casino Liaison Office
SPRINGFIELD — Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno and the Office of Planning & Economic Development have officially announced the establishment of the Casino Liaison Office. In order to meet the requirements of the Gaming Act found under Section 96 of Chapter 194 of the Acts of 2011, a host community is required to take action to help coordinate and expedite local permitting of a gaming facility. The Casino Liaison Office will act similar to a local permitting ombudsman to help coordinate and expedite local permitting of the development. The role of this office is to work with MGM Springfield and its construction-management team to resolve the myriad issues likely to occur during the construction period and to help streamline city permitting. This office will be in existence for a short time covering the period of construction and the first year of operation, with an expected span of 39 months. This office will be overseen by Kevin Kennedy, the city’s chief development officer, and will be staffed by Al Chwalek, retired director of the Department of Public Works, and attorney James Hannifan. The Casino Liaison Office will coordinate the efforts of the various city departments involved in the development and construction of the casino project and serve as an information resource for the developer and as a representative and facilitator for developer in the processing of its permitting, licensing, and regulatory approvals. “Due to the size and complexity of this multi-million-dollar project, it is imperative that the city provide a direct point of contact as we move forward with the realization of this tremendous economic-development project for the city of Springfield,” said Sarno. “Both Al and Jim have direct knowledge of the development process and will be instrumental in making sure that, when issues arise, they can be dealt with directly and in a timely manner to ensure this project stays on track.” In addition to the Casino Liaison Office staff, Sarno will also be bringing together a number of key departments as part of a casino-development team. This team will include the Office of Planning & Economic Development, Department of Public Works, Law Department, Building Department, Police Department, Fire Department, Water & Sewer Commission, and Office of Administration and Finance. As part of this team, the city will also be re-engaging the services of a number of outside casino-related consultants. These include Fuss & O’Neil, a local traffic-engineering consultant; the Chicago Consultants Studio Inc., a Chicago-based planning firm, which will review site-planning-related issues; and Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, formerly Shefsky & Froelich Ltd., for its expertise concerning legal matters relating to the gaming industry. The city will fund the office staff through payments received in conjunction with the host-community agreement. Outside consultants used for their expertise will be funded pursuant to the terms of the agreement, which obligate the developer to pay development process cost fees. “As we did during the casino-review process, the city wants to ensure that we have a transparent and open process and that we also have the most qualified people to help guide one of the largest development projects in the city’s history,” Kennedy said. “This team of city departments and consultants, which will also be fully available to the City Council as part of their review, will help to play a major role in the permitting process and provide much-needed input as we look forward in anticipation of the casino’s opening in 2017.”
AFFILIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• Thursdays, through March 26: ACCGS Leadership Institute 2015, 1-4 p.m., at the TD Bank Conference Center, 1441 Main St., Springfield. In partnership with Western New England University.
• March 24: ACCGS Pastries, Politics and Policy, 8-9 a.m., at the TD Bank Conference Center, 1441 Main St., Springfield. For political and policy junkies. Reservations are $15 for members, $25 for general admission. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• April 1: ACCGS Business@Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Delaney House, 3 Country Club Road, Holyoke. Mayor’s Forum, featuring Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, West Springfield Mayor Edward Sullivan, and Westfield Mayor Daniel Knapik. Emceed by abc40’s Dave Madsen. Sponsored by United Personnel. Reservations are $20 for members in advance, $25 for members at the door, and $30 for general admission. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• April 8: ACCGS Lunch ‘n’ Learn, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at La Quinta Inn and Suites, 100 Congress St., Springfield. “When Creative Meets Data.” Learn the ‘where’ and ‘how’ to harness the power of real one-to-one personalized marketing. Presented by Mary McCarthy of Andrews Associates. Reservations are $25 for members, $35 for general admission. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
• April 16: East of the River Five Town Chamber Member Appreciation Night, 5-7 p.m., at Europa Black Rock Bar & Grill, 782 Center St., Ludlow. Enjoy networking, games of chance, and more. Reservations are $5 for members, and may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com. East of the River Five Town Chamber is an affiliate of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield.
• April 29: ACCGS Beacon Hill Summit 2015, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. at the Massachusetts State House. Hosted by state Sen. James Welch. Day-long opportunity to meet with members of the Baker-Polito administration and the Massachusetts delegation. Reservations are $180 per person, including continental breakfast, transportation, lunch, reception, and all summit materials. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com.
AMHERST AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.amherstarea.com
413-253-0700
• March 26: Margarita Madness 2015, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at the Hadley Farms Meeting House, 41 Russell St., Hadley. Taste a variety of margaritas and vote for your favorites. Step into the tropics and pretend you’re on a Caribbean island. This is a Division One competition between restaurant and business margaritas. Your votes will determine who will take home the coveted Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce trophies. Business margaritas provided by: Alden Credit Union, New England Promotional Marketing, Hadley Farms Meeting House, Country Nissan, Lord Jeffery Inn, TD Bank for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County, Encharter Insurance, Applewood at Amherst, and more to come. Restaurant margaritas provided by: Bistro 63 at the Monkey Bar, Bread & Butter, Bridgeside Grille, Chandler’s Restaurant, the Pub, Lord Jeffery Inn, Hadley Farms Meeting House, Chez Josef, Johnny’s Tavern, and more to come. Food Provided by: Emily’s Gourmet to Go, Something Special Catering, Pallazo Café, Glazed Donut Shop, Pop’s Biscotti, and Johnny’s Tavern. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. For more information, contact the chamber at (413) 253-0700.
GREATER CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101
• March 25 : 21st Annual Table Top Expo and Business Networking Event, 4:30-7 p.m., at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Exhibitor cost: $125 for a table. Admission: $10 in advance, $15 at the door. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• April 15: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Summit View Banquet & Meeting House. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• April 16: Mornings with the Mayor, 8-9 a.m., at the Boys & Girls Club, 580 Meadow St., Chicopee. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• April 17: Lunch & Learn, 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Hampton Inn, 600 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. Attorney Kate O’Brien from Sullivan, Hayes & Quinn will present “No Union, No Worries? No Way!” This is an informative program about what almost all private-sector, non-union employers need to do to avoid being a target of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• April 22: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at La Quinta Inn & Suites, 100 Congress St., Springfield. For more information, call the chamber at (413) 594-2101.
• May 15: Lunch & Learn, 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Hampton Inn, 600 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. “ACA Compliance: Employer Requirements and Management Tools.” Learn about a solid, user-friendly road map for understanding compliance issues. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• May 20: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Renaissance Manor on Cabot, 279 Cabot St., Holyoke. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• May 21: Greater Chicopee Chamber Golf Tournament, 10 a.m., at Chicopee Country Club. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
• May 27: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at Elms College, 291 Springfield St., Chicopee. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101 or visit www.chicopeechamber.org.
GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414
• March 25: 21st Annual Table Top Expo and Business Networking Event, 4:30-7 p.m., at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Exhibitor cost: $125 for a table. Admission is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. To register, contact the chamber at (413) 527-9414.
• April 2: Greater Holyoke & Greater Easthampton Chambers of Commerce Legislative Luncheon, 11:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m., at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Sponsored by Easthampton Savings Bank, Holyoke Community College, H&R Block, United Bank, United Personnel, and TD Bank. Ask questions, get answers, and hear issues defined. Cost: $30 for members, $35 for non-members, and $240 for a table of eight. Call the Holyoke chamber at (413) 534-3376 or the Easthampton Chamber (413) 527-9414 to sign up.
• April 13: Monday Morning with the Mayor: Getting Down to Business about Business. Casual conversation with Mayor Karen Cadieux, 8-9 a.m., at Burger King, 113 Northampton St., Easthampton. Free and open to the public.
• May 11: Monday Morning with the Mayor: Getting down to Business about Business. Casual conversation with Mayor Karen Cadieux, 8-9 a.m., at Easthampton Savings Bank, 36 Main St., Easthampton. Free and open to the public.
GREATER HOLYOKE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376
• Greater Holyoke & Greater Easthampton Chambers of Commerce Legislative Luncheon, 11:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m., at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Sponsored by Easthampton Savings Bank, Holyoke Community College, H&R Block, United Bank, United Personnel, and TD Bank. Ask questions, get answers, and hear issues defined. Cost: $30 for members, $35 for non-members, and $240 for a table of eight. Call the Holyoke chamber at (413) 534-3376 or the Easthampton Chamber (413) 527-9414 to sign up.
• May 15: Chamber After Hours at Pic’s Place, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored and Hosted by Pic’s Place, 910 Hampden St., Holyoke. Tickets: $10 for members, $15 for the public. Call the chamber at (413) 534-3376 or sign up online at www.holycham.com.
• May 18: Annual Chamber Cup 2015 Golf Tournament, celebrating the chamber’s 125th anniversary, 10:30 a.m. at Wyckoff Country Club, 233 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Registration and lunch at 10:30 a.m.; tee off at noon (scramble format); dinner following game with elaborate food stations catered by the Log Cabin. Cost: $125 per player includes lunch, 18 holes of golf, cart, and dinner. Dinner only: $25. Awards, raffles, and cash prizes follow dinner. Tournament sponsors: Log Cabin and PeoplesBank. Corporate sponsors: Dowd Insurance, Goss & McLain Insurance Agency, Holyoke Gas & Electric, Mountain View Landscapes, Holyoke Medical Center, People’s United Bank, the Republican, and Resnic, Beauregard, Waite & Driscoll. For reservations, call the Chamber Office at (413) 534-3376 or register online at www.holycham.com.
• May 21: Chamber Business Connections, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored and hosted by PeoplesBank, in the atrium in the PeoplesBank Building at 330 Whitney Ave. Cost is $10 for chamber members, $15 for non-members. Join your friends and colleagues for this fun and casual evening of networking. Refreshments, door prizes, and 50/50 raffle.
• June 19: Save the date for the chamber’s 125th Anniversary Gala Ball at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Cocktails at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. Enjoy an elegant meal and dance to the music of the Floyd Patterson Band. Join Marcotte Ford as one of the major event sponsors by calling (413) 534-3376. Event is open to the public. More details to follow.
GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900
• March 25: 21st Annual Table Top Expo and Business Networking Event, 4:30-7 p.m., at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Exhibitor cost: $125 for a table. Admission: $10 in advance, $15 at the door. To register, contact the chamber at (413) 584-1900
• May 6: May Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m. at Whalen Insurance Agency. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 584-1900
• July 1: July Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m. Sponsored by Pioneer Landscapes and Easthampton Electrical. For more information or to register, contact the chamber at (413) 584-1900.
GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
• April 6: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Dever Auditorium at Westfield State University, 577 Western Ave., Westfield. This event is free and open to the public. Call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618 to register for this event, so we may give our host a head count.
• April 8: April After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., at Vantage Sports & Rehab, 130 Southampton Road, Westfield. Refreshments will be served. Bring your business cards and make connections. Tickets are $10 for members, $15 cash for non-members. To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618.
• April 28: Southwick Home to Business Show, at Tucker’s Restaurant. For more information, contact Pam at the Chamber office at (413) 568-1618.
• May 4: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Renaissance Manor, 37 Feeding Hills Road, Westfield. This event is free and open to the public. Call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618 to register, so we may give our host a head count.
• May 13: May After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., at Armbrook Village, 551 North Road, Westfield. Refreshments will be served. Bring your business cards and make connections. Tickets are $10 for members, $15 cash for non-members. To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618.
• May 18: Save the date for the annual golf tournament at 10 a.m. at Tekoa Country Club. More details to come.
PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CHAMBER
www.professionalwomenschamber.com
(413) 755-1310
• April 14: Professional Women’s Chamber Ladies Night, 5-7 p.m., at Hofbrauhaus, 1105 Main St., West Springfield. Enjoy complimentary wine and refreshments.
Reservations are complimentary but required. To reserve a spot, contact Gwen Burke at (413) 237-8840 or [email protected]. The Professional Women’s Chamber is an affiliate of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield.
WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
(413) 426-3880
• April 1: Wicked Wednesday, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Kaptain Jimmy’s, 916 Suffield St., Agawam. Sponsored by Easthampton Savings Bank. Wicked Wednesdays are monthly social events hosted by various businesses and restaurants, which bring members and non-members together to network in a laid-back atmosphere. Free for chamber members, $10 at the door for non-members. Event is open to the public. For more information, contact the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
• April 16: Networking Lunch, noon to 1:30 p.m., at Cal’s, 1068 Riverdale Road, West Springfield. Enjoy a sit-down lunch while networking with fellow chamber members. Each attendee will get a chance to offer a brief sales pitch. The only cost to attend is the cost of lunch. Attendees will order off the menu and pay separately the day of the event. Please note, we cannot invoice you for these events. Attendees must be members or guests of members.
For more information, contact the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].
EAST LONGMEADOW — Keith Tatlock of New England Financial Group, an office of MetLife and a part of the MetLife Premier Client Group, has been authorized by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. to use the certification marks ‘CFP’ and ‘certified financial planner practitioner’ in accordance with CFP Board certification and renewal requirements.
Tatlock met the rigorous experience and ethical requirements, completed financial-planning coursework, and passed the CFP certification examination. He has also agreed to meet ongoing continuing-education requirements and to uphold the CFP Board’s Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility and Financial Planning Practice Standards.
Tatlock has 10 years of experience in the financial-services sector. He is a graduate of Westfield State University and holds securities series 7 and series 63 as well as life- and health-insurance licenses. He is a member of the Estate Planning Council of Hampden County, the Financial Planning Assoc. of Massachusetts, and Business Networking International. He is also currently a major in the Massachusetts Air National Guard at the 104th Fighter Wing in Westfield.
EAST LONGMEADOW — Hub International Limited, a leading insurance brokerage, risk-advisory, and employee-benefits firm, announced that Teresa Petit de Mange, producer, was selected as a recipient of the 2015 Power Broker Awards distributed by Risk & Insurance.
According to the publication, the criterion for this award is based on customer service, depth of industry knowledge, and what each individual has done to help manage risk in the past 12 months. Petit de Mange was selected as a winner in the Energy Specialist category. She was recognized for being the vertical leader for Hub’s energy vertical.
“We are extremely proud of Teresa on receiving this tremendous honor and being recognized for her achievements,” said Shawn McLaughlin, chief sales officer. “Her dedication to serving the energy industry is evident in her strong client relationships and proven results.”
Headquartered in Chicago, Hub International Limited is a leading global insurance brokerage that provides a broad array of property and casualty, life and health, employee-benefits, investment, and risk-management products and services through offices located across North America.
MONSON — Monson Savings Bank recently announced the election of five new corporators who are advisors to the bank, representing the communities the bank serves. They also possess certain governing functions, including the election of the bank’s president.
Monson Savings has 55 corporators, including the five elected at the bank’s annual meeting on March 4: Louis Abbate, president emeritus, Willie Ross School for the Deaf, Longmeadow; Mark Borsari, president, Sanderson MacLeod, Palmer; Joseph Lawler, benefits consultant, the Gaudreau Group, Wilbraham; Roy St. George, vice president, Moulton Insurance Agency Inc., Ware; and Julie Quink, managing principal, Burkhart, Pizzanelli, P.C., West Springfield.
“We’re extremely fortunate to have these folks join our team,” said Steve Lowell, president of Monson Savings Bank. “We rely on our corporators to keep us in touch with the needs of our communities, provide invaluable insight into our operations, and also to help us spread the word of all that we have to offer. Our corporators are leaders in the communities we serve, they are highly engaged with us, and we very much appreciate their involvement.”
HOLYOKE — The Dowd Agencies announced that Account Executive David Griffin Jr. has received the Certified Insurance Counselors (CIC) designation. This accomplishment is not mandated for the insurance industry, but provides an extensive knowledge base to benefit consumers.
“Prestigious designations like CIC are essential if you want to be considered among the leaders in our industry,” said John Dowd Jr., president and CEO of the Dowd Agencies. “It shows a true commitment to professionalism and excellence in the business of insurance sales. David is a rising star here in the Pioneer Valley business community, and we are proud of his accomplishments.”
The CIC program includes 20 hours of rigorous coursework for each of the five industry categories: personal insurance lines, commercial casualty insurance, commercial property insurance, life and health insurance, and agency management. After completing the coursework, Griffin completed the exams for each course and the final essay exam to earn his designation, all while working full-time and maintaining several community-based leadership positions.
The CIC program was developed in 1969 by the National Alliance for Insurance Education and Research. It continues to be the leading organization for creating, developing, and delivering practical continuing-education programs for insurance and risk-management professionals.
Griffin works in the Holyoke office of the Dowd Agencies. Since joining the firm in 2009, he has grown in his role and now assists the leadership team. He began his career in the insurance industry as a property and casualty underwriter for Liberty Mutual, where he supported the company in Schaumburg, Ill. and Charlotte, N.C., before joining the Dowd Agencies. He is a 2007 graduate of Bentley University, where he earned a degree in finance.
Additionally, Griffin supports the Holyoke Chamber of Commerce and volunteers on the boards of directors for the Holyoke Rotary Club, the Sisters of Providence Health System, and Wistariahurst.
Often, ‘What’ May Be More Important Than ‘for How Long?’
By KRISTINA DRZAL-HOUGHTON, CPA MST
Kristina Drzal-Houghton
However, one area of concern that can often be overlooked is determining what records to keep in order to substantiate expenses. In this case, the ‘what’ may be more important than the ‘how long,’ should an IRS audit occur.
Every item of expense taken as a business deduction must be supported by documentary evidence. Documentary evidence consists of receipts, paid bills, or similar evidence sufficient to support an expenditure. Ordinarily, documentary evidence will be considered adequate to support an expenditure if it includes sufficient information to establish the amount, date, place, and essential character of the expenditure. These documents can be retained electronically and need not be the original bills.
Documentary evidence includes electronic charge expense receipts provided by a credit-card company. In many cases, a credit-card statement or charge record is sufficient documentary evidence of an expense. For example, the nature of an expense paid to a car-rental company is ordinarily clear on its face.
If the nature of the expense isn’t clear on the face of the receipt, a credit-card receipt isn’t sufficient unless it contains an itemized breakdown. The requirement of a detailed breakdown would be required for payments to online or retail stores. The IRS will also detail examine phone and other utility bills to confirm the service location. Auditors will often request the backup policy information for insurance payments so they can confirm the business purpose. Additionally, payments to service vendors should indicate where the services were rendered.
Reimbursing employees’ business expenses can often be an area where there are documentation challenges, especially where the employee is also a shareholder. It is important to obtain the proper documentations from all employees. I have seen practices assessed taxes when former shareholders are no longer with the practice and will not supply backup documents. When substantiating expenses, the initial documentation obtained is key.
For any payment to be deductible, there must be a business connection. An arrangement meets the business-connection requirement if it provides reimbursements only for business expenses that are allowable as deductions and that are paid or incurred by the employee in connection with the performance of services as an employee. The reimbursement to the employee may include amounts charged directly or indirectly to the practice through credit-card systems or another direct method.
The documentation requirement is met if the arrangement requires each business expense to be substantiated to the practice within a reasonable period of time. An arrangement that reimburses travel, entertainment, or other deductible business expenses meets this requirement if information sufficient to satisfy the requirement is submitted to the practice.
The IRS will disallow any expense for travel away from home, including meals, lodging, and entertainment, unless the taxpayer substantiates by adequate records for each expenditure.
For example, when substantiating expenses for travel away from home, the IRS requires, in addition to documentary substantiation for each expense, that the time, place. and business purpose of the travel be proven. Furthermore, when substantiating entertainment expenses, you must prove the time, place, and business purpose of the entertainment, and the business relationship of the persons entertained.
Documentary evidence of lodging must show separate amounts for charges such as lodging, meals, and telephone calls. Thus, a hotel receipt will support an expenditure for business travel if it shows the name, location, date, and separate amounts charged for lodging, meals, telephone.
An electronic credit-card receipt meets this documentary evidence requirement if the receipt has an aggregate charge itemizing each expense, such as a final bill from a hotel listing separately the costs for meals, lodging, and telephone calls. But neither an electronic credit-card receipt nor a regular credit-card statement or charge record alone is acceptable evidence of a lodging expense if the statement doesn’t segregate lodging from other expenses that may not be deducted, such as non-deductible meal and entertainment expenses or personal expenses (e.g., spa charges or gift purchases).
Unreimbursed business expenses paid by a shareholder-employee on behalf of a corporation are employee business expenses subject to the 2%-of-AGI floor. However, when a shareholder-employee is a controlling stockholder, the IRS often asserts that the shareholder cannot deduct the expenses at all because they relate to corporate business rather than to duties as an employee. Therefore, practices should consider having a policy requiring the reimbursement of corporate expenses paid by shareholders. The corporation can then deduct the expense when paid, while the shareholder can treat the reimbursement as a repayment of the advanced funds.
Now may be the perfect time to draft or update your accounting policies and procedures document. Many associations can provide model documents, but you should still consult your accountant or tax advisor before finalizing your document.
Kristina Drzal-Houghton, CPA MST is the partner in charge of Taxation at Holyoke-based Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.; (413) 536-8510.
The following Business Certificates and Trade Names were issued or renewed during the month of February 2015.
AGAWAM
Auto Paint Motors
1039 Springfield St.
Moe M. Borhot
Feeding Hills Public Market
634 Springfield St.
Hemal Batteriwala
Mitteneague Enterprises
18 Valentine Terrace
Steven Atkinson
PDK Associates
37 White Oaks
Paul Koetsch
The Pet Agree
1 South End Bridge Circle
Dominic Scavotto
The Vape Spot
525 Springfield St.
Richard Johnson
CHICOPEE
AMF Chicopee Lanes
291 Burnett Road
Timothy Joly
Continental Beauty Salon
290 East St.
Hanna Dzierzgowski
D & D Sales and Auctioneering
815 McKinstry Ave.
Donald Perusse
Digital Vision 1
54 Truro St.
Adam Warzybok
L.E. Bolcher Inc.
95 West St.
Edward Housh
Mr. Cone
1048 Granby Road
Joseph Coelho
Serenity Salon & Spa
472 Burnett Road
Laurie Kareta
Spring Real Estate
97 Woodcrest Circle
Sheila Spring
Universal Products of Poland
234 Exchange St.
Maria Stafinski
Walz Home Improvement
33 Grattan St.
Timothy Walz
Western Mass Rebels
73 Narragansett Blvd.
Luis DeJesus
Willamansett Center West
546 Chicopee St.
David Ianacone
GREENFIELD
Alber Hearing Services
489 Bernardston Road
Lisa Alber
Citizens Investment Services
89 French King Highway
Richard McClendon
Fit Nation
298 Federal St.
Megan T. Earle
Franklin St. Barbers
34 Bank Row
Steve Prondecki
HOLYOKE
Aunty’s Market
539 Pleasant St.
Mohinder Grelval
Baystate Comfort Heating & Cooling
134 Sky View Terrace
James Lapointe
Providence Ministries for the Needy
51 Hamilton St.
William Labroad
Stop & Go
399 Hillside Ave.
Rajendera Modi
PALMER
Griswold Glass & Aluminum
1184 Park St.
Jeffrey Griswold
Walnut Street Café Inc.
8 Walnut St.
Doris Theodore
SPRINGFIELD
Fabulous Cuts Barber Shop
363 Boston Road
Joe C. Long
Grace Fellowship Sanctuary
33 Peer St.
Kelly Jones
IPC Healthcare of Massachusetts
819 Worcester St.
Adam Singer
J.A.V. Home Improvement
302 Bay St.
Juan A. Velez
Jorge Movie Production
1145 Liberty St.
Jorge Rafael
K. Duran Enterprises
19 St. James Ave.
Kelvinson Duran
Kuhn Services and Landscape
181 Garland St.
William J. Kuhn
M.R.L.R. Property Maintenance
112 State St.
Mark R. Larose
MassMutual Insurance
603 Wilbraham Road
Haq Zahoor
Mike Shepard Remodeling
191 Navajo Road
Michael G. Shepard
Miss Latina Western Massachusetts
46 Redland St.
Jennifer Rodriguez
Mr. Gordon’s Landscaping
119 Quincy St.
Eric Gordon
Nature’s Way
301 Longhill St.
Daniel Atkins
Page Blvd Bottle and Can
233 Page Blvd.
Duc Truong
Palazzo Café
1350 Main St.
Luisa Cardaropoli
The Landlocked Dog
11 Cooper St.
Ulrike D. Colonna
Tony Famous Barber Shop
1153 Main St.
Dino Isotti
WESTFIELD
Creative Critters and Crafts
24 Northwest Road
Cheryl Cote Albert
Grouse Gunner Guides
17 Leaview Dr.
Sean Searles
Plantcycled
19 Lockhouse Road
Ashley Stebbins
Quality Ink and Toner
154 Wild Flower Circle
Jeffrey Lavoine
WEST SPRINGFIELD
Avis Budget
2161 Riverdale St.
Matt Rettura
Bath Crafters
176 Labelle St.
James E. Belle-Isle
DA Services
207 Morgan Road
Brynn M. Demas
Galeria Barbershop
715 Main St.
Enrique Hernandez
IVS Transportation
1506 Westfield St.
Ivan Shabayer
M & M Jewels
52 Irving St.
Mildred Ronghi
Mario’s Shoe Service
211 Elm St.
Mario Cardinale
Santana’s Kung-Fu Studio
452 Main St.
Maria E. Santana
Total Women’s Health Care
46 Daggett Dr.
Aleli L. Villanueva
Cathedral High School, Holyoke Catholic to Merge
SPRINGFIELD — Cathedral High School and Holyoke Catholic High School will be merged into a new, regional Catholic High School under a plan announced yesterday by Mitchell Rozanski, bishop of the Diocese of Springfield. While the site of the merged school has not been determined, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno and other Cathedral supporters are still pushing for the school to be rebuilt on the tornado-damaged Surrey Road location where Cathedral had been located. “No concepts other than a new regional school have been decided,” Rozanski said, noting that Surrey Road is one of several options that will be investigated. The bishop wants the two schools’ students to be merged in a temporary location by the fall of 2016, and for a permanent school to be completed by the fall of 2017, adding that insurance money from the tornado, plus $29 million in Federal Emergency Emergency Management Agency aid, will fund the construction. “The city of Springfield has supported Cathedral at its temporary home in Wilbraham by providing over $1 million of support in busing as well as assisting with locations for athletic practices and events. We will continue to support Cathedral as long as rebuilding on Surrey Road remains the plan,” Sarno said. “I am hopeful that Bishop Rozanski and the diocese will live up to their commitment made by Bishop [Timothy] McDonnell to rebuild Cathedral, where it belongs, on Surrey Road. The extended Cathedral family and neighborhood deserve nothing less.” Since the June 1, 2011, tornado severely damaged Cathedral, its 400 students were relocated to the former Memorial School in Wilbraham, where the diocese has been renting space; enrollment has since declined to just over 200. Meanwhile, Holyoke Catholic was forced to move from its namesake city in 2002 when its building was declared unsafe. After setting up at the former St. Hyacinth College and Seminary in Granby for four years, the school, which has about 250 students, moved into the former Assumption School on Springfield Street in Chicopee, opposite Elms College, in 2006.
Governor Announces New Panel on Opioids
BOSTON — As the number of deaths from opioid-related overdoses rises, Gov. Charlie Baker is taking is appointing a 16-member working group assigned the task of putting together “specific, targeted, and tangible recommendations” by May to stem the tide. The group will be led by Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Healey, and include individuals working in government, law enforcement, and addiction treatment. As he made the announcement, Baker stood in front of a display bearing alarming statistics, including the 978 deaths attributed to opioid-related overdoses in 2013, a 46% increase from the year before. Baker, who pledged to provide quarterly data on overdoses, said the 2014 death toll would be available in April. The working group will hold public meetings, assess the resources devoted to the problem, and make specific recommendations.
MGM Announces Parking-lot Closings
SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Business Improvement District (SBID) issued a reminder that changes are coming as MGM closes several downtown parking lots. These parking-lot closures, which monthly parkers were notified of six weeks ago, will require downtown workers to seek alternative parking solutions. “We understand this is not convenient for some,” said Chris Russell, SBID executive director, “but we are working very hard to make sure solutions are available. To that end, we will have SBID ambassadors on hand Monday to direct parkers to alternative lots. In addition, we are working alongside the Springfield Parking Authority, ProPark, Valet Park of America, Executive Parking, various private lots, and the mayor’s office to make sure all needs are accommodated.” Also, he went on, “the Springfield Business Improvement District is trying to work on organizing a shuttle from alternative lots outside of downtown.” In the meantime, in an effort to make this process as easy as possible, MGM Springfield has agreed to keep a few select lots open for a while longer as details are sorted out. The SBID is encouraging all individuals who are monthly parkers in downtown to not wait, but rather look for new parking as soon as possible. For continued updates on the shuttle and other related downtown news, visit the Springfield Business Improvement District’s website at www.springfielddowntown.com or follow the SBID on Facebook.
ACCGS Releases Legislative Agenda
SPRINGFIELD — The Affiliated Chamber of Commerce of Greater Springfield (ACCGS) has released its 2015 legislative agenda, addressing the major legislative issues intended to strengthen business competitiveness, lower business costs, and stimulate growth in the Greater Springfield region. The agenda touches upon key issues in the areas of tax policy, workplace ethics, healthcare, and workforce development. The ACCGS will continue to update the legislative agenda throughout the session so to stay current with the evolving nature of the region. With revenues growing at a 4.5% rate, the chamber will focus on how those revenues are prioritized and spent in the areas of Gateway Cities, infrastructure, and local aid. The chamber continues to work hard in making the region competitive when it comes to the costs of doing business, and is addressing issues in the workplace with a focus on mandated sick leave, unemployment insurance, treble damage, and non-compete legislation. Healthcare costs are a major priority in this session’s agenda and remain a point of concern for the chamber and its members. The chamber will focus its efforts on addressing the federal Affordable Care Act, mandated benefits, and insurance disbursements. With more than 6,000 pieces of legislation filed at the commencement of the session on Jan. 1, the ACCGS will be monitoring the progress of these bills to better assert its position throughout the 2015-16 legislative session.
UMass Researcher Teams with Chinese Inventor on New Antibiotics
AMHERST — Margaret Riley, an evolutionary biologist at UMass Amherst and pioneer in fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria, announced this week that she is partnering with a Chinese scientist to develop a new drug platform, pheromonicins. The Chinese government is committing $400 million per year to support the newly created Pheromonicin Institute of Beijing. Riley plans to open a sister institute in the Amherst area. “At this point, I will be doing the work in Beijing,” Riley says. “Later, as we sort out details and opportunities for U.S. funding support, we may be able to bring some of the work to the Pioneer Valley.” After trying unsuccessfully for years to find funding to study and develop a more effective method of treating catheter-related urinary-tract infections (UTIs) that are resistant to current antibiotics, she was contacted by Dr. Xiao-Qing Qiu, the inventor of pheromonicins, who asked if she was interested in collaborating with his government-supported lab. Riley now plans to collaborate with Xiu to develop his powerful new drugs there instead of in the U.S. “I want to solve the problem, and if I have to fly to Beijing to do my animal trials, that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said. The short-term goal is to focus on a new treatment for UTI, but the ultimate goal is to increase the number of effective therapeutic drugs and strategies to combat drug resistance in quickly evolving diseases such as HIV, TB, malaria, cancer, and cystic fibrosis. “One of the things that people don’t realize is how significant drug resistance is in the disease process. It’s only in the past 10 or 15 years we have begun to understand the way drug resistance arises at the molecular level,” Riley noted. “Drug resistance is at the core of many of these diseases, and their ability to stay ahead of and stymie our efforts at eradicating them is extremely serious.” Antibiotics are the primary weapons against harmful bacteria like those that cause strep throat, but they have become less effective in recent years because the bacteria can evolve into ‘superbugs,’ new strains resistant to most antibiotics. A recent pledge announced by President Obama to give $1.2 billion across a half-dozen agencies to classify and monitor antibiotic-resistant bacteria, discover new antibiotics, and improve prescribing methods highlights the importance of such efforts. “I think the president’s initiative is phenomenal and long overdue,” Riley said, adding that the biggest chunk of money allotted to the effort as part of the 2016 budget proposal, nearly $1 billion, will go to the Department of Health and Human Services, which will effectively double the agency’s funding over 2015 levels, she notes. Many observers in recent years thought that new antibiotics would be discovered in time so doctors wouldn’t need to worry about resistance, Riley acknowledges. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that antibiotic-resistant bacteria now cause 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths a year in the U.S. Riley feels that’s a conservative estimate, and the real number of deaths is likely double or triple that. The economic price is high as well, she added, as much as $20 billion a year in healthcare costs and $35 billion in lost worker productivity. Further, the antibiotics doctors employ now use a “shotgun approach,” she explained, that targets healthy as well as harmful bacteria. “With this method, when people take antibiotics, the drugs also kill beneficial bacteria in our bodies that we need for good health. This can do more harm than good, especially for children who take antibiotics while young and may carry long-term damage to their microbiome.”
