Massachusetts Alliance for Independent Community Colleges

The undersigned Chambers of Commerce, strongly oppose any effort to centralize policy and budget control of Community Colleges under the state’s Board of Higher Education. Together, our chambers represent over 11,275 businesses members across the Commonwealth, and consider the local Community Colleges to be important resources to the regions they serve and vital economic development partners. We believe their ability to quickly identify and respond to particular local needs is a fundamental role that the colleges play in preparing residents for available jobs and future employment opportunities. This ability would be drastically compromised if management is centralized in Boston.

We recognize that there are important gaps in the state’s overall arrangement for workforce preparation, state-wide, that must be addressed. However, Community Colleges are only a part of that system and such issues have little to do with their governance. We are — and have been — committed to working with them to address community needs, and believe they have acted persistently to meet local economic challenges. These challenges vary significantly from one region to another, and shifting the supervision of these programs to Boston — away from the areas they impact — would impede their progress and needlessly constrain the institutions charged with creating them.

At a time when resources are limited and our Community Colleges are continually striving to meet the needs of the business community, consolidation is not the answer. Allowing for local control and self-determination to meet the ever changing needs of the business community empowers the Community Colleges and their local boards.

While we will support and encourage any activity the administration undertakes to strengthen the ability of individual Community Colleges to educate the Commonwealth’s workforce, we will actively work with our local legislators to defeat any effort to usurp the control of these institutions, which could only undermine their effectiveness. Those who are, on a daily basis, striving to provide the business community with a skilled and educated workforce are in the best position to establish a strategy to help close the skills gaps and prepare the workforce of the future.

Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield
Berkshire Chamber of Commerce
Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce
Chamber of Central Mass South
Chicopee Chamber of Commerce
Cranberry Country Chamber of Commerce
Fall River Area Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Franklin County Chamber of Commerce
Greater Gardner Chamber of Commerce
Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce
Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce
Nashoba Valley Chamber of Commerce
New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce
North Central MA Chamber of Commerce
Salem Chamber of Commerce
Wachusett Chamber of Commerce
Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce

Robyn Branco has been promoted to the position of Manager of Member Relations & Education Initiatives. Robyn joined the Chamber staff in 2009 as the Events Manager, where she directed all of the Chamber’s events and functions. In her new role, Robyn will focus on expanding the Chamber’s membership base while maintaining relationships with current members. She will also promote and provide information regarding upcoming events and functions to our members and prospective members, and serve as the primary staff liaison to the Greater New Bedford Connecting Activities Partnership. Robyn is a native of New Bedford with nearly fifteen years of experience in fundraising, event coordination and non-profit management. Prior to joining the Chamber staff, Robyn served as the Associate Director of the Portuguese American Leadership Council of the United States (PALCUS) and as the Membership Director for a fisheries conservation group in San Francisco. She is a native of New Bedford and graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Noelle Pina has been promoted to the position of Manager of Programs & Events. Noelle joined the Chamber staff in 2011 as Employer Specialist working with members of the Greater New Bedford Connecting Activities Partnership. In her new role, Noelle will be responsible for managing the Chamber’s schedule of programs and events including the Chamber’s Business After Hours and Good Morning SouthCoast series, SouthCoast Business Expo, SouthCoast Women’s Forum, and the Greater New Bedford Home Show. Noelle will also serve as the primary staff liaison to the Chamber’s SouthCoast Young Professionals Network and coordinate employer recruitment for the CHOICES Workshops. Prior to joining the Chamber, Noelle had been Marketing Manager at Master Technicians Ltd. and Best Buy Furniture, a prominent retail partnership in Nassau, Bahamas. She holds a masters degree from West Virginia University in Integrated Marketing Communications.

Rebecca Viera has been named the Chamber’s new Communications Coordinator. Rebecca will be responsible for producing the Chamber’s Newsletter, Annual Directory & Community Guide, press releases, and event marketing. Prior to joining the Chamber, Rebecca worked at Whaling City Graphics, where she created artwork and designed advertisements for various clients. Her professional experience also includes working at the Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center of UMass Dartmouth where she created marketing materials and coordinated events.  She is a graduate of UMass Dartmouth with a degree in graphic design and is a native of Acushnet, MA.

Matthew Burke has been named Programs & Membership Coordinator. In this part-time position, Matt will provide staff support and assist with member inquiries, Chamber events and general office operations. For the last several months, Matthew has been serving as a business intern at the Chamber through the cooperative education program at Bristol Community College. Matt is a licensed electrician and is planning to continue his education by studying business at UMass. He is a native of Mattapoisett, MA.

“We are thrilled to welcome Rebecca and Matt to our team and to have Robyn and Noelle in their new and expanded roles,” said Roy Nascimento, IOM, President & CEO of the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce. “These changes to our professional staff will help us better serve our members and support the Chamber’s growth and continued expansion.”

Nominating someone is easy…

You may nominate your own business or any other business you deem worthy. Submit a summary of your reasons for the nomination, based on employment/staying power, growth, innovation and social responsibility.  Click here for the nomination form or call the Chamber office at 508-999-5231. Nominees do not need to be members of the Chamber, but must be a for-profit business. Nominations are due by April 27th.

Winners will be selected by the Chamber’s Award Selection Committee and will be announced at the Good Morning SouthCoast! Small Business Award Ceremony, sponsored by BankFive.

Pictured above: NWD Trucking of New Bedford President Lorraine DeCosta and CEO Eric DeCosta accepting the Greater New Bedford Small Business of the Year Award from the Chamber at the 2010 ceremony.

Treasurer Grossman will be discussing his priorities and legislative agenda. Afterwards, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a Question & Answer session with the Treasurer.

Steven Grossman was elected Treasurer and Receiver General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 2010. He spent the last 35 years creating jobs, managing money, dealing with crises, and finding commonsense solutions to problems as CEO of Grossman Marketing Group in Somerville, a 100-year-old, fourth-generation family business. He grew the company’s revenues eightfold, entering new markets and repositioning the company to meet the challenges of an evolving economy. He is committed to using the full potential of the Treasurer’s office to protect the public’s money, help create jobs, boost small businesses, and bring new standards of transparency and disclosure to state government.

 The SouthCoast Legislative Luncheon is an opportunity for business and community leaders to meet with legislators and hear first hand what is in store on Beacon Hill for the business community. Invited legislators include Senators Mark Montigny and Michael Rodrigues; Representatives Antonio Cabral, Robert Koczera, Susan Williams Gifford, Christopher Markey, Keiko Orrall, Paul A. Schmid, David B. Sullivan, William M. Straus and others.

 Check-in for the event starts at 11:45 a.m., with the luncheon beginning at 12 noon. The cost of the event is $35 for members and $45 for non-members, with tables of 10 also available. Advance reservations are required by Tuesday, April 10th and can be made online by clicking here  or by calling the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce at 508-999-5231. .

“We often hear from businesses about frustrations with delays, complexity, or lack of uniformity with permitting at the local level,” said Roy M. Nascimento, IOM, President & CEO of the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce “We hope this report will serve as a first step in a broader discussion about improving permitting and encouraging growth in our regional economy.” 

“Our analysis shows some real opportunities to enhance and streamline permitting in the Greater New Bedford area,” said Colleen Dawicki, Project Manager at the UMass Dartmouth Urban Initiative “It is our hope that this report will serve as a resource to help local communities improve their permitting in a way that promotes local and regional economic development.”

The report summarizes MARPA’s 26 best practices across four broad categories and applies them to practices currently employed by the region’s municipalities. The four categories are:

• Fostering better communication among municipal regulatory boards and between those boards and applicants. Best practices under this category include designating a single point of contact, developing a user’s guide to local permitting, clearly outlining the permitting process with flow charts and checklists, providing clear submittal requirements, allowing concurrent applications and combined public hearings for projects that require approval from multiple municipal boards, and instituting such items as a pre-application process, a technical review team and development agreements.
•  Standardizing forms and procedures to provide efficiency and predictability.  Some of these best practices included implementing predictable impact fees, establishing objective criteria, more effective use of site plan approval, developing a two-tier assessment process, and establishing uniform timelines, notification, and appeals.
• Providing sufficient resources to enable swift and competent regulatory consideration. These recommendations included providing adequate staffing for volunteer boards, creating a culture of training, maximizing the use of municipal websites and creation of electronic filing and tracking processes for permits.
• Encouraging proactive planning. Best practices included selecting preferred sites for commercial or industrial development, designating priority development sites under Chapter 43D, and pre-permitting for selected sites.  

 A full version of the report is available online by clicking here or visting www.umassd.edu/urbaninitiative.

Comments of David Slutz
President & CEO of Precix, Inc.

Before a public hearing of the Massachusetts Jobs Creation Commission

Good morning, my name is David Slutz, President & CEO of Precix, Inc.  Our home is here in New Bedford where we employ 338 people on three shifts, seven days a week and have a payroll of over $14 million.  We have been in business since 1910.

Precix is a true conversion-based manufacturer, in that we take raw materials and through a 10+ stop process convert them to finished products – our products are seals and o-rings that find their way into every automobile produced, commercial and military aircraft and solar/oil and gas applications on a global scale.  Last year we produced over one billion, yes, one billion pieces, all on Belleville Avenue in New Bedford.

Precix has benefitted in its affiliation with the workforce development system for the past several years participating in 2 manufacturing sector training initiatives, using the career center to post job openings and prescreen potential employees, and contracting with the workforce investment board for On-the-Job Training (OJT) slots where we are subsidized to train long-term unemployed workers, and the worker has a guaranteed job upon successful completion of training.

Collectively, over the past 8 years, our company, among 6 others, with the help of the WIB, secured $770,000 to train 1,500 workers.  The training was designed to improve our productivity and competitiveness in the global marketplace.  A unique aspect to the training conducted was the integration of 60 unemployed job seekers to build a pool of trained workers for projected growth.

We are currently involved in a similar WIB driven Workforce Training Fund application being submitted on behalf of the Southeastern Massachusetts Advanced Manufacturing Consortium.  The consortium includes 13 manufacturing companies, the GNB Industrial Foundation, UMass Dartmouth’s Advanced Technology & Manufacturing Center, Bristol Community College, NB Economic Development Council, and the career centers.

We are working with 6 other companies based in New Bedford and Fall River representing 3,500 employees.  In this case, the WIB brought Bristol Community College to each of our businesses to assess our needs and assimilate training that will be of mutual benefit.

But for the efforts of the WIB, organizing and brokering appropriate training providers such as BCC among others, there would not be a consortium.  These efforts by the WIB have allowed us to leverage our investments and bring training resources that would cost us a great deal of time and effort to identify and access.

 Continuing on…I was asked to address the following questions:

If there is increased demand for your products will you hire more employees?  When do you expect this to happen?  For us it already has.  Our company’s position in the global automotive supply chain translates into us being an early indicator…so, while most of the world began recessing in the fall of 2008 when Lehman tipped over, we were feeling the downturn in April.  Conversely, we are one of the first out, so we started getting much busier in August of 2009 and we have been adding workers ever since, to the tune of 143 people or about $6M in payroll.  As our markets served continue to grow, so will we to the tune of $155,000 in revenue for each employee, so a million in incremental sales equals 6.5 additional people.  The past 10 years has also seen us insource quite a bit of work that was done on the outside, which translated into 20 or so jobs here, for I would prefer to pay our people versus an outside vendor.

We see automotive production and airline flight miles increasing the next few years, which will translate into more people heading into 2013 and beyond.

What are the significant costs to doing business that you can attribute to having chosen to do business in this region?  Do these costs affect your ability to expand operations and create jobs? We compete with much larger companies all over the globe that have varying cost bases and challenges.  When we compare ourselves to competitors, the following stick out as major challenges to us being here in Massachusetts:

• Medical
• Disability
• Unemployment Insurance
• Workers Compensation

All told, the total cost of a typical production employee is 1.55% that of salary. So, for a worker making a wage of $30,000/yr it costs us approximately $46.4 total to employ them.  More typical for those that I speak with in other parts of the country is 1.35%, which 13% less.

More troubling for us, being that our process is so energy intensive, is the price of electricity.  We do shop the grid and get some of the best pricing around here (11.6 cents fully delivered), but we are still 2 – 3X that of our competitors in the Midwest and South.  This puts us at a $800,000 – $1.2M cost disadvantage when looked at yearly.  And should we be required to purchase power from Cape Wind in the future, at roughly .25 cents/kw, we will be at roughly a $2M cost disadvantage – ouch.

Lower rates equals more competitive pricing which equals more business and more jobs.

Have you experienced productivity advances in the past 5 years? How has that affected your hiring? Yes, our sales/associate has gone up 25% the past five years and 50% in the last decade – most of us that survive and thrive in North America have created similar advances.  This advancement was/is not an enabler to get rid of people, but it is an enabler for capturing more business via a lower cost basis.  It allows us to export product to Europe, South America and Asia, including China.  Productivity in manufacturing on a national scale leads people to believe that manufacturing is and/or should be dead in this country…this is not the case.  We simply do more with less, which is the only way to survive and thrive in thrive in a tough global setting.

In the 90-minute session, presenters take students through real-world exercises on academic self-discipline, time and money management, and goal setting. The hands-on activities awaken students to the fact that they have the power to make important future-impacting decisions right now. The seminar develops the ideas of time management, self-discipline and wise academic decision making. It brings home to teenagers the meaning of the term “cost of living” and exposes them to sobering information about the education skills required for various occupations in today’s and tomorrow’s workplace. They stress how education achievement levels will either greatly limit or expand career choices and the ability to financially support oneself or a family.

“The presenters want to help the students understand how their level of education will expand their future choices and income” says Noelle Pina, Employer Specialist for the Partnership at the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce. “The CHOICES program makes a positive difference in the lives of students by encouraging them to make good decisions and stay in school. The program is fast-paced and participatory so students are constantly active and never have the opportunity to become bored” Pina continues.

CHOICES is a fun workshop that quickly becomes easy to present. The partnership is looking for local business and community leaders who are comfortable with public speaking, are passionate about the success of youth and are interested in education, are organized and creative, and who can donate approximately 5 hours of their time to the workshop. This includes presenter training on March 14^th, 9:00am-12pm (3 hours) and presenting the full workshop (2 hours). Presenters are encouraged to practice the presentation before their first workshop and to work in pairs to allow for variety and sharing of the workload. “We will be with our presenters every step of the way so they feel at ease in front of the students,” says Zelia LaGarde, Internship Coordinator for the Partnership fromBristolCommunity College.

“CHOICES strives to awaken high school students to their potential, and helps them discover and develop aspirations for their lives,” said Leo Muller, Executive Director of the national non-profit. “We help kids understand the consequences of dropping out and the opportunities available by pursuing their education. We introduce them to life skills they can use to take charge of their lives and to build a better future for themselves. We look forward to our partnership with Connecting Activities and are honored to be part of a comprehensive solution for students in theNew Bedfordarea.”

After the workshop each student can participate in the CHOICES Challenge, a text messaging activity designed to reinforce the principles of the workshop, students who complete the activity will be entered to win prizes.

Presenter training is taking place at the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday March 14^th, 9:00am-12:00pm. For more information or to register to be trained as a CHOICES presenter please call Noelle Pina at (508) 999-5231 or e-mail Noelle Pina.

The luncheon is sponsored by Webster Bank and hosted by the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce. The cost, which includes a family style lunch, is $28 per person, $280 per table of 10, or $325 for a Signed Corporate Table which includes the company logo on a tabletop sign.

Advanced reservations are required by Friday, March 16th. For more information or to reserve your seat or table, click here or call the Chamber office, 508-999-5231

This family friendly event will feature something for everyone including an opportunity to have your photo taken with the World Series Trophies. The trophies will be displayed on Saturday afternoon between the hours of 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. with Boston Red Sox staff on hand.

There will be a myriad of demonstrations offered at exhibitor booths, cooking demonstrations and more. Exhibitors will be offering discounts and specials that are exclusive to the 2012 Home Show. This is a show you don’t want to miss.

The 2012 Greater New Bedford Home Show is co-sponsored by the Southcoast Media Group, The Real Estate Group, WBSM/WFNH and WJFD.

Please visit our facebook page at  www.facebook.com/NewBedfordHomeShow for information on exhibitors and activities taking place during the show or contact the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce at (508) 999-5231.

As a result of this strategic planning, the Chamber has officially launched the SouthCoast Young Professionals Network (SCYPN), a group managed by young professionals, for young professionals to work with local and regional leaders, Chamber members and other young professionals groups to attract and retain young talent in the SouthCoast region while also establishing our next generation of business and community leaders. The group will operate as a formal affiliate of the Chamber with its own leadership team of members and its own program of work.

“Traditionally the Chamber has always identified trends in the economy and how it will affect our business community,” said Lynne Mastera, Chair of the Board of Directors and CFO of Precix, Inc. “The South Coast Young Professionals Network will proactively shape our future workforce and help create future leaders.”

Young Professionals Organizations (YP ORG) are being created throughout the U.S. to combat “brain drain”, the slow leak of talented and educated people from urban areas. “In the 1990’s the U.S. Census reported that 90 percent of America’s largest cities had a net out migration of young talent” reports Next Generation Consulting, a marketing research firm that works with cities to identify their causes of brain drain and how to combat it. YP ORGs are instrumental in cultivating young leaders to lead with vision and passion. By allowing young professionals to serve in leadership roles and learn more about what’s available in the community, YP ORGs are a proven way to develop future leaders.

Alicia Moretti, Administrative Assistant and Artists Market Coordinator for Artworks! is a member of the SCYPN Leadership Team who has already found value from her involvement with the group, “being fresh out of college I know there are many leaders in my area that I will be given the opportunity to work with and learn from through this group, this is an opportunity I wanted to take advantage of.”

The Chamber will officially launch the SCYPN at their next Business After Hours meeting to be held on February 8^th at Buttonwood Park Zoo. At 4:30 p.m. an information session will be held about the SCYPN. All interested parties are invited to attend this session, whether they are a young professional or a more experienced professional who sees this as a valuable opportunity for their younger staff members. The Business After Hours networking mixer will start at 5:00 p.m.

If you would like to receive more information about the SouthCoast Young Professionals Network please contact Noelle Pina at 508-999-5231 or email npina@newbedfordchamber.com.