Fuente del artículo: State House News Service
Artículo por: Matt Murphy

Friends in High Places

JAN. 22, 2021…..After four years of watching Donald Trump govern by tweet, President Joe Biden took to the medium from which Trump is now banned on Wednesday morning with a message of his own.

“It’s a new day in America,” Biden tweeted.

He was right, of course. Biden was about to institute a mask mandate on federal property, order the United States back into the Paris climate accord and stop building a wall along the border with Mexico.

But the inauguration of Joseph Robinette Biden as the 46th president of the United States also ensured that it will soon be a new day in Massachusetts, with state-federal relations about to undergo a complete reset.

Baker often said he found Trump’s Cabinet to be good to work with, even if he didn’t agree with the man in the Oval Office. But the upper echelons of the Centers for the Disease Control, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Federal Highway Administration will now be stocked with true F.O.C. — Friends of Charlie.

The development at Highway came to light this week in an announcement Baker described as “bittersweet.” After a six-year stretch that started with the “Snowpocalypse” of 2015 and will end with a round of pandemic service cuts at the MBTA, Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack is trading Baker for Biden.

Pollack will begin work next week as deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. The governor tapped Registrar of Motor Vehicles Jamey Tesler to fill Pollack’s shoes temporarily.

When she was chosen by Baker at the start of his first term, Pollack was one of the most high-profile examples of what would become Baker’s bipartisan approach to governing — a Democrat most closely identified with her work at the Conservation Law Foundation to extract transit concessions from the state to mitigate the impacts of the Big Dig.

She leaves as the face of Baker’s transportation legacy, an unwavering ally through good times and bad.

“It just never hurts to have relationships with people in high places,” Baker said Thursday.

And he’ll have plenty of them.

As Donald Trump departed Washington, he broke from tradition once again by skipping his successor’s inauguration, and telling a small group of supporters at Andrews Air Force Base that he would be “back in some form.”

“So, have a good life. We will see you soon. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much,” Trump said, making his last public statement as president before jetting off to Florida.

The Massachusetts Republican Party responded to the occasion by thanking Trump for four years of service, while Baker waited until after Biden swore his oath of office to make his only public statement of the day — a welcome to the new administration.

Baker is hoping that with the Biden team in charge of vaccine distribution in Washington the state will get better “visibility into the pipeline” that is currently delivering about 80,000 doses a week to Massachusetts.

The latest data released by the state Thursday indicated that 359,919 doses of the 591,775 shipped to Massachusetts have been administered so far as Baker announced a series of steps this week to increase access to the vaccine. But the governor and Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel both talked this week about it being difficult to plan for distribution when the state is only told on a week-to-week basis how much vaccine to expect.

Congregate care facilities, including prisons and shelters, began vaccinating this week, and Baker announced that as of Thursday everyone in Phase I – which newly included home-based health care and non-COVID care providers — is now eligible.

To accommodate the growing pool of vaccine-eligible residents, Baker announced while touring the mass vaccination site at Gillette Stadium that Fenway Park would open next month as the state’s second mass vaccination site, and that CVS, Walgreens and other private partners would begin to receive vaccine for distribution.

The state Public Health Council also approved pharmacy students and students training to be physician assistants to administer vaccines after they’ve been properly trained, adding to a pool of providers that already included medical and nursing students.

The push to ramp up vaccine distribution came as public health officials announced that two cases of the more contagious, and possibly more deadly, strain of the coronavirus first found in the United Kingdom had been detected in Massachusetts.

It was only a matter of time and Bharel said the safety protocols, including mask-wearing and distancing, don’t change with the new variant, but a more contagious form of the virus could eat away at the positive trend lines that prompted Baker to relax some of the post-holiday restrictions he put in place.

Baker said that since Jan. 1 new cases of COVID-19 had fallen 30 percent, the positive test rate had dropped 30 percent, and hospitalizations were down 10 percent. Those improving public health conditions were sufficient to convince him to lift the stay-at-home advisory and curfews for businesses that he put in place to protect against the post-Christmas surge.

The governor had been advising people to remain at home between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., and in order to make that possible had told businesses like restaurants that they must shut down by 9:30 p.m. each night.

While Baker is lifting those curfews on Monday morning, he’s not adjusting the 25 percent capacity limits for most businesses, and won’t for least another couple of weeks, he said.

The week quite literally revolved around Wednesday and the activities in D.C., which turned out to be more celebratory than calamitous, which had been feared. But it was hard not to feel like the threat of more violence at state capitols kept Beacon Hill quiet this week.

Lawmakers largely stayed away, though Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka did make good Tuesday on their promise to refile the climate and emission reduction bill that Baker vetoed last week unchanged.

The big question now is when will they ask freshly sworn-in House and Senate legislators to vote on the package that was negotiated last session, and if they will entertain any changes — either ones sought by the governor or their own members – before they send it back to Baker.

While legislative Democrats plotted their next moves on climate change, Baker was preparing to give his first pandemic-era “State of the Commonwealth” address next week and to file a budget proposal for fiscal 2022.

He and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito teased the governor’s budget with the Massachusetts Municipal Association as a spending plan that will increase unrestricted local aid by $39.5 million, or 3.5 percent, and for the first time fund the 2019 Student Opportunity Act.

The MMA sneak peak has been a tradition spanning multiple governors, and a sign that some things are returning to normal.

Fuente del artículo: State House News Service
Article By: Colin A. Young

Sales Surged After Lockdown in Second Quarter

JAN. 19, 2021…..More single-family homes were sold last year in Massachusetts than in any other year since 2004, despite a once-in-a-century pandemic that threatened the financial security of thousands of residents and dramatically changed the process of buying and selling a home.

There were 61,469 single-family home sales in 2020 – a 3.9 percent increase over the sales total of 2019, according to The Warren Group. The median sale price for those homes climbed 11.4 percent from 2019 to hit $445,500 last year.

“In the wake of the first COVID-19 lockdown way back in March, single-family home sales took a nosedive for the entire second quarter,” Warren Group CEO Tim Warren said. “If you told me back then that by the end of the year that the total number of sales would surpass 2019, there’s no way I would have believed you … yet here we are. Another record-setting year in the books for Massachusetts real estate.”

Warren said an unprecedented December helped to boost the 2020 totals. December 2020 saw 6,410 single-family home sales in Massachusetts — the most ever recorded for the month and up 28.6 percent from December 2019. The median sale price for the month jumped 14.4 percent to $455,000, an all-time high for the month and the sixth consecutive month with a median sale price greater than $450,000, Warren said.

“The hot market has continued right into December, four straight months of sales gains of 25 percent or more,” driven by low interest rates and people spending more time at home. “The more time they spend at home, the more they think about the home and some ask what they want to change,” he said on The Warren Group’s podcast.

Almost everyone who sold or purchased a home in 2020 probably had to deal with COVID-19 restrictions and safety measures in one way or another. Packed spring open houses gave way to virtual showings and eventually to tightly-scheduled and timed windows for prospective buyers to tour homes for sale.

But despite the new hurdles COVID-19 imposes on buying or selling a home, the virus and its accompanying shift towards remote work helped to fuel a migration away from cities and towards “vacation” areas in Massachusetts like Cape Cod and the Berkshires, Warren said.

He said that he expects the housing market will “continue to sell well” in 2021 but saw a concerning trend emerge at the end of 2020.

“The one thing I worry about is the rapidly-rising median price across the state,” Warren said. “For six straight years, we saw a very good market but with restrained growth in price — just two to five percent. The tail end of 2020 saw huge changes and prices rose by 14 percent or more for five straight months. For the year as a whole, prices rose 11.4 percent. I consider that to be unsustainable.”

He added, “I hope we see the market cool and consolidate its gains before we create a bubble in prices as we did in 2005. The collapse of the market in 2006 and beyond was very painful.”

Gov. Charlie Baker last week signed an economic development bill that included a housing production measure anchored to local zoning changes, and another initiative designed to boost housing near MBTA stations.

Amazon is the largest online store and hosts products from some of the biggest brands in the world. They are also known for large inventories and discounts, so competing based on price can be a tall order for local startups. Interestingly, about 50% of the products you encounter at Amazon in the United States are listed by small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and not Amazon itself. So is Amazon a competitor, or is it a marketplace?

In addition to setting up your business on Amazon, there are several ways a local business can compete and establish its market. Here are five:

Offering Personalized Services

Local businesses have the advantage of offering one-on-one customized services, something that’s not available for Amazon customers. As a small business, you can focus on customer support to learn more about your clients and customize your services to their needs. There are various ways to create an impression of personalized services, from greeting customers by their names and following up on big sales to analyzing each feedback.

Introduce A Loyalty Plan

A loyalty program is designed to reward repeat customers and a perfect way to get repeat business income. If you lack one, you should create a loyalty program that allows regular customers to receive personalized treatment, discounts and better offers. Make sure your customers learn about the loyalty program during their first visit or interaction with your business. Amazon has deals and redeemable points, shipping discounts and other incentives, so make sure your loyalty program is attractive enough to retain customers.

Increase Brand Awareness and Online Presence

To become successful, people need to know about your business, so it is vital to work on the brand. Invest in SEO, set up your website and get on Amazon if your business model can align with the store. Make sure you optimize the business for local customers and take advantage of social media marketing. Increasing brand presence locally will provide the perfect canvas for exploring markets beyond the borders.

Market for Mobile

Most people start their searches online through their mobile phones and modern devices. In recent times, mobile games, operating systems and other applications have become a platform for advertising. Companies like Amazon market for everyone, especially mobile users. However, as a local business, you have the advantage of knowing and understanding your immediate customers. You know the right language to use for marketing and platforms local communities use to access information. Mobile devices also offer a chance to connect offline shopping experiences.

Set Up Your Amazon Business

Amazon boasts the inherent advantages of a global brand and is essentially a marketplace where customers can find any product. As a local business, you can take advantage of the existing logistics frameworks and reputation to list your products on the platform. Local customers that prefer to shop from Amazon will still be able to find your products and business. However, this requires meeting all Amazon requirements and optimizing your business to appear at the top of both Amazon and Google search results.

Amazon relies on small and medium businesses (like yours) in all categories and, in 2019, the number of SMB accounts in the US Amazon store increased by 133% to 1.1 million. For local businesses, the challenge is to create more perks and personalized services while leveraging social media, mobile marketing and local SEO.

If you are a freelancer, you live by your wits and your talent, which can lead to an exhilarating feeling of self-satisfaction. However, being a solopreneur has its risks and if you get sick or cannot work, you have no sick days or vacation time to rely on for backup income. So, maybe it’s time to branch out and turn your hustle into a business.

By documenting your processes, you can outsource portions of your business, increase productivity and bring home more revenue for less effort. Follow these tips to document what you do, so you can hire other people to help you grow your operations.

What Is Process Documentation?

Process documentation provides a description and instructions on how to carry out business processes. Examples of process documentation include the following:

• tutorials
• forms
• policies
• checklists
• screenshots
• step-by-step instructions
• process maps

Process documentation helps you onboard employees or virtual assistants to conduct your freelance activities.

Process Steps

Here are the first steps of documenting processes to help you get started:

• Process Name: Choose a descriptive name of the process you’re documenting. You may find it helpful to start on a whiteboard or flipchart.
• Process Scope: Choose a logical start and endpoint of the process. If you have several stages or products, for example, you can document each one separately to make it easier to complete your documentation in small sections.
• Process Outputs: This identifies the end result of the process. For example, if you are documenting a freelance process, the end result is a product or service ready to deliver to the client. Examples include crafts sold online or social media management services you provide to clients.
• Process Inputs: Identify all materials needed to perform the process. For example, you will need boxes, packing material, scissors and labels to prepare products for shipping. If you are updating a client’s website, for another example, you will need internet access, software, development tools and content.
• Process Activities: Write down or video record all the activities involved in completing the process. Examples of process activities include:

• • Sign paperwork
  • Approve request
  • Ship product
  • Notify user

You can use sticky notes and a tabletop to visualize this and provide flexibility during the organization stage.

• Process Organization: Organize all the activities that you brainstormed into logical categories. At this time, you may want to break the items up into separate processes. Within each process, put the process flow into order. Add key decision points and possible outcomes to develop a complete picture of the process.
• Process Review: Look at the process flow to determine whether you have left any steps out.
• Process Roles: Assign roles representing who will complete each activity step.
• Transcribe Process: Use swim lane flowcharting to create a visual workflow diagram.
• Final Review: Determine which activities and roles you can outsource for each activity.

If you conduct your freelance work online, documenting each process helps you prepare job descriptions and outsource different activities that involve digital delivery. One of the most efficient ways to begin is by recording yourself on video performing the work you want to outsource. Consider downloading a screen-recording software like TechSmith Capture (Mac or Windows).

When you document your business processes, you make it possible to grow your freelance hustle into a business that can grow beyond just your own capacity.