ISSUE 04

Business Todaythe official publication of the pittsburg chamber of commerce

VOLUME 46 April 2013

Rotacare Clinic CelebratesTwo Yrs. in Pittsburg................................2

More people use facebook and twitter for business.........................32013 Tech Palooza a great success..........................................................4

RotaCare clinic celebrates two years of service in Pittsburg

U.S. Agency Revises Form I-9 for Use in Verifying Eligibility to Work See Page 2

RotaCare Pittsburg Free Medical Clinic at St. Vincent de Paul is a bustling place, what with volunteer doctors, nurses and other medical professionals taking care of patients who bene�t from the no-cost care provided to them.

For years, as they've jockeyed for tech jobs and the cachet that comes with them, San Francisco has touted its cosmopolitan allure, while San Jose has countered with its vast supply of land.

San Francisco, San Jose team up to keep tech companies

See Page 4

2013 Pittsburg Chamber President’s Club:

2013 Partners:

See Page 2

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a revised Form I-9 for use in verifying employmenteligibility on March 8.

County Supervisor Glover to hold town hall meetings during April in unincorporated communities

See Page 3

Registered nurses and other medical personnel that volunteer their services on a regular basis gather for a group photograph at the two year celebration of RotaCare Pittsburg Free Medical Clinic being in operation in Pittsburg, Calif., on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013. Photographed from left are Angela Rivello, Yesenia Alvarez, Vivian dela Cruz, John Soliz, Tricia Soliz, Dollie Sorenson, Patricia Collazos, Joahna Duhamel, Blanca Estrada, Molly Dudziak, Katie Messina, Lydia Ramos, and Helene Glaser. (Susan Tripp Pollard/Sta�)

Contra Costa County Supervisor Federal Glover will hold four town hall meetings this April in unincorporated communities in his District 5 to give constituents an opportunity to raise issues directly with him and his sta�.

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013, New Chamber members; Momo’s Restaurant celebrated their Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. Their much anticiapted arrival was celebrated by Pittsburg City O�cials, Chamber CEO, Harry York and more importantly...eager patrons. The new casual Japanese Fusion Restaurant located at 7th and Railroad in downtown Pittsburg opened it’s doors to host patrons for dinner and drinks. Since their grand opening, Momo’s has delighted guest with their amazing food, great atmoshere and outstanding service. On behalf of the Chamber, we happily welcome Momo’s to downtown Pittsburg!

Business Today Page 2

All employers are required to complete a Form I-9 for each employee.

Revisions, Effictive DatesThe USCIS stated that the revisions tothe form include: A new �eld; Reformatting to reduce errors; and Clearer, expanded, user-friendlyinstructions for both employees andemployers. The Department of HomelandSecurity published a notice in the FederalRegister informing employers of the newForm I-9.According to the USCIS, e�ectiveMarch 8, 2013: Employers should begin using thenewly revised Form I-9 (Rev. 03/08/13N)for all new hires and reveri� cations. Employers may continue to usepreviously accepted revisions (Rev.02/02/09N and Rev. 08/07/09Y) untilMay 7, 2013. After May 7, 2013, employers mustuse only Form I-9 (Rev. 03/08/13N).According to the USCIS, employersshould not complete a new Form I-9 forcurrent employees if a properlycompleted Form I-9 is already on �le.HRCalifornia has been updated withthe new form.

Spanish VersionA Spanish version of Form I-9 (Rev.03/08/13N) is also available, andHRCalifornia is updated with the newform. The Spanish version is for use inPuerto Rico only. Spanish-speakingemployers and employees in the 50states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S.territories may use the Spanish versionfor reference, but must complete theEnglish version of the form.

Handbook UpdatedThe USCIS has updated the Handbookfor Employers: Guidance for CompletingForm I-9 (M-274) to correspond to thenew form. According to the USCIS,helpful new images have been added toillustrate how employees and employerscan complete Sections 1–3 of the newform. The revised handbook is availableat www.uscis.gov.

By: Gail Cecchettini Whaley, Cal Chamber

RotaCare clinic celebrates two years of service in Pittsburg This week, volunteers were not only busy seeing patients but also took out time to celebrate two years of providing services at the clinic, which recently added twice-a-month Saturday hours in addition to weekly clinic hours on Wednesdays.

The clinic specializes in providing short-term urgent care, which includes medical exams, diagnostic and lab testing, and medications, to low-income patients. Most of them are uninsured. If necessary, patients are referred for surgical proce-dures to Operation Access, a partnering organiza-tion.

The clinic �rst opened its doors in February of 2011 through an ongoing partnership of 10 local Rotary clubs, churches and St. Vincent de Paul of Contra Costa County. It receives �nancial support from several foundations and corporations.

"We need this clinic because there's a huge uninsured population in Contra Costa County, and East County was hit more than the rest of Contra Costa because of the foreclosure and unemploy-ment situation," said Barb Hunt, development director for St. Vincent de Paul.

Most of the 1,800 patients who have been seen by the clinic since it opened have come from Antioch and Pittsburg, she said.

Dr. Hamidreza Khonsari, who has a private practice in Antioch, has been volunteering at the clinic for two years and was recently named its medical director.

The clinic has added nutritional and educational classes aimed to help patients cope with long-term chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity.

"We found that 40 percent of our patients have some chronic (condition) they are dealing with, something they have to learn how to manage," Hunt said.

Angela Rivello, a retired Kaiser Permanente nurse, has been volunteering since the clinic opened and

U.S. Agency Revises Form I-9 for Use in Verifying Eligibility to Work

is a member of the clinic's advisory council.

"I fell in love with the whole idea once I started (volunteering), just seeing how much it was doing for people who don't have insurance," she said. "It's been great to see so much good come out of so little. A few of us had an idea, and because of collaboration and working as a team, we've created something very valuable in the community."

But it's not just her fellow volunteers that Rivello praises.

The clinic would not be the clinic it is without the patients who have made the decision to take care of their health.

"We don't just see uninsured and undocumented (patients). We see folks whose jobs were cut back and there was a cut in their (medical) bene�ts," Rivello said. "It can be pretty humbling to come here."

Dr. Hamid Khonsari speaks with his patient Ariel Belisario, of Antioch, who visited the RotaCare Pittsburg Free Medical Clinic for the first time in Pittsburg, Calif., on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013. Khonsari became the new medical director on Feb. 1. The clinic staff made up almost entirely of volunteers celebrated two years in operation Wednesday night. (Susan Tripp Pollard/Staff)

By Eve Mitchell Contra Costa Timescontracostatimes.com

how to get the best from your technology...

Coffee & Commerce

POWs on the Bataan Death March. (U.S. Air Force photo)

Business Today Page 3

More people are using Twitter and Facebook to contact businesses instead of dialing the 1-800 customer service number, but companies are slow to respond on social media, leaving concerns unanswered and even deleting questions, according to a study released recently. The �ndings, released by Redwood City-based LiveOps, which sells cloud-based customer service technology, and marketing research �rm Harris Interactive underscore what many consumers already know -- customer service can be lackluster on social network sites. More than half of companies don't respond to questions posted on Facebook and Twitter, the study said, even though social networks are quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to connect with businesses.

"You're destroying your brand by not responding," said Natalie Petouho�, a business consultant and lecturer at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, who conducted research for the study. "Companies are going to wonder where they went wrong and went down the drain."

The study, paid for by LiveOps, surveyed 1,255 consumers age 18 and older and researched customer service centers at retail, �nancial and telecommunications companies and other businesses over four months.

About 70 percent of complaints on Twitter and Facebook are ignored, according to LiveOps' �ndings. Most customers wait more than two days for a response on Facebook, when an appropriate waiting period is less than an hour, researchers said. More than one-third of retailers have erased a customer's question from their Facebook page, according to the research.

Most companies want to provide good customer service, experts say, but many don't have the technology to address customer complaints on multiple channels. For instance, some copy and paste tweets into a complaint database rather than replying on Twitter. Other companies restrict social media sites for advertising only, and even today, some are "still waiting to see if this (social media) phenom-enon thing is real," said Marty Beard, president and chief executive of LiveOps.

But while they wait, businesses could be losing out. Customers are likely to spend about 30 percent more money with retailers that interact on social media Petouho� said. And social media can do a lot of damage -- and good -- to a company's reputation, because comments spread in seconds to huge populations of customers. United Airlines took a beating in 2009 when a passenger's YouTube video about how his guitar was broken during a �ight went viral. In 2011, Los Gatos-based Net�ix (NFLX) su�ered a strong backlash when consumers, outraged by plans for a price hike, took to social networks to protest.

Yet, Some companies have �gured out how to keep customers happy on social networks. Nordstrom, for instance, was quick to address one customer's complaint on Facebook recently that a clothing model looked too skinny.

"You're better o� getting in front of the �re than being on the back end of it," said Marshal Cohen, consumer behavior and retail expert with The NPD Group. "To do nothing you just allow yourself to be blasted."

San Francisco, San Jose team up to keep tech companiesNow, in an e�ort to add a weapon to his city's arsenal, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has proposed reshaping a 30-acre stretch of freeway and rail yards into high-density housing, shops, restaurants and more than 2 million square feet of high-rise o�ce space.

But rather than a new stage in a Bay Area arms race, Lee's plans are being hailed as a sign of a new, cooperative sentiment sweeping the region. "Mayor Lee wants to see how to promote the Bay Area," said his spokeswoman, Chrisine Falvey. "There will be widespread bene�ts if companies relocate or expand to San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland or nearby areas." Added San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, whose city long has billed itself as Silicon Valley's capital: "I'm worried about Texas," not San Francisco. "We've got much bigger competition for companies that are expanding to other states and countries instead of keeping their growth in Silicon Valley."

Enrico Moretti, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley who has studied the region's history of innovation, said traditional rivalries have yielded to the reality of a fast-shifting business landscape.

"It used to be the case that tech companies were either in the South Bay or San Francisco. Now they are in both locations," he said. "And workers are much more mobile."At the same time, Moretti said, Lee's proposal to knock down Interstate 280 north of 16th Street and relocate a Caltrain storage yard near AT&T Park is an aggressive move for the business-friendly mayor, who has worked to keep startups in town as they grow.

Lee already has cut tax deals with such startups as Twitter in exchange for help revitalizing rundown areas, and he persuaded city voters in the fall to eliminate a payroll tax the mayor and others insisted punished companies for growth.

"Knocking down the 280 extension makes a lot of sense," Moretti said. "It will free up a lot of land to attract companies and create jobs."

Lee, in fact, said razing the overpass and rail yard is the city's last, best hope to create the kind of corporate campuses that San Jose and other cities long have used to woo companies that have

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already targeted expansion zones for tech �rms.

But some say the area already is so �lled up there's little room for growth. "When you go to lunch in SoMa, you have to get out of the o�ce before noon or you're going to be standing in line," said Jason Johson, co-founder of startup accelerator Founders Den, which sits near the Caltrain yard in Lee's sights and o�ers startups shared o�ce space and other resources.

"At certain times, companies have to leave because of their size, or because of tax incentives elsewhere," Johnson said. "San Francisco has lost a lot of companies over the years."

To be sure, Lee's plan won't give San Francisco anywhere near the amount of o�ce space San Jose boasts. The 30 acres the mayor thinks can be freed up is about the size of a single corporate campus on San Jose's North First Street. And Reed and other San Jose o�cials are making plans of their own to add millions of square feet to that area, accommodating as many as 20,000 new jobs.

Rather than view Lee's plan as a possible threat, Reed sees it as another piece of the region's real estate portfolio. "It's important that we have options in the Bay Area," Reed said. "North San Jose's got one kind of development potential.

We've got Coyote Valley with another kind of development potential. We're trying to provide lots of di�erent kinds of environ-ments for companies to work in. Those that want to be in a San Francisco high-rise will choose that." Lee's proposal isn't without its sharp critics. Some commuters worry it will slow tra�c in and out of the city. Caltrain o�cials, too, say they need the rail yard to house trains, especially with plans afoot to electrify the line as part of the state's high-speed rail project. The city is paying for Caltrain to conduct an eight-month study weighing the plan's potential impacts, according to Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager, who heads the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board that owns and operates the commuter line. Still, Yeager acknowledged, despite Caltrain's concerns, Lee's plan "would be a tremendous boon" for San Francisco and the rest of the region.

Ultimately, economic forces that are far stronger than the ambitions of the mayors of San Jose and San Francisco are likely to carry the day, said UC Berkeley's Moretti, who wrote the 2012 book "The New Geography of Jobs."

"The labor markets in the Bay Area are getting increasingly integrated," Moretti said. "This is very good for the region, very good for high tech and very good for the Bay Area economy."

More people are using Twitter and Facebook to contact businesses

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Business Starts Here

Business TodAY Page 4

2013 Techpalooza a great succes!!!

SCORE Business

Small Business Counseling

By appointment only

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Coffee & Commerce

Location: 985 railroad ave.8:00AM to 9:00AM

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Pittsburg Chamber

of Commerce

985 Railroad Ave.

Pittsburg, CA. 94565

(925)432-7301

NewsletterMonica Couture

Pittsburg Chamberof Commerce

monica@pittsburgchamber.org

One topic of discussion will be a Northern Waterfront Development Initiative that Glover is promoting.

County sta� members also will attend the town hall meetings and answer questions.

The schedule for the town hall meetings is as follows:

Bay Point: 6-7 p.m. April 2 at Ambrose Community Center, 3105 Willow Pass Road.

Pacheco: 6-7 p.m. April 11 at Glover's o�ce at 651 Pine St., fourth �oor, Martinez.

Crockett: 6-7 p.m. April 24 at the Crockett Community Center, 850 Pomona St., Crockett.

Rodeo: 6-7 p.m. April 25 at the Rodeo Senior Center, 189 Parker Ave., Rodeo.

For more information, contact Supervisor Glover's o�ce at dist5@bos.cccounty.us or 925-335-8200 or check out his website at:www.cccounty.us/supervisorglover.

By: Tom Lochner

Contact Tom Lochner at 510-262-2760 or

tlochner@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at

twitter.com/tomlochner

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Chamber MixerEl Salvadoreno Restaurant5:30pm-7:00pm

Contact us for advertising at

(925) 432-7301or email

chamber@pittsburgchamber.org

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Pittsburg Marina Grand Re-opening & Ribbon Cutting Ceremony 1:00pm-2:00pm

County Supervisor Glover to hold town hall meetings In April

April 2013 Calendar of events

New Members

Momo’s Restaurant610 Railroad Ave.

Pittsburg, Ca. 94565(925)252-9931

CES Premier Real Estate Services

1317 Buchanan Rd.Pittsburg, Ca. 94565

(925)432-3600

Yesterday's Techpalooza was PHENOMENAL!! The Chambers of Commerce, serving our region, among the other visionary and generous sponsors and participants, deserve high public commendation. I hope to produce a City-Journal article, to that e�ect, as soon as I can get "all my ducks in a row." You all did a very good thing and I, for one, am eternally impressed and grateful. Well done, friends at the Pittsburg Chamber and beyond!!!!!!!!~David Nelson~Pittsburg, CA.

The 2nd annual TechPalooza event, held on Tuesday March 19, 2013 was another great success! The brain child of Antioch Chamber Board member Matthew Hart, the Antioch Chamber of Commerce and in collaboration with the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, Pittsburg Chamber Board member, PJ Quesada and the Los Medanos College Foundation, The event was a great success and had an impressive attandance yet for it’s second year. Techpalooza is a full day event for businesses to be educated on cutting edge technology. This year, twelve dynamic presenters spoke on fresh new topics such as mobile marketing, the Cloud, and so much more! Plans for next year’s TechPalooza event are underway with ideas for new topics, speakers and dynamic contet. Look for a save the date in the coming months on our website at www.pittsburgchamber.org.

This year, we ere excited to be joined by Baypoint, Oakley, Brentwood and Rio Vista Chambers and their members and look forward to another great TechPalooz event in 2014!

2013 State of Education:

The 2013 Sate of Education was a great success. A special thank you to the CCC O�ce of Education, Los Medanos College and the Pittsburg Uni�ed School District for a terri�c event! Check our facebook page @pittsburgchamberofcommerce for more details and great pics from the event!!!