DeWITT — United Radio is planning to eliminate 15 unprofitable lines of work by the end of March.

“Basically, we are looking to restructure a little bit,” says President Phil Rubenstein.

The company has notified 30 workers their positions are being eliminated in seven weeks as the firm moves away from work for electronics companies that doesn’t pay well enough, he says.

When workers were notified of the changes, they were given an application to transfer to one of the available positions in the company. Right now, United Radio has 20 open spots, Rubenstein says.

“I hope we get to the end of March and nobody is affected,” Rubenstein says.

He says that some 15 companies that turn to United Radio for customer support or repair work aren’t bringing United Radio a profit. “They recognize that we provide them with the highest level of service,” he says, “they just aren’t always willing to pay.”

The planned changes include the elimination of the department that provides in-home repair on televisions and appliances. United Radio has six employees in that department, Rubenstein says. Overall, the company has 420 employees in DeWitt and another 130 in Peachtree, Georgia.

Rubenstein adds that the changes are in line with what United Radio has been doing since Jacob Rubenstein founded the business in 1923. “My grandfather recognized that for an endeavor to be successful, it must be beneficial to both sides.”

United Radio is a repairer and remanufacturer of high-tech and automotive electronics. It has contracts to provide services to electronics companies. It supplies radio and other communication devices and services for first responders. The company also has a research and development section that looks at new ways to repair equipment, ways to improve product design, and has received patents for hardware and software.

Rubenstein adds that United Radio hasn’t closed the door on the companies it plans to drop. “We’re still in conversations with some of them.”

Rubenstein says the latest changes will have no effect on the company’s announced expansion plans. In January, the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency (OCIDA) board approved tax abatements that could save United Radio $247,520 in mortgage, sales and property taxes on expansion at 5717 Enterprise Parkway, next to its current building at 5703 Enterprise Parkway. OCIDA documents show the economic benefits from the expansion would top $22 million, including more than $12 million in wages and nearly $2.5 million in employee benefits.

Rubenstein stresses that other contingencies still need to be met for the expansion to go forward.

SYRACUSE — The Syracuse Community Health Center (SCHC) — and similar facilities across the region — will get the federal funding they were seeking, which is part of the budget deal that President Trump signed early on the morning of Feb. 9.

The budget includes more than $7 billion for community health centers (CHCs), teaching health centers (THCs), and the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), the office of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer announced Feb. 7.

Schumer had helped negotiate the agreement, which will provide the funding for community health centers, like the one in Syracuse and others across the region.

“A lot of relief,” says Leola Rodgers, president and CEO of Syracuse Community Health Center, when asked about her reaction to learning that the funding would be renewed. She spoke with CNYBJ on Feb. 12.

“When they didn’t pass [the budget] the first time at the end of September when it was due, it didn’t make us feel too bad because two years before that, it was [a similar situation with the funding],” she adds.

Community health centers were concerned about the lack of a new federal spending plan because about 70 percent of their federal funding comes from the expired Health Centers Fund, also known as Section 330 grant funding. 

New York community health centers were facing the loss of up to $166 million in federal funding if the Health Centers Fund was not extended. 

Rodgers says someone in her position gets “a little bit nervous” around the end of the year because it’s hard to craft a budget with uncertainty about the federal money coming in.

The Syracuse Community Health Center usually receives about $5.7 million in Section 330 funding, according to Rodgers.

“If they were to cut it 70 percent, that would mean $4 million for us and there’s just no way we could recover,” says Rodgers.

 Without the funding, SCHC would’ve been forced to lay off nearly 75 employees, close three health-care delivery sites, and reduce services by $3.8 million, according to a news release that Schumer’s office issued Jan. 29. That same day, the Democrat visited the Syracuse facility to pledge his support and indicate that he would work to get community health centers the funding that they were seeking.

The Syracuse Community Health Center employs nearly 260 workers and serves as a primary-care provider for more than 30,000 people.

About FQHCs

SCHC and similar facilities across Central New York are known as federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), according to information that the New York City–based Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS) provided at the news conference.

Federally qualified health centers are community-based health-care providers that receive funds from the HRSA health-center program to provide primary-care services in underserved areas, according to the HRSA website.

HRSA, which is short for Health Resources & Services Administration, is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Without the new budget deal, New York FQHCs could’ve lost up to $166 million in federal funding, which would lead to closures of health-center sites, layoffs of providers and staff, and a loss of access to primary and preventive care for “millions” of New Yorkers.

Federal FQHC funding comes from two sources that include annual discretionary appropriations and the health centers fund, which expired on Sept. 30, 2017, the end of the most recent federal fiscal year, according to the CHCANYS. 

The centers use the funding to sustain health-center operations, including helping to “partially” cover the cost of caring for the uninsured.          

BREWERTON — If you are looking for an explanation for how Schneider Packaging Equipment, a 47-year-old company in a mature industry, managed to grow sales by 90 percent in 2017 over 2016, company President Bob Brotzki offers a one-word answer: focus.

“We didn’t split the atom,” he quips. 

“We narrowed our focus and gained a ton of efficiencies,” adds Michael Brewster, Schneider Packaging’s director of sales and marketing. He says sales jumped from $12 million in 2016 to $22.3 million in 2017.

The 120-employee company, located on Guy Young Road in Brewerton (Town of Cicero), designs and builds packaging equipment, the machines that turn cardboard flats into boxes full of products. Workers in the company’s two buildings weld together metal and integrate components to create the machinery that helps keep products moving through modern factories. Customers include some of the largest names in consumer goods as well as lesser-known companies. “Food, beverages, and pharmaceuticals are our top three,” Brotzki notes.

The average piece of packaging equipment going out of the facility costs about $350,000, he says. 

Walking through one shop, Brotzki points out a nearly finished piece of equipment. Through multiple steps, the machine will fold boxes, glue them, fill them with product and place the freshly made boxes into even larger boxes so they can be sold at warehouse clubs. 

Each machine’s operation depends on complicated controls and complex gripping equipment, designed and made at Schneider Packaging, and one-armed programmable robots made by a Japanese company, Fanuc, Brotzki says.

In the industry, what Schneider Packaging creates are called case packers and palletizers. It has been the company’s work since it was founded in 1970 by Dick Schneider, who built machines based on his own design.

Today, the company is run by Dick Schneider’s son, Rick Schneider. It was Rick Schneider who hired Brotzki in February 2016.

Brotzki readily admits he wasn’t hired for his knowledge of the packaging-equipment business. He played football at Syracuse University and had an NFL career as offensive lineman for the Indianapolis Colts and Dallas Cowboys. Other work experience included three years with Yellow Freight. The trucking firm moved him six different places in that time, he recalls. He came to Schneider Packaging from Syracuse University, where he had returned to work in player development.

“If you don’t know a lot, that’s an asset because you have to simplify things,” Brotzki says. He spoke with people in all departments and learned what they thought needed to be done. “The answers have always been in this building,” he says.

“We had to break down some walls,” he adds. For instance, control engineers were moved to be closer to the mechanical department.

He also learned that the company had core products it had designed and could build at a profit and other goods that had to be custom-designed and custom-built. The company tightened its focus on the former.

“We were really hunting with a shotgun, now we hunt with a rifle,” says Brewster. That change allowed the company to boost sales without having to increase the number of workers on the payroll.

However, Brotzki says he has been hiring. His first “big hire” was Brewster, whom he brought on in October 2016. “He came in and simplified things.”

Narrowing the focus on core products has meant not bidding on some jobs that Schneider Packaging would have once pursued. “From a sales standpoint, you really hate to say no,” says Brewster. However the tighter focus allowed the company to meet customer deadlines more consistently. 

In addition to Brewster, Brotzki says the company has been hiring aggressively and plans to do more. Brotzki says his experience recruiting college football players has helped him recruit a specific type of employee: “We wanted young, high-energy people who are interested in something that’s growing.” 

He says the company has great experience on staff. The average engineer or service technician has been with Schneider Packaging 10 years, he adds. The experienced workers can share what they know with newcomers.

“I can teach you what you need about the business if you’re smart, young and high-energy,” Brotzki says.

Brotzki and Brewster see growth moderating in 2018. The goal is an 18 percent revenue increase. Brewster, who has added an inside sales position to the sales and marketing staff, says that increase isn’t going to come from changing the focus. Instead, he sees the company gaining sales by expanding its relationships with customers, for instance getting clients that have bought a Schneider Packaging machine for one plant to add machines to other plants.

He sees a bright future for increasing automation, noting that companies are trying to reduce the physical demands on workers and that the demand for packaging increases when consumers buy more goods for home delivery instead of at brick-and-mortar stores.

Likewise, technology improvements that make equipment and processes more efficient create demand as companies see the benefit to their bottom line. “They gain a lot of efficiencies on the back end,” he says.

Brotzki says workers at Schneider Packaging have been very receptive to the changes made at the company and the rising sales. “They wanted to be successful,” he says. 

Best in Bloom, Inc. of DeWitt, a locally owned wholesaler of flowers, serves 100 florist clients in locations that include Massena and Auburn.

Owner Steve Jocz has seven employees that make the deliveries, but Jocz will “often” drive one of his six delivery trucks to “stay connected to his loyal customers.” 

“I always look for a way to find what my customers need, and the highest quality flowers are what they have grown to rely on from Best in Bloom. To this day, I still check every incoming shipment to make sure the quality is what I expect,” Jocz said in a U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Syracuse District news release that tells his story and how his business benefitted from the SBA’s Emerging Leaders program. 

Jocz began selling flowers from a delivery truck in 1993 for a wholesaler, the SBA said. He was promoted to sales manager and later to store manager when his sales numbers kept outperforming other branches. 

Jocz found that he had a knack for selling flowers, and interacting with customers was part of the job that made his work “not a job at all,” the SBA said.

After nearly 20 years in the industry, Jocz decided to strike out on his own as a wholesaler. In 2012, he attended a small-business workshop series that the Onondaga Small Business Development Center (SBDC) offered. The SBDC is a program that the SBA and Onondaga Community College support.

The course helped Jocz develop a startup plan and his networking efforts with bankers, lawyers, and insurance agents familiar with the challenges facing many startup companies. Joan Powers, regional director of the Onondaga SBDC, encouraged Jocz and gave him “confidence to pursue his dream.”

When Powers recommended Jocz get involved with the SBA Emerging Leaders program in the spring of 2017, he figured it was “the right time for his growing company to add strategic planning,” according to the SBA.

Jocz believes he benefitted from working with Emerging Leaders instructor John Liddy and learning from other business owners. As a result of the “intensive” training program, Jocz put new business processes into place, including 24-hour customer service and a new company website. The changes helped produce a 25 percent increase in the company’s revenue, the SBA said.

“Without the SBDC, I wouldn’t have started my business, and without the SBA Emerging Leaders program, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Jocz said in the release. “My goal for the future is to continue to develop sustained growth and keep my customers happy.”