|
Friday, February 20, 2015
Information about going to College...
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Everything you need to know about IT in Miami-Dade County
Take a look at the many
technology services Miami-Dade County brings to you at the Citizens IT Expo
Use online GIS maps to find your
neighborhood services, find out how to pay your tax bill and other online
services.
Register to be a County vendor, apply
for a job, request a voter registration
application, and much more.
Feb. 18, 2015 at
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Stephen P. Clark Government Center Lobby
111 NW 1st Street, Miami, FL, 33128
Attendance is free!
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Una cumbre de transporte público, sin pasajeros...Raquel Regalado (El Nuevo Herald)
En un condado tan diverso como Miami-Dade, hay algunas cosas que todos tenemos en común y recientemente la más repetida son las quejas sobre el tránsito. Y mientras algunos residentes no saben los nombres de sus representes locales, todos conocemos el famoso medio centavo para el tránsito y las promesas que él mismo nunca cumplió. La semana pasada en el centro urbano de la ciudad de Miami, se celebró una cumbre de transporte con el objetivo de reunir clientes, organizaciones, expertos nacionales y la comunidad para hablar sobre el futuro del transporte en Miami-Dade. Pero lamentablemente, era más de lo mismo, conversaciones sobre otras ciudades como Denver que aprobaron un impuesto y largos discursos sobre proyectos privados enfocados en hacer dinero en vez de resolver nuestros problemas locales.
Mientras escuchaba hablar sobre nuestro futuro colectivo, los túneles y el uso de gas natural, lamentaba la ausencia de nuestros residentes, los que usan y los que no usan el transporte público y el entendimiento que estos son los consumidores de un servicio que el gobierno, obviamente, no está proporcionando correctamente.
Pensaba sobre los autobuses vacíos que vemos a diario y la falta de conectividad que hay entre los diferentes componentes de nuestro sistema de tránsito. Y me preguntaba: ¿Por qué en vez de tapar el sol con un dedo y hablar de grandes proyectos que van a costar mucho pero abarcar poco, no nos enfocamos primero en usar lo que tenemos? ¿Por qué no hacer un esfuerzo y confrontar por de una vez por todas lo que funciona y lo que no funciona? ¿Por qué no hablar de la experiencia de usar nuestro tránsito y enfocarnos en lo básico: proveer un servicio que sea limpio y que esté a tiempo?
Como miembro de la Junta Escolar, pensaba en nuestros 2,544 estudiantes que usan el sistema de transporte público de Miami-Dade a diario y la oportunidad que tenemos con estos nuestros ciudadanos del futuro. El programa que le proporciona a estudiantes de Maritime & Science Technology Academy (Mast), Design & Architecture Senior (Dash), New World School of the Arts, Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Sr., Young Men's Preparatory Academy, South Miami Senior, Southwest Senior y Coral Gables Senior High un Metro Pass si viven a más de 2 millas de estas escuelas le cuesta al sistema escolar $56.25 por estudiante cada mes. En vez de recoger a estos niños en diferentes partes del condado, el sistema escolar manda un autobús escolar a llevarlos y traerlos de la parada de Metrorail. De esa manera el programa ahorra el dinero de los residentes y reduce los autobuses escolares que contribuyen a la congestión del tránsito.
Pero en un sistema de más de 347,000 estudiantes y cerca de 50,000 empleados, uno se pregunta cuánto más se pudiera hacer. Y qué pudiéramos hacer para que estos 2,544 adolescentes tuvieran una experiencia más placentera en el transporte público y lo continuaran usando después de la secundaria. Pero de eso no se habló en la cumbre de tránsito, ya que ésta se convocó sin los pasajeros de Miami-Dade.
En los próximos meses, vamos a escuchar mucho sobre el transporte y los proyectos multimillonarios que se están planificando, pero yo les pido que consideren el deber que tenemos de preservar el sistema en el cual hemos invertido por más de una década, hacer que este funcione lo mejor posible y definir quienes son los pasajeros de nuestro sistema de tránsito hoy y quienes serán los pasajeros de mañana.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Dumb and Dumber Predicted the Dog-Grooming Van Boom (BusinessWeek)
In the 1994 comedy Dumb and Dumber, Jeff Daniels’s character Harry Dunne spends his life savings converting a utility van into a mobile dog-grooming business—called Mutt Cutts and made up to look like a sheepdog—then ditches the business to go goofballing across the country with Jim Carrey. That is to say, Dunne is a classic case of an entrepreneur who gives up on a good idea too soon.
In the two decades between the first movie and the sequel, Dumb and Dumber To,which opens Friday, what Americans spend on pets exploded to $56 billion last year, from $17 billion in 1994, according to the American Pet Products Association. Meanwhile, the number of pet-care businesses—groomers, trainers, kennels, and doggy day-care centers—more than doubled to 14,000 from 1998 to 2012.
That includes thousands of entrepreneurs like Shaffia Galis-Menendez, who runs a West Orange (N.J.) grooming business in a tricked-out 2014 Dodge Promaster, equipped with stainless steel bathtub, adjustable grooming tables, and storage for all manner of shears, detanglers, shampoos, and canine colognes. With her poodle Hamlet riding shotgun, Galis-Menendez usually makes five stops a day. She has about 200 clients. Appointments have to be booked three months in advance. “There’s a little saying in this industry,” she says. “It’s not about finding dogs to groom, it’s about finding groomers to groom them.”
Galis-Menendez, 44, would know. She owned a stationary grooming business in Belleville, N.J., for 19 years, employing as many as seven workers. Ten years ago, she bought her first converted van and hired a manager to run the brick-and-mortar business. Going mobile lets her get to know her canine clients better, she says. She can also command higher prices: $110 for an hour-long session with a small pooch to more than twice as much for larger dogs with more hair to wash, dry, and cut.
Business is good enough that she trades in her van for a new model every two years, financing the purchases with auto loans so she can take advantage of tax benefits from owning a work vehicle. “A girl needs something new every couple of years,” she says.
There are two things responsible for the growth of the mobile grooming business, and neither is the impact of Jim Carrey’s seventh-best-grossing movie.
The first is the increasing popularity of designer dogs. “Golden-doodles, Labra-doodles, and all those other poodle mixes are popular now, and almost all of them require maintenance,” says Amy Lewett, the owner of a 60-employee grooming business in Fairfax, Va., that booked $2.5 million in revenue last year. And baby boomers have sought to fill their empty nests with furry friends. “People treat their dogs like kids,” Lewett says.
Courtesy Wag’n TailsWag’n Tails mobile conversion
The second factor behind the grooming van business is a Granger (Ind.) company called Wag’n Tails that was an early adopter. In its first incarnation, Wag’n Tails was a brick-and-mortar pet-care operation in St. Paul, Minn. In the mid-1970s it put its first grooming vans on the road and eventually expanded to more than 20 vehicles. In 1996, the company shifted gears and retooled to sell converted vans to other enterprising dog groomers, says national sales manager John Stockman.
Courtesy Wag’n TailsInside a Wag’n Tails mobile conversion
The company has since sold more than 2,100 of its conversions. That includes a pull-behind tractor set-up that goes for $32,000 and a converted Ford E450 that sells for $89,000—before adding luxury sound systems and TV screens. The monthly overhead, including vehicle payments, fuel, insurance, and supplies, should cost about $2,000 a month, as Wag’n Tails explains on its website—about the amount a groomer can expect to make from servicing 31 dogs.
The dog-grooming business held up through the recession, Stockman says. “People who had a mobile groomer didn’t sacrifice anything,” he says. “They would cut back in other ways so they could do what they needed to keep Fluffy or Scruffy happy.” Now Wag’n Tails is branching out into mobile veterinary services that come equipped with X-ray machines, teeth-cleaning equipment, and anesthesia. Stockman says in-home euthanasia is also becoming a thing.
In other words, there’s probably room for Harry Dunne’s Mutt Cutts in today’s pet-care market, even if pros such as Galis-Menendez sneer at its silly sheepdog get-up. “When you tell people you do mobile grooming,” she says, “everyone thinks of that stupid truck.”
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Office Rent/Alquiler de Oficinas Hialeah
Maria
Elena Gomez
M&M
Investment Enterprises Inc
730
S.E. 8 Street Ste #104
Hialeah,
Fl. 33010
Cell
305-934-4747
E-mail
mnm730inc@aol.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)