Freeman & Davis LLPMason has served as Chief of Staff for New York City's Energy Policy Office and Telecommunications Policy Office, with five years of service at the City's Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). Mason has transitioned from services as a government benefit plans administrator, energy savings specialist and business assistance coordinator, now applying his expertise directly in assisting private enterprise for the benefit of New York based commercial and industrial businesses. Mason's leadership at Freeman & Davis LLP, as Director of its new consulting business, is merging the two services of accounting and specialty consulting services into what is best described as "benefits engineering". The process of "benefits engineering" includes business modeling assessments; financial analyses; incentive program applications and certification assistance; business to government liaison; implementation services; and continuous client program compliance service.
Mason’s vision for Freeman & Davis LLP is to create the first full service economic development consulting firm that offers business owners a turnkey solution to all of the incentives and benefits available and subsequently maximize their bottom line for the benefit of making blue collar employment affordable in the New York Metro Area.
EDC
Mason’s experience at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) from 2001 until 2006 put him front and center in the world of economic development benefits. As the administrator of one of the City’s energy benefit programs he has learned and integrated his program with every other benefit program available to New York City's commercial and industrial businesses (city, state, federal and utilities). By integrating these programs he has created numerous inventive ways to package benefits for relocation, renovation, retention and attraction deals. These packages have become the gold standard for what small and mid-sized firms can receive.
Mason’s one on one experience with over 1300 New York City businesses have either revolved around attaining these packages or solving the various and unpredictable problems that New York City businesses face. A few examples are:
- Assisting a growing Asian food company in Brooklyn that needs to resolve a property ownership dispute before they can have rail access to bring flour to their plant via rail car
- Investigating the feasibility of converting a dead end street to angle parking so a coffee roasting company in Queens can have enough room for their own employees to park on the street
- Investigating the true ownership and maintenance responsibilities of a seawall for a metal plater in Queens who noticed that his parking lot was crumbling into the East River
- Strategizing with a Bronx business owner as to the best way of getting the City to sell him the adjoining plot of land to his factory. He later won a City issued RFP to develop the land.
- Connecting a commercial printer specializing in "funeral home printed materials" with an executive at Verizon to rewire and remove a hazardous telephone pole in the rear of their facility. (Note: As easy as it may seem to get in touch with the phone company, this was an unresolvable problem for two years before Mason stepped in)
Marketing
Mason is a respected authority on marketing ten different economic development programs. He enjoys putting his business skills to good work for the public sector. Other City and State agencies (Small Business Services, Dept. of Environmental Protection, NYSERDA, NYS Public Service Commission) frequently come to Mason for business outreach and marketing advice. He takes pride in his personal marketing successes: a 33% direct mail response rate (2 mailers) for a post-9/11 program and his program (Business Incentive Rate) receiving the highest name recognition score of all City programs amongst NYC business owners (Source: Parthenon quantitative survey of NYC industrial sector business owners). His specialty is organic, limited budget marketing and using creative partnerships to reach very specific target markets.
Project Management
Mason has been responsible for managing most of his departments special projects as well as recommendations from both the Mayor's Energy Policy Task Force and the Mayor's Telecommunication Policy Advisory Group. He negotiated a funding agreement with NYSERDA and an outside consulting firm to analyze and suggest "urban environment" improvements to the LEED “Green Building” rating system.
He has published, designed and managed the selection process for the government method of competitive procurement, Request for Proposals (RFP), as well serving on RFP review committees for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). He manages his own, as well as his departments', relationships with the legal, contracting, budget, finance and compliance departments to ensure a smooth work flow through the City's bureaucracy. His work takes him across the entire agency and he has relationships in all thirty one NYCEDC departments.
Mason has managed many project budgets, consulting contracts with a total value of $2.5 million, and has successfully dealt with managing project budgets that have multiple public and private funding sources.
One of Mason's favorite things to do at work is building and implementing systems. He likes to examine a system, break it down into it's individual parts and then reassemble it, resulting in a more efficient and effective process towards reaching the original goal. He has used this method to reform everything from how benefit applications are processed and approved, to how background checks are done on applicants. This skill was integral to his success at designing a lean system for only three staff members to administrate a new 1200 applicant program without relinquishing any of their existing work responsibilities.
Public Speaking
Mason enjoys speaking to groups about benefits and energy issues. He usually organizes forums with real estate associations, local development corporations, and other community groups. Although his main focus is how businesses can get benefits for doing routine projects, he also speaks about energy basics and how to read an electric bill. Mason applied his public speaking experience when he was appointed to his community board and had to address crowds about his opinions and persuade others to his point of view.
Inter-agency Affairs
As Chief of Staff Mason has represented his Agency and his departments on numerous high-level policy advisory groups. He helped write the energy section of the NYC2012 Olympic bid and subsequently responded to the International Olympic Committee’s energy questions. This was in the wake of the August 14, 2004 system wide electric failure. He represented his agency and the Mayor's Energy Policy Task Force at numerous conferences and functions.
A recent example of Mason’s inter agency and City knowledge is his work with DEP to determine the best way to get community impact funds from a power plant developer dispersed to local businesses for environmental upgrade/remediation on their sites. The money went from private hands (power plant developer), to escrow in quasi-public hands (EDC), to city agency hands (DEP), and then finally to the businesses (in Queens). DEP sought Mason to help them devise a creative solution and subsequently the process avoided months of legal delays so the money could be dispersed as soon as possible.
Event Planning
He has organized and facilitated at least 15 senior executive level meetings at NYCEDC’s downtown conference facility and in City Hall's Council of the Whole (COW) room. He has organized and facilitated many off-site events such as press conferences, and business workshops.
9/11/2001
After escaping Lower Manhattan on 9/11/2001, Mason found himself facing one of the biggest professional and personal challenges one could suddenly find themselves in. In the immediate days afterwards, Mason volunteered to help on a small team of NYCEDC'ers to set up a business information center for the business owners that were soon going to be let back into the "frozen zone" area around ground zero. The area was still dusty, had no electricity and had the odor of death, but the work had to get done; we were not going to let Lower Manhattan remain shuttered. The assistance center was a success given the circumstances. We did every thing from consoling business owners who had just found out how many employees they had lost, to coordinating access for private trash haulers to remove the hundreds of tons of spoiled foodstuffs that had been abandoned in the moments after the buildings collapsed.
After a few months, Mason began to investigate the feasibility of modifying certain rules so that the City could reallocate benefits for outer-borough manufacturers that had gone unused to effected Lower Manhattan businesses. The Power Downtown Program (PDP) began after getting NYCEDC, Con Edison, the Public Service Commission and Empire State Development Corp. to all agree to modifying Con Edison's rate tariff so that the unused energy benefits could be allocated towards Lower Manhattan businesses in need. Out of the 2500 companies that were eligible and received our two direct mail pieces, approximately 1200 applied and 830 were enrolled. The program was designed to reduce a business's monthly electric bills by approximately 15% for 3 years. One major hurdle that Mason negotiated was how to distribute the benefits through downtown landlords that "submeter" or bill their tenants for electricity at a flat rate. All commercial landlords ended up complying. Later, Mason was awarded the NYCEDC President's Award for creating and managing the Power Downtown Program.
Department History
NYCEDC's mission is "to encourage economic growth in each of the five boroughs of New York City by strengthening the city's competitive position and facilitating investments that build capacity, generate prosperity and catalyze the economic vibrancy of city life as a whole."
Mason began at NYCEDC in the Energy Department as a Project Manager working on energy audit programs in 2001. As his responsibilities continued to grow, he was promoted to Senior Project Manager. After a year, a new position was created for him and he was appointed Chief of Staff by the Senior Vice President of his department. Later the Telecommunications Department was assigned the same leadership as the Energy Department. Mason was the longest serving member of his unit.
Some of the organizations that Mason has worked with:
Public
NYC Small Business Services (SBS)
NYC Mayor's Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Businesses
NYC Dept. of Finance (DOF)
NYC Dept. of Administrative Services (DCAS)
NYC Dept. of Information and Telecommunication Technology (DoITT)
NYC Law Dept.
New York Power Authority (NYPA)
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)
NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP)
New York Police Dept. (NYPD)
NYC Dept. of Transportation (NYCDOT)
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC)
Private
Verizon
Con Edison
Cablevision
Couch White, LLP
Keyspan Energy
Resource Insight, Inc.
Black & Veatch
Flak and Kurtz
Steven Winter & Associates
Not-for-Profits
Bathgate Industrial Park
Community Environmental Center (CEC)
Local Development Corporation of East New York (LDCENY)
East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corp. (EWVIDCO)
Greater Jamaica Development Corporation (GJDC)
Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center (GMDC)
Hunt's Point Economic Development Corp. (HPEDC)
South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. (SOBRO)
South West Brooklyn Business Development Corp. (SWBIDC)
Staten Island Economic Development Corporation (SIEDC)