Situation Critical - Partners Needed in Napa

Where did our workforce system partners go? What happended to the education and training linkages that were so critical to delivering skilled workers for businesses? What happened to the once proud training and employment center that was called upon to open an office in Mare Island to assist with the closure? How can there not be an Employment Development Department (EDD) office in Napa?

We have 5000 +- businesses here, a population approaching 150,000, demographics that show us as more diverse than the State as a whole, with a quickly increasing immigrant population; and employment growth that has turned a once sleepy(er)bedroom community on its head in less than 10 years consequently making Napa a net importer of jobs. With the rapid changes happening in Napa, it is time to reconstruct the Napa workforce development system and to truly deliver the services that our residents and businesses need.

When EDD, the County and Napa Unified (Adult School) were working together, we were part of a core team of partners that served as a national model for one-stop service delivery and partnership. In fact, the Congress of the United States itself, called on Napa's Executive Director for testimony regarding the development of new workforce legislation that would soon become known as the Workforce Investment Act. Where did it all go?

Certainly, it is not the fault of any one partner in particular. The County and the Napa Adult School - the other two legs of the proverbial three-legged stool also made some significant changes. Specifically, the Adult School choose to move in with its educational parents at the Napa Education Center on Jefferson Street and the County moved its Training and Employment Center and CalWorks staff to a building on Soscol. Surely, there were good reasons, for these moves and the pull-out of EDD altogether. But were those "good" reasons, good enough to justify what amounted to a significant destruction of the Napa workforce delivery system?

When these three entities worked together at a common site, known as Ridgeview, Napa had a true "skills" center. It was a place where many people came to get jobs and get job skill upgrades. We had the system down. At the front desk, there was, what amounted to a "universal screener" that greeted everyone. This person, was courteous, understood customer flow, and effectively guided people to the right services. We had an integrated career center that was well staffed and serviced by all core partners. We had a number of language acquisition classes on site, computer training, job clubs, GED instruction, and a host of other training classes on site. We even had child and adult care resources available for clients when they were in training. Of course, Napa had its typical one-stop familial issues, but WoW, all in all, it was a great place to access training, education and whole host of support services that moved people into the world of work and up their career ladders.

We have to get it back....and, I think we can. In my mind, there is a window of opportunity open, right now, that can make us greater than we ever were. The present day One-Stop is housed on what can best be described as a campus. It is in, probably one of the best locations, in the County for such an operation, given its address on a main arterial roadway in the City with plenty of parking and regular public transportation frequency from all areas of the County. Within this campus there are other non-profit agencies that call the campus home, an executive recruiter, an immigration and naturalization consultant/counselor, a foster care program, a tutoring center, plenty of vacant space that could serve as classrooms for our education partners, a low cost everything store, also known as Walmart, where you can be appropriately dressed for a job interview for under $20.00 and most important...a newly renovated professional office building that is...seismically safe!

The reason that EDD gave when they moved out of the County to begin with was that they couldn't find a seismically safe building in Napa in which to operate. Poof! there went all of EDD's job services staff, all their employment and business resources, our joint efforts at serving the employer customer, and roughly1/2 of the 2000+ job candidates that were walking through the One-Stop's doors looking for work and help getting work. I don't think I need to go into what that meant for the small business economy that was expanding its job growth at the very same time that the workforce delivery system was disintegrating.

There really is a perfect storm of opportunity that I hope we can harness. It starts with getting EDD back as the good friend it once was. I think we are on the right track. I have been speaking with EDD managers and policy makers about recommitting to Napa. While I have been encouraged by all of these discussions, I am tempered by a clear understanding of the current workforce environment, which has been under attack for several years. For instance, EDD's Workforce Services Branch was recently hit hard by a $12 million cut to their job services program, this in addition to the fact that California's workforce system has been dealing with an approximate 40% cut from the US Department of Labor over the last few years. Certainly, I can feel the pain of these cuts at the State level and its impact on us at the local level, but there must be a solution for Napa other than the continued depletion of our ability to serve our community's workforce needs.

The right thing to do for this community and the employers, students and job seekers in it, is to get EDD, the Napa education system, our many community based organizations, and the County back together and to start rebuilding a once proud system that is more needed now than at any time in the past. I'm not sure how this is going to happen...but I think it starts with commitment and leadership from many people!

Monterey

I made a one day trip to the California Workforce Association's Meeting of the Minds in Monterey conference this week. Although, I wasn't originally planning on attending I am very glad I did. Not only did I get alot from the few sessions that I attended, but I also re-energized myself a little bit. I always get charged by conversations with my peers. I have some good professional relationships with others in the industry and I find that it helps to both commiserate and strategize with these friends. Some of the people I had an opportunity to talk to, I had not seen in 3 to 5 years. Others, I have seen more recently, but not often enough considering the information dump that still happens when I see them, and others I met for the first time on this trip. All in all, my conversations were good, my professional network intact and my learning curve flattened by the one day trip. A true meeting of the minds, I guess.

The Executive Committee - July 24th

The new Executive Committee met for the first time this year. According to the new by-laws that were adopted at our June WIB meeting, the executive team consists of the following:

• WIB Chair (also chair's the executive committee) - Bill Kreysler
• WIB Vice Chair - Sandy Cooper
• Secretary/Treasurer - Bruce Wilson (non-voting)
• The Chairs of each of the WIB committees: Youth Council - Barbara Nemko; Strategic Partnerships - Peter Schiller; Finance and Oversight - Mark Bontrager; Marketing - vacant

The executive committee has a big job in that it is responsible for the overall make-up and performance of the Board. This group certainly seems ready to take on the challenge of assuring a high performance and well run policy board. The group jumped right into the organizational discussion by touching on the following topics:

• WIB Membership & Organization - The group began a discussion that tried to balance our new legislative requirement, via SB293, that we add two additional labor seats with our desire to reduce the size of the Board, if possible, in order to have more substantive and focused discussions. It is also important to note that since these additional labor seats are public, we would have to add three additional business seats in order to maintain our private sector majority. This would bring our overall board size to 36 if nothing else changed. After considerable discussion, the committee approved a plan to both added the required labor seats and reduced the overall size of the board by selecting community members that could meet more than one of the required seats. For instance, Beth Painter can represent both a business seat as well as an economic development seat, and Brad Wagenknect can represent both housing and veterans. In addition, there are a few members that don't represent required seats. We will allow those seats to term and will not refill them.
• WIB Meeting Structure - The committee asked itself if the meetings are being approached appripriately. For the past year, we have used the 1/3 rule, meaning that for the first 1/3 of the meeting we would take care of old business (mostly through consent calendar), for the 2nd 1/3 we would have more in-depth discussions on new business and for the last 1/3 of the meeting we would conduct board development. The committee members believed that this approach worked and that the meetings have been successful. There was no desire to change the meetings at this point.
• Board Development/Member Expectations - I had conveyed a small level of frustration that some board members continue to claim ignorance of their role and responsibilities and that we had to come up with a way to assure that board members had the capacity to fulfill their obligations. I handed out a board member job description that clearly outlined responsibilities and the committee endorsed it. The committee also asked me to design a comprehensive orientation package for new and existing board members.

The committee also reviewed the work of the Strategic Partnerships committee and endorsed the strategic initiatives plan that was presented. Bill asked that the committee give some thought to assure that the other committees were tuned in to the plan and had responsibilitiy for oversight of particular portions of it. Peter will add a new column to convey this.

I distributed the most updated youth council roster and the committee endorsed it. I also informed the group that the youth council was set to review and recommend a youth service provider based on the solicitation process that we had just gone through.

I explained that the County HHSA vocational services division has undergone a re-organization that has benefited the WIB tremendously. Although, no new positions were created, the reorganization has aligned staff positions with the work of the Board. The WIB now has full time staff to oversee and implement its initiatives. I accepted an offer by the County to serve as the full-time Executive Director and Julia Smith had accepted an offer to serve as a Business Services Coordinator.

All in all, this was a very substantive meeting and the group made decisions that are sure to improve the performance of the board over the course of the next year. The committee is just beginning to learn how to work together and I expect that as they get compfortable with each other they will drive the agenda more. Certainly, I can tell that each of them are eager to lead and have the full capacity to do so. I think the WIB has a fantastic leadership team!

The Strategic Partnerships Committee

The WIB Strategic Partnerships committee met last Wednesday on July 18th. What a smart and dynamic group of people. Members in attendance included Peter Schiller, Ned Laubacher and Ron Souza. This week, the Chair of the committee, Peter Schiller focused, for the most part, the entire meeting on the continued development of the Strategic Initiatives outline. The outline has been a work in progress for the past several months. It outlines the WIB's vision and mission, its goals and strategies and finally, a number of specific workforce initiatives that are designed to help the WIB reach its goals and fulfill its mission.

After considerable discussion on various aspects of the outline, the group came to agreement on a prioritization plan for all of the identified strategies. Essentially, we agreed to break the strategies into four priority areas, with the first level of priority being to obtain additional resources for the rest of the plan and to acquire good data on which to make informed decisions.

In addition, the committee asked that two additional columns be added to show the progress being made on each initiative and the group/individuals responsible for seeing it through. The point was also made that we may want to consider developing each initiative with further detail which may require a differerent format for the outline/plan.

The committee asked that the ouline/plan be routed to the Executive Committee for endorsement and subsequently to the full board. All felt that it was important to obtain this endorsemet of the committee's activities. It is the committee's vision that the plan/outline will serve as the work plan for WIB staff as we move forward into the new year.

During the course of the discussion Peter informed the group that EDD's planned move to Napa has been stalled due to the failure of the Governor and the legislature to pass a budget. There is also fear that the Governor was going to line item veto up to $27 million from EDD's budget. This might have an affect on any decision to move state staff back into the County. Ron mentioned that he had run into Patrick Henning, EDD's Director at a social gathering and offered to touch base with him on behalf of the WIB. Bruce and Peter will send Ron a 1 pager on the status of the move and the reasons why EDD need to come back to the County.

In another key discussion, Ned stressed the importance of working with and leveraging the resources of other community groups that share the WIB's interest and goals. One of those groups is the Napa Valley Economic Development Corporation. Bruce agreed and said he would arrange a luncheon with NVEDC's Executive Director and their Board President to discuss possible joint initiatives.

All in all, a very good meeting!

Marketing Committee Meeting 7-16-07

The WIB's Marketing and Outreach Committee held its July meeting on Monday evening, July 17th. The committee is in some degree of transition due to some board member changes (i.e. Sandy Cooper moving to the Executive Committee) and some inconsistent attendance. At this meeting we had an avergage turnout. Three of the five members partipated including Mike Scully, Beth Pratt and Mary Ann Mancuso.

Some of the items discussed included:

1. The disconnect between the WIB brand and the Job Connection brand. A board member and partner had approached me earlier to discuss her desire to re-evaluate how we link the two in the eyes of the community. There was some degree of hesitation by the committee to make any recommendations in this area at this time. The group simply did not feel prepared or qualified enough to move forward in this area. I expect that this issue is a large one with many significant positive and potentially negative outcomes attached to it. I may recommend that we employ a strategic marketing firm to look at.
2. The planned Job Connection Open House. I had recommended to the committee that due to the fact that the WIB & Job Connection were in the middle of a reorganization, and the stalled progress of the EDD move to 1850 Soscol, that we should postpone the open house until possibly Spring. I think Spring would be a perfect time to conduct an open house for a number of reasons. First, it would give us more time to plan it; second, we may have more information about EDD's status; and third, we will likely have a few workforce reports published by then.
3. Is Job Connection seen as a welfare program? One of our committee members/partners stated that Job Connection has become synonomous with welfare programs for the County. We all agreed that if this were the case, we have a big challenge in front of us. I reminded the group of the vast amount of employer services that we have available for businesses. We will have to do more to promote business services! Having a full time "Business Services Coordinator" will no doubt help us overcome this perception if it is indeed true.
4. Communication - The group agreed that communication among board members, partners and the public was not good at all. We simply must find the tools, time and resources to ensure that board members know of all the activities and initiatives that are moving forward based on their discussions. I am certainly frustrated to hear board members complain about not knowing enough about what is going on but I will consider it a challenge. This blog is one tool that we will use to keep members updated. Beth Pratt also suggested using a tool called "Constant Contact". I will look into it.

In sum, we have a lot of work to do on the marketing and outreach front. On the one hand, we must wait until we complete our reorganization and get some successes under our belt before we market to the community. On the other hand, we must move immediately to find ways to keep board members abreast of all their good work. More later..