Career Source and workforce development act

1:47:56that'll be later today. All right, uh now we have Jerome um with Career Source and uh we added this on at the last minute because we wanted to make sure you're aware of an effort that's going on and the implications in my mind to Pasco County. So good morning.

1:48:12Good morning everyone. Everyone here today. Appreciate the time. Let me make sure I got this uh works right. So I'm here to talk about the RECAC, the uh Reimagining Education and Career Help Act that passed in June of last year by the Florida Legislature. Um That act is really to drive the improvement of the workforce development system through increased access and accountability while aligning services at the state level and local level, but also potentially realigning the

1:48:42workforce development areas. So See if I can get this to work. There we go. Okay. So The way the law is written, there's actually two things that basically could occur. Uh the the law actually states that Department of Economic Opportunity and Career Source Florida are going to complete a waiver to the federal government. asking that career source Florida Um basically takes over the role of the work local workforce boards. So the possibility is they could create another state agency

1:49:13to oversee the federal dollars that would be coming here for workforce development. That includes all the services, obviously that Career Source provides everything from reemployment services, cash assistance, food stamps, uh Workforce Investment Opportunity Act, training funds, et cetera. So that's sort of one end of it. The or and then in the law it states or they will reduce the number of workforce regions. So in essence, sort of combine combining regions. What you see here in front of you is just some of the you know population

1:49:43statistics and some of the things that have been talked about is maybe combining Pasco Hernando region with either Pinellas Hillsboro or Pinellas Hands Hillsboro or even more areas. So that's about 3.3 million people in these three regions, okay? Um Pasco has about twenty five Pasco Ronaldo has about twenty-five percent of the population. And in essence, what you see across sort of these larger regions of government or pseudo-government is that there's sort of an equitable appointment to

1:50:13those boards based on population. So in essence, right now, you know, at the way we are structured. You all and uh Hernando County Commission appoint the board members. Appoint the people locally based on federal requirements who needs to be on the board. This would mean potentially that you could have only 25% of the people on the board being appointed. Thus sort of diminishing. Your authority and your your view, your vision of what should happen here in Pasco

1:50:44County. So Want to bring that to your attention. How do things sort of look now? You know, what is it that the state is wanting to accomplish? Where do they want to go and why are they doing this? You know, currently there are 24 workforce regions in the state of Florida. We are aligned directly with Um the community college districts and that's based on how the federal law says. The federal law states that you should be aligned with education, economic development, and employment services, which is what we oversee. And

1:51:15they're looking to, um, the state is, they've engaged Ernest and Young actually, they are looking to engage local stakeholders, look at things such as commuter patterns, and also focus on sort of an economy of scale when they look at how they could redesign the system. Now

1:51:33quick quick question, M Madam Chairman Mariano stakeholders. Yes, sir. Um would that be like commissioners maybe? It should be, yes sir. Has anybody been contacted? Because I haven't been contacted.

1:51:45About this?

1:51:45About this.

1:51:48No, no, no. I I'm I'm glad and I'm I'm delighted what you've done with the with your letter too, we'll we'll talk about. But I haven't been contacted to what I to my feelings.

1:51:56By that, no, by the state eight, no.

1:51:58No, no. And I'm on the board and I haven't been contacted either.

1:52:02So the the state has enlisted Ernest and Young to sort of oversee this process. And as you can see, they have a pretty aggressive timeline. Actually, as of June, this June 9th, just a few weeks away, um Ernest and Young and Career Source Florida are going to present to the Career Source Florida Board their preliminary findings. Now again, they have not spoken with any county commissioners from where you're saying across the state, and you all have the fiscal responsibility for those federal dollars that come in for oversight. Uh they have not spoken with education at the local level, local business,

1:52:33economic development, or the citizens of the county. So I have fortunately been one of three people at the local level participating in the statewide meetings. Um I was select selected to be on the board sort of representing mid-sized regions across the state. And there's been a lot of talk about systems. You know, there are problems with the computer systems. Everyone's heard of what happened with the unemployment system when the pandemic hit, how it crashed. There's talks about sort of streamlining services

1:53:03working on, you know, higher-level communication, data sharing agreements, and so forth. So maybe that's what they're gonna talk about with their preliminary findings. But we don't even really know. But they're gonna have some preliminary findings. findings without speaking with the local stakeholders yet. So that should be fairly interesting. Uh by December, they're supposed to have a decision. So hopefully between now and December, they have had a chance to speak with you all as well as other stakeholders locally and come up with a decision. And then June that should actually say uh June twenty three. They should have an implement

1:53:33they should have this implemented. Whatever that plan may be. Whatever if it's a you know, state's gonna take over control of everything or if they're gonna combine regions or maybe they'll combine some regions and not the other, whatever it will may be, a lot of conjecture. But they'll have that ready to go and implemented by June of next year.

1:53:50Madam Chairman Mariano. Yep. One other question too, you you get a line on on economies of scale does not always meet efficiency. You in in our conversation, one thing I that struck me was you operated about administrative cost about six percent, but others are at eleven?

1:54:04Yes, sir. Um according to the Department of Ec Economic Opportunities annual review of how all the workforce boards operate. Pasco Hernando Workforce Board operates on an overall um administrative rate of six percent. Um our partner areas, which could possibly be combined with work at eleven to twelve percent. So You know, government has always been known to be efficient. Uh no offense to anybody, uh especially larger, larger groups, larger organizations. They currently are not doing that, and a lot of that is they have a different service delivery

1:54:35model than we do here. One of the first things I did when I came here was I got rid of our sort of Ivory Tower management office. and put us working in the one stop centers. Uh they still have nice big offices on on Eisenhower and other locations and there's different overhead, there's different costs. Our board, which you all appointed, did not have that philosophy. They said make sure the dollars go to with people in the community and the businesses. So we are fairly efficient with what we do.

1:55:04So are are you done with your presentation? No

1:55:06ma'am, but I'm open for coming. No, no, I'm not.

1:55:10Keep going and then we'll talk about it.

1:55:11Okay. Talking about, you know, what do they what do they want to do, where they want to go. Um hopefully they are going to want to model some of the best areas in the state. What are the best workforce development states in the country? As you can see here, Virginia, North Carolina, as rated by Siteselection.com. are pretty much one and two in the southeast. Okay? Now they are smaller states, you know, about half the population of Florida currently, but they have more workforce boards per capita than we do. They focus very much at

1:55:41the local level. So That's not apples to apples. What about the large states? Texas, who is traditionally looked at as one of the best, if not the best, workforce development state, large states. Has 28 workforce boards. They average about a million people per workforce region because they focus locally. And the funny thing is. Florida modeled theirs after Texas. And now they're looking to change it. However, Texas has still looked at sort of the pinnacle of what we should be doing. Um why? Uh frankly. Various

1:56:12reasons. Some may have to do with the way uh programs were managed or mismanaged in the past. But I think that's very interesting, you know. Florida is currently third in the the Southeast when it comes to that. And this is an independent ranking, so what are they looking at? Why are they where are they gonna go? We're not sure. It seems like we're sort of already structured in the way that we should be structured. Um Talking about maintaining that sort of local focus, again, staying with the smaller regions. You know, some of the issues and some of the things we look at is currently

1:56:42we partner and and and We're supposed to be partnered because we partner with economic development and employment partner very closely. We sit at the table with them when it comes to recruiting and retaining business. We provide services as well as some funding. Now, if you went to a larger model and you had competing economic development agencies, And again, hypothetical, but if you had a board that maybe was only 25 percent made up of people appointed from here, and you were competing. maybe

1:57:12the project would be supported more for a different area. So the resources we have to help with that. Would be diminished. You would be sort of trying to figure out how that would work. And I thought that's a sort of a key point for what it is we do with our partners. You could also look at just sort of the statistics of the workforce. What does the current workforce look like and what's it going to look like? What do they want? Currently, about 38% of the workforce is Gen Z and millennials. By 2028, not even six

1:57:43full years away, you're looking at about 58% of the workforce fit into that. What do they value? They value mobility and flexibility. They value that above salary and benefits. Okay? This is common knowledge for the workforce development and what we're looking at with the generational statistics. Yeah. What Pasco has done and created here the live here, work here, play here, model. Focuses on that. The investment that you have already put towards this economy and what you are doing here

1:58:13stays with that model. Those individuals do not want to follow commuter patterns and drive an hour to an hour and a half to go get a job someplace else. The only people that would benefit, honestly, are those businesses in other areas. It does not focus on the businesses right here. And the statistics Show that that's where the workforce is now, that's where it's going. You look at things like the Great Resignation, everyone's heard about. You look at the gig economy, more and more people are working remotely. And the pantem the pandemic. escalated

1:58:44that really just as quickly as you can believe. 2018, prior pandemic, fifty-two percent of the world's workforce worked remotely at least one day a week. Um

1:58:52Jerome? Yeah. Um so Commissioner Moore has to leave you as well. I have a budget

1:58:57meeting, so sorry. It's

1:58:58not your policy, but I think

1:59:00it's just twelve, but can I make a cover?

1:59:04Yeah, just a quick comment I want to make the motion to. Um I agree a hundred percent with you. We should not consolidate. Um I'll use it I'll use T barta as an example. Because of the decisions made Mm. Chairman Starkey. It sits on a T barter board. That board was diluted with the with Pasco County representation. Um We're the small person of the totem pole, even though we're the fastest growing county in the region. You made a great comment earlier about

1:59:34Moffitt, for example. You showed some other companies too. We we're gonna have something bigger than the West Shore Business District, possibly bigger than um downtown Tampa when it comes to the amount of jobs here in Basel County. We need you guys, we need you to ourselves. Um We know, unfortunately, what's happened recently. with Career Source Hillsboro, Career Source Penellas. We don't need to be involved in that. I do not want to merge with them by any means. If for some reason they think this is a good

2:00:04decision, I'm why is EY in charge of this? They're an accounting firm. I don't know how they're involved in workforce innovation. You think we bring somebody in that actually understands workforce innovation and is involved in that besides E.Y., which I'm not knocking E.Y. but they're they're a great popular accounting firm. If they're gonna audit somebody, go audit Pen Ellison Hillsboro. You know, not us. So I'll make the motion and I will say this. If for some some reason they think it's a good idea to do this, I'll make a motion to

2:00:34pull any damn funding from it as well. because we're not gonna merge with them. Well I hopefully we'll have to say. Well that's that's i if not if not we'll create our own. If not, we'll pull our funding and we'll create our own. Well we will figure it out.

2:00:48That's federal money flowing down.

2:00:49Well then

2:00:50they can we'll we'll figure

2:00:51it out. They do need the support and technically at the the federal level that it should go through the county commission.

2:00:58Okay.

2:00:59You do have s you do have a say at least, uh at least you have a voice.

2:01:03Let me give you another example why I think this is a bad idea. So we have AM skills.

2:01:07Yeah.

2:01:07We're not approved as a um what's the correct term Training Provider. We're not approved as a training provider in Penellas or um Hillsboro yet 'cause they view us as competition to their com technical college, which is crazy 'cause we don't do exactly what they do. We feed into their colleges, but I just I just think we have Such a good thing going here and I just think we'll really be harmed if we join with these other areas. You know, if they want to join back together. Um

2:01:38but we have greater oversight, greater control in the system that we have. And we shouldn't be punished because other people may have not had their eyes on the ball.

2:01:47Motion

2:01:48move for approval.

2:01:51And should we bring in the Florida Association of Counties to help maybe oversee some of this?

2:01:55Well we can talk we'll certainly talk about it at our meeting.

2:02:00Have your uh so is the motion to approve this letter?

2:02:03Yeah, motion to approve the letter. I think Mariano. All in favor?

2:02:06Aye. Opposed. All right, thank you. And I will sign the letter. All right, we'll we're adjourned, we'll be back at one thirty.