A bill for an ordinance approving a proposed Agreement between the City and County of Denver and State of Colorado, Department of Higher Education, by the State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education for the Use and Benefit of the Community College of Denver for the administration of the WORKNOW program for construction-related careers. Approves an intergovernmental agreement with Community College of Denver (CCD) for $564,000 and for one year to administer the WORKNOW program, a collaborative workforce development initiative to recruit, support and train residents in construction and construction-related careers, citywide (OEDEV-2018). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 2-25-19. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-28-18.
12 eyes, one abstention. Council Resolution 1528 has been adopted. Guzman-Lopez okay, if we go to Councilwoman Kennedy for a comment and then I'll come to you for the bill you want. Yes, the bill. Okay. So, Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens. Councilwoman, can you go ahead with your comment? Thank you so much, Mr. President. One more good news, bill today, which is a contribution from the city and county of Denver to the Work Now program. And this is a program that really came from a very robust set of community conversations, probably going back at least three years now as big construction projects were coming to Northeast Denver in particular. A number of residents came forward and said that it was really important for them to have local hiring in some of these big construction projects being done by the state or the city. And the real desire was not just to require that local residents could work on these projects, but that we have a much better way of connecting folks to those jobs. It's one thing to require to hire locally. It's another thing to have a place that screens folks, refers them to the employers and gets them ready to go. And we have a hard working team here within the city, but I think the realization from the community was that it was important that we really have this live outside the city so that it could serve all different projects, maybe state projects, maybe private industry projects. And so what came from that project was this work now collaborative that really brought together construction companies and associations and community members, and they have had huge success. My colleague, Councilwoman Ortega, spent a lot of time in the early phases of thinking about this partnership as well. And I think she's going to I asked if she could do the numbers because she's got the numbers in front of her. And I don't. But I just this is a big investment from our city. It's a half million dollars. And it's something that I think really has been a dream from the community for a long time. We had a recession the last time we got close to doing this kind of construction hiring. And all of a sudden there were a lot of out of work construction workers. So we stopped training. And that brought us to today where we have an aging construction workforce and a shortage. So in some ways, I feel like this contract, as small as it seems, that a half million dollars is kind of like a ten year in the making vision of how to really train workers on the big projects that we build. So I just want to thank the Community College of Denver for allowing their team to be so active in the community. And with government working on something like this, it's really out of the box. It's not a classroom project and I love that our community college was so willing to do this. And to Katrina word in particular, who really brought this vision to a reality. So and I'll I'll just, you know, with enthusiasm, it's on consent. We're not going to pull it out. But I'm really excited to see this bill moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Quinn. Each Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. So to all of what Councilwoman Canete just said, I want to say ditto, but I want to acknowledge Marcus, who is in the audience tonight, who has been working diligently on this project since he got here to his work with the city, as well as Tony, his his cohort at OED, who has helped sit down with us through many meetings to make sure that we actually had language in our office, language in the contracts that is now setting goals for hiring for apprentices, making sure that we are training people in these livable wage jobs that has a career path and exciting to learn. A presentation was given to us last week at our Business Committee talking about how many people are in this pipeline right now, and the numbers keep growing as we all keep talking about it and advertising this program. But we have over 700 people right now in this work now program, various stages. So we've got some that are working with some of our pre-employment organizations to get people job ready. We have a number of people that are in the apprenticeship programs before they're ready to go work on the job site. And we have a number of them that are also working on the job sites. And, you know, the beauty of this is that it's creating our trained workforce that will be here in place for the many bond projects that we have that will be built out over a period of time. We have seen a number of applications that have come forward before this body from the River Rail Ilitch site to the Denver Bronco parking lot. I could go on and on. Testing them, but those create potential opportunities as well that will ensure that these very workers who are getting trained will have a pipeline of job opportunities for them to plug into. So again, I want to echo praises for Katrina work and the folks at Community College of Denver who really stood up this Work Now program that is not only being used on the I-70 project, but it's being used at National Western. We were going to be utilizing it on the Convention Center and all the other big fun projects. So I just want to say thanks to our team within the city for really the dedication and commitment and the the ironic part about all of this is this is a program that the city had done historically. But, you know, over time we saw a decline in in construction projects in our city. And as we're ramping up with well in excess of $6 billion worth of construction projects, it's important that we create the opportunity for other people in our community to benefit from the not only the construction projects, but the wealth that's being built around our community that needs to trickle down to our communities as well. Thank you, Mr. President.